A Sermon Delivered by The Rev. John D. Painter at Centenary United Methodist Church Metuchen, New Jersey October 5, 2008 (World Communion Sunday)

Text: Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Then God spoke all these words:
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work.
Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance, and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.” Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin.” —Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20, NRSV

Last year Promenade Pictures released the animated movie The Ten Commandments. As part of their marketing, they commissioned Kelton Research to poll 1,000 people on their recall of Big Mac ingredients vs. the Ten Commandments. I don’t really know why they chose to make that comparison, but from the results it appears that Ronald McDonald is keeping Moses in bondage.
Eighty percent (80%) of Americans knew the Big Mac had two all-beef patties while just over fifty percent (50%) knew “Thou shalt not kill” was a commandment. In the end, only fourteen percent (14%) knew all Ten (10) Commandments.

Even more disturbing, perhaps, it seems that those who attend church or synagogue at least once a week also have a bit of trouble naming them all. The top two mentioned commandments—Thou shalt not kill and Thou shalt not steal—were recalled by 70 seventy percent (70%) and 69 sixty-nine percent (69%) respectively. However, the Big Mac was more memorable—seventy-nine (79%) percent knew of its all-beef patties and seventy-six percent (76%) of regular attendees at church and synagogue knew that the Big Mac comes with lettuce.

As some have pointed out in the wake of this survey, a lot of religious folk may get all bent out of shape if the Ten Commandments are pulled off courtroom or school room walls, but they aren’t able to pull up the entire Decalogue (Ten Commandments) themselves.

Sharply captured in a phrase by one news item, “It’s enough to make McMoses throw his two all-beef tablets to the ground!”

Just to have a little fun this morning, I have asked the Ushers to pass out to you a “Moses vs. the Big Mac Survey,” and want to take just a few minutes to see how we do in response to these questions. Let’s take 30 seconds to try to complete a few of these…and then we’ll take a minute to complete the final, important question. (Here we asked the folk to answer several of the questions on the Survey, while Jon Benjamin played the theme from “Jeopardy” on the piano. You will find a copy of the Survey at the end of this Message.)

The realization for many of us may be Sleepy the Dwarf is more memorable than resting on the Sabbath, and Rudolph the red-nose reindeer better remembered than making no graven images. So let’s briefly consider some ways to keep the commandments from disappearing, or becoming trivial, in our lives.

It’s important to remember that this is really God’s first memorandum to the newly formed nation of Israel. God has appeared in a number of individual “theophanies” to their forebears, but this is basically God’s first word to the entire community of Israel—and it’s written in stone.

God has led the Hebrew people safely through waters of the Red (or Reed) Sea; the Egyptians are no longer a threat; and, it’s time for the people of God to sit down and have what one fellow has described as a kind of “Come to Jesus” meeting. God breaks the silence—up to this point God has spoken primarily through mighty deeds—and God says, “Okay, people, listen up. Here’s the deal.” And the first thing God does is to remind them of just who it is they are dealing with: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” This is who they are dealing with. The LORD—the LORD who is your God—and I am the One who just saved your skin; I’m the One, in case you’ve forgotten, who got you out of “the house of slavery.” So, it’s like: “Pay attention!”

Rule Number One: “You shall have no other gods before me.” And so on….

Israel is now formally coming into a relationship with God, and God, before going any further, parks the people of God at the foot of Mt. Sinai and asks for a “prenuptial agreement”: “Here’s our arrangement, our covenant. These are my expectations.” This will be our covenant together.
God provides this list of Ten Commandments, not in order to make salvation possible by the strict keeping of these commandments, but to establish a standard of holiness for the people of God…
The effect of the Ten Commandments is that, for the first time really, the people understand clearly that God is quite different from them. God is not just like us. God’s ways are not our ways. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. God is Someone quite Other. I AM WHO I AM, as God declared to Moses.

So first of all, let us remember that the Ten Commandments were not something new for the Israelites. It’s not like Moses shared the Ten Commandments with them and they’re saying, “Oh, wow! We didn’t know that! We’re so glad you told us.” Look at the commandments, and then review Genesis. It’s all there. You don’t murder—almost at the very beginning. You put away false gods. You don’t steal from your uncle. You don’t cheat your brother. You don’t covet the flocks of your neighbor, and you don’t mess with your neighbor’s wife. Etc.

Israel had the same problem we often have: It’s not that we don’t know any better; it’s that we often don’t behave much better. We’ve heard the law but we don’t necessarily do the law. The giving of the Ten Commandments illustrates in stone a very real truth about human nature: We’re prone to ignore what is right, and to do what is wrong; and, ultimately, that is not good for us…or for our world.

