How the courtroom ruined the (true meaning) of the Ten Commandments.

How the courtroom ruined the Ten Commandments

Ten Commandments

On Wednesday Jamie, Mary Katherine, and I walked down to the St. James to eat lunch.  We struck up a conversation with a family from Michigan who is visiting for this weekend’s events.  They ended up inviting us to eat with them and we had a wonderful time. 

                Of course, they asked a bunch of questions about Alabama and Selma.  One of the questions wondered what it was like to live in the Bible Belt.  After I briefly described the dynamics of the Bible Belt in Alabama, the family went on to talk about how Bible Belt Christianity existed in Michigan too.

                They told me about a friend of theirs who decided to give up wine for the season of Lent.  They laughed at how intolerable she was to be around during this time.  They said she was always complaining about this horrible self-imposed affliction.  And no, surprisingly their friend was not an Episcopalian!

                At this point in the conversation I asked, what was this woman hoping to accomplish by giving up wine for Lent?  What was she trying to prove?  They said she was giving up wine for Lent because she wants to be ready on the Day of Judgment.  She wants to stand pure and blameless before Jesus when he comes back to judge the living and the dead.  And as you might imagine, this is when I buried my head in my hands and silently whispered, Lord have mercy.

                I don’t mean to lump what it means to be a Christian in the Bible Belt into this one story.  However, there is a message out there not just in the south but all over that is crippling the power of the gospel, the power of what it means to be saved by no power of our own.  There is a message out there that tries to convince us that we are in charge of our salvation, a message that says if we can live up to a certain standard then we will be right with God and be saved.   

                I believe some of this message is a result of how the Ten Commandments have been mistreated in our culture.  The mistreatment of the Ten Commandments has not only come from the religious arena but also the political stage.  As you are all very well aware, there has been serious debate in recent years as to whether or not they belong in the court room.  Regardless of your position on the issue, we all have to admit that its placement in the courtroom significantly changes the Decalogue’s meaning. 

            

            Before I get too far ahead of myself, we have to remember the context in which God gave the people the Ten Commandments.  Remember that God’s Word does not speak through a vacuum.  God’s Word breaks into our world at specific times, in specific places, for specific reasons—and we know this truth most fully through Jesus Christ.  So what circumstance did the people of Israel receive these commandments? 

After a time of wandering aimlessly in the wilderness, God decides that this group of Israelites needs some kind of direction.  So God calls their leader Moses to the top of Mount Sinai for instruction.  On the mountain God reminds Moses that he brought his people out of slavery for a specific reason, so that they would be God’s people in the world, so that they would be a light in the darkness.  However, these Israelites forget their calling and start to complain against God.  Some of them even beg for God to send them back to Egypt to be slaves—at least they had food to eat as slaves.

So the Decalogue is above all a reminder of who God is calling the people of Israel to be.  God is giving the people of Israel boundaries for their own good.  God is basically saying to Israel, “to live outside of these boundaries or commandments means death metaphorically and literally.” 

It is like a parent-child relationship.  It would be like Jamie and me giving Mary Katherine commandments.   “thou shalt not jump on top of a bar stool, thou shalt not pull the dog’s ears, thou shalt not dump your apple juice all over mommy’s dining room table.”  In case you were wondering, these commandments are based on experience…  We tell her these things for her own survival, for her own good.

As her parents it is our job to remind her of those boundaries again and again until one day she figures it out on her own, until they are written on her heart.  We give Mary Katherine these boundaries because we love her and want her to know how to live in a broken and sinful world. 

In the same way, our heavenly Father loves us and wants to remind us and teach us how to live in a broken and sinful world.  These commandments are not signs of a God who is bent on punishment or judgment.  Instead, these commandments are signs that we have a God who loves us and desperately wants us to know the freedom of what it is like to live as people of God in a broken and sinful world. 

So now that we understand the commandments in the context of salvation history, now that we have recited them together in this place of worship where we are reminded that nothing can separate us from the love of God—how does that compare to reading the commandments in the court of law?

Why do people go to a courtroom?  They go to a courtroom to hear a verdict from a judge.  The courtroom is a place where people are judged based on whether or not they live up to the law of the land.   So to have the Ten Commandments in the courtroom fundamentally changes how we understand the Decalogue. 

Given this new context, it would be easy to assume that the Decalogue is God’s standard of judgment.  In other words, when we stand before God on the day of judgment, we will be judged based on how well we lived into the Ten Commandments.  Think about that.

This line of thinking would not only be foreign to the first people who received the commandments.  But this way of looking at the Decalogue not only diminishes the gift of the gospel but also the gift of God’s law.  If we look at the commandments as God’s standard to salvation, then all we have done is reduce the commandments to a moral code. 

The danger of simply seeing these commandments as a moral code is this.  We will end up looking at the commandments as a type of salvation check list.  At the end of the day before we say our prayers we will sit down and say, “Let’s see.  I managed to keep 7 ½ commandments today and in high school that was a passing grade so I’m good.  I don’t even have to pray tonight.  What’s on TV?”  How deprived are we of God’s richness if this is how we look at the commandments?

I invite you to look at these commandments more like an inventory.  These commandments are wonderful tools to help you discern your spiritual health.  In case you didn’t notice, the commandments are literally broken into two tablets—one tablet focuses on a relationship with God and the other a relationship with neighbor.  So ask these questions.  How is your relationship with God?  Where is it strong?  Where is it weak?  How is your relationship with others?  Where is it strong?  Where is it weak? 

If you honestly use the commandments as an inventory, you are likely to discover something about yourself that you would rather not admit.  Reflecting on the results of your inventory might feel kind of like Jesus turning tables upside down in your own life--as he did in the temple. 

So what do we do with the results?  What do we do with the havoc that the inventory plays on the temple that God is trying to create in our own hearts?  We bring our shortcomings to light.  We name our failures for what they are.  And what are they?  Our failures and shortcomings are weak and pedantic before the mercy and justice of God.  This is the good news.  God's standard of judgment is resolved in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Ultimately, the promise of God’s covenant depends on who God is and the help God gives us in Jesus Christ.  Like our Baptismal Covenant implies, I can with God's help.    

We know that Jesus didn't leave the tables overturned and the temple destroyed.  He said that in three days he will raise it up.  Because God rebuilds his kingdom in his Son Jesus Christ judgment day will not be like a courtroom trial.  It will be more like a Presidential pardon.  And instead of a president issuing the pardon, our God whose property to always have mercy will be the one issuing the pardon. 

  Friends, it is the knowledge of God's pardon through Jesus Christ that transforms our hearts and changes the world.  The experience of the good news is what makes us people of God.  Yes, the Ten Commandments shows us how God desires for us to live in community with God and each other but only the good news of God in Christ will save us.  Someone said it like this, "The law shows us what love looks like but it does not produce love.  Love produces love."

Thanks be to God for the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!