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Home , Tablets of Stone, The Ten

Exodus 20: 1-17 March 7, 2021 – Lent 3 Stacy Carlson

Mystery and Meaning in Stone

Good morning everyone. No matter what tradition we come from, most of us probably know this passage from Exodus, at least as the headline we call Commandments. These are ten rules or laws for how we should behave. They seem especially important during Lent, don't they? Yes, but perhaps not in the way we might think, because when a story is familiar, sometimes it doesn’t seem as meaningful the second and third time around as it was the first. We think we have learned all there is to know. So it might be with the . But today, let’s try to look at them differently. One way is to think more about the stone tablets. Were they gray? Brown? Were they red clay? How much did they weigh? Did chisel them letter by letter, or in a big flash all at once? Do we know if the commandments were divided equally – five and five -- between the tablets? And don't we wonder what the thought when came down carrying stone tablets from a mountain shrouded in clouds, but also bursting with thunder and fire? Even if we knew the answers to all those questions, what new lesson can we learn today? I believe there is still mystery and meaning in these two stone tablets. What if we imagine the world after the pandemic? Imagine we're gathered outside a Metro station in DC. Let's say Dupont Circle. We've walked the fifteen miles into the city from St. Thomas and have set up camp there. Then, imagine Moses, in thunder and fire, rising up from that incredibly long escalator at the metro station holding two stone tablets? Wouldn't we have surprise and fear? Wouldn't we also wonder, just as the Israelites must have when God “spoke all those words” what he wanted from us?

God speaks. God reminds the Israelites that he has brought them out of slavery in . They already know this, but God reminds them of how he treasures them, because he's going to expect a from them in the future. The Israelites have left Egypt and are camped at Mt. Sinai, but we don't have evidence of a real mountain called Sinai. Honest historians will tell you that we really can’t know what happened on Mt. Sinai, if anything happened at all at a place we can’t even say really exists. Harvard professor of Jewish Studies Jon Levenson tells us that although we know nothing about the place of Sinai, we know a lot about the traditions surrounding Sinai. If we focus on historical evidence, we miss the significance of this material in Israel’s history and, I will add, to our life today. Exodus 20: 1-17 2 March 7, 2021 – Lent 3

Sinai was an archetype. There, God established the Sinai Covenant. This covenant sets the structure for Israel, a structure for who she is and who she is meant to be in every generation. Levinson says the other important point is that, at Sinai, God chose to live in no-man's land, in a forbidding wilderness between Egypt and . He says it’s important where this encounter doesn’t take place. It's not in a city, or even a village. God chooses the desert – a place which isn't controlled by anybody, where there’s no government or political authority – to give these ten commandments. Why there? Why then? Because there, in no man's land, the mountain of God is a beacon of freedom to these former slaves. It symbolizes a new kind of master, different than Pharoah, and a radically different relationship between the people and the state. God offers a new covenant to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai. It's the third covenant offered to the Israelites at this point in the Bible. It's not only new. It's different. And it's written in stone. Recall the first covenant in Genesis. After unleashing a devastating flood, God sets a rainbow in the clouds and promises he'll never do that again. God promises this to without expectations in return. Last week, Fran told us about God's covenant with , about a God that makes and keeps "extravagant promises." God gives the elderly Abraham and children and fertile land; and God promises Abraham he will be the father of Israel and all nations. For those blessings, God only asks Abraham to walk blameless before him. So now, at Mt. Sinai with thunder and clouds and fire and , God makes another covenant. We hear it plainly in Exodus 19, a few verses before today's reading. God tells the people, "If you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples." This is very explicit. God treasures the Israelites and God wants to be in relationship – but here, God sets some expectations, he gives them ten commandments. But why is God doing this now? The Israelites already have the covenants with Noah and Abraham, what else do they need? More is needed because, in our story, the time has come for progress. Here, in the wilderness, God makes a covenant with a people whom he has chosen and freed through his mercy. They’re not slaves to or any state system, anymore. At Mt. Sinai, God gives the Israelites and us laws for how to respect that God-given freedom, laws for how we should live together in society. He tells us how to shape civilization.

Exodus 20: 1-17 3 March 7, 2021 – Lent 3

And that brings us back to the stone tablets. Now, just as we don't know where Mt. Sinai was, we don’t know how many commandments were on each . But as we consider how they are organized, we’ll see why it makes sense to think of them as four on one, six on the other. In the first four commandments, God tells us how to live with God. We are to have no other God before him, to not make idols, not take his name in vain, and rest and keep the holy. In the other six commandments, God tells us how to live with one another. We must honor our parents, and there’s to be no murder, adultery, stealing, lying or coveting. All summed up the Ten Commandments tell us how to love God and love one another. Do one. Do both. Another way to think of this is that , the Jewish word for law, can also be rendered as "teaching." So, let's think of God bringing us Ten Teachings -- ten ways we can learn to build a life and a society based on love for God and love for our neighbors. This lives on in , of course. In Matthew Chapter 22, Jesus summarizes the two stone tablets, these ten teachings, as the . The Book of Common Prayer helps us remember in even simpler terms. Our confession says, among other things, "We confess that we have not loved God with our whole heart, and we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves." In the Episcopal tradition of Godly Play, which teaches children Bible stories, they call these commandments the ten ways and sum them up in four words: Love God. Love People. But that’s not always easy is it? Somedays it’s hard for me to love people, even people that I love. There are days when I am so confused by God that I’m sure this idea of becoming a is really his idea of a practical joke. There are days when I’m almost rapt with coveting, wasting hours online, looking at stuff I not only want, but can convince myself that I need. I imagine most of us have days when we fall short and feel ashamed to turn to God with all of our mistakes. Don’t. God doesn’t keep a scorecard. God wants us to try. As we try, God's covenants remain everlasting just as he promised Noah. Think of the baptismal covenant. You are baptized as God's own. You may renounce God, but he won't renounce you, ever. So it is with the Sinai Covenant. God wants us to know that this is how God wants us to be. Love God. Love People. And that would be the best possible reason for Moses to rise out of the Dupont Circle metro and come to us in the midst of our society, today: to remind us that God's intended structure for society, for all of civilization, was true then and is true now: Love God. Love People. Exodus 20: 1-17 4 March 7, 2021 – Lent 3

I believe God knows we try. And God knows when we ignore his teachings we wander from the light into the dark. Our Lenten journey is to consider how far we have wandered and then ask for God's light to find our way back to God's mountain. Our journey is to believe, to know, that God will keep his covenant and always welcome us home. Love God. Love People. That, I believe, is the mystery and meaning of those two stone tablets. Amen.