Exodus 20: 1-17

There is a snippy little white dog in the neighborhood where I run. The first time I met this dog, I was out for a run with my beagle, Yankee. The dog came charging out of its backyard and chased us down the street.

After several anxiety-causing interactions with this little bundle of energy, I began to dread running down his street. But one day, something different happened. As we rounded the corner, I braced myself for that mess of fur to come tearing after us. I saw him fly out of his backyard toward us. This time, though, he stopped short and stayed in his own yard.

As he stood there yapping at us, I scratched my head trying to figure out why he wasn't chasing us. Then I saw a small little sign, close to the ground in their yard – they had installed an invisible fence.

Now, when we run past we smile and wave at the little white dog and heyaps and wags his tail at us. I don't have to worry about him chasing me or getting hit by a car. A boundary has been set for him.

Boundaries are a good thing. They provide structure and guidance for little white dogs and for humans of every shape and hue. They create order in world that is full of chaos. They allow us to live in community with each other.

Boundaries – especially the boundaries set by God for God's people – can be a visible reminder of God's liberating nature and guide us to abundant life.

Most of us learn boundaries by living in community.

They are taught to us by our parents – “it's not polite to stare.”

They are taught to us by our schools – “the faster we all line up and get quiet, the sooner we can go to lunch.”

They are taught to us by the larger society – “I saw that you're new to the neighborhood, so I brought you some cookies.”

And they are taught to us by our religious institutions.

Many of us have known today's passage from Exodus 20 nearly all our lives. My first memories of it are from a poster hanging in my Sunday School room when I was a child. On the poster were two big stone tablets, listing all ten of God's commandments with big Roman numerals.

They came to me entirely out of context – just floating words on the wall.

Interestingly enough, they come to us in the Exodus setting out of context, too. These ten commandments are called the ten words in the Jewish tradition. [1] Scholars haven't been able to pin down their origin, but the ten words seem to have been used regularly in ancient Jewish worship. The flow of the pronouncements makes it easy to see how a group could recite them. Early hearers could count them carefully on their fingers and pass down these guiding words from generation to generation. [2]

The ten words of YHWH appear both in Exodus 20 and in Deuteronomy 5. In both passages, they are nearly identical, suggesting that the Israelites did indeed know them well and passed them along with great consistency.

In their Exodus setting, however, they come to us in a jarring fashion. Moses has been traveling up and down a mountain, talking to God. At the end of the chapter 19, Moses has just traveled down from the mountaintop once again to deliver a message to the people. Abruptly, we read “then God spoke all these words…”

God's voice breaks forth out of the blue, reassuring the people [3] with words that have long been written on their hearts: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt .”

As Christians, we come by these ten words second-hand. They originally belonged to the people of Israel and we share them with Jews around the world today. Too often, Christians have claimed that we are the only ones who can claim a relationship with God. Passages like the one we heard from John earlier today are used to support a view that Jesus was anti-Jewish, which is completely inaccurate since he remained a faithful and engaged Jew throughout his life. But that's a sermon on John for another day.

Thinking back to the ten words, though, it seems strange to me that so many of the people who want to post the ten commandments on the lawn of the courthouse are the same people who say that the “God of the Old Testament” is no longer relevant because Jesus came and established a new and better covenant. If that's the case, then why are they so attached to the ten commandments?

Fortunately, in the past fifty years, there have been a number of Christians saying we can do better than this. We know that we can honor the relationship between God the Jewish people seriously without feeling as if our own relationship with God is threatened. We understand that there is a rich tradition in Judaism that can teach us.

Traditionally, Jewish scholars have numbered the ten words differently than we Christians. For Jews, the first word is this: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt .”

They then combine what we see as the second and third words “you shall have no other gods” and “you shall not make for yourself an idol” into one proclamation. On the surface, “I am the Lord your God” doesn't seem like much of a commandment at all. Rather than telling us what to do, it simply makes a statement of who God is – a God of liberation.

But to say that God is our God is more than just a statement about God. It also radically alters who we are.

To say that God is our God means we will never see ourselves, the world, or our place in it in the same way again. Walter Brueggemann, a UCC scholar I often like to consult, says that the people of Israel had been set free from the oppressive bondage to Egypt so they could form a new, liberating, covenantal bond with YHWH. [4]

For the Israelites, that first word was radical statement of belonging. A people who had, just very recently, belonged to the powers-that-be in Egypt are now being claimed by a new power – YHWH. The one that is.

This first word is followed by nine others that are meant to set boundaries and guide the community's relationship with God and with all of creation.

Barbara Brown Taylor, a preacher in the Episcopalian tradition, uses the image of a tent for the Israelites' relationship with YHWH. [5] She says that the promises of God – the promise of many descendents for Abraham and Sarah, the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey – these promises are the canvas of the tent. They clothe the Israelites in the wilderness and provide hope.

