September 14, 2025 – Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Deuteronomy 5.17-20

Matthew 5. Selected verses

Alternative Commandments

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

When I was in college, the Friday after Thanksgiving was reserved for getting together with old high school friends, and a pick-up game of football was always on the agenda.  One of those afternoons found us playing behind our old high school and as the day was growing dark, one of us lobbed a long pass in the general direction of the end zone, where the ball was snagged by a rather tall maple tree.  We stood underneath for a while, wondering how in the world we were going to get the ball back when it came loose of its own accord and fell into my friend Alan’s arms – for some reason, I had multiple friends named Alan in those days.  Alan smiled, raised a finger and said, “Eleventh Commandment:  God helps those who help themselves,” and ran the ball into the end zone for the winning score.  Years later I recalled that afternoon when I read an article that stated, among other things, that more than fifty percent of Americans surveyed believe the phrase “God helps those who help themselves” is found somewhere in the Bible.  I could not help but wonder if Alan, who went on to a successful career as a writer, had anything to do with that.

I wonder what other alternative commandments we might imagine.  Richard Dawkins, a former Oxford biologist and notorious agnostic, was nonetheless a moralist and came up with a few of his own, the first of which actually comes from the Bible, which is the Golden Rule, “Do to others what you would have them do to you.”  Dawkins also suggested commandments like “Live life with a sense of joy and wonder,” and, one of my favorites, “Question Everything.”  Other writers, wary of all the negativity of all the Bible’s “Thou shalt nots,” recast the original ten in a more positive light, replacing such commandments as You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, You shall not covet and You shall not kill  with Honor and respect the name of the Lord your God; Respect whatever belongs to your neighbor; Honor, value and maintain the lives of all living beings.  Since behavioralists tell us that people tend to respond better to positive reinforcement than to scolding and reproach, perhaps reframing them like this might find wider agreement and better behavior than the originals.

Then again, when it comes to alternative commandments, we’d be hard pressed to find a better example than the one Jesus left us in the Sermon on the Mount.  Time and again, as we heard just a few moments ago, Jesus took an old commandment and turned it into something new.  He didn’t make them any easier, by a long shot; as theologian Walter Brueggeman wrote, “There is nothing innocuous or safe about the gospel; Jesus was not crucified because he was a nice man.”  If anything, he made them even more difficult, and more uncomfortable.  “You have heard it said…” Jesus began, but then twisted it around with, “But I tell you…”  And each time he tightens the moral bond so that avoiding adultery is no longer sufficient; we need to root lust and licentious ideas from our hearts as well, as President Jimmy Carter once publicly confessed.  Likewise it is not enough to refrain from killing, because anger and resentment carry the same proscription.  And loving your neighbor?  Jesus declared it only half-measure; you haven’t really done anything commendable until you love your enemy as well.  If you think the Ten Commandments are demanding, you haven’t heard anything until you’ve heard the Sermon on the Mount.  Maybe this is what ought to be posted in school classrooms across the country.

For Jesus, these are not meant so much as rules to be followed as they are meant to outline ways for living together in love.  Which is to say, it is not about living to the letter of the law as it is about embodying its spirit.  So you haven’t murdered anyone lately, you’ve been faithful to your partner, you keep your language clean and you haven’t used God to justify your questionable behavior; are we supposed to get a medal for this?  Sacred community is not maintained by obeying all the right rules and coloring between the lines, it is about treasuring and treating the people we know and the people we do not know with the same unconditional love that God has poured into our spirits in creating this sacred community.  Because folks, community is fragile.  It requires our attention, our care, our hard work and our love to keep it from fraying.

And you don’t need me to tell you how fractured and frayed our sense of common community has become in recent days.  Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that it has been fraying around the edges for a while, and the events of the past week have revealed the extent of the damage already done.  As I wrote to you on Friday, seventeen Americans died by gun violence this past Wednesday.  Only one of them provoked a reaction across the nation and beyond.  And I cannot help but wonder which is more outrageous, the fact that seventeen people died or that only one of them sparked horror and fury.   If you ask me, the shooting deaths of seventeen of our fellow citizens is far more outrageous than the death of just one, but then again, nobody asked me.  Beyond that one death itself, the shooting also provoked hateful accusations, finger-pointing, name-calling, slander, calls for revenge, and what is worse, much of it occurred before anyone knew the identity or the motive of the shooter.  This is why I say the fault lines of a fractious community already existed just below the surface, because so many were so quick to cast blame at others, regardless of ideology.

Kevin Cullen wrote a heartfelt column in this morning’s Boston Globe; I recommend it to your reading.  A long-time reporter and columnist, Cullen earned his chops covering “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland during the 1970s and ’80s, in the midst of the visceral hatred between the Irish Republicans and the Loyalists.  It was an irrational hatred, with each side unquestionably certain of the righteousness of its own cause.  The death of any enemy, soldier or civilian, was celebrated.  If two on one side were killed, then three on the other side must also die.  I won’t describe the entire piece, but here is the sentence that struck me:  “I have seen what happens when people are so convinced of the righteousness of their side that they dehumanize the other side to the point that not only are they unmoved when someone from the other side is murdered, they actually celebrate it.”

And I think this goes right to the heart of Jesus’ attempts to modify, or perhaps clarify, the sixth commandment.  A bullet took the life of a single individual, but the subsequent anger and animosity and fury and rage that followed in its wake have infected thousands.  You have heard that it was said to the people of long ago, You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgement.  But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgement.  This is a much more difficult commandment to live by, and we have seen and experienced some of the reasons why it is so difficult with a numbing clarity.

You may have heard the remarks of Utah Governor Spencer Cox on Friday.  The Republican Governor named the national sin for what it is and minced no words.  “We can return violence with violence,” he said, “we can return hate with hate, and that’s the problem with political violence – it metastasizes because we can always point the finger at the other side.”  He went on to underscore the necessity of responding in a different way, one that recognizes differences without demonizing the other.  While for some rage and violence appear to be the only options, he called for an embrace of our differences and the possibility of choosing compassion over anger, of choosing community over division.  As you have heard me say many times, it is up to us to tear down walls that others prefer to reinforce, to build bridges others would destroy.  I think this is at the heart of the national anxiety and it is a faithful way through the present crisis.

Jesus understood this necessity.  Just before he reimagined the ten commandments he reminded his hearers, “Do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them… for unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the realm of God.”  Remember, the scribes and the Pharisees were experts at keeping the letter of the law:  You shall not murder, neither shall you commit adultery, neither shall you steal, neither shall you bear false witness against your neighbor.  They had these down cold.  But Jesus insisted we can do better – we can do better and we can and must go deeper than this.  We can fulfill both the letter and the spirit of these words, and by doing so remain faithful to the law and the prophets.  And we will do this by creating and maintaining community.  We will do this by being intentional about relationships.  We will do this by creating new relationships, by being authentic and honest with one another and by being true to our word.

As it turns out, Jesus’ alternative commandments are in reality the original Ten Commandments at their very best.