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Sermon: Sunday 8th March, 2015

7/3/2015

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You can still see them in some churches – big boards, affixed prominently on the wall, one with the text of the Lord's Prayer, the other with the text of the Ten Commandments. You might think them useful if you don't have them printed on an order of service, or if members don't know them. But that would only be true if there were to be public recitation of these texts. While most churches recite the Lord's Prayer, only a few recite the Commandments. The effect of these boards can therefore seem rather intimidating, a very visible reminder of the moral failings of the congregation, a silent public rebuke.

But if that is the effect, and undoubtedly some who put them up may have meant it to be so, then we’ve rather missed the point of the Ten Commandments. I want to suggest this morning that, rather than being a text which should strike terror into our hearts, it is one which should bring joy.

How so? If you have been here over the last two Sundays, since Lent began, you will have detected and wee theme running through our services. That theme is the idea of covenant, that particular form of divine promise which God has established from time to time with his people. On the first Sunday of Lent, we thought about God’s covenant with Noah – symbolised by the rainbow – never again to destroy the earth. Then last week, we thought about one of God’s covenants with Abraham and Sarah, by which God promised to make them the parents of a great nation. Today, we continue with the theme of covenant.

We are familiar, I am sure, with how the covenant outlined in the Ten Commandments came to be made. The Children of Israel, the nation promised by God to Abraham, had suffered for hundreds of years in slavery in Egypt. Led by Moses, under the guidance of God, they have escaped. God has made that possible. God has freed them and, in his love, fed them with manna, bread from heaven. Life in the wilderness is not easy, to be sure, but overwhelmingly the context for the giving of these Commandments, these divine words, is God’s love and bountiful provision for his people and his deep desire for their wellbeing. In bringing them out of slavery in Egypt, God has reaffirmed his covenantal promise to be with them. What is given to Moses up at Mount Sinai is a guide to how to live in covenantal relationship. And remember, always, that covenantal relationship is two way. It is binding on God as well as on his people.

Perhaps "binding" is the wrong word. It has too many negative overtones. I want to argue that's the Ten Commandments, rather than being laws which restrict, are in fact teachings which liberate.

When, in Mark’s Gospel, a scribe asks Jesus which is the most important commandment, he doesn't get a straight answer. He gets two answers. Jesus tells him, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength; and love your neighbour as yourself.”  Jesus replied in this way because there are two distinct strands to the Ten Commandments. Five of them relate to how we should live before God and five of them relate to how we should live with one another, with God’s people, our neighbours, near and far. They are, first and foremost, a declaration that to be bound in covenant with God is to be set free to live as God's people. This is not about restrictions on personal liberty, but about protecting community and opening a way to encourage life, both individually and communally, to flourish.

While five of the Commandments are focused on our relationship with God and five are focused on our life together as God's people, it would be unhelpful to create too rigid a distinction. The fact is, they are all interrelated. Jesus’ refusal to pick one principal commandment demonstrates that. We cannot love God properly unless we love one another, and neither can we love one another properly unless we acknowledge that our love is rooted in and derived from God. Faithful worship of God leads to proper love of neighbour. Proper praise of God shapes our social responsibility.

For example, if we have no gods before God, and if we guard against idolising other things, then we will keep in their proper place all the other things, like money, power and sex, which press their claims on our lives and appropriate our devotion. If we keep the spirit of these commandments, we will see these things as gifts and responsibilities given by God. And knowing and treating them as such means that we will not use them to exploit other people. Not taking the Lord’s Name in vain is about speaking well of God, about an attitude of praise and thanksgiving. Keeping the Sabbath is to help us remember that all creation is a gift and we have a responsibility to be wise stewards of it. It is not an arbitrary instruction not to work one day a week, but an encouragement to value what God has given us by not being relentless in our pursuit of our own goals and agendas. The fifth commandment, about honouring our parents, goes well beyond being obedient, or not cheeky, or kind to our mothers and fathers. This is a reminder that we are not self made; that, to a great extent, what we achieve, we do so because of the help and support of others and that, ultimately, we depend on God.

The next five Commandments are more to do with how we live together. Given to a newly liberated people who were having to work out entirely anew the norms that would order their communal life, they are equally applicable now.  “You shall not murder” suggests that others are loved, as we are, by God, and made, as we are, in God’s image. It also reflects back on the covenant with Noah, in which God promised never again to destroy in anger. What binds us binds God too. The Commandments about adultery, stealing and truth telling are all about cultivating trust and faithfulness. They are about building up community and not doing things which tear at the fabric of society; for such things damage everyone, and the advantage individuals may hope to gain by an act of faithlessness or of wrongful acquisition or by telling a lie, will ultimately come to nothing.