But the ten words YHWH gives to the people – the boundaries YHWH sets for living – these are the tent poles. They provide the structure and support for a life lived in YHWH's promises.

Of course, these ten words are just the prologue. God reveals a total of 613 laws to the people Israel throughout the Torah. Now you may be thinking that 613 seems like a lot to remember, but think of it this way – when we look at the ten commandments, we see that nine of them can be kept while you're sleeping. [6]

No other gods? Check.

No graven images? Can't make one during a nap on the couch.

Don't take God's name in vain? Not a problem unless you talk in your sleep.

Honor the Sabbath? Well, I know that taking a nap on the Sabbath is one of my favorite ways to rest.

In all seriousness, though, we Christians have a tendency to think of the laws of the Torah as cumbersome. But I think that's primarily because we were not raised in the Jewish faith. We did not grow up learning these guidelines from our parents. They are not the poles holding up our tent.

Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish New Testament scholar at Vanderbilt, explains that even non-religious people keep thousands of laws. Each of us has to learn what is and isn't acceptable in our society. But we learn it in a way that it doesn't feel overwhelming because we learn it over a long period of time from people we love. [7]

And so it is with the words given by YHWH to the people of Israel . Passed down from generation to generation, the guidelines don't chafe and tug. They are simply the poles that support a tent holding up a community of faith.

The ten words – these boundaries – are essential for living. After all, what good is a tent without poles?

We, as Christians, are privileged to be invited into that tent. Through the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we became grafted into the tree of Israel . A great image that I'm borrowing from the Apostle Paul – you can look up the full story in Romans 11 if you'd like. Just as the tree of Israel has not been chopped down, the tent of Israel – it's promises and laws – has not been torn down, it's just been enlarged. Through Christ, we are invited to experience a relationship with YHWH – the one who is – through the gracious gift of God's words of boundaries.

Now, let me ask you a question. Have you ever known someone who needed some poles for their tent? Some boundaries?

My cousin Eldon was one of those guys who needed boundaries, but he lives in a new tent these days. Eldon – who we sometimes call “Big E” for short – is from Oklahoma . He speaks with a long drawl. He rides big motorcycles and is about twice the size of me. He has a shiny bald head and lots of tattoos.

Eldon's face lights up like a child on Christmas morning when he talks about his march out of Egypt . You can see the parted sea reflected in his eyes as he remembers the day his shackles were broken.

Just over three years ago, Eldon was in bondage. He lived to get to his next high. He was addicted to drugs, alcohol, women, and fighting.

One day he was at work and was about to get in a fight with his boss. He paused for a moment. He had never prayed before and didn't really believe in God anyway but in that split-second a voice came to him out of the blue.

Eldon tells me it sounded a lot like his own voice, but he knows it came from somewhere outside of his body. The voice said, “You do not need to fight him. Go to a meeting.”

Instead of hitting his boss, he punched his time clock and went to his first twelve-step meeting – Alcoholics Anonymous. The voice of God – from out of the blue – gave Eldon clear boundaries to follow: fighting is not good, going to a meeting is better.

As the days went by God continued to give Eldon boundaries and Eldon kept following God's voice – picking up manna and quail along the way.

Eldon left the job that was making him so angry.

He left the woman he was living with because she didn't want to quit using.

He put down the beer that would be “just one” because he had learned that he could never have “just one” again.

Eldon followed that voice all the way into a halfway house. And when he got there, he looked up at the stars through a hole in the roof of his tent.

He blessed the name of the Holy One and gave thanks for the promises that were too many to count. And he gave thanks for the boundaries that made his tent a home.

Not all of us will have an experience as dramatic as Eldon's. But at some point in our lives, we will all find ourselves both enslaved and set free.

Like ancient Israel , we may be enslaved to imperial powers that treat us unfairly and with contempt.

Like Eldon, we may be in bondage to addictions that are beyond our control.

We may find ourselves at the mercy of global markets that do not care about our 401Ks.

We may find ourselves trapped in an abusive relationship or beholden to a horrible medical diagnosis.

Or we may lose ourselves completely – rendered unrecognizable by mental illness.

It is in these very moments of wilderness wandering that God speaks to us out of the blue. Our God – the God that frees us – liberates us with words of boundaries.

And it is in this carefully crafted tent of freedom – clothed in the glory of God's promises and held aloft by the firmness of God's care – that we are able to truly live.

[1] Ronald J. Allen and Clark M. Williamson, Preaching the Old Testament: A Lectionary Commentary , 95.

[2] “Ten Commandments” article in the Anchor Bible Dictionary .

[3] “Exodus 20” commentary, New Interpreter's Bible.

[4] Brueggemann, Walter. Interpretation and Obedience , (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991)) 145.

[5] “Exodus 20” commentary from http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel .

[6] Some other thinker brought this to my attention at some point – that most of the ten commandments can be kept while you're sleeping. I wish I could remember who it was so I could give them proper credit.

[7] Levine, Amy-Jill. The Misunderstood Jew.