Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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In our efforts to make God "user friendly," we've been forced to de-emphasize the Ten Commandments. It's not just the commandments themselves, which lay out a life style not exactly in vogue. The very idea of God giving orders (without our having a say) doesn't sit well. It's offensive. I suppose you had to be there, at Sinai, to catch the wonder of it. Somewhere we've lost our sense of place. We would prefer to make our own rules, be our own God. That's a far cry from the people of Israel, who, when they heard the thunder and the trumpet call, and saw the lightning and smoke on the mountain, were terrified, and backed away. "You speak to us," they said to Moses, "and we will listen, but don't let God speak to us, or we will die."

And right there was born the idea of an intermediary. Someone (living or dead) who stands between the people and God: a priest, a minister, the Virgin Mary, some saint, a witch doctor, an angel, whatever. The need for intermediaries was obvious to ancient peoples. They feared God, and trembled in his presence. His appearance, as on Mt. Sinai, was ominous and dreadful. All ancient religion was born of fear, so it seemed good for there be a buffer between humankind and God, a priesthood, to speak to God for us and to us for God. Intermediaries.

It's difficult to fit such a God, dictatorial and so terrifying that intermediaries were needed -- difficult to fit such a God into our modern world. People today are yearning for God, but they are reluctant to cede him authority. We are ready but also hesitant. Because we know that acknowledging such a God would be like joining the army: there would be no going back, and there would be orders to obey and consequences if we didn't. Who wants to sign up for that? Can't we have a smaller God, one not so frightening, a god more like us? Better yet, can't we have many gods, no one of which is so frightening, gods that can be appeased one at a time?

We already have that. We live in what Pope John Paul calls "a culture of death." The sanctity of life, where life is understood to be created by God and belonging to God, is threatened. Tribes massacring tribes, nations fighting bloody wars, prisoners being executed, babies being killed before they are born, Dr. Kavorkian running around playing God. It is a culture of death, and of the things that lead to death (traditionally called "sin"). But there are few objections raised. Yet we know, from experience, that when one human life is expendable all human life becomes expendable. First the Jews, you remember, then the gypsies, then the Poles, and the Checks, and the Slavs. We learned from the Nazis that murder is contagious. That's why there's a commandment against it. Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.

We are surrounded, just as the ancient Jews were, just as the early Christians were, with polytheism: people worshipping many gods, convenient gods, small gods, gods that lead only to destruction. But we are called to worship one God, who is not so convenient, and to lay aside all others. That's the first commandment, forbidding idols, other gods, false gods, and, in a way, it summarizes all the rest. For all these other things -- another's possessions, another's wife, abusing God's name, doing as we please on the Sabbath, lying -- all these things can be thought of as idols, false gods -- on whom we waste our love, and to whom we become enslaved, and in the service of whom we die.

So faithful people today have a difficult choice. We can succumb to the ways of the world (go along, and get along), or we can sign up with this difficult God, the God of the Ten Commandments, who will tell us, not ask us, how we should live, and who will permit no other affections. I think we're still afraid of that God. Like those Israelites at the foot of Mt. Sinai, we back away from his presence. Maybe their idea of an intermediary isn't so bad after all. And, by the way, we have one.

"If any man sin, we have an advocate (a lawyer, an intermediary) with the Father, even Jesus Christ the righteous." According to the Book of Hebrews, Jesus is "our great high priest." No more need for ritual sacrifice. He is the sacrifice, given in love. He is a kindly high priest, who understands our weaknesses, tells us not to be afraid, takes us by the hand and leads us up to the throne of God -- where we discover God to be not a tyrant, but a Father, whose rules are there for our own good, whose laws are, in fact, gracious, and whose love for us is without limit or condition.

It is traditional, before communion, to read the rules, the Ten Commandments. They remind us where the need for all this (the table, the bread, the wine) -- where the need for it began. In the Garden of Eden, with God's rule and our refusal to obey. Then followed our spiritual banishment, marked by self-hatred, fear of God, and desperate efforts to appease an angry God with sacrifice. But we could not escape this culture of death. until a new high priest came, even Jesus Christ. In his birth, death and resurrection, we believe, he released us from the power of sin and death (from which we could not otherwise have escaped), gave us new freedom, new birth, indeed new lives. That's why the most important word in any Communion service is a word of thanks. New life is what we are celebrating when we do this thing of ours. It is an act of thankful remembrance.