There is a temptation to see some Commandments as major and some as minor. We find murder abhorrent but we all envy what other people have, from time to time. Arguably, the whole advertising industry is premised on our willingness to covet. But the fact is, humanity is fragile and our loving is fragile and our community is fragile. It doesn't take much to damage it and to compromise our faithfulness to God. The inclusion of something we perhaps see as relatively minor reminds us how easy it is for us to stray, how easily our human ways of thinking can lead us in the wrong path.

Sometimes Lent, with its sombreness and introspection, can feel like an imposition. But it shouldn’t. It should feel like an opportunity to deepen our holiness and our relationship with God. Similarly, the Ten Commandments can seem very forbidding, but ask yourself this – would you want to live in a world in which murder and stealing and falsehood was rife, a world in which community did not exist and in which there was no rest, no love, no kindness, generosity, no selflessness? Would you want to live in a world from which God was totally detached? Would you want such a world? No you wouldn't, and neither does God. His Commandments are a gift which free us from such a dystopia.

Amen.

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Meditation: World Day of Prayer, 6th March, 2015

6/3/2015

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We’ve all experienced it. Most of us have probably done it. Putting our foot in it. Saying the wrong thing, at the wrong time. It is easy to do. Sometimes you mistake the mood. Someone starts to say something and you respond with a joke, only to realise that what they wanted to say was quite serious. Or someone is telling you about something that is difficult for them, but it seems not such a big deal to you and you say something dismissive, only to realise later that your friend is in real difficulty. Or perhaps you remember a situation like this. You are standing on a beach, warm breezes wafting around, watching the sunset in the company of someone rather special. You are just about to declare your love when they say, “I could murder a poke of chips.” And you realise that you were the only one thinking romantic thoughts, and then the moment is gone.

In the Gospels, Peter seems to have a particular talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Being with Jesus brought more than just a few significant moments. Early on, when Jesus started healing people and excited crowds were gathering, there was an early morning when he went away alone to pray. Peter, caught up in the excitement of the crowds coming for healing, urged him to return, to keep going. It was the wrong thing to say. Jesus had other plans. Then there was the occasional up the mountain when Jesus had been transfigured. “Let us make you some tents,” Peter said because he did not know what else to say. It was the wrong thing to say. We might remember too Peter in the High Priest’s courtyard, Jesus on trial and Peter denying he knew him. Just last Sunday here, we read how Jesus had begun teaching that he would suffer death, only to have Peter rebuke him for such talk.

Tonight we have read yet another story of Peter missing the point, saying the wrong thing, spoiling the moment. Certainly, he had a right to be surprised by what Jesus was doing. Normally footwashing was the role of a menial servant. But this act, as was everything Jesus did, was purposeful. He did not waste his actions as he did not waste his words.

“Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. The Gospel does not record whether any answered. Did they understand? Do we?

I want to take one thought from this tonight. In all the examples I gave of occasions in which people might put their foot in it, might say the wrong thing, such an inappropriate word would matter because someone else was trying to say something serious. And saying or doing something serious is often costly. It costs an individual to open up, to let something deep about them be seen. It cost Jesus to show his disciples that the Son of God is the servant of all. It cost him to show them that the path he was on was one on which he would be despised, even more so than a servant who washes feet, so much so that he would end up being killed. But if a word or an action is really to be worth something, it will cost.

This evening’s service marks World Day of Prayer, and so our focus should be on prayer. This service includes lots of prayer, prayer for all sorts of different purposes and causes. You might think we should be encouraged to pray more. But I don’t think so. Words, as we have seen, can be cheap and unconsidered. What I think we should be encouraged to do is to pray better and I offer one thought which may help us do that. Prayer is about opening ourselves to God, and that kind of openness should cost us. If prayer is genuine, rather than just a torrent of unconsidered words, then it must be serious, and the very act of praying should change us, because in praying, we should give much to God.

Amen.

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Sermon: Sunday 1st March

1/3/2015

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Last week, when I came into church, I saw a wee job that needed to be done. The pulpit falls and the bookmarks were still Epiphany green, whereas they needed to be Lenten purple. I don’t know how much such things matter to other people, but they matter to me. I like the steady, rhythmic marking of the seasons, the visual reminder that our focus in worship has shifted, that we have entered a different time and, with it, a different mood. We leave behind the excitement of Christ’s ministry starting; all those hopeful stories, so full of promise, of disciples being called, of new teaching being heard for the first time, of people suddenly and unexpectedly being healed of their illnesses. In Lent, we enter into a more contemplative season, a time for reflection and repentance, a time of gathering clouds, before finally, on Easter morning, light breaks through.

