“The Ten Commandments: Love Your Neighbor” Exodus 20:12-16

 It is no secret that one of the pastors who I greatly admired was Fred Rogers. Yes, Mister Rogers from Mister Rogers Neighborhood who was an ordained Presbyterian minister. I have a colleague who shares my admiration for Mister Rogers - and when asked why, it is because of his emphasis on neighbors. Loving your neighbor. I recently told this colleague that I found a new novelty item for the neighborhood that says this “you are not acting like the person Mister Rogers knew you could be.”

Which has been true well before Mister Rogers was called or he was even born. Throughout time, people have not been acting in ways that they could be. Ways that they were created to be. Which is why we needed (and still need) the second half of the Ten Commandments. 

The Ten Commandments were so sacred to the people of Israel that they were placed in the ark of the covenant. Now there were lots of different understandings around the purpose of the ark of the covenant. It symbolized the presence of God. It went before the Israelites into battle. It was present at times of worship. But the ark and the items continued within were a reminder to the people that their lives, their whole, everyday lives, were lived before a holy God. 

Yet, we are not God, so we need life to have structure in order to help us to have a container in order to live in a way that is pleasing to God. There is a woman in our parish who always reminds me of the Scripture of Psalm 16:6 that states that God has made our boundary lines fall in pleasant places. While we often try to rebel against boundaries, they are truly a gift from God. And in that gift there is both abundance and blessing.

The problem is what we have never been very good at boundaries or being obedient to the One who gives them to us. Think back to Genesis 3, in the garden, where Adam and Eve were told that they could eat from any tree in the garden except the tree that was in the middle of the garden - the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There was a clear boundary. But the serpent confused the boundary line and its meaning, by telling Eve that the consequence would not be death if she ate from it, but instead she would be given the gift of open eyes. A decision was made. Consequences even worse than death came as Adam and Eve were dismissed from the garden. And a path of human disobedience and personal willfulness began to dominate our story. 

But God still did not give up on us. As he is forming this new community in this new promised land he gave ten commandments to act as boundary lines around how we are to relate to God and to one another. The problem is that we have made the ten commandments into the ten suggestions or the ten moral principles instead of actually viewing them as the boundary lines that they are intended to be.

Lest we think that the Ten Commandments just guide our Jewish brothers and sisters, I remind you of what Jesus said when asked what the most important commandment was. He couldn’t give just one. Instead he said, “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” In this statement, Jesus ties together the two tablets of the commandments and tells us to write them on our hearts and live them out in our lives. 

Which we still need today. Because we are not always good at common life together. In fact, we can be downright sinful. The Ten Commandants are not meant to be a gold star that we wear as a badge of righteousness, proclaiming that of course we can keep them. No, they expose our sin and then try to restrain it as well. Boundaries. Boundaries that offer life. 

What happens when we don’t view the second half of those commandments properly? Well first, we forget that the whole loving our neighbor thing flows out of the love we have for God. Kids get this a lot better than adults, I’m afraid. I’m big on using images or items that you can hold in order to communicate Gospel truths. So I have told kids in the past that the cross tells us about God’s love in the vertical portion - God sent his own son to give his life for us as an act of live. But the hortizonal part of the cross, that reminds us that we are to share that love with the world in how we interact with our neighbors. Because God loved us, we love others. 

But instead, we get caught up in judging people. Or arguing. I’m in the middle of VBS at my new church. We meet with kiddos once a week over a month timeframe in order to proclaim the Good News. At the first planning meeting I attended, when things were already well under way, the organizer said something that stayed with me. Do we really wonder why kids treat each other so poorly today when the adults they have modeling behavior for them, on TV and in person, aren’t showing them a different way?

And I’m sorry to say friend, that statement can be just as true of Christ followers as anyone else. We don’t always get the loving your neighbor thing right. 

So we have this covenant that yes, binds us, but it also sets us free to live as the people of God in a away that is so different than the world. In a way that makes us different. That allow us to love differently, not out of our own strength, but out of God’s. Not to point to our own goodness and moral fortitude, but to point to the salvation that has changed us. Not to build ourselves up, but to build up the community by speaking the truth in love. 

