Lent 3, Year B: Exodus 20:1-17.
I have a rule.
I’ve had this rule for so long, that I forgot why I had it.
What’s the rule?
Thou shalt not ride thy bicycle after 3 pm on Fridays.
I adopted this rule when I lived in Houston and … I still live by it today.
I love to ride my bike. I feel free! I feel fast! I love to feel the wind and sun on my face.
When I lived in Houston, I loved seeing the white cranes, the blue herons, and the schools of fish in bayou. I loved waving to an elderly gentleman in the Third Ward who seemed to always be sitting on his porch when I rode past.
In Austin, I love seeing the turtles sunning themselves on the rocks of Shoal Creek, the lovely cypress trees lining Lady Bird Lake, and the young man at Texas Rowing Center enthusiastically greeting passersby on the trail each time I ride past.
The freedom and the connection to creation that I feel on my bike is just as important as the cardiovascular exercise which got me on it in the first place.
But — I recall a day, several years ago, in Houston. My schedule was such that I was struggling to find a time to ride… and I thought to myself: I’ll just this afternoon. It was a Friday.
Forgetting my rule … and it was after 3:00.
(dun-dun-dahhh)
A little after 5:00, four blocks from a popular beer garden and numerous other bars in east downtown, I narrowly — and I mean by inches — escaped being hit by a car driven by an inattentive and perhaps inebriated (?) driver who ran through a stop sign.
As I pedaled away from this near miss and traffic laws broken, I was relieved to still be among the living … and I remembered: oh yeah. I have a rule … no bicycling after 3:00 on Fridays because of traffic and happy hour. But — I just forgot.
I think that’s the way the Ten Commandments can be for us. We forget their context. We forget why they were given. They can sound like an old list of rules, which we know are important, but we take them for granted. They have always been there. Those dusty tablets which Moses, sporting a long grey beard, brought down from Mt. Sinai, long, long ago.
Because it is so far away and so familiar, we can feel a disconnect from the Decalogue and their significance for us.
But, fortunately, the first commandment provides both context and reason, making this old list come alive with significance for us again: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”
In the Hebrew Bible, God is known best by God’s saving act : the liberation of the ancient Israelites from slavery. The phrase “YHWH brought Israel out of Egypt” is repeated ninety-one times in the Old Testament. [1] And in our tradition, we remember this mighty act in our Baptismal liturgy. God heard the cry of the ancient Israelites on account of their taskmasters and delivered them from slavery — and this is how God identifies God’s self: The Creator and God of the oppressed. Liberator of slaves.
This is who God is. This is what God is doing.
To further this point, through the gift of the Ten Commandments, God provides a new way of life to these former slaves.
As Dr. Joy J. Moore points out: God provides an “alternative to the culture the Israelites have been living for centuries … [theirs is] a community whose national identity had been one of forced labor in a culture of oppression, disregard for human life, and power-over moves borne of ethno-centric narcissism.”[2]
Culture is the air we breathe and the water in which we swim; it is difficult to think outside of it. The ancient Israelites needed a new culture — a new way to live — and God provided. Therefore, this is the next wave of liberation for the ancient Israelites: this new culture, this new way of life that God outlines in the Decalogue — the Ten Commandments.
And in this new way of life, God says: you are free to worship, and you are free to rest! What does that sound like to people who have always been oppressed and only known fear?
Now … Free to live with one another and rest in the knowledge that God has provided and given us enough. No need to take the life of another; no need to steal or covet other people’s things or relationships.[3]
And if you are living this new way of life, then that is evidence that you are worshipping the living God. This creates a self-check on this first commandment.
For as another scholar points out: “…choosing something or someone other than the great God of Exodus to revere is not the real problem. The more important problem is found in the results of such worship.
What sort of person does the worship of other gods create? How does the activity of a person reveal just who or what the person worships?
[…] Right worship of the God who brought us out of the land of Egypt will lead us to listen to and affirm the nine commandments that are to follow. And living by those commandments will be the surest way to know whether YHWH is the one being worshipped.”[4]
All of these points are packed into this first commandment and gives context to the other nine. And yes, they were given a long time ago, but they were just as surely given to you and me as they were to the ancient Israelites.
The Decalogue frees us. We are slaves no more. We have been liberated by our compassionate and just God.
The Decalogue is a gift and provides the structure for how free people live.
It is not an attempt to control but to create a safe space — a container, if you will — for us to flourish. Just as God brought order out of chaos in creation in Genesis 1, creating an environment for life to thrive, God does it again here in Exodus: bringing order to people’s lives and life in community. Establishing the boundaries for our healthly flourishing as a people … which is good.
It took a week, but I got on my bike again. But this time, I paid attention to my process … remembering the reasons for my habits and choices, as they were alive to me in a new way.
I put on a bright-colored jersey, my safety-yellow helmet, and my hot pink knee-high socks (yes, that’s righ — hot pink knee highs. I want to be seen by inattentive drivers!). And I took off on my bike equipped with lights and a bell. (brrring, brrrring!)
With these things in place, I enjoy the freedom of riding my bike in this city that I love. Free to feel the wind and the sun. Free to see the turtles, the cypress, and smile when I see the Texas Rowing guy on the trail.
God gave us the Ten Commandments to enjoy the freedom of being God’s people — a free people, free from every kind of slavery.
So do not forget. But remember: the Decalogue is a gift from our loving, liberating God. Receive it for the gift that it is … and the freedom it provides:
To feel the pleasant wind of the Spirit and walk (or bicycle) in the light of God.
[1] Holbert, John C. The Great Texts – A Preaching Commentary: The Ten Commandments. Abingdon Press: Nashville, 2002.
[2] Luther Seminary Working Preacher podcast #772: Third Sunday in Lent, 2021.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Holbert, John C. The Great Texts – A Preaching Commentary: The Ten Commandments. Abingdon Press: Nashville, 2002, p. 18.
Image above: Losenko, Anton Pavlovich, 1737-1773. Ten Commandments of Moses, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55125 [retrieved March 13, 2024]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ten_Commandments_by_A.Losenko_(%3F).jpg.
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