2009 Cottesbrooke : 15 March 

Help us Lord to become masters of ourselves,  so that we may become the servants of others. Take our lips and speak through them take our minds and think through them, take our bodies and have them work for you.  Amen.   



Some years ago an enterprising  radio programme presenter  telephoned a number of clergymen and asked them to list the Ten Commandments.  It turned out that few could do so correctly,  at least there and then.  It must have been a bit embarrassing.  But, to be fair, they are not something one thinks about every day and having in several instances been built into the law of the land for hundreds of years, in many respects one no longer  regards some of them as God's commandments.  I wonder if The Queen knows the dates of all her predecessors. 

The Ten are straightforward  and  memorable  : but in some cases not easy to keep. In they 21[st] century, they need some re-interpretation 

Some have come to be more or less ignored  more or less ignored swamped by modern morality.   I have  in mind particularly  the third  Commandment not to take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,  seems to have fallen into disuse or, rather, is transgressed so often that we have virtually ceased to notice.   Who can claim that in a moment of  frustration or anger  the phrase  " For God's sake"  or one of many such varied callings upon God's name, or that of Jesus,  has never slipped out. 



Three commandments   -  those against murder, theft and false witness are part of the law of every land and transgressors  will land up in court.   Others, in the West at least, like the 3[rd] commandment,  have fallen by the wayside more recently.   Keeping the Sabbath as a day of rest finally went under when powerful interests like the Football League and  supermarkets decided they wanted to stay open on a Sunday and the government of the day caved in to pressure.  

Adultery? Always a difficult one throughout the ages, particularly for monarchs.   In the last century our political leaders certainly set the pace: Asquith, Lloyd George, Ramsay Macdonald, Johns Major and Prescott to name a few. Without wanting to sound sanctimonious,  adultery has become part of  human life almost since the beginning of time, little more in more recent years than a useful excuse for divorce.      

Covetousness, the 10[th] Commandment.   Well,  envying the Joneses is a national past time.  Politcial platforms have been built on it. There are those who have felt.  however, that this commandment deals not with acts like the other nine but with that inner mental state that is a source of wrong and they argue that a Commandment that suggests so high a standard of morals is out of place among the ten.  Again others have said that it really means "defraud not", somewhat easier to comply with.   

As for honouring one's father & mother, that to has a somewhat dated air about it, I fear.  Old age outside the family  -  consigned to an old people's home  -  is all to often the fate of the parent.  

So they have become -  how shall I put it ?  -  ragged at the edges.  Yet these commandments as a whole are hugely important as one of the historic building blocks  on which our Judeo-Christian civilisation has been built.   Inscribed on the walls of many churches, they have been an integral part of Christian education for hundreds of years,  even dramatised by Hollywood.  The image of bearded, wild eyed, Charlton Heston carrying the tablets of stone down from Mount Sinai still lingers in the imagination.   

The Ten Commandments, nonetheless,  do give us as Christians some firm guidelines.  "Thou  shalt  not" presupposes that if one does the result will be judged a sin with consequences.   From Sodom and Gomorrah to Balshazzar's Feast,  the Old Testament contains some pretty grim accounts of what happened to those who violated the Commandments. 

In our more relaxed,  less censorious, days  however, the idea of an Old Testament God visiting punishment for sin not only on the sinner but also on many future generations, is not one that we wish to contemplate or accept.  Hell and damnation are out of fashion, except perhaps with  Dr. Paisley and some of his supporters in Northern Ireland or on the wilder shores of Scots' Presbyterianism.   Christ's descent in to Hell has disappeared from the Apostles Creed in Common Worship.  The Triumph of Hell, as in the painter Hieronymous Bosch's vision, no longer strikes a chord.  If we think of hell at all, it tends to be something more  mundane,  like Heathrow Airport on a Bank Holiday.

Moreover, in to-day's Western civilisation the biblical penalties of death or mutilation for theft, murder and sometimes adultery are no longer acceptable.  It's now the sharia law in some countries that echos those penalties, which we now rightly regard as barbaric.   

Rather, we prefer to bear in mind that true repentance for transgression  of commandments, as Our Lord taught us, will bring forgiveness for our sins and we are enjoined to forgive those who sin against us. We tend to forget, however, what He had to say about the chaff being burned in unquenchable fire. 

Transgression,  however,  is difficult  to handle.  The political emphasis swings from one side to the other.  Tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime is one of those phrases that will for ever be associated, ironically I fear, with Tony Blair.  Since 1997 Parliament has enacted well over 1000 offences that are punishable by imprisonment.   Lock `em up and throw away the key! Three strikes and you're out for life is the American way in some states. That's put 2 million people in prison there and the figures is still rising.    

Here in Britain we have the largest prison population in Europe. Yet we have released murderers in the interests of peace in Northern Ireland and other transgressors  because we now have no room for them in gaol.  Clearly something is not working.  

So where does that leave us with those Ten Commandments ? 

First, and most relevant to our lives as Christians is the summary of the Commandments as laid down by Jesus.   Forget the, Leviticus, sharia law aspects,  for want of a better phrase, and focus on the main things.  

To  " love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind" .  But loving God requires very considerable faith : we've never seen him nor if precedent if anything ot go by, are we likely to.  We can never discern his/ her purposes.  So it's hard to love someone with whom one has never had face to face contact.  But I believe it becomes easier, at least it is for me, if we believe, if we recognise,  that God for his part loves us and has a plan for our lives.   We are not just a collection of atoms and water sitting on a tiny planet in a universe that is only one of many such, an insignificant spec in the cosmos.  And if we have that faith in God's purpose for us, we can then reciprocate that love to Him.  

Then there is Christ's second commandment  for us, that we should love our neighbour as ourselves.  That's tough as well.  Paedophiles ?  Drunks at the wheel who kill innocents?  Harold Shipman?  Well most people want to put them in Hieronymus Bosch country.  I won't go that far: but those transgressors one has to leave to the judgement of man and the penalties prescribed by law.  It's towards those who have never had that feeling that anyone loved them  -  in the way that most of us here this morning  ( I hope )  have felt love, who are, I feel,  our neighbours in this context. . 

In a few weeks time  Chrystal and I will be going to an adult baptism,  a first for both of us.  The man concerned, now aged 44, had a checkered career, with all kinds of problems: abuse as a child, children's home,  drugs, alcohol and prison.  He was angry, frustrated, alienated from his family, more often than not  homeless.  But two years ago, after some years of silence,  he rang me out of the blue and told me that he had  turned his life around and became a Christian.   Quite simply, he discovered that God loved him and had a plan for his life, and my goodness, has he been working to fulfil it.  

Seeing the transformation in his life, in his mood, in the way he looks at others, has been a heartening and revelatory  experience.  As Christians then we can do no better than try to bring as many of our "neighbours" into a similar relationship with God.  It won't work every time: but we can keep trying. I have in mind the ideal of the Parson in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. 
  
                    " Holy and virtuous, he was, but then
                       Never contemptuous of sinful men
                Never disdainful, never too proud and fine....
                   His business was to show a fair behaviour
               And draw men thus to Heaven and their saviour".
                                       
Just keep trying. Jesus' two commandments  show us the way. 


"Teach us good lord to serve thee as thou  deserves.............."






 






