“Tent Posts, the World Over”

“Tent Posts, the World Over”
Exodus, the Ten Words
World Communion Sunday,
October 2, 2011

When we think of today’s story, it is difficult to separate what comes to our mind from the depictions of two stone tablets that we often see now scattered around public court house lawns and squares. For all the controversy that has swirled around such displays, we have to remember that what happened on the top of that mountain all those millennia ago was much, much more than just the bringing down of moral precepts. It was Moses sharing the word of God with humanity.

The Ten Commandments are not just laws carved into cold stone, they are the living word of God. The Ten Commandments are an essential part of the Judeo-Christian faith that cannot be domesticated. They represent what God has spoken to us all, and because God still speaks to us, we have to learn to concentrate not on the Ten Words alone, but upon how it is that we live by them.

A few years ago, my entire family met up at a beautiful State Park in the Ozark Mountains. Ben, my step-son, was newly married and with a new baby. He and his family arrive last, but they were so excited to get there and set up camp beside the other portions of the clan. As they got out their tent and laid out the canvas, they noticed something. Neither he nor his wife had remembered to bring the tent poles. What good is a tent without its poles?

Well, speaking as a scout, I can tell you that it is not entirely a loss. At the very least, a camper can wrap the canvas around them or cover up their gear if it starts to rain. A slightly cleverer person might even find a way to fashion new poles from the saplings around the camp, or figure out a way to rig a ridge pole between to tree trunks and throw the tent over that for some shelter. But the thing is, the tent will never be able to do what it’s advertized to do, without the poles. BB Taylor has suggested that the 10 C’s are like the tent poles of the faith. Our faith can shelter us from harm without them, but we do so much better if we have them up in our lives.

Now this isn’t to say that having them in place is easy or that it is all we need to do. The 10C’s are the Word of God, and they cannot be domesticated. Just putting a poster up out on the front lawn with the 10 C’s on it is nothing magic. Insuring that the courthouse has a set mounted to the lobby wall is not magic either. The Ten Commandments are not just words, they are the words of God.

I guess that’s why I never felt all that strongly about the arguments that are out there for putting them up. To me, the real proof of their power lies in the way we try our best to live them out. Even the most easily understood and seemingly self-explanatory of them (say Thou Shalt Not Kill) can be argued about. Does that mean we should abolish capital punishment, refuse to go to war, and maybe even refuse to kill animals in order to eat meat? Certainly, if all we do is put “Thou Shalt not Kill” up on the courthouse wall, it does not resolve any of these thornier questions of how to follow the law.

But most of all, it does not address the full impact of the fact that these are God’s words to us. Apart from God, laws have no ultimate meaning. And with God, through Jesus Christ, we have forgiveness for even the worst of our sins and our crimes against the law. Jesus wants us to know that it goes both ways: he tells us he did not come to abolish the law—the Ten Words of God brought down from Mt. Sinai still live on—but there is more. For Jesus goes on to say that he came to fulfill the law. The law is shaped by his forgiveness. Where once the law said simply, “Love the Lord with all your heart, your soul and your mind,” Jesus now adds, “and love your neighbor as yourself” and “Love your enemies” and “love others as I have loved you”.

In other words, the 10C’s are still the Word of God; but they are not all the words of God. With that in mind, we can stop and wonder, what are some of the other words from God that we hold dear? This past month we have been praying for some new words from God. We have addressed God, not just as individuals, but as a congregation, and asked God to strengthen our vision for who we are, to help us change where we can, to insist that we learn how to pray for and receive new words, new directions from the Divine. It is our sincere hope that those visions will become the pillars (or tent posts) of our personal and congregational faith.

But human nature being what it is, when those words come will we do with them what many so often do to the Ten Commandments? Will we try to domesticate those too? Let’s try out a for instance.

Let’s suppose that in the course of our prayers and discernment meetings, we come to the conclusion that our tradition of 3 hymns to every worship service deserves tent post status. It is funny to me that, no matter where I have gone to worship in the last 40 years of my life, every worship service contains three hymns. Imagine if we decided that this word from God should be placed outside on our sandwich board: We believe in the Ten Commandments and the Eleventh one too—Thou Shalt always worship with three hymns, not one more or any less.

It seems silly, of course, but it is possible that someone, at some point in time actually heard this as a word from God. We believe that God certainly influences the way we worship, so it is not impossible to conceive that one of our early Protestant preachers or laymen first heard this good word and put it into action. Now it is a tradition. As a tent post of the faith, 3 hymns in every service seems fairly non-controversial, right. But just last week, we violated the rule. We sang more than 3 hymns, and from the sounds of it, most of you really liked the change.

We are a people who are blessed by words from God. Many of the traditions of this church came about because at some point in our history, one of our Radnor ancestors first heard a word from God and started a mission or ministry. You all will know the stories better than I do. Who first brought liturgical colors into the church; who first decided it was ok to have these beautiful windows (I imagine that was controversial in the beginning because, Radnor doesn’t even have a steeple—Congregationalists were not very fond of such gaudy decorations). So who first proposed that we spend all this money on such extravagancies, and what reception did he/she receive?

At times in our congregational life we are called to change the way we approach the words of God, both those that come directly from scripture, like the Ten Commandments, and those that come into our hearts and minds from the Holy Spirit. The times change, and so does the way we are called to do Jesus ministry.

This is such a time again. For many of our neighbors, those who live up and down our streets and whom we are praying to “get to know better, church is simply not on their radar screen. Thursday night, I came in and about 14 little girls and women were practicing cheerleading in the basement. It was fantastic that we could offer them a warm, dry, safe place to do this. Delighted by all the activity, I asked one little girl what her name was.

“I’m Emily”, she said, “I am here for cheerleading”.
“I’m Pastor Matthew,” I replied as I bent over to shake her hand.
She smiled at me and, a little perplexed, said, “Well, what are you here for”?

It was funny, and very cute—but also just a little sad because I don’t honestly think that she knew what a Pastor was, or that she was in the basement of a church. As I looked around behind her I spied all the columns that held up the sanctuary above her head—very strong tent posts each one—and I realized that God was offering me a new word: “Here is an opportunity Pastor Matthew, what will you do with it?”

What will we do with it? We have a choice to either lament the loss of the way it used to be, or to find a way to recognize the changed community around us and embrace new ways of getting our faith out there on their radar screens.

It is only natural, part of growing in the faith and serving the world, that is constantly changing, just as our Lord told us to do.