Have you ever noticed how time passes differently, depending on what’s happening? You know the old truism, “A watched kettle never boils.” Time just moves differently depending on what’s going on.
I remember back in High School the last five minutes of the last class period of the day seemed to go on forever. I swear sometimes the clock would move backward.
Sometimes time flies like when I’m with good friends or when reading a good story.
Sometimes time doesn’t move fast or slow, sometimes it is just different, it is just more full.
Like when recovering from illness or surgery, a time of healing has a different quality to it.
Or there is the time of preparing to die, a lingering illness or a sudden trauma, time because precious.
Time really has very little to do with measuring out hours and minutes, though we give a great deal of attention to measuring time, usually because we want to be somewhere else, but we never really get there, always looking at the watch on the way to somewhere else, rarely present to the moment.
Jesus was alone in the wilderness for forty days of fasting before he faced the temptations of the devil.
Israel wandered through the wilderness for forty years before finding their promised home.
It rained for forty days and forty nights when Noah and the animals were tucked away in the ark.
There is something significant about the number forty when it shows up in the witness of scripture. We usually hear that it is a symbolic number that means a really, really long time. But I think it’s more than a matter of quantity.
Whether its forty days or forty years when the number forty shows up it is more about a certain kind of time, there is a certain fullness and quality to that long, long time.
The number forty is a time of gestation, of getting ready to be alive, getting ready to be free, of getting to know our own heart and seeing how broken and twisted it is, of how much we are in need of rescue, of healing, of a new beginning.
That is what this season of Lent is about, it is forty days long, not counting Sundays, but it’s not about counting off the days, its about getting ready to be born. It is a certain kind of time.
How do we get to know our own hearts that we may be set free?
A classic and ancient way of examining our heart, our conscience, is to study and reflect upon the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue, the Ten Words.
That is why it is especially appropriate to have a Lenten sermon series on that topic. Some folks, like Bishop Spong, think they are too historically dated to be of any worthwhile relevance today.
Some folks think they are the foundation of any civilized society.
Some folks think they should be up on monuments because of their historical value.
I really don’t know about all that.
This might be a long shot, but for a long time I’ve thought that the Decalogue were about who God is, they showed us something about God so that we could grow closer to God.
They show us a God who is leading a people, creating a people, giving birth to a people who are free from the house of bondage. I see them as ten word of freedom, ten words about the God who loves a people who are free.
That is the title of this sermon series, “Ten words of freedom”.
They were given to Israel to carry with them during their long Lent that they may become free. There is a funny saying that it didn’t take long for Israel to get out of Egypt, but it took forty years to get the Egypt out of Israel. Being owned by Pharaoh left a mark that took the grace of God to erase.
So each year we are invited to join with the ancient people of Israel to face all the Pharaohs that are taking away the image of God’s freedom that is our created birth right. The ten words invite us to become the image of God’s freedom.
Each Sunday during Lent I will give a reflection on two of the words.
The first two words are very similar, “You shall have no other God’s before me”, and “You shall not make for yourself an idol.”
And God is jealous, or fervent or passionate about having no idols.
The first words about freedom are about worship.
We become what we worship. Think about that. We become what we worship.
What forms us? What has all our attention so much so that it rubs off on us, effecting how we speak, and move, think, hope, dream. Sounds kind of like television.
Ultimately what we worship owns us.
And only God is big enough to own us.
The paradox of freedom is that it is dependant on being owned by God.
Slavery is being owned by anything or anyone else. They are all too small to encompass the divine image in us. They can only twist and distort the image of God, twisting our soul and conforming us to something that is ugly and devouring.
So the road out of Egypt begins with worship, the worship of the God who is free, who would have us share that image of freedom, who insists without compromise that we become bearers of the divine image, human banners of liberty.
What does freedom look like?
How do we become reflections of that image?
Forty days to prepare to begin to live, without any false images, without any bondage.
Next Sunday, the third and the forth word, You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy.