January 27th, 2019
When I was in middle school the cool thing to wear was Guess-brand shortalls- overalls that were knee-length. All the most popular kids in seventh grade wore them. They were expensive but I thought that if I had them my social life would be transformed- a magic talisman to make me cool. But in pleading with my parents I blew my case almost immediately by saying the fatal phrase “but everyone else has them.”
As soon as the words left my mouth I knew I wasn’t getting those shortalls. My mom sighed and said her catchphrase, the one I hear over and over even now, in my mind. “We don’t care what other people do, or what other people think.”
Every family has their own rules, their own stories to define who they are and what is important to them. In my family we talk about nonconformity- we don’t care what other people think. We don’t conform to what they do. While in middle school this rule chaffed-I really wanted those Guess shortalls!- but they gave me a scaffolding to grow with. They gave me greater priorities than just trying to be popular.
These cultural rubrics matter. They give our lives a shape bigger than the demands of our individual egos, bigger than what advertisers tell us we want. Rules give us moral guidance, a scaffolding based on what is best for the community instead of what is best for us. Ancient wisdom for Modern Life is our theme for the next ten weeks, and we are going to consider what impact the old guidelines could have for us, today. Over the next ten weeks we are going to discuss the Ten Commandments, from the Jewish tradition, as well as the 8-step Noble Path of Buddhism, and our own Unitarian Universalist Seven Principles.
A long time ago, between 1400 and 586 BCE, The Ten Commandments were written down. Scrawled in ancient Hebrew, they had been in circulation as a part of the oral tradition for a long time, maybe decades. In ancient Hebrew the words describing them isn’t commandment, but the ten ideas, ten principles, or the ten utterances.
A few years back, my colleague Ana Levy-Lyons writes, Lynn Westmoreland, a Republican congressman from Georgia, went on the Colbert Report to advocate for having the Ten Commandments installed in every courthouse in the United States. He said it was to remind people of a moral code, of right and wrong. But when Colbert asked him to list the Ten Commandments, he couldn’t do it. He could only list three.
The Congressman had made the promotion of the Ten Commandments his life’s goal, but he couldn’t even list them That is because it wasn’t the Ten Commandments that matter to him- he was using them as a symbol. He said the Ten Commandments, but he meant conservative, Christian values, 1950’s Leave it to Beaver, Sundown towns, women know their place values, apple pie and church on Sunday. Unfortunately for the congressman the Ten Commandments weren’t written by Ronald Regan- they are part of an ancient, Jewish legend. They tell a much different story then he assumed.
The story goes that for centuries the Israelites lived in Egypt, second-class citizens doing grunt labor, treated poorly, and not allowed to leave the country. They were in Egypt for so long that they forgot what it meant to be an Israelite. They forgot their own songs, their own ethics, their own stories. So when Moses led them out of Israel, across the Red Sea, and they found themselves in a desert wasteland, they didn’t know who they were. They had an identity crisis. They weren’t Egyptians, the Egyptians abused them. But they didn’t know what it meant to be Israelites. So they squabble and hurt each other and built idols and lived unethically.
This pushed Moses to goes up the mountain to talk to God- the Torah says that Moses went into the dark cloud to talk to God- and God uses God’s finger to etch the Ten Commandments on stone tablets. And these Commandments, or in a more correct translation ten utterances, give scaffolding to the Israelite people. They are a unified community, unified by the Ten statements, shaped by a moral code.
So the first commandment is a long one, it is “I am YHVH, your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from a house of slaves. You shall have no other gods besides me.” Yod-hey- who? Who is this God? The first thing to note is that the Israelites were not, until this point, monotheists. They worshipped lots of gods, as did all the communities around them at that time. There was your own tribal god, then the god of harvest, the god of war, sun, rain, or childbirth. There was a pantheon of gods, one for every occasion. Moses went to the top of the mountain to meet the Israelite’s tribal god, who announced their name then as YHVD, which isn’t a word the Israelites know. It translates roughly as I am, I who will become, I who have been, I who have become… it’s not a name that tells us much, only that YHVH is not a person-type deity, not a big woman or man in the sky, but reality itself. YHVD is all that is known and unknown. People and physics and amoebas and comets. The word YHVH in ancient Hebrew is the sound of breathing, of an inhale and exhale.
