Exodus 20: 1-17 Psalm 19
1 Cor. 1: 18-25 John 2: 13-22
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my strength and my redeemer. Amen.
Rumor has it that some people among us are baseball fans. Yes? It is a harbinger of spring when the pitchers and catchers report for training and it is a sign in this congregation when several of our members, and I might add they are of the female gender, head to Arizona, to begin the season with their beloved Mariner’s during spring training.
It’s my observation that one of the most glamorous, talked about positions on a baseball team is that of pitcher. After all, you get a lot of camera time up there on the mound, all eyes trained on you. You get the signal….no….you signal back with a subtle shake of the head. Next signal….still not what you want. Third signal….yep (head nod) that’s the one. And there’s the wind up and the pitch and it’s a strike! And that’s it…the Mariner’s have won the world series!
But it’s also been my observation that the catcher is at least as important, if not more so, than the pitcher. “The catcher is the one who seems to know more completely what’s going on, what’s at risk, and who to protect. A good catcher announces every play, keeping the team moving forward as one.
The catcher, often, becomes the one we trust.”[1]
The position of catcher is just as critical if one is a trapeze artist. Henri Nouwen, beloved and renowned theologian, writes of visiting a circus in South Africa and finding himself enthralled with the trapeze artists. While speaking with one of the flyers, one of the people who does all of the flips and leaps and twirls in mid air, the flyer said this to Nouwen: ‘Henri, everyone applauds for me because when I do those leaps and back flips, they think I’m the hero. But the real hero is the catcher. The only thing I have to do is stretch out my hands and trust, trust that he’ll be there to pull me back up.’
Our Old Testament reading from Exodus today is the reading of what we know as the Ten Commandments but what is better known as the Ten words or the Decalogue. They are a part of a covenant, a promise, that God is making with the people of Israel, who have just been delivered out of captivity in Egypt. Tradition tells us that the first several words or commandments have to do with the relationship the Israelites were to have with God. There were to be no other Gods above Yahweh, the people were not to worship idols instead of God, the Israelites were not to misuse God’s name. On the Sabbath the people were to rest. And then the commandments turn to how the Israelites were to live in community: honoring their elders, not murdering, not committing adultery, not stealing, not lying about their neighbors, not coveting anything that belonged to their neighbor.
Following all of these words would, it would seem, be a good pattern for living together in community, whether one was an Israelite coming out of captivity or whether one is a resident of the twenty first century. In fact, we have, particularly in the west, so embraced these as the gold standard for following God that we have overlooked some of their inherent difficulties. For example, we would likely all agree that killing is wrong, but what about war? Is there such a thing as a just war and if so, how do we reconcile that with this commandment? What about the death penalty? Is there a time when taking another life, killing another person, is ok? God doesn’t say anything about that in this passage of Scripture. And what about this matter of slaves? Because not once, but twice, God offers commandments about what male and female slaves will and will not do. Is slavery then ok? And how is it that the slaves and the wives belong to a neighbor, just as the ox and donkey?
This is the problem with a literal reading of the Bible and this is the problem with taking a very particular message intended for a very specific people and holding them as precise and fixed standards for all people in all times. In their literal sense, they do not fit. And we have largely chosen to ignore that, instead parading replicas of the stone tablets upon which Moses carried them down from the mountain, posting them in courtrooms as though they supercede the municipal laws. Yet, a 2007 Reuter’s survey discovered that more Americans could name the ingredients of a Big Mac than could name even half of the Ten Commandments.
But I am not here to argue against embracing the Ten Commandments. Just the opposite. I am here to argue for understanding them, then embracing them as the treasures they are for disciples of Jesus Christ.
Again, context is critical. The Israelites have just come out of captivity; they have been delivered by God and God is covenanting with them to be their God. Verse 2 is a declaration of God’s identity: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery;” That’s who God is. And that is good news! And then God goes on to give the words. The words that will be the Israelite’s side of the covenant.
In the Hebrew language these words are not written in the imperative. They are not written as commands at all. They are written in the indicative style, as statements of what is. Isn’t language complex and marvelous? God was not shouting commands at the people, God was offering statements of how things are to be within the covenant. God is God and the people are the people and here’s how things will be.
God already knew just how capable the Israelites were of living outside of God’s desire for them. And so, instead of issuing some set of rules and restrictions, God offers a covenant, a promise, that God will be God, and the people will respond accordingly.
As we have already talked about this Lent, we have a new covenant in Jesus Christ, whose life, death and resurrection embody and supercede all of the old covenants. It doesn’t mean the Covenants of Hebrew Scriptures are unnecessary or unimportant, it means they have been fulfilled. They are accomplished, finished in Jesus Christ.
Yesterday I had the chance to hear the renowned Lutheran theologian Gordon Lathrop speak about what he calls the Ten Words. Lathrop notes that an encounter with Jesus Christ takes the Ten Words and turns them on their head, turning them into a symbol for the question “Are you willing to have your life changed?”
And so, for us, the Ten Commandments are less about rules and regulations than they are about identity. Who is God? Who are we? What is our relationship to God? What is our relationship to one another? How do we live in ways that connect our identities as children of God with our life together in community?
Living in relationship with God and in covenant with God requires trust. It requires that we understand our role. And, if you will, it allows me to return to my illustrations of baseball pitcher and catcher and the flyer and catcher on a trapeze.
Neither the catcher behind the plate or the catcher flying in the circus comes to their task without a good understanding of what it takes to make their ultimate tasks work out successfully. The catcher and the pitcher know what every signal means. They have practiced for countless days and weeks on every single nuance of every single pitch. And when things aren’t going as planned, it is the catcher who comes to the pitcher there on the mound to talk things over. To review what it is that they have rehearsed for so many months. To remember how they trained and drilled and prepared.
Similarly the trapeze artists have trained extensively; practicing every single move, until trust develops and the reach for the hands of the catcher by the flyer is instinctive.
They know how it has to be in order to best have this critical relationship. They know exactly what must take place and how it must happen. The catcher does not need to shout at the pitcher or the flyer. They both know what it takes. They trust the other.
And when we read Scripture, including the Ten Commandments, we can trust that God knows how to catch us when we fail or fall. God knows what underpinnings to offer us, not as shouted commands, but as a simply stated promise. That God is God and we are not. And that when life seems like a baseball game for which we are ill prepared (not unlike some of the Mariner’s moments) or when it seems that we are flying on life’s trapeze, all we have to do is trust that God is God and then reach out our hands and grasp the God of life.
Amen.
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