The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Ephphatha Parish of the Deaf
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY
How many people here today have seen the old Cecil B. DeMille movie, The Ten Commandments? If you've seen it, please raise your hand.
If you've seen that movie, you probably remember this scene. Moses is having a long talk with God on top of the holy mountain, Mt. Sinai. Suddenly, God tells Moses to hurry up and get down the mountain. The people he left there, who had, only a few days ago, sworn to obey and follow the Lord God, had felt lost without Moses there to guide them. The only thing they could think of to do was to make some gods for themselves...gods such as they had known in Egypt, gods such as they had seen in the other lands they passed through. So they gathered their jewelry and melted it down and made themselves a golden calf to be their god, and began to worship it.
Well, naturally God was angry. Think about it...how would it be if three or four days after the wedding, the bride informed her husband that she didn't really love him, and packed up and left? How would it be if right after swearing the oath to join the army, one of the recruits ran away in the middle of his first week in uniform? How would it be if a witness in court, after swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, suddenly changed his story and said that all he had said yesterday was lies? You can imagine what would happen. The people who had been lied to or cheated would get plenty mad, and you wouldn't blame them one bit. And that's why God got angry.
And God's anger had clout. The bridegroom could sue for divorce, the army commander could put out a bulletin to have the AWOL soldier brought back and put into the brig, and eventually dishonorably discharged; the lying witness would be declared in contempt of the court and sent to jail. But when God gets angry and upset, well, he starts regretting that he had done such a thing as to make human beings, who could be so evil and untruthful as to lie to Almighty God who made them. So, Moses had to spend some time talking God out of the idea of destroying the whole Israelite nation!
Well, Moses got God calmed down and he agreed not to destroy all the people, and then Moses went down the mountain to deal with this problem. You probably remember the scene from the movie where Moses comes down the mountain, sees the golden calf, and throws down and breaks the stone tablets on which God had written out the covenant agreement he had made with the people...that agreement they had sworn solemnly to uphold and follow. Now they had broken it, and that's why Moses broke the tablets on which the covenant was written. You will remember what a dramatic scene it was, if you saw the movie.
It's enough to scare anyone to death, if they're thinking about breaking one of the Ten Commandments, isn't it? And of course most of us break those commandments regularly...using God's name in inappropriate ways, putting things other than God first in our lives, going to a picnic or golf game instead of church, ignoring the rules our parents make for us, sleeping around, taking home stuff from the office, telling white or black lies, and being jealous of what other people have. We tend to think this is normal behavior and forget that it's all sins, big sins, big sins against God at that.
But, you know, there is more to this than just the way we think it's natural to break laws, God's laws or society's laws.
For starters, we forget that God is everywhere. Remember how God was the one who told Moses what was going on, down at the bottom of the mountain? God knows when we sin even if we try to cover it up. God is with us all the time, every minute of every day of our lives.
And then: God is love. God loves us, and he wants nothing but good for us. That's why he gave us the Commandments to begin with, so we could live in peace with one another and with him, and not get into fights over things like stealing or lying. If we live in peace with God, we are aware of his presence in our lives in so many little ways....the cloudy sky that clears when we plan a picnic; the bus that comes just when we run, panting, to the bus stop; the sale price on exactly what we need, that makes it possible for us to afford what we thought we could not pay for. I wonder, how many times do we think to thank God for those little, every-day proofs of his love and caring for us?
But, more than that even....Paul reminds us that God gives us strength to do the work he calls us to do. At Baptism, we are called to live the life of Christ in our own day and age, in whatever place we live in. At our Confirmation, we are reminded of our responsibility to tell others about Christ. At marriage, we hear the charge to raise up children to know and love God, and also the reminder that the love of husband and wife for each other is a sign to the whole world of the love Christ has for the church. At ordination, the person who is ordained is reminded strongly of their responsibility to show God to others through preaching, sacraments and pastoral care. And at each of these times, the Bishop makes the same prayer: What God has called you to promise, may God give you the will and strength to do. That, you know, is what the Israelites needed: the will and strength to follow through on their solemn promises to God.
As we learn from the story of what happened with the Israelites, breaking our agreements with God isn't the end of everything we have promised. No. Jesus explains: when God makes a promise to us, it's forever. Even when we turn our back on him and ignore our promises and covenants with him, he still loves us. Even when we swipe cookies from the cooky jar just before dinner, Mom still loves us, although she may feel she needs to spank or otherwise punish us. So, we may have to accept punishment form God for our sins, and, as Paul reminds us, everybody sins, and many people feel that sin is a normal way of life, as we noted about the Ten Commandments. So, although God is angry, and may punish us, he keeps on coming and looking for us and trying to draw us back to him, back to the relationship of love that he still has for us. Jesus' stories make that clear. We are the lost sheep, the lost coin, and God moves heaven and earth to try to get us back, and has great joy when we come home to him again....just as he did when the Israelites repented at the foot of the mountain, and just as he did when he renewed the covenant of the Commandments after they were punished for their breaking of it the first time around.
May the God who has called us into his covenant, strengthen in us the will to obey it, and give us the strength to do it. Amen.
