+ In the Love of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
If I were to ask you to find the Ten Commandments, right where you’re sitting, where would you look?
{{Congregational Response}}
[Pew Bible: Exodus, Deuteronomy; Book of Common Prayer]
Please turn in the Prayer Book to page 350. There you will find the Contemporary version of the Decalogue. What does the word “Decalogue” mean? {{Congregational Response}}
[Ten Words, the literal translation from the Hebrew language, and the original way people referred to the Ten Commandments.]
Notice how the Ten Commandments are introduced:
“Hear the commandments of God to his people: I am the Lord your God who brought you out of bondage.”
In other words, these Commandments come in a context― the context of a liberating God who wants to establish a liberated community of people. The Ten Commandments are not primarily a blueprint for good behavior; they are primarily a blueprint for good relationships― good relationships with God and good relationships with people.
When I was growing up, we prayed the Ten Commandments on the first Sunday of every month; so please turn to page 317 where you will find the Traditional version of my childhood. I’ll read the Ten Commandments, and please pray the responses in italics:
God spake these words, and said: I am the Lord thy God who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
[And here comes the first Commandment:]
Thou shalt have none other gods but me.
Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.
Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them.
Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.
Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain.
Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.
Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.
Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.
Honor thy father and thy mother.
Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.
Thou shalt do no murder.
Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.
Thou shalt not steal.
Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.
Thou shalt not covet.
Lord, have mercy upon us, and write all these thy laws in our hearts, we beseech thee.
Finally, please turn to page 847. This is for future reference. This is in the Catechism or Teaching section of the Prayer Book, and this will give you basic understanding for what the Ten Commandments mean.
In this morning’s Gospel, the Pharisees try once again to test Jesus. So they ask him which of the commandments is the greatest. But Jesus doesn’t choose any of the Ten Commandments; instead he recites a commandment from the Jewish prayer known as the Shema Yisrael, a prayer that Jews pray every morning and every evening, before they go to bed, and on their deathbeds: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
And then Jesus says, “This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
Where did Jesus get this second commandment?
{{Congregational Response}}
[from our first reading this morning, in Leviticus.]
I recently learned that the translation, “And a second is like it” is wrong. It should be translated, “And a second is the same.” But how can loving God, and loving our neighbor as ourselves, be the same commandment when even Jesus calls loving God with all our heart and soul and mind the greatest and first commandment? Here’s the answer:
The reason the second of the Ten Commandments forbids making an image or likeness of God is because we are created in God’s image and likeness; and so the only way God is available to us in any practical way is through God’s image and likeness in us. And that means that the only practical way we have of loving God is by loving those whom God has created in God’s own image and likeness.
That’s why later on in Matthew’s Gospel, when Jesus tells the parable of the Great Judgment, the King says, “I was hungry, and you gave me food; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink; naked, and you clothed me; sick and imprisoned, and you visited me; a stranger, and you welcomed me. For as you did it to the least of these, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:31ff).
And this idea occurs throughout the New Testament. Listen, for example, to these passages from John’s First Letter:
“How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” (3:17); “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us” (4:12); “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also” (4:20-21).
I’m currently reading this book― Free for All: Rediscovering the Bible in Community, by Tim Conder and Daniel Rhodes. A homeless man joined their church, and here’s what happened:
“When our sermon conversations were about poverty, prison, or shame, he would often speak up with personal illustrations that were far outside the experiences of everyone else in our community. For most churches like ours, the social status of a “prostitute” is a casual abstraction. But a female friend of this man, a woman who supported her drug addiction through prostitution, was also a frequent worship companion, so texts involving Jesus’ compassion for prostitutes stepped off of the page for us. We had only to look across the room to see what the call to love the least of these (Matthew 25:31-46) actually means” (p. 63).
The commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” is also a statement of fact. The more you love others in concrete ways, the more you will love yourself. Just this week a friend of mine posted this on Facebook:
“I offered compassion and forgiveness to a friend who hurt me terribly ― took me quite a while to be able to do ― but it was miraculous. It freed both of us.”
“It freed both of us.” And that brings us back to the beginning of my sermon and God’s words at the beginning of the Ten Commandments:
I am the Lord your God who brought you out of bondage.”
Jesus’ great commandment to “love our neighbor as ourselves,” which fulfills all the other commandments, is the commandment of a liberating God who wants to empower a liberated community― a liberated community which will be free to love all those whom God has created in God’s own image and likeness, a liberated and liberating community who will feed and forgive, heal and help, empower and embrace.
Thanks be to God.
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I am indebted for this insight to John M. Hull and his essay “Mission-shaped and kingdom focused?” in Mission-shaped Questions: Defining Issues for Today’s Church, p. 116-124.
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