"The Version Without Charlton Heston"
October 2, 2005: 20th Sunday after Pentecost, Year A
The Rev. John MacIver Gage, co-pastor
United Church on the Green, UCC: New Haven, CT
www.newlights.org
Scripture:
Exodus 20: selected verses
Then God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you ought of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me... You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them... You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses [the divine] name. Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work... Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
Sermon:
You know, it's probably a good bet that if the only version of a particular passage or story from the Bible you know by heart is one you learned before the fourth grade or comes from an edition of the Bible more than 300 years old, it may be time for a refresher course. The 23rd Psalm, the Lord's Prayer, the Christmas story—pretty much anything with a "thee" or "thine" in it is suspect. That kind of archaic language is a tip-off that we're storing these passages in our heads not as living texts but rather museum pieces, historical documents to be dusted off and occasionally displayed, but certainly not handled, examined, or put to use.
That goes double for any Bible story you really remember only because you saw it once in a movie, and triple if that movie starred Charlton Heston. Now, I don't bear Mr. Heston any particular ill will, though God knows we differ on any number of points politically. It's just that, well, his performances have never been what you call subtle, which makes it much easier to remember him—the jutting chin, the wild eyebrows, the line delivery that makes William Shatner look like Olivier—than the stories of the films themselves.
Take Cecile B. DeMille's grandiose 1956 epic, The Ten Commandments. Chewing the Technicolor scenery in that movie is a tall order, but Heston delivers. The sad fact is, whether we like it or not, when we think of Moses, when we think of the Ten Commandments, most of us see Chuck standing there on the rock of Sinai, tablets in hand, beetle-browed and glaring down over the riots of the Israelites. Oddly enough, it doesn't really matter whether you've seen the movie or not. In this media-saturated age, the image has been burned into our collective retinas.
But that's really about as far as my memory of the film goes: it's all about Heston, on the rock, all eyebrows and bushy beard, fiercely channeling 1950s disapproving dad. After that, it gets fuzzy. One performance morphs into another, and in my mind's eye I see Moses hurling the tablets to the ground screaming "Get your hands off me, you damn dirty ape!" before defeating the mutant albinos in a chariot race, then sitting down to heaping helping of Soylent Green.
Friends, do you really want to depend on Charlton Heston for your Biblical education? Or Mel Gibson or Dan Brown or the latest NBC "Greatest Story Ever Told"-of-the-week, for that matter? Like I told any number of people a couple of years ago when The DaVinci Code was so hot, "Hey, I'm happy you're excited to be reading about Jesus and faith and the church, but you know, we've got the primary source material here. Why not start with that?" We've got Bibles, we've got brains. Let's use 'em. So this morning we turn to Exodus, chapter twenty, in our New Revised Standard Version Bibles—published in 1990, products of rigorous scholarship, translated with great and prayerful care—and there we read... what?
Well, the Ten Commandments of course, in only slightly more up-to-date language. No "thee"s or "thine"s, but "covet" doesn't exactly crop up in daily conversation, does it? And the whole thing is still so encrusted with layer upon layer of old interpretations, like a coral reef, dead and dry and hardened now, that we hardly stand a chance of discerning their true import. What our culturally over-conditioned context hands us here is not the dynamic, living law of God but a thing—heavy, dense, seemingly suitable only for granite monuments in state capitols, for crushing the life of the spirit under the weight of the dead letter. What we get aren't ten commandments. It's THE TEN COMMANDMENTS!!!
So how do we get past that? How do we set aside all the history and the history of interpretation, all the uses and abuses and the various cultural contexts then and now and get back to the original meaning of these words handed down to us from so very long ago? How do we find the framers' intent?
We can't. And even if we could, it'd probably make even less sense to us; after all, we're hardly semi-nomadic peoples living in the Ancient Near East. Things have changed somewhat since then. That doesn't mean all the textual study, all the literary archaeology isn't worthwhile. It is helpful to sift through the layers, to dig into the text and try understand how a passage like this, so central to our traditions, has been interpreted first one way and then another down through the ages by communities of faith and also, more widely, in the culture at large. But the bias of history, of culture, of personality clings to us like ashes, and we cannot be rid of it. It is part of who we are as human beings, in fact part of what it means to be human.
So what does that mean for our search for meaning? Are we stuck in the hell of "radical relativism" as our more conservative Christian sisters and brothers fear? Must the stories of the Bible remain impenetrable to us forever? Is the word of God dead?
No. I believe we have hope because I believe in the promise of Jesus Christ, given to his disciples in the gospel of John just before he himself was killed. "I have said these things to you while I am still with you," he says, "But the Advocate, the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom my heavenly Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid" (John 14:25-27).
Do not let your hearts be troubled, friends, because just as Jesus himself was raised to new life that first Easter Sunday, the word of God in scripture will be resurrected for us by the life-giving breath of the Holy Spirit Sunday after Sunday as we read and listen, study and pray, remember and imagine together, as we listen for the Word within the words that our God is still speaking today. As theologian Marcus Borg notes in The Heart of Christianity, it is by God's grace that we are freed to believe "deeply and loosely," giving our heart in commitment to the word of God but always straining forward to hear the new thing God is saying, even here in the midst of the old, old story of scripture—especially here, perhaps.
In this same spirit of holy imagination, I offer just a few thoughts on the text before us today. If my comments seem too light, too quick, I ask your forbearance. It is my intention to open a conversation, not end one, and to invite you in to share and extend this conversation as part of your journey, our journey together in faith.
