October 2, 2011 – “House Rules”
Phil Blackwell
“House Rules”
Exodus 20:1-4,7-9,12-20
Two weeks ago there was a story in the news that a school district somewhere in the South was being sued because the administrators had insisted that the Ten Commandments be enshrined on a wall in every classroom along with, they said, “other American documents.” Along with the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, part of the Constitution, but not the First Amendment, I suspect, because that would contradict the edict. But, when did the Book of Exodus become an “American document”? What kind of history are they teaching our children these days?
Well, we occasionally hear about the impulse of some well-meaning folks who want to display the Ten Commandments as a checklist of rules to live by, the ancient dictate of God to Moses as a kind of warning that “thou shalt not,” placing a yoke on peoples’ necks who seem to be getting out of line, especially the young ones who seem on the verge of anarchy.
Remember about six years ago the specter of Judge Roy Moore, the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court at the time, driving around his realm in a flatbed truck hauling a 5280 pound monument with the Ten Commandments carved in stone. No one could say, “Well, it’s not carved in stone,’ because it was.
Tom Long, the compelling teacher of preaching at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, points out that Moore’s memorial averaged out to over 500 pounds per commandment. Talk about the weight of the law coming down on you! It was enough to remind Long of Isaiah’s complaint, “These things you carry are loaded as burdens on weary animals.” (Isa.46:1)
Dr. Long goes on to point out something very important in the first verse of our reading from Exodus 20 that sets the prism through which we could be reading the Ten Commandments this morning. God does not say, “Here are the ten rules you must obey, or else I’ll damn you to hell.” Rather, God speaks, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” And then, commandment number one, “You shall have no other gods before me.”
I am your God who has set you free. Therefore, you are free to have only one deity and not have to worry about keeping a whole panoply of gods happy.
I am your God who has set you free. Therefore, you are free to ignore the idols that others foist upon you, even 5280 pound idols. Talk about sin! A two-and-a-half ton graven image would qualify.
I am your God who has set you free. Therefore, you are free from having to harangue me and castigate me and call me names in order to get my attention.
I am your God who has set you free. Therefore, you are free to take one day off a week. Look, I did it; you can, too. I am responsible for running the world, not you. And all of you who refuse to rest simply are too invested in your self-importance. (We can let that one sink in for all of us who are afraid of what might happen if we actually were to honor the Sabbath religiously.)
I am your God who has set you free. Therefore, you are free to honor your elders and gain a sense of perspective from their lives.
I am your God who has set you free. Therefore, you are free from having to commit murder in order to preserve your life.
You are free from having to commit adultery in order to prove your worth.
You are free from having to steal in order to make ends meet.
You are free from having to lie in order to get your way in the courts and in the court of public opinion.
You are free from having to lust for what other people have in order to be fulfilled because I, your God who has set you free, will provide for you all that is necessary. May your wants be confined to your needs and not your needs be inflated to encompass your wants.
When we read the Ten Commandments in light of God’s introduction of freedom, we see them not as legalistic burdens slung over our shoulders, but as a description of parameters within which we can live freely as a community. Laws can set us free, not bind us up.
Notice to whom the Ten Commandments are addressed. It is not to the nation. There was no nation at the time. There were twelve extended families, the twelve tribes of Israel. The Ten Commandments initially were the “house rules” for how God’s people were to live together, the rules of “God’s house,” a house made of relationships, not of four walls and a roof. After all, the people of God would wander homeless for the next forty years in the wilderness trying to get their act together under the guidance of these commandments.
These were not rules for everybody. The Ten Commandments were not the replacement of Hammurabi’s Law on the one hand or the prefiguration of the U.S. Constitution on the other. We see what happens when the Israelites finally settle down and begin to develop a code of law for a residential people. We get the Book of Leviticus, the Book of Laws, over 600 specific laws on how to settle property disputes, how to share with the indigent, how to treat strangers with regard, as well as how to slaughter a calf, what foods should not be mingled, how to cut your hair, and what fabrics you can wear and not wear. It was a sin to wear clothes made of mixed fibers; the garment must be all of one kind. So much for the slick biblical literalists in their polyester suits preaching damnation against sinners who do not follow every jot and tittle of the law!
The Ten Commandments as a description of how we live freely together, not as a code of conduct lashed to our backs. House rules for the household of God.
My very first year in ministry was in Wolverhampton, England, an industrial city in the West Midlands, well past its post-World War II prime when Sally and I were there in the late 1960’s. I served as a student intern at two small Methodist chapels in the council housing area at the north end of town.
Mr. Brown, the headmaster of the Bushbury School, a school for about 300 elementary-age boys located at the end of Leacroft Avenue at the foot of Low Hill, invited me to come and lead the morning exercises. He would invite a minister to talk to the boys at the beginning of the school day. “Tell them something that God wants them to do. The Bible is good for them; it keeps them in line.”
Well, I was not impressed with his use of the scripture for his own disciplinary cause, but I was intrigued by the invitation. So early in the morning I showed up at the school, had a cup of tea with Mr. Brown and a few teachers, and then was escorted onto the stage in the gymnasium where all 300 boys had been gathered. As I stood on the stage and looked down at them seated on the floor, I was stunned to see that a full one-third of them were wearing turbans. They were Sikhs. This was a time of great migration of people from the once great empire into Great Britain, many of them from Pakistan and India.
Mr. Brown had neglected to tell me of this mixture. It did not matter to him. “Tell them something that God wants them to do. The Bible is good for them; it keeps them in line.”
The Ten Commandments are not good for us because they keep us in line. They are good for us because they tell us how to be free. House rules for the household of God.
A couple of analogies: in music what is the “house rule?” Well, let us say that it is the melody line, the thing that defines the song, identifies it. What comes next? Let us add the harmony. There are rules that govern harmonic structure, what augments the melody and what does not. Now, for a creative musician, if she has the melody down pat and knows the harmony, then she is set free to improvise. Given the basic rules, now the musician can create. But without the structure of melody and harmony, whatever else emerges simply is sound.
Football . . . last night I was at the Wisconsin – Nebraska football game in Madison. It is helpful to know the local house rules that include the mandate that you wear red to the game. But that was not a big deal since the Nebraska fans wear red, too. But, you need to know that you have to “jump around” between the third and fourth quarters, and when you sing, “Varsity,” the alma mater, you begin waving your right arm from a position out to the side of your body so that you end up with the arm extended to the right in an open position and shake your hand in the air.
The local house rules. The general house rules for football we all know: here are the sidelines, there is one end zone, and there is the other one hundred yards away. Here is ten yards, you have four downs; so now, play the game. You are free to call the plays you want, even change with audibles at the line. Your defense can change between zone and man-to-man coverage of the pass. All is possible as long as you know that the playing field is defined by the lines on the turf. Disregard them, and you will run far afield; there is no game.
The world is more complex than the dimensions of a football field or the progression of a melody line. And the Ten Commandments are not sufficient as, nor were they intended for, the legal structure of a secular society. But, in some ways they are more vital because they tell us how to live in community with one another, not in isolation. They tell us how to let go of our anxieties, our worries, our grudges, and our gripes, and how to embrace life fully, how to live freely.
They are the “house rules,” how the extended family of God’s house is meant to live together so that everyone thrives. Yes, the Ten Commandments are good for us, not because they keep us in line, but because they set us free. Amen.
Philip L. Blackwell
The Chicago Temple
October 2, 2011