A few weeks ago, a fellow pastor and sister in Christ posted something on Facebook that resonated with my soul. Now Facebook and the internet at large, can be a place that destroys community. It can quickly become a place where we do not love our neighbor well. This sister posted a statement about how we should be guided by what is Christ-like. In how we approach life and in how we live life. And I found myself thinking “that! That’s it!” I want to live a life that is Christ-like in how I love my neighbor. And that is what I appreciated so much about Mister Rogers. Even through a TV screen he was able to make strangers into neighbors because of his care and how he loved with the love of Christ. 

At the end, the commandments that were uttered from the very mouth of God about what it meant to be community and love your neighbor well, are just as needed today. Not as a suggestion. Or for kindness’s sake. But because without them, we don’t put our neighbor first. We do not love with the love of God. We are prone to go our own way. 

So are we going to live as people within our boundaries given by God and see them as pleasant and creating a place of abundance or are we going to rebel against them? Are we going to live differently because of the love of Christ or are we just going to look like the rest of the world in how we communicate with and treat other people? Are we going to have a Christ-like heart that guides all we do and say or are we going to let our own words and thoughts take over?

Maybe, just maybe, the statement that we need is not “you are not acting like the person Mister Rogers knew you could be” but “you are not acting like the person Christ died for you to be.” Let us be different church. For the sake of the Kingdom. Amen. 

“The Ten Commandments” Exodus 19:1-6; 20:1-2

  If I had to describe Moses in one word it would be “reluctant”. Moses was a reluctant servant of God, even when he had this profound experience of God showing up and speaking to him through the burning bush. Even when God gave him this awesome responsibility to go and tell Pharaoh that he is to let the people of God go. Even when he was tapped by God to be the one to lead the chosen people into the Promised Land. 

But then again, Moses was the reluctant leader set apart to lead a reluctant people. 

The people of Israel have already been on this journey to the Promise Land for three months when they arrived at Mount Sinai. Originally they had set out for Rephidim, which was known as a place where human need came face-to-face with the awesome power of God’s provision. 

Now the people may not have been aware, but Moses certainly was, that this Mountain stood as a sign of God’s faithfulness towards the people. And here, God again spoke to Moses, telling him that when people look back on this moment generations from now, they will continue to tell the story that Moses and the people are to pass on to their decendants. That it was the Lord Almighty who brought them out of Egypt.

But their story does not end with being rescued from Egypt, or even arriving at the Promised Land. They are now to obey God and keep the covenant that they are given as a sign that they are God’s treasured position. 

And what is the first part of that particular covenant? I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

It would be so easy to think that this is a text of something that happened long ago that has little bearing on our lives. But nothing is farther from the truth. For the next few weeks we are going to journey together through this covenant that God gave the people of Israel, which we still teach today. It’s called the Ten Commandments. 

Movies and books have been made about the Ten Commandments. People of faith may think that they know them, claiming that they have never broken them, only to realize that they may understand the letter of the law, but have forsaken the spirit in which it was given. And so, we return to them again, these thousand upon thousands of years later. 

This covenant that God gave to the people, even before they reached the Promised Land, was to guide them in how to live in a distinct way that reflected the God who loved them. Yes, they were the chosen people, saved by God, but they weren’t saved to sit by and judge other people. They were saved to be holy servants of God, Most High. 

Near the beginning of today’s scripture passaged we find that God gave them a job and a mission - saying “you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” They were to live in a way that reflected the glory of God even, and perhaps most especially, to the nations that did not yet known about Yahweh, the God who saves. 

But they couldn’t live into this calling on their own. Left to their own devices they would certainly fall back into the habits and patterns of other nations, even with knowing and loving God. So God also gave them this covenant not just as a way to live in community and reflect the light of Salvation, but also to give them something to obey. Something to guide their own lives and act as guardrails that kept them from falling into patterns of distraction. 