As I changed the falls, I thought about the last time they had been changed to purple – for the first Sunday of Advent. How different Advent is from Lent. Yes, it is a time for reflection, repentance and preparation too, but it is so much shorter, so much quicker.

To the annoyance of some, I like to linger as long as possible in Advent rather than slavishly following the diktats of the commercial world and letting Christmas start far too early, but even so, Advent is always a time of such busyness. Not so Lent, which seems to stretch out far into the future, demanding a slower pace, a more contemplative frame of mind.

There is something Lenten about Abram and Sarai. As we join their story, we find them in the autumn of life. No longer young and vigorous, their life is marked by a slower pace and by contemplation. They have much to look back on, much about which to be satisfied, but also disappointments too. Chief among them is the fact that they have had no children of their own. In desperation, Abram has had a child, Ishmael, with Hagar, Sarai’s servant. God had promised them children of their own, but none had been forthcoming. Each well into their nineties, it seemed unlikely now. But still there was the promise of God, and that doesn’t count for nothing.

Human reserves of patience and God’s own timetable really coincide harmoniously. Ishmael was the result of Abram’s impatience, and that, as we know is a sad story. But God does not leave things too late. Even at ninety-nine, God knew that it was not too late for Abram and Sarai. And in the space of a few verses, everything suddenly changes. Indeed, the future of Israel and ultimately of God’s church turn dramatically on what happens in this story we have read together this morning.

First, everyone is given a new name. For the first time, God calls himself “God Almighty”. It is a name which makes clear that the God who is addressing Abram is the God who made the heavens and the earth, the God of Genesis Chapter 1. It is a name, furthermore, which makes clear that this God is a god above all other gods, for at this time even the Hebrew people thought that there were other gods, gods associated with other tribes and peoples. This change of name is not an assertion of a new identity, but a reinforcing, a confirmation of an existing one. The new names given to Abram and Sarai are, however, both; both in an assertion of an existing identity and a giving of a new one.

Unlike the change of Jacob’s name to Israel, which is about leaving behind an old identity, and all the faults and offences of youth, the change from Abram to Abraham and from Sarai to Sarah speaks both of continuity and of a new beginning. There is continuity because God has already made his promise. There is newness because the promise, the covenant, is now being renewed. And it is also being extended. The earlier covenant with Abraham was primarily about land, about securing inheritance. Now it was a covenant - a promise by God to be always with Abraham and his offspring, for ever. It is a reflection of God’s covenant with the children of Israel, and through the children of Israel with the Church, and through the Church with each one of us. What we have read this morning is the promise which gives us the confidence to say that God is with us and to know that it is true. And it reaches far back before Abraham to the moment of creation and links us together with all that is, all that has been, and all that is yet to come. A child for Abraham and Sarah is the first fruit of this covenant, but the covenant does not depend on their faithfulness, or the faithfulness of any other. The surprising thing, the wonderful thing, is that God has willingly and irrevocably bound himself to people who persistently turn away from him. And even when we do, he will not renege on his covenant.

But I don’t want you to think, and I’m sure you don’t, that the nature of God’s covenant lets us off the hook to be or do anything we want. His faithfulness to us does not depend on our faithfulness to him, but faithfulness to God should be our response.

I think that that is what Jesus was getting at with his call to those who would follow him to deny themselves and take up their cross. It comes as quite a shock. It is a shock to us and it was a shock to the disciples. Up to this point, discipleship had been a big adventure – exciting new teaching, miraculous healings. But suddenly Jesus makes it clear that being a disciple is about more than following him, watching him, and listening to him. It is about more than being a Jesus fan. It has deep personal implications.

It is, fundamentally, about a new identity. We don’t change names, but the sacrament of baptism is bound up with the idea of naming, and it is not for nothing that we call our first name our ‘Christian name’. That speaks of us being named as disciples of Christ. That speaks of us being inheritors of the covenant made with Abraham. Even in the long, slow, darkness of Lent, and under the shadow of the cross, Christ’s cross and our cross, the promise made to Abraham remains. God is our God, and we are God’s people. This covenant can never be broken. Caught up in the grace of God’s covenant, we follow, in Christian discipleship, the one whose name is Emmanuel, God with us, and whose destiny is our destiny –  the cross, the grave, and the resurrection to eternal life.

Amen.


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    Author

    Posts here are by Sandy Horsburgh, Minister of St Nicholas Buccleuch Parish Church.

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Dalkeith: St Nicholas Buccleuch Parish Church (Church of Scotland) 119 High Street, Dalkeith, EH21 1AX
Scottish Charity Number SC014158