You Are Free
Dear Friends,
Most of you know that during our Wednesday evening programming we’ve been watching video recordings juxtaposing interviews conducted with five generations of parishioners from St. Peter’s and St. John’s Episcopal Churches. What has struck me most about the stories shared in response to these videos is the importance placed on passing down the wisdom and values of our elders. These are the guardrails and disciplines that have provided for loving, stable relationships, responsible vocations, safe and supportive communities. It is the loss of our communal covenants, some have lamented, that has led to much of today’s societal dysfunction. In other words, the rules of life that once were so uniformly passed on and obeyed are not just burdens, but blessings.
This Sunday, we will be reading the Decalogue from the book of Exodus, better known as the Ten Commandments. In much of our popular religious imagination, the Ten Commandments have become burdens, weights, and heavy obligations. Many see them as encumbrances placed on personal behavior. Most people cannot name all ten, but they are persuaded that at the center of each one is a finger-wagging “thou shalt not.” For others, the commandments are heavy yokes to be publicly placed on the necks of a rebellious society.
Understanding the Decalogue as a set of burdens overlooks something essential, namely that they are prefaced not by an order - “Here are ten rules. Obey them!” - but instead by a restorative announcement of freedom: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Ex. 20:2). We will probably always refer to the declarations that follow this announcement as the “Ten Commandments,” but we can also think of them as descriptions of the life that prevails in the landscape of God’s liberation. “Because the Lord is your God,” the Decalogue affirms, “you are free not to need any other gods. You are free to rest on the seventh day; free from the tyranny of lifeless idols; free from murder, stealing and covetousness as ways to establish yourself in the land.”
The Decalogue begins with the good news of what the liberating God has done and then describes the shape of the freedom that results. In the words of the great preacher and teacher, Tom Long, “If we want to symbolize the presence of the Ten Commandments among us, we would do well to hold a dance. The good news of the God who set people free is the music; the commandments are the dance steps of those who hear it playing. The commandments are not weights, but wings that enable our hearts to catch the wind of God’s Spirit and to soar.”
As we move into this third week of Lent, I invite each of us to pick one, or maybe even two or three of the Ten Commandments and spend some time pondering and practicing the freedom that they offer. As many of you know, one commandment I have trouble keeping is the Sabbath, and my commitment for the remainder of Lent is to practice Sabbath as an act of gratitude for my own freedom, a freedom that many in our world do not have. The freedom to rest.
In Christ,
Amelie+