But what exactly did God mean when he gave the Israelites this unique calling? Remember what it meant to be a priest. Amongst the tribes of Jacob, there was a very particular tribe that was set apart - the Levites. This tribe had religious duties, as well as communal duties that helped shape the people of Israel as a whole. They performed the religious ceremonies of the temple, they sang and played music, and they served as guards. But even with this very particular call, they didn’t have a land to call their own. Even after the Israelites settle in the Promised Land, the Levites continue to not have a place of their own, being told "the Lord the God of Israel Himself is their inheritance”. Instead, they were dependent upon the generosity of the other tribes.

So is God saying that if Israel is a Kingdom of priests that they no longer need the gifts and calling of the Levites? No. Instead, God is saying, yes, like the Levites you have a particular blessing that rests upon you. However, with that comes much responsibility - chiefly to be holy as I am holy. In other words, you are live not for your own selves, but for the sake of the name of God.

I wonder what this could mean for us today. Especially in a day and time where the wider world tells us to look out for ourselves and those we care about first and foremost. How could this understanding of what came before the Ten Commandments that undergirded its very being help us to live as a people of faith today?

Perhaps it is a reminder that we all have a part of play in the work of the Kingdom. That we are all called to be people who share in the work of spreading the Good News and living in a way that reflects not our own ways, which are often selfish, but rather the way of the God of Salvation. 

I think we need this reminder today, just as much as the people of Israel long ago, because without it, we can be all about the blessing and not about the responsibility.  We can get so caught up in living our own lives that we forget who we are living for in the first place. 

We need places to gather where we are reminded who we are and whose we are. Places to listen together for the voice of God, even when it is hard to hear. I’m sure that they last thing that the Israelites wanted to do on the way to the Promised Land was to stop and receive the rule of God that would govern them. By three months in, they would have been eager to stop traveling and start being rooted where they were to be planted. But that wasn’t God’s way or plan for them. They needed a guidepost that served as reminder that it was God who had brought them this far and it was God who would lead them on. 

In a day and time, when each person seems to do what they think is best in their own eyes, we need God to give us eyes and hearts of faith. Not faith in ourselves, but faith in the God who started this good work in us. We need places to hear the stories of ancient faith and translate them into what it means to us today. 

So we have come today to be reminded - of the God who loves us and the message that has claimed us. But we also have come to be sent out, as the Israelites were sent out long ago, to live our daily lives in a way that reflect God’s way, truth, and life in the world. Now here’s the thing, friends. The Israelite couldn’t show up with their commandments that set them apart and force nations that hadn’t even heard about God to abide by them. Instead, they demonstrated by the way that they lived that their God was different.

We need that reminder today, as well. All too often we bemoan when people who don’t know about God won’t listen to us, but I wonder if we are really living in a way that leads them to respect our voice? Are we truly obeying God or has that just become a thin coverup for our own heart and ways? What would it look like to truly be people who live out our faith in life-changing ways, here and now today? Amen. 

“Pentecost: Rejoice” Phil 4: 4-7 Acts 2: 1-21

  Think back on your birthday celebrations over the years. Maybe its birthday parties you have thrown for other people. Maybe its something special someone else did for you on your birthday. But as you think back over all of those years - did anything unexpected happen? Maybe something beyond your wildest imagination?

Today is the day of Pentecost, which we describe as the church’s birthday, because it is literally the day the Holy Spirit showed up upon the followers gathered together and breathed life into them. Breathed them into purpose and being. 

Jesus has been resurrected from the grave, but did not ascend to be with the Father in Heaven for forty days. Then before he left his followers he gave them these instructions: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

So the disciples are gathered together in one place. And all of sudden things change. There is a violent wind blowing through their dwelling place and then as they looked around they saw tongues of fire sitting over each other’s heads. If that wasn’t enough, they received the gift of the Holy Spirit, which enabled them to proclaim the Good News to everyone gathered in Jerusalem for the Festival of Pentecost. Languages they had never been able to speak in before - they were able to clear as day proclaim the Gospel in. 

