Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
October 2, 2011

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Today we have as our focus text part of the version of the Ten Commandments that appears in Exodus. There’s a slightly different version in Deuteronomy, but the one in Exodus is the one most people know and the one most people mean when they refer to the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are a really big deal. Never mind that they’re only the first ten of 613 laws in the Torah. They’re the ten people know or at least have heard of. They’re the ten that a great many people think express a basic, universal, absolute morality. They’re the ten that a lot of people, or reasons that escape me, want to mount on the walls of courthouses. So understanding the Ten Commandments is a pretty important thing both within Christianity and in our society in general.

The Ten Commandments do state some pretty basic principles. Have no God but the LORD. Don’t steal. Don’t covet other people’s stuff. Don’t commit perjury. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t kill, or at least don’t commit murder. Those are pretty basic moral rules, and the Ten Commandments is an OK place to look them up if you forget them.

But did you notice something about our reading this morning? It’s the reading specified in the Revised Common Lectionary for today, an ecumenical resource that many churches follow and take their scripture readings each Sunday from. You probably noticed that the reading skipped some of the verses. It skipped verses 5 and 6 and verses 10 and 11. Whenever I see the lectionary skipping verses like that the first thing I do is look at the verses they skipped and try to figure out why. In the case of our reading today it isn’t too hard to figure out why the lectionary skips them. Verses 5 and 6 read:

You shall not bow down to [idols] or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Verses 10 and 11 read

But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien in your towns. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.”

It seems pretty clear that the lectionary folks left those verses out because they say things that we don’t believe anymore. They say that God punishes successive generations of people for the sins of an ancestor. We don’t believe it. In fact, Judaism doesn’t believe it and hasn’t for something like 2,600 years. That’s why the lectionary people left out verses 5 and 6. It may not be so obvious why they left out verses 10 and 11. It’s not because they accept slavery, because verse 17 does that too, and they left that one in. But did you notice who’s not mentioned in the list of people who shall not work on the Sabbath in verse 10? It mentions “you,” presumably a male head of a household. It mentions “your” son and daughter, slaves and animals and resident aliens; but it doesn’t mention “your” wife. I think that omission reflects the grossly patriarchal nature of the culture that produced the Ten Commandments, and I think maybe that’s why the lectionary people left this verse out..

Which raises some questions about the Ten Commandments, doesn’t it. If, as so many people contend, the Ten Commandments are God’s word on moral living, how can they have in them those things that seem so wrong to us? Yet they do have those things in them. So clearly we can’t, as so many people want us to do, just take the Ten Commandments at face value. If we have to take verses 5, 6, 10, and 11 out of them when we read them in worship, don’t we at least have to ask questions about the rest of verses?

Clearly we do have to ask questions about the rest of the verses. The verses the lectionary leaves out show that the Ten Commandments were written in and reflect an ancient culture that was very different from ours. They express a view of God that is very different from ours. They accept slavery, something it took us a long time to reject in this country but something that we now universally reject. There are some other things in the Ten Commandments that may not be so apparently troublesome but are troublesome nonetheless. When they say “I am and Lord your God…; you shall have no other gods before me” it really isn’t stating monotheism. It fully accepts the reality of other gods besides Yahweh. It just says the Hebrews are not to worship those other gods. When it says “thou shalt not commit adultery” it doesn’t mean what we take it to mean today either. Adultery didn’t mean back then any sexual relations outside of marriage, as many people take it to mean today. It was a man having sexual relations with a woman who was married to another man. That’s all. As we’ve already seen, the list of people who may not work on the Sabbath assumes that the commandment is addressed to a man. It mentions his son, daughter, slaves, and animals; but it doesn’t mention his wife. I guess she could work on the Sabbath because she had to serve the man. So yes, we do have to ask questions about the Ten Commandments, and we might not particularly like the answers we get.

So what are we to make of the Ten Commandments? In the movie “The Pirates of the Caribbean” the characters talk about something called to Code of the Brethren. It’s a code of honor among thieves that pirates developed and that pirates are supposed to obey. In one scene a pirate captain named Barbossa, played by Geoffrey Rush, tricks Elizabeth Swann, the daughter of a governor, played by Keira Knightly, and kidnaps her. Elizabeth, who has long been fascinated with pirates, appeals to the Code, saying that it requires Barbossa to do the decent thing and let her go. Barbossa says first of all the Code doesn’t apply to Elizabeth because she’s not a pirate; but beyond that, he says “the Code is more like what you’d call guidelines.” Geoffrey Rush of course delivers the line brilliantly, and it usually gets quite a laugh from the audience. His character Barbossa means that as guidelines rather than binding rules the Code is something he can ignore, or at least interpret his way around, when it suits him.

In leaving out some of the verses of the Ten Commandments the lectionary is saying to us, I think, that the Ten Commandments are more like what you’d call guidelines than hard and fast rules. As guidelines the commandments are something that we need to take seriously but not literally. They are something we need to question and learn a good deal about if we are truly to understand them and use them appropriately. Yes, they state some valid general principles. No, they are not infallible in every word. Should we post them in courthouses? No. Doing so is blatantly unconstitutional, and like everything else in the Bible the Ten Commandments require a lot of study before we can actually understand what they are and are not saying.

Perhaps Captain Barbossa was being cynical and conniving when he called the Pirates’ Code more like something you’d call guidelines. I don’t think we’re being cynical or conniving when we call the Ten Commandments something more like what you’d call guidelines. So let’s take them seriously. Let’s study and understand them. But let’s stop making such a big fuss over them. After all, they’re only more like what you’d call guidelines. Amen.