Sermon Archive
Are the Ten Commandments Christian?
Sermon preached by John Armes at Holy Communion on 6 October 2002
Exodus 20 1-4; Philippians 3 4-14
Are the Ten Commandments Christian?
At a former church I was rummaging through the debris on a disused balcony when I came across two large boards. I turned them over and discovered that inscribed on the other side were the Ten Commandments. There was a time when many churches displayed the Commandments, beside the altar or high up on the wall. (Not at St John's, of course; we have stuck other things on the wall for people to read during boring sermons.) The point is that those boards, once a stern, weekly reminder of fundamental values, were now dusty, neglected and forgotten. And their neglect seemed to speak volumes about our changing attitudes.
The Church Times last week reported that Amnesty International have taken up the cause of three homosexual Ugandan Christians, who have been attending an Anglican church in Vancouver after fleeing from state-sponsored persecution in their own country. Apparently, the Anglican Archbishop of Uganda came very close to condoning this persecution when he said that his church was adamantly 'opposed to inhuman sex between men.'
The writer of the article made a telling comment. Whilst the Archbishop no doubt offered an authentic Ugandan witness 'most Canadian Christians would, I think, prefer Amnesty International to the Old Testament as a moral guide' in these matters. [Andrew Brown writing in Church Times, 27 September 2002] We might extend this to many Western Christians generally. Clearly cultural differences shape how and to what extent we adopt moral norms. Does this apply to the Ten Commandments as well?
The seventh commandment has been much in the news this week. And one prominent view has suggested that adultery is actually a matter of personal preference - apparently, it's not something to be ashamed of if the two people involved enjoyed themselves (which I assume by definition condones any act of adultery). This is moral reasoning on a par with Homer Simpson who, when castigated by his family for eating a bucket of roast chicken throughout a church service replied: 'If God didn't mean us to eat in church he would have made gluttony a sin.'
I suspect that our own reactions to the revelations of the past week suggest that for most of us the Ten Commandments still hold some sort of influence. And indeed, as they were read earlier, if we were listening, they will have evoked a mixture of emotions: a sense of security and reassurance, a quite irrational feeling of guilt, even, perhaps, a very justifiable sense of shame and a desire to make our confession all over again.
These emotions illustrate nicely the problem with the Ten Commandments. On the one hand they have a positive value. They remind us that our beliefs are not just about a warm inner glow or an hour's escape from our cares on a Sunday morning (important though these things may be) - they must lead us into action, they must be incarnated, make a difference to who we are and what we do.
On the other hand, there is what Gerald Priestland used to call 'guilt-edged religion'. A faith obsessed with obeying the rules, doing the right thing, of scrutinizing the minute details of one's life to ensure that everything is confessed - a faith that tells us that we can never do the right thing, that ultimately we are worthless. The medieval church was particularly good at this. Johannes Major (there's a topical name!), a medieval theologian, suggested that it was no sin to steal one to five ears of corn from a rich man, that to steal six to ten was a venial sin, to steal more than that was mortal sin.
But Protestant Christianity has been little better. Christianity generally has been very successful in stimulating an unhealthy sense of guilt, of low self-esteem and personal failure. Psychiatric illness, sexual hang-ups, personal misery - how much of this has been caused by the obsession of the church with sin? An obsession which, ironically, is the very opposite of a gospel that is founded on the forgiveness and the acceptance that God offers us all.
This creates a further danger. For all those wallowing in guilt there are others preening themselves self-righteously. Those outside, who've failed the test, and are beyond the pale, and those inside who, whether by temperament, lack of opportunity or pure good fortune, have kept the rules. I know we revolt at such a thought and yet how quickly a rule-based religion chooses to avert its eyes from the subtleties of life, the complex pressures on individuals, the quirks of character, the impossible choices. There are no shades of grey in this classification of goodies and baddies.
I am not speaking here of religious extremists or sinister cults, this behaviour is evident in how our own society functions. Look what we do to public figures who fall from grace, the Archers and the Aitkens, for example, who are made to carry the burden not just of their own sins but also of our disappointments. But not just public figures. Our attitudes to prisoners too, the behaviour of mobs towards suspected paedophiles or those accused, never mind convicted, of certain crimes, suggest that we are adept at piling our own failure onto others and so allowing our consciences the illusion of cleanliness.
Again, this contradicts the essence of our faith. For Jesus the issue was not the what but the why. As he says, 'it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come' (Mark 7.21). True holiness is concerned with far more than simply keeping a set of rules. As he points out in the Sermon on the Mount, you may not have murdered someone but how many times have you nursed anger in your heart? You may not have committed adultery, but have you ever looked lustfully at someone? To start with lists of misdemeanours, therefore, is to begin in the wrong place, namely, with ourselves, and making ourselves fit for God. What Jesus wants is that we should look to God first - admit that our own efforts are not enough to make us perfect and in admitting that to throw ourselves on God's love and mercy. This requires an attention not to our sins but to our sinfulness.
This is what Paul is getting at in the second reading. If ever there was a rule-keeper, a jobsworth it was Paul before he saw the light. As he says, he was scrupulous in his obedience to the law. And yet this did not bring him the freedom he craved. He discovered that what was crucial was to understand the nature of the relationship between us and God. Not a contract where we are good and God in return offers us eternal life. Rather, it is a one-sided offering rooted in the love of God and our own simple ability to trust that love. The relationship at the heart of the Christian faith is founded on the grace, the generous love of God.
So, are the Ten Commandments Christian? Or to put it another way, do we need to keep them? They do not of themselves change us inwardly and bring us closer to God - only God's own love can do that. And God's own love recognises that part of being human is to face choices. And with choice comes the possibility of making the wrong choice, of harming ourselves, others and our relationship with God. Perhaps this is, in the end, what we mean by original sin - the propensity to make wrong choices. And we discover the extent of God's love when we learn that in Christ he is prepared to accept the cost of human wrong choices
But whilst the Ten Commandments do not create the relationship with God, yet they are clearly, within the Old Testament, the fruits of that relationship. They are not a Christian code, and yet the Christian gospel would eventually bring us back to something not unlike the Ten Commandments for they call us, basically, to revere and respect God, and to revere and respect other people in real and practical ways. They are couched negatively, but it is not hard to spot the positives behind them.
All of which suggests that Johannes Major, in his cataloguing of sin, actually missed the point whereas his anglicised namesake has in the last couple of weeks bravely articulated something very important. Adultery is no more simply a sin on a list than it is merely something indulged in by 'two healthy, handsome people'. When understood as the denial of faithfulness, integrity and trust, as alienation from our closest friends and from God then it becomes a cause not only of regret but indeed of that rarely admitted and deeply rooted sense of personal wrongdoing, shame.
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