What started on that day of Pentecost so long ago wasn’t just the church being the gift of life, but the church being sent out in mission. A mission to tell the story of Jesus and make his name known, in word and deed, until he comes again. And that mission wasn’t just for those on that first day of Pentecost, but all of us who are part of the Church throughout the ages, including you and me. And including the Apostle Paul.

We hear the story of Paul further in the book of Acts, but he was one claimed by God to be a missionary for Jesus Christ, going to non-Jewish people to let them know that this life changing Good News is for them as well. One of the places that church went and raised up believers became known as the Philippian church. As you read Paul’s letter to them, it becomes so apparent that he is attached to them and that the people trust Paul in abundance. Paul has written them this powerful letter, encouraging them to have the same mind of Christ and to keep up the good work that they are doing. Then, near the end of the letter, he gives them these words “Rejoice in the Lord always!”

That seems such odd advice from a man in prison. One who has faced countless trials and tribulations. It would seem odd advice to the first disciples long ago who were gathered in that room, waiting for the unknown, after (in their minds) Jesus had just left them again. Yet, this day, in-particular invites us to consider what it means to be a people of joy. What it means to have a theology of joy. Joy even in the face of the unknown. 

Joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. It grows within us and spills out when we have the Holy Spirit in our lives. Yet, sometimes we stifle its out pouring because of our own misunderstandings - especially when we think that happiness and joy are the same thing. Let me say clearly this day - joy is not the same thing as happiness. Happiness is pursued, and is often found in the pursuit. But not joy, my friends. Joy is something that overtakes us. We don’t pursue it, we simply respond to it. Martin Luther King Jr described the distinction in this way: “The end of life is not to be happy. The end of life is not to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. The end of life is to do the will of God, come what may.”

Because of that, we can have joy and share it even when we are longing. Even when things are not perfectly as we would want them to be. 

Joy can also transform us. Many of you know that I am a worrier. I would describe it as a naturally anxious person. But when we take those anxieties to God in prayer, he can refashion them. Now does that mean that God always takes them away? No. At least not in my case. But God is able to help me understand my anxieties as something not to dwell on, but something to think about. It helps me to see and respond to situations differently. God takes what could consume me if left uncheck and refashions it into a gift. 

That may not be your experience with anxieties or worries. But Paul invites us that no matter what you face, you can bring it to God. This type of prayer, however, isn’t brining a wish-list to God. Which is all too often how we think about and approach prayer. Instead, its praying that God’s fruit be born in and through us. 

Fruit like joy. 

And fruit like peace. 

If anyone would have understood what it meant to be at peace it would be Peter and Paul. Peter, because he had denied his Lord and Savior on one of the most important days of his life. Paul because he was facing an unknown date of execution. Yet, the Holy Spirit gave them both, peace. Peace that lead to proclamation. Peace in all circumstances, even and maybe especially during the tough ones. 

Peace and joy come together and make each other complete. The prophet Isaiah puts it this way “You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.” (Is 26:3).

Does that mean peace and joy are always easily found and lived into? No. Even when joy should be at the rooter of believer’s lives. 

But I also wonder where there isn’t joy, if we have really submitted that area of our life to Christ Jesus? Or, in the words of the Apostle Paul, if we are guarding our hearts and keeping our minds on Christ Jesus?

Part of what made Pentecost so amazing and why we still celebrate it today, is even in the midst of the unknown and the longings, the first followers of Jesus were obedient. And because they were obedient they were able to experience this life-changing and world-transforming thing. 

Even if other folks around them didn’t understand. 

The crowds didn’t see this as the birthday of the Church. The crowds saw this as folks who had had a bit too much to drink. Because they had that much joy following out of them. But even that gave the disciples, and in particular Peter, a chance to proclaim the Gospel. 

I have said it before and I will say it again, a large reason folks don’t want to hear what we have to say today, friends, is because we are missing joy. We are missing the connection between peace and joy, and as a result our lives don’t look any different from the world around us. 

So on this day of Pentecost, let us be filled with the joy of the Sprit. The joy that flows out of us in abundance. Not just this day - but always. Amen.