The Ten Commandments

[Our lessons were Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; and John 2:13-22.]


When I read the various parts of Exodus that figured prominently in Cecil B. DeMille’s movie The Ten Commandments, it’s hard not visualize scenes from the film, such as Charlton Heston holding stone tablets. Such, I guess, is the power of Hollywood.

What we refer to as the Ten Commandments were in fact only a part of the rules God established for his people, but they were the only ones that God wrote onto stone tablets. The Commandments are seen in context as a part of God’s covenant with God’s people. They also are the part of the Law that we consider also applying to us, even though we aren’t Israelites, and they’ve been included in Anglican liturgies since the 1549 English Book of Common Prayer.

The Commandments establish boundaries in our relationship with God and with our neighbors. When we say that we are to have no other gods before God, that doesn’t just mean we don’t worship Baal or Astarte or Zeus. When we say we shall not make an idol to worship, that doesn’t just refer to a golden calf.

In our world, we have worshipped at other altars and idolized many things in recent years. In many ways, our economic troubles are the result of our worshipping at the altar of greed and idolizing money. I don’t know what (if any) faith Bernard Madoff professes, but clearly he worshipped a different God. When we exalt Wall Street traders and executives with ludicrous bonuses, are those not our real “American Idols”?

The Commandments that deal with our neighbors call on us to have a proper relationship with our neighbors and, of course, Jesus said that everyone is our neighbor. When we oppress the poor and deny them equal access to education and health care, so as to gather those resources to ourselves, aren’t we stealing from them and coveting what should be theirs?

Our secular society often treats the Ten Commandments as a historical document, placing them on walls with other ancient legal documents. People urge us to post them everywhere, believing that the problems that afflict our society are the result of people not following the Commandments.

While that may be true, when we treat the Ten Commandments merely as a decorative artifact to be placed on a wall or on a yard sign, we aren’t following them; we aren’t living them! There is a story that a Boston business man famous for his tough business dealings told Mark Twain, “Before I die I mean to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land; climb Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud at the top.” Twain replied, “Why not stay in Boston and keep them.”

Our problem is that keeping then Ten Commandments isn’t always easy. It’s easier to erect a monument to the Ten Commandments than to work toward a society that lives them; it’s easier to say the Decalogue than to live it ourselves.

When we truly live the Commandments, we don’t put anything in God’s place, we set aside a special time to reflect on God’s ways, and we put our neighbor in the place we would wish to be. We respect every aspect of God’s creation. We remain faithful in relationships, deal with others honestly and fairly, and work for justice. We take joy in what others have instead of trying to have what isn’t truly ours.

Saint Paul knew that this is hard. As he said in his letter to the church in Rome, “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do!” On our own, apart from God, we just can’t do it; it’s beyond our power.

However, if we live by our covenant relationship with God, God gives us the strength to succeed. The giving of the Commandments and Jesus’ attack on the sellers and money changers at the Temple are both efforts to remove barriers between God and his people.

By the time of Jesus, a “market opportunity” had grown up, supplying the proper type of sacrificial animals so that the people could offer the proper sacrifice at the Temple and be restored to a right relationship with God. The money changers would change the Roman money into Temple money for a fee and the sellers sold the animals for a profit. Jesus wanted to eliminate a doubly unjust and corrupt system that placed barriers between the people and God and enriched some at the expense of the poor.

When we come between God and another person, aren’t we under judgment ourselves? When we let pride, arrogance, spite, or hurt feelings prevent another person from coming to God, aren’t we like those who Jesus chased out of the Temple? When we support those who exploit those in need or support systems and economies that oppress the “least of these”, aren’t we like the sellers and the money changers?

If, with God’s help, we live the Ten Commandments, rather than just sticking them on the wall, we can give the right answers to these questions.