October 2, 2011 – Exodus 20.1-4,7-9,12-20
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
For Freedom [ELCIC Praise Appeal Sunday]
16th Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 27) – October 2, 2011
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
God is a generous giver of gifts.
The first gift God gave the Israelites was the gift of freedom from slavery.
When they were hungry, God next gave manna, and when thirsty, God gave water.
Now, this morning, on Mount Sinai, God gives them another gift:
the gift of the Ten Commandments, a gift that will help the people stay free.
It was gracious of God to liberate the people,
and it’s gracious of God to show the people how to keep that freedom.
The commandments, you’ll notice, begin with God saying, “I am the LORD your God.”
And they end with the words “your neighbour.”
As biblical scholar Amy Erickson notes, it’s clear from these bookend words that
Life according to the commandments is fundamentally about radical commitment to God and
compassion for the neighbour. (http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=10/2/2011)
Radical commitment to God and compassion for the neighbour. That’s what our lives are about.
Or, as Jesus summed up the whole thing, to love God and love the neighbour.
The commandments give us the freedom to do these things that we were made for.
If you want to stay free together, have as your god the God of all grace and all compassion,
not the god of wealth or the god of success or the god of greed or the god of power.
If you want to stay free together, love your neighbours: don’t try to exploit one another,
or oppress one another, or take advantage of each other, or kill one another.
See: The Israelites are being led by God to be a different kind of people than the Egyptians,
a new kind of people, an alternative community in the world in which
God’s values of love and justice are shown forth, unlike the realm of Egypt.
As God says in the previous chapter of Exodus, he has freed them in order that they may be
“a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.”
A priest mediates God to the people: so the people, in the way they live,
are to mediate God to the world.
This is a high calling: the commandments are a way of ordering the community in such a way
that it can remain free to do this.
Now we might think that this is all very well for those people who lived 3500 years ago when
there were all these idols around and when life was so primitive compared to ours.
But it doesn’t take much reflection to realize that
our culture offers us many, many other “gods” to worship, that enslave us to ways of life
that do not have as their aim loving God and loving neighbour.
These gods draw us away from being the people – the priestly people – God calls us to be.
The thing is: we just don’t recognize that these other things have become gods –
the most important things – in our lives.
And these other gods make powerful appeals to us.
In pursuit of joy we might choose alcohol or drugs and
our enslavement would look like addiction.
In pursuit of security we might choose military might and our enslavement would look like war.
In pursuit of true love we might choose promiscuity and our enslavement would look like
broken relationships and profound despair.
In pursuit of well-being we might chase wealth and
our enslavement would look like endless consumerism and buying and hoarding.
In pursuit of self-worth we might obsess over appearance and clothing.
In pursuit of pleasure we might choose endless entertainment.
Many things distract us and stop us from being the priestly people God has called us to be.
Many things are put before worshipping God on Sunday morning and gathering together on
to pray for our sick and share the manna of Christ together and
ask after one another and nurture our relationships together so that we can
work together as a priestly people as part of God’s mission to
love, bless and set free this world and every person in it.
Many, many things prevent us from loving God and loving our neighbours in need.
But the commandments are a gift from God that give us back the freedom to
love God and love our neighbour.
Today is ELCIC Praise Appeal Sunday.
The ELCIC – Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada – is our National Church body.
I’m grateful – and I invite you to be grateful – for the work of the ELCIC this morning.
I’m grateful for belonging to a church that so clearly has as its priorities loving God and
loving the neighbour.
Our National Church provides a wonderful context for us in this congregation to
live out our calling to love God and love our neighbours.
And the work of our National Church can inspire us to love God and
love our neighbours in our own contexts, and for that I am very grateful.
On the loving God side, I am so very pleased that our National Church Council is
encouraging all 160,000 members of our church to be seriously and
intentionally engaged in spiritual renewal: This is a real gift!
At convention in July, Call to Spiritual Renewal materials that were developed by the ELCIC
were distributed to convention delegates.
You can see some of these materials posted on the National Church bulletin board in
the Parish Hall or on the ELCICwebsite.
These are terrific materials and I’m very grateful for them.
They encourage us in spiritual practices that are deeply rooted in our tradition:
– daily prayer and scripture reading;
– regular attendance at worship;
– yearly involvement in a program of study;
– regular service in the community (not just the congregation);
– regular and proportional giving similar to the understanding of
the tithe found in scripture;
– and commitment to sharing the good news with those around us,
beginning with our family and friends.
A simplified list of this call to deeper discipleship includes:
Pray, Read, Worship, Study, Serve, Give and Tell. (see www.elcic.ca/CSR/)
The materials developed by the ELCIC for this will help us for many years to come.
I invite you to stay tuned for how this will work itself out in our congregation.
On the loving our neighbour side of things, there is a lot I could say about
our National Church’s living out of this command.
The ELCIC engages in much ecumenical work on our behalf,
especially with our full communion partners, the Anglican Church of Canada.
It partners with KAIROS, a group of Canadian churches working for justice and peace.
And with its main partner, Canadian Lutheran World Relief, it engages in
emergency relief and development work across the globe.
I want to tell you about just one person, though, whose life this work has changed.
Her name is Judith Tembo Zulu, and she lives in Africa, in eastern Zambia.
Judith is 48 years old, married, and has eight children and three grandchildren.
She dropped out of school at Grade 9 and was pushed into early marriage by her parents.
In the rural setting in which she lives, women are often marginalized,
their participation in society is restricted, and there is frequent violence against them.
To counter this, Canadian Lutheran World Relief facilitates a program that
seeks to reverse this so that development in the country can be sustained.
Judith participated in this program and that it has allowed her to “make her life count.”
She has been elected chairperson of a local action group and trained as a literacy facilitator.
She has become a leader in her church and she has successfully run for public office.
(http://www.clwr.org/resources/documents/2011-Jan..pdf)
Through the ELCIC and Canadian Lutheran World Relief,
it’s not just one woman’s life that will be changed, but many as people like Judith
transform their own communities into places in which life can flourish.
The ELCIC is a church that has as its clear priorities love of God and love of neighbour.
I’m proud to be a member of this church.
Today you have an opportunity to directly support the work of the ELCIC by making a
contribution to the Praise Appeal by using the envelopes provided. Please be generous.
We are all in this together and my prayer this morning is that the life and work of the ELCIC in
loving God and loving our neighbours will inspire us to do these things in
our own lives and in our own congregation.
Can we, like the Israelites, use our freedom for this?
Can we use our freedom to love the God who made all that is and who is committed to
loving and blessing this world and every person in it? Freedom is for loving.
Can we leave behinds all the gods and all the idols that distract us from committing ourselves
wholeheartedly to this God? Yes we can! We can because God is committed to us.
I learned this week that Jewish people count the commandments differently from us.
In the Jewish tradition, “I am the LORD your God” is not an introduction to the commandments,
but is actually counted as the first commandment.
This is good news: the god of all grace, of all love, of all compassion is our God.
This God means us well. This God will never let us go. This God is for us and with us.
Counting the commandments this way means that the one who keeps the first commandment is
in fact God.
And because that is the most solid foundation on which to build a life,
this God’s commitment to us means that we can be free to live
without all the other gods we think we need. The truth is:
You don’t need those other gods. They will only enslave you and will never lead you to
who you truly are, who you were born to be, which is as Paul says to become like Christ.
You are meant to be free to live a life full of loving the God of all life and all love,
free to live a life of being God’s priestly people,
mediating this God’s love to our neighbours in need.
God has simply freed us to be a people who love God and love our neighbours.
So let the assembly say “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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