The second thing we need is an easier way to remember the heart of the Decalogue. You might notice an internal division within the Ten Commandments themselves. Jesus later summarized the Ten Commandments by saying that the law was easily summed up: Love God and love your neighbor. His division is the same that separates the Decalogue into two groups—a vertical component outlining our worship relationship with God in the first four commandments, and a horizontal component which frames our interactions with other people in the final six. These two groupings—worship and community—make for two natural movements in our relationships of faith.

Third, more than any other passage in the Bible (apart from the words of Jesus himself) we get the sense that this is really God speaking to us. This is God! Speaking to us! The commandments! Nothing says “God” like the Ten Commandments. Here God audibly speaks words to Moses, loading them with great interpersonal gravity. Throughout the Torah we can find lists of recorded rules. But here the people heard their God speaking from the mount—thundering and crackling these words into fearsome existence.

Compare the impersonal feel of the IRS tax code to the care and nurture of a parent telling a toddler he or she cannot run into the street. We’re to remember that God’s decrees are a communication of God’s love, hopes and protection for us. “I made you. I love you. I know what will satisfy you and what will leave you longing.”

Fourth and finally, understanding and applying the Ten Commandments to our own life journey means we walk a fine line between legalism and antinomianism, between keeping these laws and living without laws at all. On the one hand, obeying these Commandments will earn us no additional favor or special merit with God; the Decalogue is about our sanctification—our maturing in faith, and not about our justification—our acceptance/salvation in love and grace by God. On the other hand, we cannot be cavalier about the law, assuming it has no further connection with the gospel beyond plain freedom. In his New Testament epistle, James held the law and the gospel of grace in tension, reminding us that we know we are people of faith if we live as people of faith.

We’ve heard of the many demonstrations and legal battles waged by various religious chanters as they bemoan the removal of the Ten Commandments from public places. Yet, is there a better way to put the commandments on display before God and everybody than by living lives that are consistent with the teaching of the commandments?

A number of people think that the Ten Commandments are simply a collection of “thou-shalt-nots,” But they are far more than that…they are a paradigm, a model for a healthy community which lives in covenantal relationship with their God and with one another.

Let’s be honest in our cultural exegesis: the Brady Bunch was pathetically corny at its best moments and the Big Mac is as healthy as a stick of deep-fried butter dipped in ranch dressing. If there’s anything that we, the people of the Covenant, need to remember, it is the timelessness of these powerful words which God has spoken into our souls.

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PRAYER
Holy God, like all children, we need rules so that we can learn our boundaries. As a loving parent, you have given us rules—not to punish us—but to instruct us. The commandments you give bring wholeness to our lives. When we keep your commandments, we honor you and everyone with whom we are in community. Help us to fulfill our baptismal promise to teach our children your law and your ways. Continue to guide and instruct us. For it is only with your help that we can stay on the right path. Amen.
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Moses vs. the Big Mac
Survey

You will have 30 seconds to complete each of the following lists:

1. Jot down as many of the ingredients found in a McDonald’s Big Mac as you can remember.
2. Name as many of Santa’s reindeer as possible.
3. List as many of the first names from the Brady Bunch as you can.
4. Name as many of Snow White’s dwarves as you can.
5. Name the seven titles that comprise the Harry Potter series.
6. Name the eight states and their capitals which border, and/or are closest to your home state.
7. Name any six characters from the TV show, Lost.
8. Finally, list as many of the Ten Commandments as you are able. (60 seconds)

Moses vs. the Big Mac
Answer Sheet
Big Mac Ingredients: two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onion, sesame-seed bun.
Santa’s Reindeer: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, Rudolph.
Brady Bunch: Carol, Marsha, Jan, Cindy, Mike, Greg, Peter, Bobby.
Seven Dwarves: Grumpy, Doc, Bashful, Sneezy, Sleepy, Happy, Dopey.
Harry Potter: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (June 26, 1997); Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (July 2, 1998); Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (July 8 1999); Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (July 8, 2000); Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (June 21, 2003); Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (July 16, 2005); Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (July 21, 2007).
States: New York (Albany); Pennsylvania (Harrisburg); Delaware (Dover); Maryland (Annapolis); Connecticut (Hartford); Rhode Island (Providence); Massachusetts (Boston); Vermont (Montpelier)
Lost: Hugo, Claire, Sawyer, Kate, Jack, Jin, Sun, Juliet, Locke, Sayid, Ben, Desmond,
Charlotte, Daniel, Michael and Miles.

Ten Commandments:
1. No other gods before me
2. No graven images
3. Do not lift up the LORD’s name in vain
4. Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy
5. Honor your father and your mother
6. You shall not murder
7. You shall not commit adultery
8. You shall not steal
9. You shall not bear false witness
10. You shall not covet…
Source: Homiletics (September-October 2008), p. 46.
Copyright © 2008 by Communication Resources, Inc. Used by Permission.