Good News and Thanks-Living

The English writer Gilbert Chesterton once observed that if a person comes to the edge of a cliff and keeps on walking, he doesn't ignore the law of gravity, he proves it!

But perhaps we are getting ahead of ourselves here. Let's back up and start over.

However much we are accustomed to think that our relationship with God begins with the 10C, it is not so.

Instead, it begins with the sentence prior. It begins with God's promise to us:

I am the Lord your God.

“How is that so?” the ancient Hebrew would ask, and the keeper of the story would begin:

A wandering Aramean was my father.

He went down to Egypt and sojourned there, few in number.

And there he became a nation, mighty, great, and populous.

And the Egyptians treated us harshly and laid upon us hard bondage.

Then we cried to the Lord the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice, and saw the affliction.

The Lord brought us out of Egypt with an outstretched arm, with signs and wonders, and he brought us to this place and gave us this land.

Because of wonders as great as this in which God has shown us his will, and promises to be our God,

therefore, we should without reservation listen to what he has to say and heed it, avoiding those things which offend his dignity , and doing all that which shall please him.

That is how the people were supposed to react when Moses clambered down from that high rocky mountain.

Thus were the Hebrews to react each time they kept Sabbath.

Thus were the people to react 40 years later when Joshua demanded: “Choose this day whom you will serve,

whether the gods whom your ancestors served in the region beyond the river,

or the gods of the Amorites in whose land your are living;

but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

Thus are the people to react every seven years when all gather together for the great covenant festival at Shechem,

once again to hear the story of God's action with his people,

to accept their place in that story,

and to acknowledge God's claim upon them and their actions.

Thus are the people to react to God's good gifts when they gather together and all the rest of the time as well.

This is the ancient context in which the 10C function as God's word,

and our situation is exactly parallel with it.

Lutheran theologian and wise teacher James Nestigen recognizes that we too must begin with the powerful good news of God's actions for us, actions for our benefit, actions on our behalf.

He says:

God has made a decision about you.

He hasn't waited to find out how sincere you are, how devout and religious you might be, or how well you understand the Bible and the Catechism.

God hasn't even waited t find out if your are interested, or willing to take this decision seriously.

God has simply decided.

God made this decision knowing full well the kind of person you are.

God knows you better than anyone else could, inside out.

God knows where you are strong and where you are weak, what you are most proud of and what you would like to hide.

Be that as it may, God's decision is made.

God comes straight out with it: “I am the Lord your God.”

This is the decision: God has decided to be your God.

For God wants to be as close to you as your next breath, the one who gives you confidence and value,

the one who opens a future for you in the freedom of the word.

God wants to be the one to whom you turn for whatever you need.

God first announced this decision about you when you were baptized.

God said, as the pastor spoke your name: “You are baptized in my name. I am your God and will never let you go.”

Which God is this anyway?

The One who made you and everything that is,

the God who raised Jesus from the dead after he had been killed on the cross,

the One whose Spirit came like a mighty wind to drive home a word that gives forgiveness and hope,

the God who called Abraham and Sarah out of the desert,

the God who sent word to Mary that she would have a baby,

the God who opened Paul's mouth with a word of freedom.

With God's decision, you receive the freedom of forgiveness.

The God who has decided for you is the God who in Christ refuses to hold your past against you, no matter what shape it has had [and transform you.]

The God we know in Jesus is the one who takes you as you are, with your strengths and also with the things that you would like to conceal, [and reshapes you.]

There are no strings on God's decision, and no strings on you.

“I am the Lord your God”, he says, and the “am” stands forever.

Even in the silence of death, you will hear Jesus' voice saying, “Rise and shine; I am the Lord your God.”

God's decision creates life, forgiveness, and resurrection.

[James Nestigen Free to Be, pp5-7]

Once we have heard this clearly and powerfully, then we can approach the 10C in a completely different light.

They are no longer seen as a burden which we resent,

but as an appropriate response to the promise, gift, and love of God who establishes such a covenant with us.

Here is the gift; now, what do you want to do because you have already received it?

So we receive the gift of the gospel and all God's gifts with utmost joy,

and God's commandments with utmost responsiveness.

In our human perversity, someone will always say:

“Well, if God is so good and always forgiving, then I don't need the 10C or any other guidelines.”

But to say that is to underestimate the power of sin.

Some think of sin as an old-fashioned word that we have outgrown.

Not so! If anything, it is even more public and powerfully visible than ever before!

Rebellion against God,

doing one's own thing,

thinking of oneself only,

involving both giant Ponzi schemes and petty meanness;

all of these things go on as always.

Disobedience is our way.

Then the law steps in to do its proper jobs:

We know and need all three of them:

first, to regulate society.

For example, it is an offense against one's neighbor to pretend that particular things or sums of money are ours when they are not. Don't do it!

second, to convict us of sin.

It is an offense against God to steal, to claim what God has entrusted to someone else as our own.

third, to guide us into positive ways of living.

We should “help our neighbor improve his property and means of making a living,” as Luther explains it.

These three uses of the law, to regulate, to convict, and to encourage, press upon us continually, no matter how much we would try to hide ourselves from them.

We don't outgrow the commands,

we don't become too mature for them.

We are brought together in worship today because of God's overwhelming promise:

I am the Lord your God.

and the overwhelming command which accompanies it:

You shall have no other.

Not one without the other:

both of them, and in that order.

Joyfully, we're focusing on the 3^rd use of the law, as encourager.

It captures some of what the Hebrews meant with the word Torah:

Come here, walk this way.

Here are the footsteps of Jesus' life of obedience.

Christ, our older brother, has stomped a path for us through the blizzard of daily life. Walk this way.

It is the way of thanks-living. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.