What kind of God are you?

 Thou Shalt Not!  Don’t you dare! Don’t even think about it!

When I hear the ten commandments, my first response is a little nervous, I have to confess.  I don’t remember watching Charlton Heston as Moses but there were enough illustrated bibles in every waiting room when I was a child that the intimidating image of the old man carrying stone tablets down the mountain in time to see the Israelites partying hard around the Golden Calf left an indelible image in my mind. 

It has left many with an indelible image of an angry judgmental God throwing laws at us like the bad guys shooting at Tom Cruise Mission Impossible climax, determined to get a bead on us and take us down, squishing us like the worms we are.

So not a healthy theology, or a helpful image, is it?  And yet many folks still wrestle with that as their primary image of God.  Especially folks who may never have engaged with church as an adult other than weddings and funerals.  They don’t know any different, they may not understand what is good about God or our supposed Good News.  Especially when our Gospel reading today (Gospel means good news, by the way) is such a violent, bloodthirsty story of people working in a vineyard they do not own, enjoying the local improvements the landowner has done to the farm, and resenting the requests the landowner makes.

Some days it is easy to slip into resentment.  Whether it’s against Moses and those inflexible laws carved into stone, or paying taxes or rent, and especially now with restrictions and rumors flying around, when even so-called civilized leaders calling people they disagree with clowns, or refusing to let other people take turns in conversations or debates, resentment seems rampant.

Rebellion is in the air, and we can’t even walk into a grocery store in town without seeing people rebelling against the new rules.  Even I have gone the wrong way down an aisle at Buylow on occasion.

Other people like to have rules chiseled in stone.  They like the feeling of security and predictability from knowing what will happen every day or at every event.  It’s the unpredictable that is upsetting and discomforting.  They like the certainty of something that will not change ever.

Neither is helpful when you are wandering around in a time of upheaval that is demanding new responses to the way the world is.  When we have to adapt to too much change too fast, we can respond in many different ways.

We can be caught up in denial.  It’s just a conspiracy by big Pharma or government corporations or some ethnic group or another that has developed an elaborate plot to control the world.  Nothing is trustworthy except my opinion and the opinion of my friends who think the same way.  Facts and figures are not real, all that is real is that I alone have the inside knowledge and the smarts to understand what is really going on.  It’s about no one being able to tell me what to do.  And that I don’t need to have a shred of empathy for anyone but myself.  I can interrupt anyone I want, I can talk over anyone I want, I don’t have to listen to anyone and I don’t need to change a single thing that I’m doing because I know I’m right and everyone else is not worthy of respect.

When we put ourselves at the centre of our belief systems, when we decide that we are the only ones who have the right to etch things in stone, we put ourselves ahead of God.  That is dangerous, and we are seeing that in the debates to the south of us.  When we do not have empathy for anyone but our own lives, we can become like the tenants, sure that they can get away with whatever they want, even murder.  When we rebel against community guidelines, we end up destroying community and destroying communication.  We destroy the opportunity to listen and to learn.

The 10 commandments were not perfect.  They were patriarchal and lumped women in with possessions except the part about honoring both mother and father.  They were very simple and straightforward, about not taking what we don’t own, and having empathy for our neighbors.  They were written for a people in chaos who had lost the structure and authority of overseers and didn’t know how to live in community.  In the wilderness there were no police officers, no rules, no expectations, no whips, no jails, no state executions, no structure.  History shows us that when an enslaved country becomes freed of an oppressor, they look for ways to enslave others.  George Orwell’s Animal Farm told that chilling tale, based on what was happening in Russia after the Tsar was deposed.  The Statue of Liberty was inspired because Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte loved being the President of France so much that rather than allowing a peaceful transition of power to a new president, he declared himself as Emperor Napoleon the Third, and turned his back on democracy.  The French rejected that loss of democracy and built a statue to remind them not to lose it again.

God didn’t want the Israelites to become another Egypt.  God wanted a people that would remember their time as slaves and empathise with others who were enslaved.  God wanted people who would be compassionate and not driven by envy or jealousy.  The 10
commandments were God’s attempt to reshape the people into a caring community who would celebrate freedom and love.

We are called today, more than ever, to hear God’s call to be reshaped in a time of great fear, anxiety, resistance, denial and anger.  To remember that we live in a beautiful vineyard and are asked to respect that vineyard, take care of it, and live with respect in creation with our friends and neighbors who also are worthy of freedom and empathy.  Love God and love our neighbors is the call to freedom that God sends each and everyone of us.  Thanks be to God for that freedom, which is truly Good News!