Wisdom of the Mountain

sermon by Carrie Eikler
3rd Sunday in Lent
Psalm 19, Exodus 20:1-17

As many of you know, my parents visited last week. It was a fun but, I can imagine, exhausting visit for them. Having a two and half year old’s tantrums and the gas-filled tummy wails of an infant is trying even for the most doting and loving grandparents. At the end of the day we often fell into couches, chairs, and pillows with big sighs.

Part of our nightly “winding down” ritual for most of those six days was to watch an episode or two of the award winning HBO miniseries, “John Adams,” documenting the life of the second president of the United States. Now, you might not guess this of me, but I have always been somewhat fascinated with colonial history, and our country’s original “Adams Family”. My birthday is July 4th, so there is a sense of connection with this auspicious day in the life of our country and I know most of the songs from the musical 1776 by heart. My middle name is Abigail, so looking to historical women for my namesake there was a clear connection with Abigail Adams, John Adams’ wife and his “dearest friend” as he always addressed her in their famous letters.

I admit, however, my great romantic interest in the colonial period and the birth of our country was tempered over time as I have sought to explore the world through Christ’s gospel of peace, which includes looking at history with a more discerning eye and heart.

But this week, I put all that aside as I once again, fell willingly into the awe of history, and the dramatic retelling of a difficult period in the life of a people. Whether it was an accurate portrayal or not is debatable. But it did give some great insights into one of the most formative people in the life of America.

These are the things we know about John Adams. He was an outstanding lawyer and wordsmith, gifted in rhetoric. He was adamantly opposed to slavery and tended his own farm while others, even in Massachusetts, used slave labor. He was persistent and determined in the cause of independence from Great Britain, thus being essential for the drafting and acceptance of the Declaration of Independence. He and his wife Abigail were deeply in love until death and Abigail, his dearest friend, was his center, drawing him back into focus when his eccentricities got the better of him.

Because in spite of all these notable characteristics, John Adams was, in his own words, “obnoxious and disliked.” He was stubborn, rude, and single-minded in many matters. He allowed fear to guide early decisions of the new country, such as the Alien Sedition Act, which attempted to squelch criticism of the government and imprison potential threats to the union. He was pitiless to the faults of his son, Charles, which included drunkenness, deserting his wife and children, and wasting away family money. Charles died relatively young without John’s forgiveness—even after his son died, John still could not forgive him.

As wise as the founders of our nation were, it is obvious, no matter who wrote the history books, that their human wisdom too easily gave way to fear, violence, and unforgiving spirits. To paraphrase David McCullough, author of the Adams biography the miniseries was based on: it was an amazing time with an amazing group of people ushering in the birth of a new nation. But we can’t forget the very humanness they exhibit in the midst of their greatness.

I can relate to that statement. Not because I think I am terribly great, or incredibly wise…I certainly think I’m flawed. But it does seem like many of the wise people in history that I have looked up to have turned out to be terribly flawed.

When I found out Martin Luther King, Jr. wasn’t a very good family man, I was crushed. Same goes for Mahatma Gandhi, who had a less than ideal relationship with his wife. And the world was stunned when they found out that Mother Theresa struggled in life with depression and deep doubt. All these people--very wise in their own unique ways, but very human, which means, very flawed.

Luckily God understands and loves us, with all our flaws. And in fact I bet God grants us more grace than we grant ourselves. After all, the creation story says God looked on us and called us good, not perfect. Not even the tree of the knowledge of good and evil allowed us to obtain God’s wisdom. Perhaps it just allowed us the illusion that we could somehow possess God’s wisdom, and goodness! how much we struggle with ourselves when we find out that will never happen.

But it was obvious that humans needed a little help. Americans had the Declaration of Independence declaring their freedom; the wandering Hebrew people had the booming voice of God, and writing on stone tablets declaring theirs. The current cultural debate seeks to define the line between the two, or blur the line between the two, or erase the line between the two. Groups are fighting to display the Ten Commandments and other religious symbols in public and political sphere as ferociously as others are fighting to keep them out.

For some, the connection is clear: God and the state (Christianity and the US, to be specific) go together like apple pie and baseball and the religious faith of the founders of this nation are clear examples of that. For others the connection is less clear: religion and politics make bad bedfellows, and the philosophies of the same founders of the country that are invoked on the other “side” are clear examples of this point as well.

In spite of the factions of the culture wars, and our own positions on the matter, we might impart a bit of grace with one another. Perhaps what is at the heart of the matter is less about the displaying of massively large tablets, but about seeking a wisdom that is beyond our own-- Because we know we don’t have the answers. Or maybe that in spite of our own wisdom we recognize there is something flawed and we need a little guidance. Or maybe we recognize we all need an Abigail to our John Adams, reining us in when our dark side gets out of hand, and calls us to center ourselves in the heart of our “dearest friend.”

