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Lent Year B – March 8, 2015
Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19;
1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22
St
Stephen Lutheran Church
The
Rev. Maurice Frontz, STS
Grace
and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
During
the Paris student riots of May 1968,
a
phrase entered the French lexicon,
spray-painted
on doors and crudely lettered on placards.
The
phrase was Il est interdit d’interdire,
which
I cannot pronounce.
‘It
is forbidden to forbid.’
The
phrase was perfect for that generation
which
had been radicalized
and
was ready to raze the foundations
of
French society, a society that had failed to live up to its promise.
Socially,
politically, and morally,
the
young French had had enough of strictures,
and
they wanted to tear down everything that stood in the path to freedom:
la liberte.
The
phrase is a logical absurdity,
and
yet our world of today lives by it,
although
it probably looks a lot different
than
the rioters of May ’68 thought it would.
For
those who would forbid
are
not easily tolerated in our culture,
and
I don’t think that’s because there is a real interest in justice.
Rather,
breaking taboos fascinate people,
and
when people are fascinated, there is money to be made.
Lots
and lots of money.
A
few weeks ago, a film opened nationwide
which
discussed and depicted a topic
that
simply would not have been discussed sixty years ago
in
mixed company or heaven forbid from the pulpit.
This
film was made for mass consumption.
And
there was lots of money to be made from it.
A
teddy-bear company came out with a very special bear
based
on the main male character, complete with accessories:
a
mask and a pair of handcuffs.
The
Target chain of discount stores
produced
a six-item line of products related to the film
under
the categories of ‘health’ and ‘beauty,’
products
which not too many years ago
simply
would have been unobtainable
except
from catalogs arriving in plain brown envelopes
and
specialty shops in the most interesting parts of town.
The
movie itself was produced for $40 million dollars.
At
present, it has grossed over $500 million in the United States alone.
One
could go on,
but
it is no good to talk about how things once used to be better.
The
only good that can be done
by
railing against the proclivities of our present time
is
to understand the situation we’re all in.
It’s
a free country, after all,
and
no one is interested
in
what Christians or any other moralists have to say
about
what should or shouldn’t be.
If
there is money to be made, sex to be had,
any
taboos to be broken,
it
will be done.
It is forbidden to
forbid.
And
there’s no use arguing about it.
The
only thing that a Christian can possibly do
is
embrace an alternative vision of freedom.
This
is the freedom offered by the commandments.
Perhaps
this statement seems as nonsensical as the phrase
‘It
is forbidden to forbid.’
The
first thing that God did once he freed the ancient Israelites
from
their slavery in Egypt
was
to saddle them with a bunch of rules.
You
shall, you shall not.
While
some of the rules make sense from our twenty-first century perspective,
‘You
shall not kill,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ and so forth,
others
do not.
‘Remember
the Sabbath Day,’ but what if there is something to do?
‘You
shall not commit adultery,’ but what if your current relationship is loveless
and
you have found the right person to be faithful to after all?
‘You
shall not covet your neighbor’s house,’
but
what is wrong with wanting something you don’t have,
especially
something you deserve?
And
so our society trumpets those rules which make sense for it
and
minimizes the ones that do not.
Perhaps
we ourselves do this from time to time.
We
should not expect society to live by the Ten Commandments.
But
we as Christians are called to do so.
Why?
Doesn’t God love us?
Doesn’t
he want what is best for us?
He
does indeed.
He
set the Israelites free from the Egyptians,
so
that they could be truly free,
free
to live in relationship with him.
We
see the commandments as impediments to our freedom.
But
the commandments call us into freedom.
The
call to have no other gods
would
free us from those other gods who would enslave us;
who
would be even harsher taskmasters than the Egyptians.
The
command against misusing God’s name
would
free us from the abuse of power that comes from that misuse.
The
command to remember the Sabbath day
would
liberate us from the tyranny of work, of always having to be useful,
of
forgetting that there is a God who wishes to feed us in spirit,
which
we could never do on our own.
And
so on and so forth,
until
we would be free from fear, envy, anger, possessiveness,
and
everything that plagues this earth and our souls.
No
more wanting to be better and more recognized than another.
No
more refusing to be happy until we have the something
that
the other has.
No
more gossip, backbiting, taking, using the other;
no
more mockery, violence, the death of the isms.
The
freedom of the commandments.
Ancient
Israel didn’t want to keep the commandments
any
more than our society does today.
And
in fact, the Church does not wish to keep the commandments either.
The
Church wants to be just as comfortable as the rest of the world.
It
refuses to be shaken from its restful slumber.
It
has used the promise of forgiveness
as
an excuse to remain in quiet rebellion,
exchanging
the freedom of the commandments
for
the self-satisfaction of socially acceptable morality.
And
this is why non-Christians rightly castigate Christians
for
being little different from everyone else.
But
Martin Luther knew
that
the ‘you shall nots’ of the Ten Commandments
always
implied a ‘you shall’ for God’s people.
This
is why his explanations of the commandments
tell
us not simply what God wants to avoid but what God wants us to embrace.
For
example,
in
his explanation of ‘You shall not steal,’
Luther
says,
‘We
are to fear and love God,
so
that we neither take our neighbor’s money or property,
nor
use shoddy wares or crooked deals to obtain it for ourselves,
but
instead help them to improve their property and income.’
Far
from being a passive affair,
the
keeping of the commandments becomes a living, active thing,
full
of good works which are oriented to the well-being of our neighbors.
Their
application can be as richly imaginative and varied
as
the imagination which comes up with various fantasies to distract and tantalize
us.
There
is one thing that saves us.
It
is not our keeping of the commandments
nor
our keeping of most of the commandments.
It
is in this one word, the word in which God binds us to himself
in
covenant promise:
‘I
am the LORD your God,
who
brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out
of the house of slavery.’
God
brings us out of slavery
through
the cross and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah,
so
that we may know the freedom of living the commandments.
And
when we fail, we may fall back into the arms of the God
who
sets us on our feet again,
who
in Christ kept the commandments for us
so
that they might become not a curse for us,
but
a blessing.
A
few days before the movie ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ was released,
a
young American human rights activist
and
humanitarian aid worker was killed, reportedly by airstrikes against ISIS.
Kayla
Mueller was taken hostage in October 2013
while
leaving a Doctors Without Borders hospital.
Her
last communication with her family
was
in a letter written in spring 2014,
which
was smuggled to them by fellow prisoners who had been released.
In
the letter, she revealed no hatred for her captors,
and
stated that the only suffering that she had really had
was
in knowing how much suffering she had put her family and friends through.
She
wrote:
‘I
have come to a place in experience where,
in
every sense of the word,
I
have surrendered myself to our creator
[because]
there was literally no one else.
By
God and by your prayers I have felt tenderly cradled in freefall.
I
have been shown in darkness, light,
and
have learned that even in prison, one can be free.
I
am grateful.
I
have come to see that there is good in every situation;
sometimes
we just have to look for it.
I
pray each day that if nothing else,
you
have felt a certain closeness and surrender to God as well
and
have formed a bond of love and support amongst one another.’
The
world thinks it knows what freedom is.
But
the true freedom is the freedom of the commandments:
the
freedom of the commandments,
the
freedom to love,
the
freedom to forgive,
the
freedom to serve.
It
is found in the freedom of him
who
gave up his freedom for us,
the
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
