Bible Text: Exodus 20:1-17 | Preacher: Pastor Dorry Newcomer | Series: Exodus | Way back when, meaning up until March of this year, I always put a key Bible verse on the front of our printed bulletins every week.  If you’re using the monthly Worship Booklets we’ve been mailing out, you will see a key verse listed at the top for this week, Exodus 19:8, “Everything that the Lord has spoken, we will do.”  That sounds simple enough.  But what I think is particularly noteworthy is, the Israelites agree to obey in Chapter 19—but the law, the Ten Commandments, they don’t come until Chapter 20!  Who says yes, we will obey everything, when they don’t even know what is going to be required yet?  That sounds a little foolish to me.

And did you catch all those commandments?  The people were going to have to give up a lot in order to obey them.  Commandment #1:  put God first.  Okay, that probably didn’t surprise them.  God rescued them, God has sustained them, it makes sense God would ask them to be committed first and foremost to God.  But it’s so easy to get distracted!  Commandment #2: give up idols.  Considering they lived in a world where everyone worshipped a variety of gods and idols in order to cover all their bases, this was going to be hard.  Commandment #3, don’t misuse the name of the Lord.  I don’t know if the Hebrew people were prone to the same bad habits as us, saying, “Oh my God” when they were frustrated or excited, but clearly God wanted to be sure everyone understood that God is so sacred, so set apart from everything else in the world that even the name of God is worthy of special respect.

Which brings us to Commandment #4, honor the Sabbath.  You’d think this would be the easiest commandment of all to keep—take a day off!  But we are not the first people to live in a culture that treats the Sabbath as just another day to schedule things, another day to work finishing the work we didn’t get done yet and preparing for a week of work ahead.  What God envisioned, though, is a rhythm of life that allows for one day of every week to be special, as a way for all of creation to honor, and depend on, and delight in their Creator.

Commandment #5 can be tricky:  honor your father and mother.  It does not say to love them.  But it does say to respect them—even if they are not perfect, which of course no parents are!  If you want to have a long life, you must honor the people who gave you life.  Honoring life is also at the heart of Commandment #6, do not put anyone six feet under.  Do not murder!  Commandment #7, do not commit adultery.  Commandment #8, do not steal.  Commandment #9, do not lie.  And Commandment #10, do not covet what your neighbor has.

This is definitely not an easy list!  These ten commandments represent a boatload of sacrifice.  Sacrificing all other gods.  Sacrificing fitting in with the culture.  Sacrificing greed and jealousy.  Sacrificing revenge.  Sacrificing a competitive edge by working on the Sabbath.  Sacrificing the guilty pleasure of anything that is not truly yours.  That’s a lot of sacrifice!

But God commanded these things because God knows, there is no community without sacrifice.  God gave the commandments to the freed slaves to help them build a civilized society, a much more just way of living together than they experienced in Egypt.  God wanted them to have community, where people cared about each other, and treated each other fairly, and respected limits and boundaries.  To create this kind of society, every person would have to learn to sacrifice.

Even the smallest communities cannot be built without sacrifice.  Take marriage for example.  One of the more memorable books I’ve read over the years is called “The Zimzum of Love:  A New Way of Understanding Marriage.”  It was written by a very hip Christian named Rob Bell and his wife Kristen.  They say there is a rhythm to romantic relationships.  First there is a spark, an initial attraction.  The two people are drawn together and crave time with each other, which allows them to see if there is any trust substance between them.  Is this just a superficial attraction, or is there something deeper there?  If so, they will spend more time together, developing and discovering substance in their relationship.

But eventually, sacrifice is going to be required.  One or the other of them, and ultimately both of them, will have to sacrifice something important to them in order to continue the relationship.  In a way, the sacrifice is a test to see if love is real.  But sacrifice is also a way to generate real love.  Maybe one person in the relationship will have to leave a job they love in order to live near the other.  Maybe one will have to sacrifice a personal preference in order to accommodate the other.  Maybe one will have to sacrifice a significant amount of money to purchase an engagement ring…You get the picture.  Sooner or later, if love is real, sacrifice will be required.  Rob and Kristen Bell write that, although sacrifice is difficult, it pays great rewards, leading to new sparks and deepening intimacy in the relationship.

Spark, substance, sacrifice.  That is the rhythm that defines and creates true love.  It not only strengthens marriages, it strengthens all communities.  God gave the Ten Commandments so that they people would become one, holy nation.  In Chapter 19 God had Moses remind them, you’ve seen what I did to the Egyptians.  You saw how I bore you on eagles wings and brought you out of slavery.  You’ve seen how I have provided for you.  The whole earth is mine.  But I want you to be a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.  I want you to be a special community.  I want to have greater intimacy with you than I do with anyone.  And to achieve that, sacrifice will be needed.

