We have been slowly journeying through the Book of Exodus all summer and we left our wandering Israelites two weeks ago right as they arrived at Mt. Sinai. This has so far been a journey from slavery in Egypt to freedom but even now at Mt. Sinai, where they will camp for months, they have a further journey to reach the Promised Land. But God stops them here. They are to make camp at the foot of Mt Sinai where they will stay for the rest of the Book learning what it means to be in a covenantal relationship with their God. They need to understand who they are as God’s people before they journey forward.
So…. we begin this morning’s section of the book where God will talk through Moses on Mt Sinai. And we must start by saying no one really knows where Mt. Sinai is. And while the exact location of the mountain is not known, it has been generally associated with Jebel Musa or Mount Moses which is on the south central point of the Sinai Peninsula. If so, God did not direct Moses on the most direct route to the Promised Land and there has to be some reason for it…. Hmmmm…..
God wants the people of Israel to know what it means to be marked as God’s covenant people. The Lord explains that only Moses can see and talk to God but God will tell Moses what to say and Moses can be the Lord’s spokesperson. God is mighty. God is too big. God is overwhelming in power and might and God’s people cannot perceive God’s being. But they are close. So close in fact that the Lord tells Moses to have them consecrate themselves to ready themselves for God’s message or Word. So they do. They wash their clothes, they put on their best face, you might say, for the Lord’s arrival. And much like a mighty storm or a large earthquake, it turns out you do not have to be right on the site, to get a sense of God’s magnitude. God descends on the mountain and only Moses is allowed to go on it. Yahweh explains that anyone else would die. And God shows God’s self as a storm to end all storms. Those of you who have lived through the worse of the hurricanes can relate to the descriptions of the noise, the thunder, the lightning and the noise like a piercing blast of a rams horn. Encountering God, even from far away, sounds absolutely petrifying. And if this is what the Israelites experienced at the foot of the mountain, imagine what poor Moses was feeling on the top and in God’s presence. James Brashler, the professor emeritus of Bible at Union Seminary in Richmond says the often overused word ‘AWESOME’ is absolutely appropriate here.
My experiences of the Holy have been quite different. No thunder… No lightning or earthquakes… Not even a voice from above directing me in correct paths. But God directs my life as clearly as the Lord directed those ancient Israelites on the foothills of Mt. Sinai (where-ever that may be). I feel God when I sit in our sanctuary during the week and pray. I feel God when I get an inspiration while writing a sermon. God is with me when I get to swim team and dive in that cool clear water and thank God for our rich resources that make swimming pools available to people. And I feel God in my moments of uncertainty when I question my directions and how to best minister in this time in history….I know that God is there and I know that God is here right now in us and with us.
The other night I had a nightmare which I don’t usually have. In it, I was a military leader who led troops on a mission where I lived and others did not. I woke up with great anxiety. But I am not a military leader and my leadership style is collaborative or that of a shepherd when I am being most my directive. But I do have an old friend to whom I immediately thought of who might be living my nightmare. I had not talked to him in a few months so I texted this dear friend who is in the higher echelons of the military and told him I was praying for him and the weight I thought must be on his shoulders. He texted right back saying how grateful he was for my text and prayers as he needed them. I later found out he had been serving last week as the Acting Secretary of Defense until Mark Esper was confirmed and during this time we heard talk, there was talk of war with Iran. You see….God was at work. God had spoken….
And my guess is that each of you could tell a time when you felt God’s direction. In those moments of serendipity, where you are in the right place to minister to another at the right time and know that you are doing what it is you were created to do. Or those times when the gratitude wells up inside you for all that you have been given. Or those times when you feel the energetic Sprit-led call to change what is not God-like in the world. In these times, we hear God, or feel God’s direction and love. I think those are our experiences of God. They are when we feel a rightness about our life and know we are doing what we are meant to do.
But Moses was able to see and speak to God. Moses, and no other Israelites were allowed to have a conversation with the Lord or even go on the mountain when Yahweh was on the mountaintop. And you know, speaking directly to God is not a common thing in the Bible. In the Hebrew or Common Scriptures God spoke directly to Adam, Cain, Noah, Moses, Samuel, and David. In the New Testament God only spoke directly with Jesus and Paul. Our experiences of God, it seems are more the norm.
And while Moses is on the mountain top, God gives him the messages he is to tell God’s people. In this morning’s reading, God gives Moses what we refer to as the 10 Commandments. And we all know them…. and most of us can recite at least some of them. They have been seen as the backbone of laws by which we should live. Some southern court houses have them on the walls of their buildings. They are revered and possibly worshipped. But Theologian Eugenia Anne Gamble, author of ‘Loved Carved into Stone’, reminds us that nowhere in the Bible is the word commandments used with these ten rules by which God says we are to live.
Gamble invites us to look at this text more as a love letter from God and less of a list of ‘Thou Shall and Thou Shall Not’s’. She says that although she does not consider them commandments, they are God’s words and are definitely more than mere suggestions. She says what we have here is a love letter from God to God’s community who are stuck in the wilderness. It is an invitation into their new relationship with God, for a passionate life they can have with God and each other. In this list God discusses with Moses, God is providing boundaries that if lived within we can also live with freedom and peace. Gamble suggests we approach what we call the Ten Commandments as a 10 point list as to what we should avoid and what behaviors we should embrace.
Living in community is difficult. I took out several of my books written by Reinhold Niebuhr this past week rereading his work on morality and immorality of humanity and society. We need boundaries to be our better self. And just as important, is that we continually look at the boundaries and laws we set up and weigh them against God’s laws. Are we living the relationship with God and all of God’s children that is intended? And, Niebuhr says, if they are not, we should change them.
Two years ago Rosemary Welton gave a wonderful sermon on the 10 Commandments. She, like Gamble and other modern theologians see them not in the negative, but in the positive. Because, if I went further and talked about them individually I would just be quoting and repeating Rosemary, so, I am now going to do what I told Rosemary I was doing with this sermon which is to hand out her sermon and call it a day.
But, we will find as we move further in to Exodus is that the 10 Commandments are just the beginning of God’s law. God continued to talk to Moses about how the Israelites could live in community with one another and in covenant with their Lord. Next week we will continue with God’s rules for the Israelites and what they could mean for us today.
Amen.
