Jack Hardaway
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Desire.
This is all about desire.
What happens when it turns inward and stagnates, and decays.
And when it looks outward and is transformed by love, when it is baptized.
This is the fourth sermon in a sermon series on the decalogue, the ten words that set world free from the house of bondage.
Today we hear the seventh and the eighth words, Thou shalt not commit adultery, and thou shalt not steal.
These two commandments take up a great deal of our attention, a never ending source of gossip and media obsession. Who knows how many books and movies and stories have the simple title of the Seventh Commandment, or the Eighth Commandment?
The seventh word, that sets us free from the house of bondage is about much more than sex, and whose sleeping with whom.
It is about desire, and what happens when it goes wrong, and what happens when it is baptized.
Adultery is the breaking of the covenant of marriage.
Just don’t sleep with someone else, pretty straightforward at first glance.
Jesus goes to the heart though.
In the same passage where he says murder includes anger, insult and judgement, Jesus also expands adultery to include lust.
Which pretty much makes most of us adulterers.
In that episode when Jesus saves the woman caught in adultery from being stoned to death he defuses the situation by saying those without sin can cast the first stone.
Nobody took him up in the offer.
There is something else going on here.
Adultery, like murder, begins long before the act, it begins with a poorly tended heart, a moment of weakness, and an opportunity.
In our catechism class we play a game. I read the catechism version of each of the ten commandments and the class tries to figure out which commandment it is.
The catechism simply says, “To use all our bodily desires as God intended.” That’s all it says. It is the shortest commandment in the catechism.
It usually takes the class a little while to figure out which commandment that is. It’s a fun game.
I know, I know the things that priests do for fun…
Desire.
Do I use other people? Are they a means to an end for me?
Or, do I love and serve others, that they may be all that God intended? Blazing with glory.
Do I cultivate my heart to see and treat others like the miracle that they are?
We are all users in recovery, with broken untended hearts that are becoming whole, we are letting go of a world that is all about consuming others and being consumed, and we are being born into a new world that chooses love, that embraces the miracle that other people are, that embraces the miracle that we are.
God is known and revealed through the miracle that we all are.
Embrace the miracle.
God embraces the miracle.
Jesus is that embrace.
Be embraced.
That is the seventh word of freedom, leading us out of the house of bondage.
Embrace the miracle. Be set free.
Thou shalt embrace the miracle.
The Eighth word of liberation from the House of bondage is the word of not stealing.
Just as the seventh word is the shortest in the catechism, the eighth word is the longest.
Turn with me to page 848 in your Prayers Books.
Let’s read this one out loud, roman numeral VIII, in unison…
“To be honest and fair in our dealings; to seek justice, freedom, and the necessities of life for all people; and to use our talents and possessions as ones who must answer for them to God.”
Ouch.
So that is much more involved than we first thought.
Shop lifting and embezzling, that kind of thing is what usually comes to mind.
But, when I take advantage of someone else’s need or weakness for my own profit, that is stealing as well.
When I don’t share, I steal from God.
Bottom line.
When I don’t share, I steal from God.
Wealth is not a blessing, it is not an entitlement, it is not an achievement.
It is a responsibility.
It is not mine.
It is for me to pass along, it is God’s, not mine.
We are stewards of God’s abundance. Not owners.
Which is why tithing is considered the beginning of a faithful response.
We have been lied to.
We have been taught that we can own and consume whatever and whomever we choose.
That world is dead and dying.
God’s world is something else.
God gives all, has given everything, even unto death on the cross that we may live, that we may be free, that we may choose love.
The word of freedom is that the overflowing grace of God has entered and overwhelmed the world.
Therefore, I share out of thanksgiving.
Thou shalt share. Thou shalt share a lot.
Be set free, don’t be owned by ownership, don’t be possessed by possessiveness.
The word is setting us free, to be free indeed.
Next week, the last two words of the decalogue that set the world free. Thou shalt not bear false witness, and thou shalt not covet. The two that we don’t talk about all that much, but probably should.
Speak the word that sets the world free.