The Park Road Pulpit

I won’t bore you with a lecture on math -- I’m hardly an expert -- but I need to explain the title of our summer series: The Power of Ten in a Binary World. Our counting and all of our mathematics uses 10 digits. Simple enough. But mathematical systems can use any number of digits as a base. Computers use a “binary” system -- that is, there are only two digits, “0” and “1.” Think of a light switch: one position (“on”) represents “0” and the other position (“off”) represents “1.” Computers are not intelligent; they cannot “think” or “feel” (at least not yet); they are simply machines filled with gazillions of tiny electronic switches. So if we could see what a computer sees, all of our English words, typed into a word processor, all of our digitized pictures, downloaded from camera to screen, all of our “MP3” files, imported for our musical enjoyment, would appear as a gigantic string of “0’s” and “1’s.”

It’s a new world. A world written in a binary language that mystifies most of us. I’m glad Philip Cramer, David Dilworth and our other computer guru’s can make these machines talk plain English!

Several thousand years before the IBM “personal computer” conquered the world, another code was introduced, and this Decalogue (“ten words”) also revolutionized the world. James Newsome says,

The Ten Commandments are one of the modern world’s prevailing influences. This is not because people in our time are more dedicated to living by [them] but because [their image] inhabits our consciousness as a strong symbol of what is enduring and just.[1]

For the next ten weeks we want to explore the following question (speaking metaphorically): “In a ‘binary world,’ is there still power in these Ten Commandments, or are they as outmoded as that old Royal typewriter on which Mrs. Savage branded into my 10^th-grade head the keystrokes: “a, s, d, f,” “semi, l, k, j.”

While I’m speaking in metaphors, let me extend this one for a moment. Though our world is advanced beyond even the wildest imagination of Moses, the Law-giver, for all of our sophistication and complexity, we live in a frighteningly “binary” time. By that, I mean that with the rise of world-Fundamentalism in the past century -- the increasingly dogmatic thought and practice of major segments of all of the world’s major religions -- many of the leaders of our “global community” offer only two choices for any given question. “Black and white” reigns supreme. It’s right or wrong. Good or bad. Democrat or Republican. Allah or infidel. Creation or evolution. God or “secular humanism.” Pro-life or pro-choice. Christian or liberal.[2]

As the events of September 11^th have made so very clear, when Fundamentalism shapes one’s world view, the result of practicing one’s faith can be absolutely un-godly. This is true for the Christian as for the Muslim. A “binary world” is a frightening place to live -- whether you are the faithful or the infidel.[3]

Now, I’m not a poker player. I’ve never had the face for it, so let me play my hand already -- we believe there is a power in these ten words. It is an enduring power to reveal God’s intention for abundant living. Our frightening world needs the power of this ten-digit code. But hear this: Though these ten words were “etched in stone,” according to the biblical tradition, they were not written in “black and white.” Ancient Israel expanded upon them, adding instructions of protection and liberation, which we find in other biblical passages, for ethical issues not covered by these ten words.[4] Jesus, then, reinterpreted them when he taught: “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not kill,’ but I tell you, ‘Do not be angry with your brother or sister.’”[5] Terrence Fretheim says that this corrective within scripture, “… gives the people of God in every age an innerbiblical warrant to expand on them,” yet he insists that the Ten Commandments remain an “indispensable starting point for our ongoing ethical task.”[6]

These ten words of God do have the power to liberate, but, contrary to the religiously popular opinion, this liberation will not come by their polarizing judgment of “right and wrong,” and the consequent punishment of the accused. Only if we can see through them the liberating love of the God who brought [us all]… out of the house of slavery will they free us for abundant living in a world, which is cast in infinite shades of gray. (Do not fool yourself: little in this world, now as ever, is purely “black and white.”[7])

We believe that this power, then, will not be found in pounding the pulpit and demanding a return to the so-called “biblical values” of the Ten Commandments, just so, we do not believe that posting the Ten Commandments in our courtrooms will stop the reported “moral erosion”[8] of our country. Neither biblical interpretation nor life is ever that easy.

The literary form of Exodus 20 suggests that, “Israel’s worship was the primary life setting for the commandments.”[9] These lines are liturgy. They are given to the community of faith. Only those who know the liberating God can hear their liberating word.

To that end, I invite you to hear now this ancient code, that we might learn anew its liberating power.

Then God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it. Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

“God is spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth.”[10] Jesus and a Samaritan woman were having a theological debate at the well of their common ancestor, Jacob. Jesus offers a simple commentary on the essence of God, “God is Spirit.

Yet this simple claim is the beginning of our knowledge of Truth. It is the basis of our worship. It is the foundation of our understanding of these ten words. This God, whose Word we seek, whose Will we seek to serve is spirit. It is important to note that Jesus did not call God “a spirit.” Like the New Testament’s universal proclamation, “God is Love” -- Jesus’ proclamation challenges us to stretch our understanding of God’s very nature. God is not “a spirit,” “a being” but, in the difficult language of the theologian Paul Tillich, God is “the ground of all being.”[11]

This is not my doctoral attempt at sounding educated or intellectual, a theological sophisticate. This is simply the language of scripture. When, in the biblical story of exodus, God called Moses to lead the Hebrew people, Moses, a product of his poly-theistic culture (many gods), asked “Who shall I tell the Pharoah sent me?” (“Which god,” Moses asked?)[12]

For those who believe, God is. Confusing though it may be, can you really say more than that? Can you articulate your understanding of divinity? Can you verify your belief in providence (God’s providential activity in the world)? Can you explain your claim to relationship with God?

