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One of the greatest social upheavals that I have lived through has been what one could call the systematic removal of Christian symbols and practices from North American public culture. Some call it secularization. Others call it pluralisation. Others call it privatization. I’m sure there are other words for it, but no matter what you call it, the fact today is that when we walk into a courtroom, we’re not going to come face to face with the Ten Commandments. All of those e-mail spam campaigns to save the Ten Commandments just didn’t work. There was a cultural tsunami happening and if you’ve happened to see any video footage of a tsunami you know the question you are faced with isn’t “how do we save what we have” but rather “how do we live now that it’s gone”. So, in the wake of this cultural tsunami that has removed Christian “religion” (and notice I’m not saying faith) from North American public culture the question we Christians have to ask is “How do we live now that it’s gone?”
To answer that question maybe it would do us well to ask what the Ten Commandments are in the first place. If we look at them in the Hebrew language we find that they aren’t really commandments. They are statements of reality stated negatively. They describe the way the people who owe their lives to God are to be by saying what they are not to be. Because the Lord delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and they owe him their lives they will not worship anything other than him. They will keep a Sabbath. They will honour their parents. They will not do those things that destroy trust among people, you know, murder, stealing, adultery, coveting, those sorts of things. The Ten Commandments weren’t simply a moral code that God commanded the Israelites to obey. They were to be the Israelite way of life, a way of life shared among a particular people in whose lives God had really acted to save; and here’s the important thing to note, a way of life that gave image to the very nature of God. God told them not to make any little idols of him because the way they were to live together would be his image.
It is interesting to note how in ancient Israel the way of life brought forth from the Ten Commandments got overshadowed by a big business religion centrally focused in a very wealthy priesthood who controlled nearly everything from a great big building in Jerusalem. It was supposed to be that if you wanted to know what the God who inhabited the Jerusalem temple looked like you just had to look at how his people lived together so genuinely and peacefully. But what you really saw was oddly dressed hypocrites who grew rich off the spiritual needs of God’s people. It’s no wonder Jesus was so angry with them.
Well, pushing this into our “since Jesus” context, the Apostle John gives us a new spin on this idea that the way we live together shows what God is like in 1 John 4:12-21 where he writes: “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them…We love because he first loved us. Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”
Paul also sets us in this direction at Romans 13:8-10: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal; you shall not covet’; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” So for ancient Israel and for us in the church today, if the Lord God who delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt is our God too and who has saved us from sin and death, then we fulfill the Law and give image to God by being a people who love one another and our neighbours as ourselves.
So, to answer the question of how we Christians are to live now that a cultural tsunami has washed away Christian religion from our public culture, well maybe it’s by getting back to the foolishness of the cross, the way of self-denial and loving our neighbours as ourselves that marked the earliest Christian churches. Christianity in North America has been little more than a religion that served the public good. We are guilty of simply being good people who are blessed with comfort who do what good people are supposed to do and that’s go to church so God will know whose side we’re on. That’s a start, maybe, but it resembles little of what Jesus meant when he said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the Gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the world and forfeit their life?”
That’s a good question for us. Have we forfeited the new life we have in union with Christ Jesus by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit so that we share in his fellowship with God the Father because we have resigned ourselves to believe that God has blessed our particular culture and we in turn practice our religion by being good, moral law-abiding, church-going citizens. That’s the way of religion not the way of the cross. We like to believe that we are not bad people but how many of us try to live on less in this materialistic and consumeristic culture so that we are able to give more towards feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, and clothing the naked. How many of us turn off our TV’s or put aside our leisure reading so that we may know the joy of prayer and reading the Bible? How many of us are too busy to gather with our brothers and sisters in Christ for Bible study or to serve in his church?
I could let this guilt trip go on. It’s Lent, the time of year we do this sort of thing. But I’ll end with a Jesus quote. Jesus said, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” The way of the cross; it may be foolishness even scandalous in the eyes of our culture, but it’s where the Triune God of grace abides and offers his rest. Give it a try. Amen.