Whether it is the ten commandments given to the Hebrews, or the seven pillars of Islam, the eight-fold path of Buddhism, or the Constitution of the United States, most people in the world recognize that our own wisdom, generally, isn’t enough. We need a heart to return to, where we are reminded that there is wisdom beyond ourselves.

Mt. Sinai was a place of craftsmanship. God was crafting a community, or re-crafting the community that had forgotten who it was. This often is the case for communities held in bondage and slavery, far from home. Moses went up the mountain to talk to God and brought down from the mountain a charter of sorts, attempting to regroup the wandering people.

But instead of the best attempt at human wisdom, like a political charter, these Ten Commandments were about God’s wisdom, and God’s attempt to draw these abandoned and lost people back into the heart of their dearest friend. Moses had all the responsibility of bringing that reminder, carved in stone, to the people.

And while at first they seem like rather simple rules to keep—most of us aren’t going around committing murder, or fashioning golden idols, or desiring our neighbor’s ox or donkey—we realize that they aren’t so easy to keep as we might think. The taxes we pay go towards paying for war which inevitably leaves thousands dead every year. We put the pursuit of comfortable living ahead of the pursuit of a relationship with God. We feel dissatisfied with our jobs, or homes, or children, or partners when we see the jobs, and homes, and children, and partners other people have.
And it is here where God’s wisdom seems foolish to us. When our wisdom encourages endless productivity, God says “Sabbath!” When our wisdom dismisses the experience of the old folks in favor of the energy of the younger folks, God says “Honor your elders.” When our wisdom says that making money while profiting off the debt of others is sound economics, God says “Don’t steal.”

There are many ways to slip into the commandment breaking spiral. Maybe we would be wiser if we had the Ten Commandments in public spaces. But, somehow, I doubt it. What it may do is remind us of the obligations God set before the Israelites, and then simply turn the commandments into a finger-waving document, attempting to control our own rebellious society

But, God did not boom from the clouds that the people were rebellious and therefore needed rules to burden an already difficult life. Rather God gave a “breathtaking” declaration “of freedom” [1]: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”
Tom Long, professor of preaching at Emory University in Atlanta, suggests that we can think of these ten declarations not as a set of rules, but descriptions of the life that has God at the heart of it: “Because the Lord is your God, 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.”

Long goes onto say that [The Ten Commandments] begins with the good news of what the liberating God has done and then describes the shape of the freedom that results. He compares the workings of the Ten Commandments to 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. He says, the commandments are not weights, but wings that enable our hearts to catch the wind of God’s Spirit and soar.”

Long reflects on a story he once heard about a man named Jack Casey, a volunteer fireman and ambulance attendant. When Jack was a child he had to have some teeth pulled which required a general anesthetic. Jack was terrified, but a nurse stood by him and kept telling him “Don’t worry, I’ll be right beside you no matter what happens.” When he woke up from surgery, she had kept her word and was still standing by him.

That experience stayed with Jack. 20 years later his ambulance crew was called to an accident. A pickup truck had flipped over and the driver was pinned beneath. Jack tried to crawl inside the wreckage to remove the man, gasoline dripping on both he and the driver. To add to the anxious situation, power tools were being used to dismantle parts of the car, and the likelihood of a fire was a serious possibility.

The whole time, Jack recalls, the driver cried out that he was afraid of dying. Jack kept telling him, as did the nurse so many years before, “I’m with you, I’m not going anywhere.” After the man was rescued and he realized what had happened he told Jack, “You’re an idiot, you know that the thing could have exploded and we’d have both been burned up!” Jack said, simply, he felt he just couldn’t leave him.

As Long explains, that is how the commandments work. First we are cared for and set free (“I am the Lord your God who brought you out of slavery”). Then we are compelled to live our lives that are shaped, ethically and emotionally from that freedom. A nurse telling a child that she won’t leave him, became the action of the man who risked his life to do the same. A people set free from slavery are invited to act as free women and men. Not bound in fear, but freed into love.

The commandments reveal God’s wisdom of the good life, the life lived in the heart of God, our dearest friend. They can act like the Abigail Adams to our John. The wisdom that came from God to Moses on the mountain is far greater than our own, and God’s commandments are powerful. They are powerful because they were given to care for us, more than to enslave us; to free us more than bind us.

We will never have God’s wisdom. But I think we might touch God’s wisdom and purpose for humanity when we find the ways the commandments can set us free. Amen.

[1] Long, Tom. “Dancing the Decalogue” Christian Century, March 07 2006)