That being said, from the home office on Mount Sinai, here are the Top Ten Commandments of the Lord our God:
#10 You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor: Don't let the fancy "covet" language put you off. It just means don't envy your neighbor's house, their car, their vacation, their seemingly oh-so-easy life. Make peace with what you do have before going out to try to get more... and more... and more. Because this is a deceptively simple commandment. It goes to the root of our capitalist social system. I mean, the advertising industry alone spends billions of dollars a year to increase covetousness among us.
#9 You shall not bear false witness against another: Much more straightforward than it sounds: DON'T LIE. Not to your mom. Not to your boss. Not to a federal grand jury. Not to a nation. And let's not waste time trying to parse out the difference between a "little white lie" and something more serious. We all know a real lie when we tell one.
#8 You shall not steal: Will somebody please explain to me the difference between stealing a car and bilking thousands of employees and investors out of their life savings by manipulating the financial reporting of your corporation? 'Cause I want to know.
#7 You shall not commit adultery: Jimmy Carter got us all confused when he confessed to having committed adultery in his heart back in the 70s. And Bill Clinton put us around the bend. But at the end of the day, I think God wants to make sure that when we give our hearts and make our promises to one another, we understand that what we're doing is important, powerful. Covenant love is procreative. It changes the world. It creates a new third thing, a loving relationship, where two stood alone before. And adultery destroys that. Oh, and this is not—I repeat, not—a heterosexual commandment.
#6 You shall not kill: After thousands of years, exactly what part of this commandment is it we just don't understand? Murder, war, the death penalty, deadly poverty—it's all killing. 'Nuf said.
#5 Honor your father and mother: Harder than it seems at first. Yes, this God affirms family relations, but—and let's be clear here—not when they are emotionally or physically abusive. Note that the word is "honor," not "obey." I think God is telling us that respect for persons begins at home; after all, if we can respect the image of God in own father and mother, whose faults and failings and worst best intentions we know all too well from firsthand experience, how much harder could it really be to respect anyone and everyone else?
#4 Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy: This has nothing to do with selling beer on Sundays. It has everything to do with recognizing our human need to cease from striving and be still. On the seventh day God rested—God! God took a moment to sit back and reflect on all that God had done and recognize that it was good. We do violence to the image of God in our neighbors when deny them the same opportunity by supporting economic systems that insist they work without respite day after day, night after night, just to get by. Is it absolutely necessary for the Gap to be open till nine every night? Do we really need that turtleneck sweater that bad?
#3 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of God: Oh boy, my favorite. Faith is not just another tool in the drawer to be manipulated for our own selfish ends. We're talking about people's deep relationship their creator, and God is not a means to an end. Are you listening, Mr. President? You better check yourself.
#2 You shall make no idols, of any kind: The make-believe witches and wizards of Harry Potter don't worry me. Neither do Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Zoroastrians, agnostics, or atheists. The masses bowed down to the graven images of nationalism, the profit margin, fundamentalism, insistent individualism, homeland security, the pleasure principle, and the rest of the modern pantheon do—golden calves galore.
and the #1 Commandment of all time, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me": Note that this commandment is different than the others. It's not a simple "thou shalt not," but instead invokes an entire relationship. God doesn't begin by telling us what to do. God first tells us what God has done for us, what God is willing to do. Lest we forget, our God is a God of life, of liberation, of saving love. From the Red Sea to the cross to today, salvation—and by that I don't mean some heaven high up and far away but abundant life here and now in communion with our creator and all creation—salvation is God's purpose in giving us these commandments to shape our living together. The law of God is not a test but a gift, not a trap but a guide.
Now just because God's living, loving law comes to us a gift doesn't mean that living a life in the light of God's law is easy. Far from it. It takes work, it takes mindfulness, intentionality. And even then, we're likely to trip over our own good intentions or to rebel like the adolescent creatures we are. Consider the Israelites: mere moments after Moses comes down the mountain to deliver the law, they're back coveting and lying and bowing down before the golden calf, even killing and in God's name.
But the story of God's love for the people of Israel is a story of redemption, of a love that lifts up the fallen, that seeks out the exiled hearts and brings them home. It's the story of grace, that same grace we see given flesh and bone in Jesus of Nazareth. It is the grace to choose this day whom we will serve—and when we sin and fall short as we are wont to do, the grace to choose again. As I see it, it is not a story of reward and punishment. It's the story of life, death, and resurrection.
By the power of the Holy Spirit, this story has now been given into our hands. The journey is now ours to make, and the Bible, this record of the journeys of generations of those who would be faithful, is ours as well, in all its messy, muddled, marvelous perspiration and inspiration. If we are followers of Christ then we are called to become theologians, interpreters of scripture, and discerners of God's will in the word and the world. And we join the ranks of prophets and apostles before us who, as Paul puts it in his letter to the Philippians, were also called to work out our salvation with reverent "fear and trembling," (2:12) assured and empowered by their awareness of God's grace toward us and all people.
Of course there are plenty of people out there willing to take the Bible out of our hands, to do the hard work of interpretation for us, to tell us what God is saying—secondhand. How thoughtful of them! But no, no thank you. As difficult as it may be, as thorny as these texts often are, this is something we need to do for ourselves, even if we end up drawing different conclusions than our brothers and sisters in faith—perhaps particularly then.
God is still speaking not just to the majority, but to theological minorities like us as well, like the ragtag band of escaped slaves called the Hebrews struggling to make it to the land of God's promise; like the persecuted first followers of Christ spreading like wildfire in the cracks of the Roman Empire; like the legally wrong and morally right champions of the civil rights movement in this country, daring to dream a dream of freedom and full citizenship; like the women in every age who insisted against all common sense that God was calling them, even to ordained ministry; and gay and lesbian persons after them daring to live their love out loud.
So, with apologies to Mr. Heston: to all who tell us that we should sit down and shut up because they know God better, deeper, truer I say, "You can have my Bible when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!"