This sermon was preached at Glenwood & Canoe Ridge Lutheran Churches, Decorah, Iowa on March 4, 2018. If you’d prefer to listen to it, find it at https://soundcloud.com/stacey-nalean-carlson/.
At choir rehearsal recently, our director referenced an article she had just read about how our sense of rhythm has been diminished over the years. “Just think about your grandparents and great-grandparents,” she said. “Think about the rhythmic chores embedded in their daily lives: churning the butter, kneading the dough, raking the yard. Now, we blow our leaves, and we buy our bread and butter. And along the way, as a society, we’ve lost that sense of rhythm in our daily lives.”
As I’ve been thinking about our readings for today (Exodus 20:1-17 and John 2:13-22), this idea that we’ve lost that embodied rhythm keeps coming to mind.
The Ten Commandments begin with a word of introduction that sets the tone for everything to come. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:2).
Imagine what all those years of slavery did to God’s people. Imagine how they would have lost the rhythm God intended for their lives. Imagine how, instead, their bodies and spirits and minds would have been shaped and molded by the rhythm of slavery.
In my mind, I’m hearing the rhythm of life under Pharoah as a dull, steady, driving beat. Relentless, unchanging. Never any deviation. Monotonous. Devoid of life.
In contrast, the rhythm of life with God is syncopated, lively. Sometimes slow and smooth. Sometimes fast and exhilarating. Always inviting movement, dance, expression.
This time spent in the wilderness is time for God to re-introduce the people to the rhythm of life with God, the rhythm of freedom–so vastly different from the rhythm of slavery.
God instills this rhythm of life in a newly freed people with the Ten Commandments-not a list of dos and don’ts intended to be as enslaving as the demands of Pharoah, but a way of abundant life, a way to flourish as a community.
Hebrew Bible scholar, Walter Bruegemann*, describes the gift of these commandments so beautifully:
“The Ten Commandments are strategies for staying emancipated once you get away from Pharaoh. This new strategy, first of all, says you have to honor God–that’s the first three commandments–to the exclusion of every idol, every ‘ism’ such as racism, or sexism, or nationalism, or the worship of stuff…The last five commandments are all about the neighbor and treating neighbors with dignity–not to violate the neighbor for the sake of greed. And between these two commandments of honoring God and taking the neighbor seriously, at the center of the Ten Commandments, is Sabbath day. Keep Sabbath: take a break from the rat-race of busyness and exhaustion and do not let Pharaoh define your life.”
God’s people spent 40 years in the wilderness, learning to embody this new rhythm. But once the people entered the promised land, over time they forgot what God had taught them. The rhythm was lost again. The law, intended for life, became legalism instead. The temple–intended to be the place where God danced with God’s people–became a
marketplace for the sake of fulfilling the law’s demands.
A new exodus was needed, a new movement from slavery to freedom, a new opportunity for God to instill life-giving rhythm in God’s people.
Enter Jesus.
In John’s gospel, Jesus goes to the temple almost first thing. This is a zealous Jesus, speaking of the temple of his body, determined to re-set the rhythm of God’s people.
In the body of Jesus, the enslaved are set free. In the body of Jesus, God’s people encounter God, in the flesh, with hands to heal and feet to move to the rhythm of God’s grace.
A person, not a place, is where we experience God, where we see God, where God is made known. And that person is Jesus.
In the first chapter of John’s gospel, he tells us that “the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace.” (John 1:16-17). Jesus fulfilled the law–loving God and loving neighbor perfectly–so that we can experience the law as gift, as opportunity to flourish as a community, as a way to embrace abundant life and move to God’s rhythm.
In elementary school music class, I remember my teacher tapping out a beat and inviting us to listen well: “Step to my beat. Listen with care. When I say stop, freeze right there.”
The season of Lent is a perfect time to listen with care to the rhythm God wants for us. Are we living according to the rhythm of the Ten Commandments or are we sacrificing Sabbath rest for unceasing production? Are we moving to the beat of Jesus or are we preoccupied with fear and scarcity?
According to Bruegemann, “Lent involves intentionality and discipline…It’s not about giving up chocolate, even if that’s a good idea. It is about giving up the expectations of Pharaoh for greed and ideology and anti-neighborliness and exhaustion.”
God, through the body of Jesus, has freed us from all that would attempt to enslave us. Let us stay emancipated, moving to God’s rhythm, and watch the world change. Amen.
*http://day1.org/8145 walter_brueggemann_strategies_for_staying_emancipated
I love this Stacey! As always, your words are like gold. (And- this elementary music teacher does that same game to teach children to move to the beat!)
Thank you, Leslie! I love that you use that same game in your teaching!