Treasured Possessions

Pastor Kyle Clark

Text Lesson: Exodus 19:5-7; 20:1-17

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Third Sunday of Lent

Ask people about their most treasured possessions and you will likely get answers ranging from their latest techno gadget to family photo albums to various other items of memorabilia. Some will speak of their children or of their health. Some will even offer their well-worn Bibles as their treasured possession.

Freedom, some would say, is a possession to be greatly treasured. Late December 1989, Romania was in turmoil. Food was scarce, health care was poor, and the government was corrupt. Public dissent swelled and overtook the ranks of the military. President Nicolae Ceausescu, the dictator of that country since 1965, and his wife were executed in a violent coup. Now, no one was in charge. One woman being interviewed by a Western reporter summed up the predicament: “We have freedom,” she said, “but we don’t know what to do with it.” Certainly those who have not experienced freedom long for it, yet when it is obtained suddenly, there is a sense of confusion, even fear, about what to do with it.

But even those of us who have lived our whole lives in freedom sometimes struggle to know what to do with it. From time to time we hear news stories about the on-again, off-again debate about the public display of the Ten Commandments in this country. Who can forget former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore and his unsuccessful efforts to keep the Commandments in the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court Building? Even the U.S. Supreme Court seems torn on this issue. In 2005, the court declared in separate rulings that a small framed display of the Commandments in a Kentucky courtroom was unconstitutional while two large granite monuments depicting the same Commandments on a courthouse lawn in Texas were deemed to be constitutional. In his comments on these cases, Justice Antonin Scalia noted the paradox of the Ten Commandments in American life. “I think probably 90 per cent of American people believe in the Ten Commandments, even though 85 per cent couldn’t tell you what the ten are.” I would add that perhaps the more troubling thing, for me at least, is that many people are more concerned about their public display than understanding and practicing their content.

So, where do we begin to tell the story about this theme of treasured possessions and freedom in light of our text today? Joseph, I think would be a good place to start.

You remember Joseph, don’t you? Young Joseph was foolish enough to taunt his brothers with his dreams of his superiority over them. So they decided to show him. Some wanted to kill him, others just wanted him gone, so they sold him to a caravan of merchants. It appears that Joseph was enslaved and his brothers were free. (That’s a funny thing about freedom – sometimes the ones who are free don’t really have much freedom. You can only be so free if your life is staked on a lie, and Joseph’s brothers were lying to their father about what had happened.)

Meanwhile, Joseph bounces back and forth between slavery and imprisonment. He doesn’t have much freedom, but he is able to live with the truth. (If you can face the truth head-on with no fear, you possess a kind of freedom that nothing can take away.)

Well, Joseph eventually rises to a position of great power. He is in charge of rationing food during a severe famine. Things are so bad that his brothers come to Egypt to buy food. While Joseph makes them sweat a little bit, he frees them from the death sentence of famine as well as the death sentence of their guilt. (There is not anything much better than the freedom that forgiveness brings.)

Joseph’s family moves to and settles in Egypt where they multiply. Over time the Egyptians come to fear these Hebrew people and begin to clamp down on them. The restrictions become greater and greater until the Hebrew people cry out to God from their oppression. And God sends Moses. God tells Moses, “They will know that they are my people, when I free them from Egypt.” Even though he is a reluctant freedom fighter, Moses leads these people out of Egypt. Across the desert, through the sea and into the wilderness they go. Some would say that the hard part is gaining freedom when you are enslaved or entrapped. But, for the wandering Hebrew people, the hard part is just beginning. Suddenly they have freedom, but now they don’t know what to do with it. Once you’ve been set free, how do you stay free? You see, the reality is that someone who has been set free can become enslaved again. Someone who has been saved can be lost again. But they don’t have to be.

God gives a way to those wandering souls to preserve this new-found freedom. It is a covenantal way of life that God describes to Moses on Mt. Sinai – the covenant that God establishes with His people. The Decalogue, the Ten Words (we call them Commandments) are God’s gift to those who have been set free, showing them how to keep that freedom. Freedom implies options, the opportunity to choose. In the 19th chapter God gives people the freedom to choose – “if you obey my voice and if you keep my covenant…”

The “Commandments” then are not, like many claim, weighty burdens, heavy obligations or restrictive rules. Most people cannot name all ten, yet they are somehow persuaded that at the center of each one is a finger-wagging “thou shalt not.” Look at them again. These ten words are not preceded by an order – “Here are ten rules. Obey them or else!” – they are introduced instead by a breathtaking announcement of freedom: “I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out of slavery and oppression in Egypt. You are free!”

The Decalogue begins with the good news of what God has done – making freedom a reality! What comes after is the description of what that freedom looks like,  not some barrier that people must overcome to gain freedom! God has done for the Hebrews what they could not do for themselves – given them their freedom. Now God gives them the means of keeping that freedom, if they choose.

“I am God. I set you free to make choices. Choose whom you will serve. I am God, not an object; don’t make or worship images or idols. I am bigger than that. And please, don’t misuse or disgrace my name.”

“Keep the Sabbath a day of rest – if I needed it, you will too. Honor and respect your mother and father; in fact honor and respect all those older than you. Do not murder. Don’t give your bed, your eyes, or your affections to anyone other than your spouse. Don’t steal anything. Take nothing that is not yours. Don’t take another person’s reputation by lying and slander. Keep your heart as well as your hands off of things that belong to someone else”

I invite you to go home and read them again, these Ten Words.  Reflect on them. Enter into dialogue with these Commandments, because they are intended to be engaged as dialogue, not hung on a wall like some old document. These are the words God speaks to the people he has set free. These are the covenant words. God spoke these words and the promise from God is, “…you will be my treasured possession.” (Exodus 19:5)

You see, while the freedom to choose God is a treasured possession for those Hebrew people, they, you, I, and all people are God’s treasured possession.  We need to understand that God’s treasured possession is not the community that memorizes these words, or publicly displays these words. God’s treasured possession is the community that responds to these words.

Sadly, the Hebrews forgot their promise of the covenant. They forgot how to use and keep their freedom. Less than 40 days after receiving them they traded their freedom in God for bondage to a golden calf. This should be a sobering reminder to us today during these 40 days of Lent. Sometimes it takes as long as 40 days to remove distractions so that we can renew our focus on God who gives freedom. Sometimes it takes less than 40 days to drift into old ways of bondage and out of freedom.

In time God promised a new covenant written not on tablets of stone, but on human hearts. That’s because these words were never meant to be stone-cold words – they were always meant to be life-giving, freedom-sustaining words.

In this season of Lent let us hear again the voice of the freedom giving God, “If you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you will be my treasured possession.”

Amen.