3rd Sunday of Lent 2024
Fr. Ben Riley
Generally speaking, we don’t like rules very much, do we? I suppose all of us would agree that without rules, things would be pretty chaotic, but still on an individual level, we don’t like it when someone tells us we can’t do something, or when we are told we have to do something. Well, I’m sorry folks, but here is your spoiler, every religion in the world tells its followers what they should and shouldn’t do. That’s a big part of religious belief. So why do we push back against the rules so much? Maybe it has to do with freedom, or at least a perceived freedom. Maybe we think these rules limit us, that they limit our freedom, and that’s not fair. Many people who walk away from their faith, take exactly this stance. They are presented with a particularly challenging aspect of Christian morality or ethics, and instead of wrestling with that tension, they simply give up. And so today, before we delve into the ten most fundamental rules of the Christian life, the ten commandments, I would first like to describe how these rules, these laws, don’t limit freedom, but they make freedom possible.
I will give three examples. First, I am a relativaly free speaker of the English language. I can express myself fairly well using proper grammar and syntax. Now, how did I become free to do this? Was it because when I was young and made a mistake in grammar, or spelling, or pronunciation, my parents or teachers said, “Don’t worry, you just speak however you want to speak.” No, I can speak English now, because when I was young, I was taught the grammatical laws of the language. The rules are what actually make me free to speak the language.
What about playing the piano? Any little boy is perfectly free to bang around on a piano, and technically he would be playing the piano, but if he takes the time to study from a master pianist, and learn the rules of musical theory, and practice his art, then he is not only free to play by banging around aimlessly, but he becomes free to play with beauty and excellence. And only the rules make that possible.
Lastly, there was once a school on a mountain. Every day for recess the children were let outside to play, but out of fear for falling off the edge of the mountain, the children stayed right up against the edge of the school building. It wasn’t until a fence was installed, that the children felt safe to run free in all the space. The fence, the boundary, actually make them more free, not less.
As I said at the beginning of this holy season of Lent, this is a time of getting back to spiritual basics. Learning the ten commandments, setting them to memory is a good way to do this. The ten commandments are a wonderful way to examine your conscience as you prepare for confession or even at the end of the day.
The ten commandments are divided into two tablets. The first three dealing with our relation to God and then the last seven dealing with our relations with each other. The first tablet is far more important than the second. First, our relationship with God must be brought into right order. If these first three commandments, all dealing with our relationship with God, are not being followed, then the last seven dealing with our relationship to others will also be out of kilter. So, lets pay special attention to the first three commandments.
Number one. “I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods besides me.” Now, there’s a trivial way to read this: that God is jealous, that he is a kind of tyrant and demands our worship out of pride. No. This commandment is the most important element in the spiritual life. God doesn’t need us. God doesn’t need anything. So, it’s not a matter of God falling into a jealous snit here. When there is clarity about what we worship, the rest of our life falls into order. We all worship something; there’s always something in your life of supreme value or supreme importance. It could be a pleasure, it could be money, it could be your country, it could be your family, all sorts of things. “You shall have no other god besides me.” In other words, any act of idolatry, turning something other than God into God, will throw the rest of your life out of balance. This is the first and most important commandment.
Number two. “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” Now, there’s a common understanding here that we shouldn’t swear, use profanity or curses; that we shouldn’t use the name of God in a disrespectful way, and that’s certainly true. Though what they had in mind here in the Old Testament was something like, the use of God’s name in a superstitious way as a kind of incantation. To use the name of God in order to get God to do something, like a spiritual vending machine. Last week I spoke about falling in love with the benefits of God, or God himself. And that is exactly what is at the core of this commandment.
The 3rd commandment: “Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day.” How basic this would have been to the ancient Israelites: to spend just one day a week, in worship and thanksgiving to God who has given us everything. How challenging people find it today. Denying this commandment makes the abstract faith so easy. How many times have I heard people say. “Oh sure, I’m a Christian, I believe in God.” Okay, I think to myself, prove it. I don’t mean that you have to be perfect tomorrow, but do you really try to live the commandments and worship God the way He asked to be worshiped? I would argue with everyone that the falling away of so many in the western culture from keeping holy the Sabbath has wreaked havoc on our society. When we stop signaling to ourselves and to others that we do indeed worship God, things tend to fall apart.
