Commandments in Stone

Friday, June 1, 2007 -- Week of Proper 3
(Justin Martyr)

"Morning Reflections" is a brief thought about the scripture readings from the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer according to the practice found in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.

Morning Prayer begins on p. 80 of the Book of Common Prayer.
Evening Prayer begins on p. 117
An online resource for praying the Daily Office is found at www.missionstclare.com
Another form of the office from Phyllis Tickle's "Divine Hours" is available on our partner web site www.ExploreFaith.org at this location -- http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/index.html


Today's Readings for the Daily Office (p. 968)
Psalms 31 (morning) 35 (evening)
Deuteronomy 5:1-22
2 Corinthians 4:1-12
Luke 16:10-17 (18)


Earlier this week a book came to me in the mail unsolicited. From the book jacket it appears to be a defense of the Ten Commandments -- why they are just as needed and authoritative as they ever were, and why they should be adopted, presumably not only by Jews and Christians, but also adopted as some form of expression of civic religion, placed in courtrooms and schools.

In one sense, I am sympathetic. The spirit of the Ten Commandments is rather universal. Similar expressions of ethics are found in virtually every enduring religion. In broad strokes, what the Ten Commandments urge is a direction of life that finds wide concurrence. They speak wit divine, universal wisdom.

But then come the interpretations. When do you read the Ten Commandments, or nearly anything from sacred scriptures literally? And when do you interpret them? That's been a pressing question throughout religious history.

Christians, for instance, abandoned the observance of the sabbath long ago. In cultures influenced by Christianity, vestiges of the sabbath observance remain in the tradition of the weekend. Many jobs are weekday employment, Monday through Friday. But unlike observant Jews, we do not carefully avoid all forms of work on Saturday, otherwise all shops would close, yardwork would cease, non-essential or long travel would be abandoned. For most people, Saturday -- the seventh day -- is a day of activity. (Even if you interpret the Christian sabbath to be Sunday -- the first day -- the observance of rest is very limited; either way, the commandment has been interpreted.)

Early Christians were accused of violating the first commandment, "you shall have no other gods before me." The commandment forbids any image of God. Yet we read today from Paul in 2 Corinthans, that Christians see "the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." Paul says that "the glory of God" shines for us "in the face of Jesus Christ." Conventional Jewish interpretation would condemn such a statement as a violation of the first commandment. Christians developed the theology of the Trinity, in part, to refute such charges.

"Neither shall you commit adultery." The Hebrew scriptures offer a process for a man to file a certificate of divorce in order to leave his wife and be married to another woman without committing adultery. We have a similar civil tradition. But we read today in Luke, "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery."

The first commandment speaks of God's "punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation." But both Jeremiah and Ezekiel speaking in God's name announced a change, saying that God would no longer hold children responsible for their parent's sin, but hold each person responsible for their own sin.

And what about slaves? The Ten Commandments teach that "male and female slaves" may rest on the sabbath, and that we are not to desire or covet our neighbor's male or female slave. In the face of the abolitionist movement of the 1850's many preachers made use of these commandments to declare that slavery was consistent with God's will and God's plan, otherwise God would not have made provision for slaves in the Ten Commandments. The existence of slavery seems normative throughout scriptural history. Subsequent generations have interpreted slavery to be an evil, contrary to the will of God.

Throughout Christian and Jewish history, we have inherited sacred texts which appear to have a rather fixed form. Despite copying errors and scribal editing, we have sacred words, like the Ten Commandments. They appear objective and fixed. But their interpretation has always been in process. Even those who insist they read literally (and scoff at others who they say treat these words like the "ten suggestions") also bring their own tradition of interpretation to the Ten Commandments and other traditions of scripture. The reality is that we have always needed to interpret, debate, and re-interpret the meaning of sacred scripture, even the parts that appear "written in stone."

Lowell
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The Rev. Lowell Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, AR

The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
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