In recent years, the Episcopal Bishop and Charlotte native, John Shelby Spong, has been increasingly criticized by the Evangelical community for his proposal to re-formulate Christianity. His critics accuse him of a cryptic a-theism, but I find his basic assertions compelling -- and, ironically, I hear them as deeply biblical. In his latest book, A New Christianity for a New World, the Bishop defends his claim that a vibrant, defensible 21^st century Christianity must move “Beyond Theism but not beyond God.” He says,

I refer here not to a deity who is ‘a being,’ not even if we claim for God the status of the highest being. I speak rather of the God I experience as the Ground and Source of All Being and therefore the presence that calls me to step beyond every boundary… into the fullness of life...[13]

In his words, I hear a deep respect for Jesus’ God who is spirit, for Moses’ God, the great “I Am” of Moses – this is the God who will not be defined. Spong continues,

I do not argue for a moment that God is not real. Indeed the reality of the God-experience overwhelms me every day of my life. I assert only that no human words, no human formulas, and no human religious systems will ever capture that reality. To claim that any one at any time has ever done so is idolatrous.[14]

All theological formulations should begin with the recognition that all of our words for God are limited. They may reveal to us something of the nature of God, but they will always fall short of capturing the essence of God. Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann says: “There are no analogues, no parallels, no antecedents, no adequate replications or explanations for this God who confronts us in and through the narrative of liberation.”[15]

The first commandment is generally interpreted as a challenge to our sense of priority. To what in your life do you devote more time, attention, or respect than to God? Your job? Your car? Your sex life? Your portfolio? The security of your future? And this is a right question to ask. I have often said that I should probably paint “Exodus 20.3” on the stern of my boat as a reminder -- for if I have another god, it is a Ski Nautique! But in this interpretation, I think we let ourselves off the hook too easily. It is difficult for any modern Christian to actually equate our materialism with the pagan worship of another, literal, “god.” So we justify our sin; we convince ourselves that we are really not worshiping another god, and we miss the biting edge of the commandment.

So consider with me this morning a more subtle abuse of this first word. It is an abuse which, in a “binary world” as I have defined it, is becoming increasingly deadly. The abuse is to claim that our belief about God is in fact equivalent to God. It is to so “objectify” God with the words of human theology and institution, to make our very limited view of God, the very God we worship. Human words, even the words of scripture, can become so literalized that they themselves become the object of our devotion, instead of signs pointing us to God.

We begin in humility. We must recognize that the words which we use to talk of God and our experience with God, even the words of the Bible, are ultimately just that – they are our words. God will not be possessed, domesticated by our language. When we approach the world around us with our God-talk, and when we approach God, we must do so with great humility. “For now we see through a glass darkly.” It is our blessed hope that “one day, we shall see face to face.”

Finally, we must approach the first of these ten words as the Hebrews did. The commandments begin with God’s declaration, “I am Yahweh. Your God. I brought you out of the house of bondage.” The Israelites made a distinctive claim: “Our” God is active among us.[16] Without experiencing the God who acts within our lives and history, our claim of loyalty, now as then, is an empty, impotent claim.

How personal, how real, how true will your knowledge and experience of the God who demands your loyalty really be? If there is no reality to your own God-experience, it will make no difference – even to God – if Yahweh is our only God.

In our homes, our businesses, our social settings, as in our sanctuary, let us worship God in spirit, that we might always pursue truth.

[1] Interpretation Bible Studies, “Exodus,” James D. Newsome, 73.

[2] I use this pairing deliberately. (This is an observation from a non-fundamentalist perspective.) The rhetoric I hear from the “Religious Right” seems comfortable to suggest that to be “liberal” is to cease to be Christian at all. There is no room for discussion or diversity on theological issues.

[3] Fundamentalists (of every religion) will always view themselves as “faithful,” and with God’s support for their cause.

[4] Exodus 21-23 includes such instructions. The Jews extended the commandments into 613 laws, which they understood as interpreting the original Ten.

[5] Matthew 5.21

[6] Terrence D. Fretheim, Interpretation, “Exodus,” 222.

[7] The great, polarizing debates of the past decade, including abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, etc… make this clear, with Christians lining up across the spectrum of debate.

[8] I place these words in quotation marks as a rejection of the pulpit-pounding of today’s popular piety. I don’t want a “return” to any day. I will take our “moral decay” over the blatant bigotry of the 1960’s South, the Crusades of the Middle Ages, or the corruption of Ancient Corinth. Sin is our predicament. It always has been.

[9] Terrence E. Fretheim, Interpretation, “Exodus,” 221. Emphasis added.

[10] John 4.24

[11] This is Tillich’s well-known phrase, I do not know the original source.

[12] Exodus 3.14

[13] Spong, 59-60.

[14] Spong, 63.

[15] Walter Brueggemann, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol.I, “Exodus,” 843.

[16] To say “our” God here it not to make a possessive claim, but to recognize the personal character of God.