Moses’ words rang true with the people.  The last few weeks as we’ve studied the book of Exodus, we read about had their trust had deepened.  First, there was a spark of hope when Moses said, ask the Egyptians for their gold and silver, and lo and behold, the Egyptians handed it over.  That led to discovering God’s substance:  the miracle crossing of the Red Sea.  The manna and quail.  Water from a rock at Massah and Meribah.  They people knew they could trust God.  And so they agreed to sacrifice.  They agreed to obey.  They agreed to building a common unity with each other, centered around their common experience with God.

A couple weeks ago, I was the substitute teacher for the Tuesday evening Bible study, and our lesson was about the Ten Commandments.  One participant said, I don’t think these commandments are even important anymore, because Jesus summed up all the law and the prophets with two sentences:  love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself.  It’s hard to argue with that!  Jesus’ words demand our utmost attention.

But the reason I think the Ten Commandments are still important is that they flesh out what it looks like to love God and love neighbor, and they flesh out what is needed to create community.  God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses, who was giving them to a people who had been slaves for generations in a foreign land, and then they were wanderers for forty years.  They never had a place to really call home before, a place that belonged to them.  God gave them these rules to be the foundation upon which they would become a holy nation, a priestly kingdom, a community centered around their relationship with God.  They needed structure and specifics in order to build this community.  And so they said yes to God, before they even knew what was going to be required.

As we finish out 2020 and move into 2021, many people are wondering about the church’s ability to sustain community.  I think the answer to that depends on our willingness to say yes to God.  This is something the people of Lima are good at!  Two weeks ago church council approved the Nominating Committee Report, which is a list four pages long of people who have said yes to serving God as leaders in their local congregation, even though who knows what next year will bring?  Last week Bill Thomas was named Man of the Year, for his excellence in study, fellowship and service.  He is committed to saying yes to God.  We celebrated All Saints Day, giving thanks for the many people who have said yes to God and nurtured us in our faith.  We also celebrated becoming a Reconciling Congregation, which is a witness to how Lima UMC is willing to say yes to God, even though we don’t know what repercussions may come from that vote.  I could go on and on.

Community is built—and sustained–by saying yes to God.  This week, many of you received a letter in the mail, asking you to say yes to God by making a commitment to financially supporting Lima UMC.  If you did not receive a letter in the mail, you can still make a commitment by visiting our website.  Now, you might be thinking, we just read the list of the Ten Commandments, and it doesn’t say anything about giving your money to God.  That is true.  It wasn’t until later that God commanded people to give a tithe, 10% of their first fruits, to support the religious structures in the community.  God asked the people to make that commitment, and God knew it would be a sacrifice.  But it is also the very substance of being a person of faith.  It is a way to show God that we have no other gods before him.  It is a way to provide support for each other and the world.  It is an act of love.  With every offering, we are demonstrating the substance of God’s love for the world and our love for God.  And it is my hope that every offering blesses you with a spark!

The Hebrew people said yes to obeying God, before they knew what would be required.  At first glance that sounded a little foolish.  But it is actually the genius of faith.  God asks us to commit and give based on what we already know: that God is love, that God is with us, that God is always at work for good in and through us.  When we commit and give, we in turn get blessed with gifts we never anticipated, gifts like freedom, friendship, purpose, significance, and yes, community.

And it seems to me, we can really use more community now.  I wrote this sermon and am recording it on Wednesday morning.  The results of Tuesday’s presidential election are unclear.  I can only imagine that, on Sunday when you hear this sermon, some of you will be relieved by the results of the election, and some will be distressed.  But here’s the thing:  the scripture for this week’s worship service was chosen in August.  I did not on purpose pick Ten Commandments week, which to me means Community Week, to be today.  This is serendipity.  This is the Holy Spirit at work.  And so I think we need to pay attention.  Is there anything in the Ten Commandments that can help us build community in our deeply divided nation right now?

One of the things I love about being United Methodist is how we have historically been people with a wide range of political views.  We have been able to work well together, despite our differences of opinion on various policies, because of our common commitment to have no other Gods before the God we know as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  We have sacrificed a desire to have our own way on many issues so we can have unity in Christ.  We have built community around a common allegiance to our Lord.  We can be a witness to our world that sacrifice is always required to build community.  Whether it’s a community of newly freed slaves, or a marriage, or a congregation, or even a nation.  Community is a work in progress, always evolving to show both more mercy and more justice.

So let’s recommit ourselves to these Ten Commandments:  to putting God first in our lives.  To giving up all our idols.  To stop taking the Lord’s name in vain.  To honoring the Sabbath.  To honoring our parents.  To hear Jesus’ caution when he says, every time we call someone a fool, we commit murder.  To live within the limits God sets and remember that lusting after another in our hearts is adultery in Jesus’ eyes.  To stop taking what is not ours to take, stop uttering words that are not true, and stop desiring what our neighbor has.  By sacrificing our will to God’s, may we build a community that blesses us, Lima, and the world.  Amen.