But then there is a big qualifier- I am everything ever, your God, who brought you out of slavery in Egypt. This is wild because if YHVH is everything, ever, it could say- I’m God, creator and destroyer of all things, judge of everything. I am God who sends lightening bolts. I am God who crafted puppies in all their cuteness. But no, YHVH says, hey, I am the one who brought you out of slavery. YHVH, reports Moses, is the God who frees people from captivity.
The Israelites in ancient Egypt were resisters. In the Egyptian culture built on making money for the most powerful they rebelled. When the Pharaoh demanded the wholesale slaughter of all male, Israelite children the Israelite midwives refused. When Moses saw an Egyptian beating his Israelite slave, he killed the Egyptian. The Israelites, who passed the Ten Commandments down through the ages, were the poor, oppressed minority in a 1%-er world. YHVH says, I am the God that freed you, because freedom from oppression is important, more important than inventing lighting bolts or judging people.
Okay, but this was a few millennia ago, so why do we care? We are so far, in time, culture, and even geography, from the ancient Israelites wandering the desert. Why are we talking about the Ten Commandments? The first reason is because people like Congressman Westmoreland try to use the Ten Commandments for their own, conservative agenda. Recently retired, Westmoreland was against the Voting Rights Act, called Obama uppity, and opposed reproductive rights, gay rights, and a path to citizenship for immigrants. He thought the Ten Commandments backed up his hateful ideology, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Westmoreland is the Pharaoh, the oppressor, not the rebels who got the Ten Commandments. We have to know this history so theology can’t be used against us. We have to cry foul when conservatives warp the story of liberation that is the Jewish and Christian scriptures.
Even more important we are not so different from the Israelites. We are Unitarian Universalists, and we have seven principles to guide our journey through this life. The fourth principle is the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Truth and meaning is difficult to find in this media-saturated world, where we see hundreds of advertisements every day, targeted right to our demographic. Where the middle class is shrinking and poverty is growing, especially among children. Where the environment is changing very quickly and not for the better. We need to seek truth and meaning outside of mainstream culture. We are not enslaved in Egypt but we are subject to a cruel Pharaoh, a corrupt government that cages brown children and takes money from school food programs. It is difficult to live our human and earth-centered values in this time. So as Unitarian Universalists we are charged with that fourth principle: the free and responsible search for truth and meaning, which reminds us that there is more to this existence then money, power, and accumulating stuff. We search for Truth and Meaning. We resist.
In the first step on the Buddhist Noble Path we find a similar scaffolding when talking about Right View, the idea that we need to keep things that are sacred in the center of our vision. To keep our eye on the prize, so to speak. This is the first step for Buddhists toward living in a sacred manner, this focusing on what is good, what is ethical. This is how I interpret the final piece of the first commandment, when YHVH says you shall have no other gods before me. We shouldn’t have any other gods besides liberation for all creatures, including ourselves. We shouldn’t worship stylish clothing or having a huge investment account, Tom Brady’s apparently ageless football skills or our boss’s Rolex. Instead we keep our eye on liberation- on freedom from the oppressor. And sometimes that oppressor is a corrupt government and sometimes it is our own materialism, our self-centeredness. Our misconception that we are the center of the universe.
Let’s go back to the moment Moses approached YHVH on the mountain. The Torah tells us that initially God speaks to the Israelites directly- they are camped at the base of Mount Nebo, and the mountain shakes and sparks, and the ground rumbles. And before the Israelites can even hear a word they freak out, it is way to scary. So YHVH backs off and just has Moses come. The Torah says “The people stayed at a distance, and Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.”
Seeking truth and meaning is scary. Shifting our lives to the Buddhist idea of Right View can be isolating. Most people weren’t ready to approach the thick darkness where meaning was hidden. Many contemporary Jewish Rabbis see the story of Moses on the mountain as a metaphor for choosing to embark on a spiritual path- you might have to go it alone. It will be terrifying, leaving behind your tribe. Your loved ones may not want to travel with you. Still, afraid, Moses found the courage to go alone. And what he found changed his heart, and the hearts of all who knew him.
As we embark on this new worship series, exploring the Ten Commandments, 8-Fold Noble Path, and Seven Principles, what you discover may move you to makes changes in your life. May we be open to journeying into the darkness, where we meet the great mysteries face to face.
