Our Lady of Lourdes Church and School

Last week’s first reading from Genesis gave us insights into the relationship that God had with Abraham, our “Father in faith”. Today’s first reading engages us with another narrative that tries to help us enter into the mystery of who God is for us. Exodus 20 narrates the commandments of God, popularly referred to as the Ten Commandments. However, if we pay attention to the way in which the chapter begins, we are given an insight into the context for our understanding the commandments.  

It starts with a simple statement: “I, the Lord, am your God.” Now we might be inclined to take this statement as a given, but being honest with ourselves, we know that sometimes in our lives we find ourselves torn between different priorities, and the “Lord, our God” can be made to take something of a “back seat”. We might be tempted at times in our lives to place some other “god” first in our lives. And so the authors of this scripture passage take nothing for granted: “I, the Lord, am your God” and in case you might be inclined to forget who I am to you, I am the God “who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.” I am the God who is with you in all the circumstances of your life. I am the God who accompanies you to the darkest places of your life. I am the God who stands beside you in the horrors of your life. I am the God who stands with you and who calls you into freedom and dignity whenever any circumstance or person or thing would deprive you of your dignity or your freedom as a child of God. I am the God who will walk beside you from whatever place sucks the life out of you, and will accompany you into a place where you will thrive and flourish, becoming for the world all that you can be.

“You shall not have other gods besides me.” I am the one and only true God. There is none other who calls you into being, who dreams for your good, who blesses and graces you, who gifts you with all you are and have. All that I am and do, I am and do for you. I gave you everything you needed for your good. I gave you everything I could possibly give, up to and including the life of my only Son, freely given that you might live. Now what will you do with that life? You may follow other ‘gods’ in your life. You may wander into the influence of their false promises and attractive illusions. But none will gift you with the fulfillment of your own heart’s deepest desire, which is my own desire for you, a desire I breathed into your soul from the first moment of your being. No idols of your making, no beauty of the earth, no wonder of creation can grace you with life as I do.

For all these reasons, and more, we respect the name and the truth of who God is for us. When we abuse the name of God we offend God who is beautiful and true and good. We disfigure what is beautiful, we deny truth and we detract from good, instead settling for less in life. This is also part of why we honor God with our rest from human labor. We set aside time in our week to be completely ourselves, as God made us, and to call to mind, or to reflect upon, or be mindful of, the goodness of all that God has done for us in our lives. Sabbath is our commitment to being human before God.

These first three of the commandments circumscribe our relationship with God. The remaining commandments focus on our relationship with one another. How we conduct ourselves before God is reflected in and is intrinsically bound up in our relationships with one another. We cannot be faithful in our relationship with God and be unfaithful in our relationships with one another. Neither, I suspect, can we be faithful in our relationships with one another while unfaithful in our relationship with God.

These ten commandments are a wonderful gift to us for our entering into the fullness of life. We might well appreciate why one author has called them the “Ten Words of God for Life.”