Additional Thoughts from Today’s Sermon: The 10 Commandments As A Basis for Morality
Some weeks I find more in the Scriptural text, or my research thereof, than I can share in a standard sermon, and I have to choose what to include lest I preach longer than our average attention span cares to engage. With that in mind, and with so much good material drawn particularly from the inimitable Walter Brueggemann’s “Exodus” portion of The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume 1, I thought I’d share more here on our blog. Blessings to you who choose to visit and read!
The Decalogue as Revolutionary Social Construct
Citing others’ work as well as his own interpretation, Walter Brueggemann shares that the Decalogue is the core of a new social reality for the Israelites. At the beginning of his section on the Decalogue he shares that:
the Decalogue stands as a critical principle of protest against every kind of exploitative social relation (public and interpersonal, capitalist and socialist) and as a social vision of possibility that every social relation (public and interpersonal, economic and political) can be transformed and made into a liberating relation.
–Walter Brueggemann, “Exodus,” New Interpreter’s Bible, p. 840
Then, near the end of this section on the Decalogue, Brueggemann summarizes some of his thoughts on the revolutionary, community-building nature of the 10 Commandments:
It is possible to conclude simply that these are the most foundational absolutes of God’s purpose in the world. That is, the commandments occupy a peculiar and decisive claim, articulated in the categories of revelation. They disclose the non-negotiable will of God.
Alongside that claim, George Mendenhall’s political understanding of the Decalogue may be useful. Mendenhall has proposed that these ten commands are ‘policy’ statements. They are not in themselves guidelines for specific action, but provide the ground and framework from which specifics may be drawn. Taking them as policies links the commands quite clearly to the concrete community Moses formed. This means that, rather than contextless absolutes, they are proposals that counter other kinds of policies. Such an understanding invites adherents to this covenant to recognize that they have made, and are making, peculiar and distinctive ethical decisions related to a core decision about covenantal existence.
–ibid, p. 852-853
This perspective reminds me a little of one I have shared before, that salvation is a both/and process that we are freed from sin and freed to love. The Decalogue serves not only as a set of rules for behaviors that help us to be moral, ethical agents after the example and expectation of God, but then also provide for us a core structure for healthy social relationships.
The Rules for Divine Relationship
- Have no other gods before me
- Do not make idols
- Do not use God’s name in vain
- Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy
Brueggemann points out that the “first three commandments are preoccupied with the awesome claims of God’s person. God insists, in light of the exodus, upon being accepted, affirmed, and fully obeyed” (842).
This uncompromising demand is properly voiced in a world of unacknowledged polytheism. We have always lived in a world of options, alternative choices, and gods who make powerful, competing appeals. It does us no good to pretend that there are no other offers of well-being, joy, and security… In the Christian tradition, baptism is the dramatic form of making a God choice, in which receiving a new name and making promises is choosing this liberating-covenantal faith against any other shape of life. Thus in the Christian tradition, appropriating and living out our baptism means living by a single loyalty among a mass of options
–ibid, 843
I am reminded in reading this that our baptismal vows include statements affirming our rejection of evil powers and accepting the power and freedom of God to resist. Specifically, the questions:
“Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?
–United Methodist Hymnal, #40
“Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?”
Just as we claim the power of God through Christ and the Holy Spirit to live in a new community with one another, some times at odds with the powers of the world around us, so, too, the 10 Commandments serve as a God-given means of grace to do the same.
We might ask, though, what it means to misuse, or take the Lord’s name in vain. Is this intended as condemnation for the person who cries out some version of the holy name in exasperation? (I’m reminded of an old BilL Cosby routine where he, as a toddler, misunderstood his father’s angry exasperations to such a point that he thought he and his brother were named “Jesus Christ” and “Goddammnit.”)
On this, Brueggemann shares that “The notion that the ultimate human purpose is to ‘glorify and enjoy God’ means that God is pure end and never means. Using God’s name mischievously however, is an enormous temptation, because the holy God is vulnerable to being made into an ideological tool” (844). What I think this means is that the misuse of the Lord’s name that we should be wary of is more akin to claiming divine blessing where it should not be placed, or declaring something to be “God’s will” when it may not be. Too often Christians can be reductionist regarding their ideological or ethical stands, declaring “God says so,” even if their stance harms some aspect of a human being or community. I think that is what we are inclined to stay away from!
The Rules for Social Relationship
5) Honor your father and mother
6) Do not kill
7) Do not commit adultery
8) Do not steal
9) Do not testify falsely
10) Do not desire and try to take your neighbor’s stuff
In these commandments, Brueggemann shares that “the intrinsic worth of human persons as creatures of God puts humans beyond the reach of abuse and exploitation. The second tablet is a magisterial assertion that human life is situated in a community of rights and responsibilities that is willed by God” (849).
