"CHOOSING CAPTIVITY"

Exodus 20:1-21

10/2/2005 World Communion Sunday

We have just read

one of the most familiar passages

in all of scripture.

And if it's not exactly the most beloved passage,

it has to be one of the most revered. 

The book of Exodus

is about the adventures of a small band of shepherds,

on their way from being strangers in a strange land,

to becoming a people through whom God would work miracles. 

We meet up with them today about halfway through the book.

Moses has seen God in the burning bush,

and led the people out ofEgypt,

and God has provided them food and water along the way.

Now they have reached the promised land,

and Moses goes up on Mount Sinai

for a meeting with God that would change the world.

It occurs to me

that the people who became the nation of Israel

had been doing someone else's bidding for a long time.

They had been doing what Pharaoh said for generations!

But slavery was over now.

They were out of there.

And now that they were finally free,

I wonder how it felt to them

to get another set of orders to follow?!

That must have been popular.

Surely about the last thing they wanted

was for someone to give them a list of things they must do!

But there's more going on here than we realize.

What's going on

is the parallel stories of them gaining their peoplehood

and becoming the people of God.

Those two stories get intertwined

all the way thorough Exodus.

Their journey from slavery to liberation

was their journey from serving human taskmasters

to serving God as their Lord.

Freedom from human domination

meant freedom for God's presence and God's leading.

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Almost every religion has its own form

of the Ten Commandments.

Buddhists have ten "charges,"

among them the charge to avoid taking of life,

the charge to avoid taking what is not given,

and the charge to "avoid unseasonable meals." Hmmm.

I bet they wouldn't avoid the potluck today!

In Islam,

Muslims are told among other things to

"Ascribe nothing as equal with him"

and "Be good to your parents."

Hindus who follow the Laws of Manu

are to seek contentment, forgiveness,

self-control and truthfulness.

Almost every major religion

has some set of laws or tenets

that its believers are expected to live by.

Some of them sound familiar,

and most of them are good rules for living a good life.

But there is a major difference

between rules for living as good people

and commandments for following Yahweh the God of Israel.

And that difference is this:

there is a connection

between how one lives

and the One who gives life.

The people are given a reason out of their own past experience

for doing what it is that God asks them to do.

If you look at Exodus 23:9,

Israel is commanded not to oppress the sojourner -

not just because a good person wouldn't do that,

but because they themselves knew very well

what the life of a sojourner was like.

God gave them a reason out of their own experience.

We see it again today in the second verse of our reading.

Just before God spells out the commandments,

God reminds them that "It is I, Yahweh,

who delivered you from the land of Egypt,

from the house of slavery."

There is a connection between how one lives

and the One who gives life.

The thing that sets the Ten Commandments apart

from any of those other lists of virtues or charges or anything else

is grace.

God gave Moses the Ten Commandments

AFTER they had been freed from captivity.

The commandments weren't held over their heads

as something which would help them be free

if only they could obey.

or something they would have to do in order to earn God's love.

The Ten Commandments are not threat,

or oppression,

or hammer.

They are pure gift.

Think about it:

God has saved them!

God has brought them out of slavery

in ways they never could have brought about on their own.

Food and water were provided as they needed.

They were kept safe along the way.

So how would one go about trying to say thank you

for all of that?

By living lives of gratitude

that would reflect the very nature of God.

By giving worship where worship was due,

honoring parents,

respecting neighbors and all that goes along with that,

living lives of integrity.

That's the only payback that God asked of them:

remember who got you here,

don't waste your time worshiping anything else,

and conduct yourself in ways that reflect the one you worship.

Some cynics would say

that the people who got out of Egypt and started serving God

just went from one kind of servitude to another.

Perhaps.

But serving God

is the kind of "captivity" that gives life.

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Today on this World Communion Sunday,

people all over the world

are gathering around the table.

It was some Presbyterians who came up with the idea of World Communion

something like seventy-five years ago,

and now the celebration has spread

and the table grows larger and larger every year.

In your bulletin today

you'll notice that we are using music and liturgy

from just about every corner of the world:

from Scotland to South Africa,

from Cameroon to the Caribbean,

from Argentina to New Zealand.

A lot of folks today complain about the malaise in mainline churches

in the United States.

And a lot of the same folks notice

that some of the most stunning growth and vibrant worship

is coming out of countries in South America and Africa

and not so much the United States.

I wonder why that is.

In terms of our scripture reading today, //

maybe we don't think we're in captivity here

in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

I'm not sure I agree.

We can say that we have freedom of choice in our country,

and our relative wealth compared to the rest of the world

means that we can choose just about anything we want.

I'd call that captivity.

There may not be anyone named Pharaoh involved

and we may not be strangers in a strange land.

And that may be part of the problem right there:

you and I are SUPPOSED to be strangers in a strange land!

The fact that we are not strangers

is part of our captivity.

You and I in our society

are held just as captive to dollars

as the Israelites were to the Egyptians.

And even with all that we have,

you and I still wonder if God can provide us what we need.

We try to take matters into our own hands

just to make sure that we will have enough.

But when we insist on fending for ourselves,

we are forgetting to trust the One who brought us out of Exodus.

And failing to trust God usually doesn't work.

Friends, the God that we know in Jesus Christ

has freed us from that captivity.

God has brought US out of slavery

in ways that we could never have accomplished on our own.

You and I have been brought through a wilderness of our own making

into the land of freedom, forgiveness and grace.

How in the world can we ever say thank you?

By opening our Bibles to Exodus chapter twenty.

By living lives of gratitude

that reflect the very nature of God.

By giving worship where worship is due,

honoring parents,

respecting neighbors and all that goes along with that,

living lives of integrity.

That's all the payback that God asks of us:

remember who got you here,

don't waste your time worshiping anything else,

and conduct yourself in ways that reflect the one you worship.

In a few minutes we're going to head over to the Williams building

to enjoy lunch together

and also to hear about the "State of our Church."

Maybe it's no coincidence

that on a day like today

we are reminded again of God's ten gracious words to us.

Where is God leading us now?

Where are we headed as a congregation in 2006

and even further down the road?

And how do the decisions and choices we make today

have a bearing on what happens here tomorrow?

What's holding us captive as a congregation?

And what's holding us captive as individuals?

Whatever that might be,

God is ready and willing and able

to lead us out from captivity.

Perhaps the decision before us today

is to choose our captivity.

Will we choose to remain bound by fear,

or jealousies, or cynicism and smallness?

Or will be choose to be captivated

by the One who provides abundantly for our every need,

even down to providing God's only Son?

Let's choose to say "thank you"

by living as people and as a church

who know that God has freed us from everything which holds us back.

Let's choose to say "thank you"

by living as the grace-filled people of God. 

Amen.

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Many thanks to professor Perry Yoder of Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, whose sermon on this text "Liberated by Law" can be found on the website of Sojourners magazine, www.sojo.net.