Friends
Peace be with you.
I’m not a lawyer, nor am I a scholar of the law. But, most legal systems have at least two tracks when it comes to violations: laws that are very serious and laws that are less serious. In church law we divide between venial and mortal sins. In civil law, I believe they’re differentiated between felonies and misdemeanors, with felonies being more serious crimes than misdemeanors. This makes sense because you wouldn’t want the same punishment for jaywalking as you would have for murder.
As you know, I continue to focus my homilies on the first reading from the Old Testament. This week, we get to focus on the 10 commandments, these immutable laws written on stone by God for Moses to take to the people. Every once in a while, I hear about a controversy involving a stone monument of the 10 commandments. It generally involves a group called Americans United for a Separation of Church and State, the ACLU and, the rather horrendously named, Church of Satan versus the Eagles Club or the Knights of Columbus or some other civic minded individual or group that has been given permission to put the Ten Commandments on public land, like a county courthouse of the state capitol. From a theological perspective and culture warrior perspective, I’m all in favor of reminding people that some laws are greater than a human creation. We didn’t just get together and decide that murder should be off the table. It was built into our consciences by a creator in what we call natural law.
However, then the theologian takes over and I realize that we sort of have a problem. First, there are two different places in the Bible where the 10 commandments appear, the version we hear in Exodus 20 and in Deuteronomy 5. It wouldn’t be a big deal except that the two versions don’t exactly match. Further, there are three other places in the Bible, Exodus 34, Deuteronomy 4 and Deuteronomy 10, where they list 10 things and then refer to the 10 commandments. But these things aren’t at all what we would call the 10 commandments. The other issue I bring up is that Exodus 20 is really just the beginning of four books; Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers, which are largely filled with commandments, “thou shalls” and and “thou shall nots”. What makes the 10 commandments we had to memorize in school and written on the granite monuments any more important than the others? Are they the mortal sins, the felonies, if you will while everything else there is just a venial sin, a misdemeanor?
No, once again we have to look to context. In Exodus Chapter 19 there is this kind of confusing scene that happens where God describes how he’s going to reveal the 10 Commandments as we know them to the people. Generally, God’s people wandering in the desert preferred to have Moses as an intermediary between God and them. God speaks to Moses and then Moses speaks to the people. In this passage, God says that his people should stand at the base of Mount Sinai while he speaks directly to them. And he does speak these 10 commandments, apparently. And, after this, the people, who have been told by God that they aren’t allowed to approach Mount Sinai or they will die, are so terrified by what has happened that they have moved far far away from the Mountain. It’s at least a bit surprising that the people didn’t at least try to go up the Mountain since they seem to glory in doing exactly what God told them not to but, in this case, they don’t because they’re scared. God has been speaking to them in words that sounded like thunder and lightning to put the fear of the Lord in them. And right after they are told not to covet their neighbor’s goods, they appeal to Moses that God could just speak to him and Moses can pass along God’s message along to them.
So these 10 commandments are depicted as coming directly to the people, not through an intermediary. That’s pretty significant. Earlier, I talked about something called Natural Law. Natural Law is a philosophical concept that there are laws that are written in the human heart, not laws that are made by human beings. That’s partly what the 10 commandments are. It doesn’t mean that everyone obeys the 10 commandments or even that everyone agrees with the 10 commandments. It just means that there are these principles that seem to transcend societies, that establish the basic premise that we should do what is good and avoid what is evil.
The interesting thing is that I doubt anyone has a problem with the vast majority of the concepts put forth with the 10 commandments. The ACLU isn’t arguing that stealing should be legal or moral. The American Society for the Separation of Church and State doesn’t want consequence free murder. Heck, I’m guessing even the church of satan enjoys having Saturday and Sunday off, even if it’s in part to honor the sabbath as celebrated by Jews on Saturday and Christians on Sunday. I’m guessing they have a problem with the first commandment, the one in Exodus 20 that has the most words and most warnings. There is one God, he is a jealous God and he is the source of all blessings. And the way we treat God says a lot about how we treat the rest of the 10 commandments. God is jealous because he won’t tolerate us trying to make other gods than himself. And our world is filled with false gods, money, power, fame, just to name a few.
But, let’s also look at that part of the first commandment again. It says, “For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishment for their fathers’ wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation; but bestowing mercy down to the thousandth generation on the children of those who love me and keep my commandments.” I think we’re tempted to look at this last part as though it was kind of anecdotal or maybe even like this is an Old Testament understanding and we don’t believe it any longer. But I think there’s another side to this. We are called to hand the faith on to our children both in what we tell them and how we live our lives. If we focus on the areas in our life or our world where we wish God would act and constantly complain that God isn’t doing what we want God to do, our children are listening. When we complain about the way father celebrates Mass or the choices father makes as to where the parish office is, our children are listening. When the purpose for Mass is to “get it over with” as quickly as possible or when we willingly go to sporting events, restaurants, retail stores, and our friend’s houses but decide that it’s just too dangerous to come to Mass, what are we communicating to our children? It’s no surprise to me that our lives seem to be a punishment when we put God on the back burner of our lives. And it’s no surprise, as well, that we see the many blessings God puts into our lives when we decide to have a relationship with him. That’s the significance of the Ten Commandments: they are from a God who could squash us off the face off the earth but, instead, God invites us into a relationship as sons and daughters, a holy people called by name to love him and serve him. Our challenge, then, is do we want that or are we going to stop God, say we’d rather he be a little distant so we can complain about what he does and just make sure we aren’t too bad, aren’t disobeying any major rules. Let’s resolve today that we want God’s blessings to a thousand generations, that we will see the good work God has done for us each and every day, that we won’t distance ourselves from God but will invite him deeper into our heart every day in prayer.
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