The Charter of Freedom

Exodus 19:3-7, 20:1-17; Matthew 5:17

The Lord called to Moses from Mount Sinai: Thus shall you tell the Israelites: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I brought you to myself. Now you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Yes, the whole earth is mine, says the Lord, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” And so Moses set before the people all the words that the Lord had commanded him.

As most of you know, I spent several years working for the office of the U.S. Trade Representative.  The trade negotiators would often travel to Beijing or Geneva or some other place and meet with their counterparts from other countries, and return home – if the bargaining was successful – with an agreement about what new export opportunities they had secured for American businesses overseas, and what restrictions they had had to accept in return.  And the common joke was that coming home from one of these negotiations was like Moses coming back from Mount Sinai. “How did it go, Moses?” “Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is I got him from 20 down to 10. The bad news is adultery is still in there.”

Like most religious jokes, it’s only funny if you get the theology completely wrong. One of the many things this joke gets wrong is that Moses did not go up to Mount Sinai to negotiate with God. It’s not like Moses went up to ask God, “You know, Lord, we’d really like this land over there in Canaan – we’d like it to be flowing with either milk or honey, or preferably both. Now what do we have to give you in order to get that land?”

No, the story of Exodus is that this whole project was God’s idea. The Hebrew slaves were suffering in Egypt, that’s true, and they called to God and asked for deliverance. But when God responded to their prayer and gave them freedom, the story of Exodus is that at every step along the way, the people were so afraid that they wanted to go back to Egypt.  So last Sunday, we read how the people didn’t know how they were going to get across the Red Sea and they panicked. Then they didn’t know what they were going to eat, and God had to provide manna in the desert. Then they didn’t know what they were going to drink. Then they got nervous that Moses was up on Mount Sinai so long that they made a golden calf. They were so used to their life of misery and bondage in Egypt, they were so used to the trauma that they had endured all their lives, they could not imagine that life could be different, that life could be better, that God actually wanted them to live in freedom.

So the first words of God to Moses are: You saw what I did to the Egyptians, you saw how I brought you here. And I did this so that you will be a unique people who knows what it is to be set free from the bondage of Egypt, and through you everyone will come to know what it looks like to live as a free people. So listen to these ten words – in Hebrew, they are not called the ten “commandments” but simply the ten “words” – ten words that describe to you what life in freedom actually looks like.

The USTR joke assumes that the ten commandments are restrictions on our freedom – rules that God imposes on us and enforces because God’s a sticker for the rules. But the story of Exodus tells us that in fact the people are actually afraid of freedom and would have rushed back into bondage at the first opportunity – so God gives them these ten words to show them what freedom actually means.

So – for example – “Thou shalt not kill.” Back in Egypt, you know, life was cheap. Specifically, your life was cheap. You were slaves. You were disposable. You had no rights. Well, in the land of freedom, your life will be respected. No killing will be allowed. So you will be protected. For the first time in your life, you will be safe. You’ve never known, actually, what it is to be truly safe, to know that your community has your back, you may not even believe that it’s possible to let down your guard and allow yourself to experience safety. But this is exactly what I brought you out of Egypt to experience.

The same is true for all the commandments. The one about adultery is not, as the old joke would have it, the most unfortunate restriction God is imposing. Back in Egypt, nobody respected the relationships of Hebrew slaves. Nobody cared about their privacy, about their loves, about their intimate lives – they were slaves. No more! In the land of freedom, your relationships will be respected. And there will be no stealing – your possessions will be respected. No false witness – your reputation and good name will be protected.

The same is true for the Sabbath. We often hear in the gospels how many rules there were for what you could and couldn’t do on the Sabbath, and so we often assume the Sabbath is just one more of those religious rules that stop people from having fun. But for former slaves, what this word really means is – You are entitled to rest. Everybody gets a day off. Everybody gets the right to enjoy life. You don’t have to work all the time for somebody else – you have time that belongs to you. And not just the lucky people who have the money to retire or to go on a vacation – everybody gets to rest because everybody’s life matters, including yours. Whether you have means and especially if you don’t. And in the land of freedom we will work together to set things up so everybody gets to enjoy Sabbath.

And so coveting will be unnecessary. In the land of freedom there is enough for everyone. No need to worry that somebody else has something you don’t have – give in to that fear, give in to the urge to take care of yourself and not your neighbor, and you’ll be back in Egypt before you know it. To live in freedom, learn to trust that there is enough for everyone and so there will be enough for you.

And the key to all of this is the first commandment – to worship only the God who set them free from Egypt and to worship no one else. The gods of Egypt – the gods who demand the sacrifice of the weak, the gods who suck the life out of the enslaved, the gods who punish anyone who resists Pharoah and his whims – these gods who have made you cower in fear all your lives – these gods do not need to be feared because they do not exist. The God who does exist, the God who alone is worthy of your reverence and your worship and your gratitude, is the God who wills your freedom, not your servitude.

So the Ten Commandments are not ten rules to restrict our freedom that we have to put up with and comply with in order to get what we want from God. The Ten Commandments are ten words from God that describe the life God wants for Israel after Israel has been delivered from Egypt. The life that God wants all people to live.

And yet, what I think is the most striking thing about the Ten Commandments is how far we still are from actually living this way. If it were easy to put the Ten Commandments into practice, over the last 3000 years you would think we’d have figured it out by now. But we haven’t.

To reflect on the Ten Commandments is, I think, to reveal to us the extent to which we are still living in Egypt. We still live in a world where some people are expendable, where some people are just props in a powerful leader’s political statement or are homeless or imprisoned and so not worthy of our attention or care. We live in a world where some people’s relationships are not respected, where people are routinely slandered because some people want to feel superior to others. We live in a world where some people have immense leisure and freedom and others are expected to work three jobs to make ends meet. We live in a world where the economy wouldn’t work if people didn’t covet the latest and greatest fashions and technologies.

We are, I think, much like the people of Israel who complained and cried out to God about how they were suffering in Egypt – but then when freedom was offered to them, when they saw what a life of freedom in God’s promised land would look like, they pulled back. They were used to living in Egypt, they were used to fearing the gods of Egypt, and this life of freedom God was offering them was so different from what they knew it didn’t matter how attractive a vision it sounds like – they were too afraid to actually trust that they could, as a community, make it happen.

I think all of us have our fears, the times when we’ve been hurt, the times when we’ve felt vulnerable and afraid. We’ve learned to protect ourselves from the things we’re afraid of – it’s a valuable skill to have, when you’re living in Egypt, to simply be able to survive and make it through another day. But when you’re not in Kansas any more – when God offers you the chance to get out of Egypt – new skills are needed. And that takes trust – that takes faith – and faith is not easy.

God called Israel to be the people who learned how to live outside of Egypt, the people who learned how to live in freedom, so that everyone could be delivered from Egypt. And Jesus did not come to abolish that call, but to fulfill it. And now we are invited here to the Lord’s table, where – like Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai – we are invited to envision what it means to live together as a community in freedom. To come to a table where all are respected, where everyone is welcome, where there is food and drink and presence enough for all, where we are invited to experience in faith what it means to live in freedom. And then we will be sent back to Egypt – but knowing that we were not made to settle for surviving in Egypt, but for thriving in the kingdom of God.