These commandments, aka Tablet 2, provide a more excellent way to live, perhaps even a way “to be perfect,” as this month’s series is exploring.
The interpretive task is to show that this fragile bonding in covenant that guarantees dignity and well-being is a live possibility among us. The second tablet is indeed an articulation of a more excellent way; it is a way in which human life is intrinsically worthy of respect, in which human persons are honored ends rather than abused means, and in which rapacious desire is properly curbed for the sake of viable community
–Walter Brueggemann, New Interpreter’s Bible Vol. 1, p. 847
First, this brings to mind the “practical imperative” added to Kantian deontology: human beings are always an end, never a means. Secondly, it shares that these rules are about avoiding behaviors – and, we’ll see, taming desires – that can otherwise destroy community. These are community building, community affirming.
The commandment to “honor” father and mother is likely rooted in the perennial tension that can exist between generations. Just as children are to be re-told the Exodus story as their story, this positive command instructs people to care for their elders, especially when they cannot do so themselves.
There are three short, tersely stated commandments against killing, adultery, and stealing. These address ways in which vulnerable persons in a community are assaulted, diminished, and/or destroyed by the actions and behaviors of others. These commands stand against behaviors that destroy our shared solidarity with one another, but are also intrinsically open to interpretation. As Brueggemann says of people trying to apply “do not kill” to issues of capital punishment, war, euthanasia, and abortion: “The interpretive community is of no single mind on these great questions, and no consensus is in prospect” (850).
I deeply appreciated Brueggemann’s thoughts on Commandment 9, “do not testify falsely,” especially in how it might apply to current (and particularly political) realities. So I present his reflection here in full:
Viable human community depends on truth telling (v. 16). This commandment is not concerned with “white lies,” but the public portrayal of reality that is not excessively skewed by self-interest or party ideology. The primary point of reference is the court, where witnesses speak and testimony is given. The commandment insists that courts must resist every distortion of reality, every collusion with vested interest (cf. 18:21; Pss 15:2; 24:4), which makes such truth telling prerequisite to worship.
–ibid, ps. 852-835
More broadly construed, the commandment enjoins members of the covenant community not to distort reality to each other. The major pertinence of the prohibition in our society is the collapse of truth into propaganda in the service of ideology. That is, public versions of truth are not committed to a portrayal of reality, but to a rendering that serves a partisan interest. Such a practice may take many forms. Among the more blatant practices of ‘false witness’ in recent times has been the use of propaganda through which defeat has been described as military victory or reporting has simply been silenced, so that no truth need be told at all. Such a public tendency is not new. Isaiah 5:20 already addresses those who distorted reality (self-)deception.
Moreover, Jeremiah understood that religious leadership is equally tempted to deception, which both advances institutional interests and seeks to give credence to theological claims (see Her 6:13-14; 8:10-11). The commandment continues to expect that there is a viable alternative to this deceptiveness in public life.
Finally, the 10th Commandment shifts from activity to “coveting” or “desiring.” While it includes prohibition against the theft of a neighbor’s household, it begins with inward desire/attitude as opposed to just an outward action. This is a significant shift, especially if we look at the 10 commandments as a starting point for virtue and ethics, as apparently Jesus did. While the 10th Commandments hearkens back to the 8th’s terse statement of “do not steal,” it begins in the soul; the 10th commandment is about misdirected desire. Ultimately, the primary desire of the people of God should be knowing and doing the will of God, and runs counter to society:
The propensity to covet in our society is enacted through an unbridled consumerism that believes that the main activity of human life is to accumulate, use, and enjoy more and more of the available resources of the earth. An undisciplined individualism has taught us that we are entitled to whatever we may want no matter who else may be hurt. Such individualism, however, is driven by a market ideology based on an elemental assumption of scarcity… …the ideology of scarcity, which drives our economy, is, in the end, an act of theological doubt that does not believe that God’s providential generosity is finally reliable. This commandment summons the faithful to break with the practice of acquisitive individualism and to reject the ideology of scarcity upon which it is based. Thus the commandment requires a massive repentance that is theological in substance, but that is manifested economically.
–ibid, p. 852
Jesus will refer to some of the commandments in his own teachings. Looking forward to those New Testament narratives from this point of the Old Testament, Brueggemann shares that “the commands are not considered unattainable modes of conduct; they are, rather, the threshold to more serious discipleship and a step on the demanding way to ‘eternal life’!” (853).