The Ten Commandments

Lenten Vespers, Week One

Reading: Exodus 34:1-9, 27-28

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Lent is traditionally a season of instruction for those preparing for Baptism. Remembering this, and keeping in mind the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, it is appropriate that our vespers meditations for the next several weeks turn to Luther’s Small Catechism.

The Small Catechism is basic household instruction in the Christian faith, and it consists of five parts, namely: the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the holy Sacraments of Baptism and Communion. We begin with the Ten Commandments. It’s quite a story, really.

In Genesis, God made the world good and His creatures free. Alas, we abused this freedom, corrupting the very earth we were intended to steward. Sin fragmented the world, cracking apart the original harmony established by our Creator. Murder, adultery, idolatry, abuse, warped us into a fallen, confused, and scattered race. It got so bad that it seemed impossible for things to ever be set right.

But then God chose the unlikeliest of heroes—a wandering old man, as good as dead—and promised that He would make of this old man a great nation, and that this nation would become a blessing for all the peoples of the earth. The old man Abraham believed God, no matter how outlandish this divine plan might sound. And God made of Abraham a family. And that family became a people. And that people became a nation.

No matter what obstacles encumbered their way, no matter how far astray they wandered into sin, God never abandoned His people, never gave up on His promise. When they fell into slavery in Egypt for four long centuries, God sent Moses to liberate them in the Exodus, and to guide them back to the land that God had promised to Abraham and his children forever. And as Moses led them home through the desert, God appeared in His cloud of glory atop the mountain of Sinai, and proclaimed aloud in a voice of thunder the Ten Commandments that would forge these tribes of slaves into a free and lawful people. These Commandments are:

I am the Lord your God; you are to have no gods before Me.

You are not to use the Name of the Lord your God in vain.

You are to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.

You are to honor your father and your mother.

You are not to murder,

nor to commit adultery,

nor to steal,

nor to bear false witness,

nor to covet.

This is the core of Israelite Law. All the other commandments found in the Old Testament are nothing other than applications of these Ten to everyday life in ancient Israel.

In some ways, the Ten Commandments are the particular possession of one particular people: Israel, the children of Abraham. But in a larger sense they represent the intended inheritance of all humankind, for they reveal God’s original plan, the once-and-future harmony that existed between God, Man, and the world. Jesus summed up the Commandments thusly: we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul and all our strength and all our mind; and we are to love our neighbors as ourselves.

That’s it. That’s the whole Law, in a nutshell, for all humanity. And while the Ten Commandments lay it out explicitly, the Law itself—the Law of loving God and loving neighbor—is written deep upon the hearts of all of humankind, available for discovery to every person of humility, reason, and goodwill. Do this, God says, and you will be righteous, strong and free! Do this, God says, and you will flourish as I have always desired for you to flourish! Do this, God says, and you will finally be what you were always meant to be: truly human.

Love God, love neighbor. On these two hang the whole of the Law and the Prophets. It is so simple that any child can understand it. And yet we cannot seem to do it. We know what it takes to be good, to be human, to be alive—love God and love your neighbor—yet if the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. The good we would do, we do not do. And the evil we would not do is the very thing we end up doing! Lord, have mercy! Christ, have mercy!

The Law is so simple, so elegant, so unquestionably true! And yet our own refusal to walk according to its light convicts us, condemns us, kills us. We are stricken not because the Law is harsh or unjust but rather because the Law is good and true and beautiful and we are not. We do not love God with all that we are. We do not love our neighbors as ourselves. We have sinned. From where is our hope to come?

And it is precisely at this moment that the Law gives to us its greatest gift: it reveals to us our need for grace. We do not and cannot fulfill the Ten Commandments. Lord knows we’ve tried! We never know just how bad we are until we try very hard to be good. But the Law drives us to the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ. And that Good News is that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Not because we earned it, but simply because God loves us more deeply than we could ever have imagined. He loves us when we are unlovable, forgives us when we are unforgivable, raises us up when we are unraisable!

And it is to this Good News that we turn joyfully next week, with the Apostles’ Creed.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.