Those are the first three commandments, having to do with our relationship to God, and nothing is more important. This is because the more you are connected to God, the more His love will flow through you into the world. Now, on to the second tablet, and the remaining seven commandments, having to do with our relation to each other.
The 4th commandment. “Honor your father and your mother.” Well, yes, honor your literal father and mother, in so far as they have given you life and you are grateful for your life. But as we all know, not everyone’s father and mother are deserving of honor. So, most of the ancient commentators say this means something like honoring and loving your family: maybe it’s your literal family, your adopted family, or a family you made for yourself. At the root of this commandment, if you claim to be a person of God, which means a person of love, but you can’t love your own family, something is off. If you can’t love those who are nearest and dearest to you, well then how will you love anybody else?
The 5th commandment: “You shall not kill.” This one is probably best translated, “You shall not commit murder”, because we all know that there are exceptions. We talk about just war theory, or self-defense, and so we know killing might sometimes be morally justified, but even in self-defense our desire or intention cannot be to kill. That would be murder. Now I know murder is not a temptation that most of us struggle with. Most people have no intention of murdering anybody. But it’s certainly not the case that murder isn’t a problem in our society. 60 million abortions have been committed since Roe v Wade was passed. How about the almost casual murders taking place on the streets of our major cities? What about euthanasia laws and the death penalty? There is a growing indifference to life in our society. Saint John Paul II named it clearly as “the culture of death.” And so we need to be alive to this problem of an indifference to the dignity of human life. You shall not kill.
The 6th commandment: “You shall not commit adultery.” I know everyone thinks the church is obsessed with sex, but look, we don’t even get to sexual matters until the 6th commandment. Now I assume that everybody agrees that adultery is the breaking of the marriage vow. We can see the effects of sexual infidelity permeating our society and breaking down the sacrament of marriage. And this is not just in acts of adultery. The greatest scourge on our society today is pornography. Parents, please monitor your children’s internet use. I know it seems like the Church is overly concerned with sex, but it’s because priests see this gift from God become an addiction and ruin relationships over and over again. The biblical authors knew very well that the family is the building block of society, and when the family suffers, our whole society suffers.
The 7th commandment: “You shall not steal.” My family’s house was broken into twice when I was a kid. And there’s something that is uniquely awful about that experience. Maybe some of you have been unfortunate enough to experience it. You feel so violated. It’s such an aggressive violence, such an invasion of privacy. Stealing is one of least loving things you can do, but we know, my fellow sinners, that in a lot of ways, we steal things from people, in many other ways than robbing them. We steal people’s reputation and good name when we gossip. We steal their dignity and honor when we bully or make fun of others.
Commandment 8: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” This is distinct from what most would call a white lie or saying something to make someone feel better. This commandment is about a willful lie whose purpose is to harm. Why do we do it? Well, it makes us feel better doesn’t it. Violence feels good. It makes us feel more exalted. If I can drag you down, I somehow seem higher. Where is this flourishing? We all know: online, right? Social media culture has caused this sin to flourish: to bear false witness against our neighbors; to say all kinds of lies, or even to believe the lies without a second thought. Before we post something online, we should ask ourselves, “Why? Why do I feel the need to say this thing?” And again, because I cannot say it enough, please parents, monitor your kid’s internet use.
Now finally I’ll bring the ninth and tenth commandments together: “You shall not covet your neighbors’ goods, and you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.” It’s very interesting that word covet. It seems like there is a triangular quality of desire; that we rarely want something simply because it’s attractive to us. Very often, we want something, because somebody else wants it. This is the principle on which most advertising is based. I discover that I want something because some famous person wants it. Or watch two kids playing together: one kid is indifferent to a toy until his friend comes in and wants it. The source of so much of the tension and violence in our society is this triangular quality of covetousness. It’s interesting that before the social sciences ever proposed this theory, the Bible warned of it very well. It is perfectly fine to desire something for your own sake, or for the sake of your family, but be careful and notice when you start to desire something because someone else has it.
Okay, that’s a quick run-through of the ten commandments. And again, I encourage you as a Lenten practice, commit these commandments to memory, and use them as an examination of conscience before confession, or even before you close your eyes in holy sleep.
May God bless you.