1st Commandment

Sermon by Rev. David Roth

Sermon: What if you could be free from attachment to possessions? What if you could be free from fantasies about other people? Or the need for recognition and reward? What if you could be free from the need to be right, or by a bodily appetite? What if you could be truly, deeply, peaceful and content- even joyful? Not at some far off time in the future, or maybe after you die, but right now in your daily life. What if you had complete control over how you acted, and reacted to things? What if you weren’t shoved around by negative emotions, or held in patterns of thinking by obsessive thoughts? What if there was a program that taught you and led you away from hurt and into healing? Would you sign up for it? Would you sign up for that program?

Well, part of you would want to, because there’s a part of us that wants to do the right thing. But there’s another part of us that would resist, saying “I’ll be okay by myself; I don’t need that.” We get kind of comfortable in our own dysfunctional behavior because we’re used to it.

Today we’re beginning the course, Rise Above It: Spiritual Development Through the Ten Commandments. What is the “it” that’s referred to in Rise Above It? What is it? Well, as the Writings for the New Church say, it’s your proprium, or what is your own, your own sense of self. It is the nasty side of ourselves. It is us when we’re led by ourselves, instead of by the Lord. We have an it (or proprium) but we don’t have to be it. We don’t have to listen to it. We don’t have to be led by it. The Lord can create in us a heavenly proprium, or a heavenly sense of self, when we follow His program. In fact the Writings for the New Church say that the old self has to die before the new one can be conceived. But the Lord invites us to work with Him. He says, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle, and lowly in heart. And you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

Can you imagine the Lord with all of His resources, which are a lot – all that’s good and true, loving and wise- working for you? The Writings for the New Church say that the Lord’s yoke is easy and His burden is light because we are led by the Lord, and not by ourselves just to the extent that we resist the evils that flow forth from the love of self and love of the world. The Lord is then fighting for us, and He is resisting these evils in us and removing them from us. So it’s a complete change, a complete reversal of the operating system by which we’re running.

Well, the Lord speaks to us in His Word about how He will do all this. He gives us the instructions. What He said was love the Lord your God with all of your heart, your soul, your mind and your strength and your neighbor the same as yourself. This is the message of the Lord’s Word. That’s what it’s all about.

This same message shows up in all the world’s religions. The rules are the same for everybody. And the Lord gives more specific details in different places. Like the Ten Commandments are more specifically describing to us how it is that we can love God and how we can love one another. Then we find where the Writings for the New Church say that the Ten Commandments contain everything to do with love to God, and everything to do with love towards the neighbor. So if you study these ten laws it will tell you exactly how you can live your life to be someone who loves God and loves your neighbor.

If you want more specifics than that, which are good, the Lord gives you His Old Testament, or His old promise, that has more details, and His New Testament, or new promise, that has more details. And then He’s revealed the Heavenly Doctrines for the New Church, or the Writings for the New Church, which give lots of details and expounds the inner meaning of these commandments, so that we have a whole arsenal of information if we need it.

Let’s go back to that map, for a minute. You can imagine, maybe, the basic Two Great Commandments of loving the Lord your God and loving your neighbor as yourself as giving a global view of what we’re supposed to do. If you focus in on a specific country, that might be taking it down to the Ten Commandments, breaking it down with more specifics. Well, if you go down to the state level, that might be like looking at the Scriptures. Or if you want to get down to a city and look at all the specific streets and signs, and so on, that could be like the Heavenly Doctrines, with all the details. All those working together could give us a full view of what it is that we can do.

When was the last time that you really stopped and examined a map? Maybe when you were lost. Maybe before you were going to go on a trip. Many people find maps fascinating. I love looking at maps. I think part of it is because they give you a sense of where you are, and where you can go, and what your world is like, and where you are in reference to everything else. And it also shows you how to get to where you want to go. So it’s too bad you can’t just stop down to the map store and say, “Hey, I’d like to have a map that shows me how to get to the kingdom of heaven. And I’d like to find balance, I’d like to find peace, I’d like to find wisdom, and love and kindness. Where’s the map that leads there?”

Well, they don’t sell those kinds of maps there. But we already know where the kingdom of heaven is. The Lord says it’s inside you. The kingdom of God does not come with observation. Nor will they say, “here it is”, or “there it is”, for indeed the kingdom of God is within you.

So the Kingdom of God is inside – it’s something that’s inside of us as we live according to the Lord’s commandments. And even though it can be right there, inside of us, it’s hard to find it. But there is a map. And in the New Church the map is the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Writings for the New Church, or the Heavenly Doctrines. And other religions have other maps, but they all have one part that’s common, and those are the Ten Commandments. We’re told that all true religions use them, or have a slight variation of those commandments. And all major religions live by them. Why? Because they’re true, because they work and because they’re Divinely given, by the Lord. The Creator of the whole system has said to us, and to all religions, “These are the ways that you can get to heaven, how you can live a life that opens you up to loving God and loving your neighbor. They also remove hellish attitudes inside of yourself, and open up heaven.

You can think of them as perhaps so many steps in the process of how we change. For the children of Israel, the giving of the Ten Commandments is the pinnacle, I think, of the Exodus story. It’s a transitionary time because up to that point the Lord was leading them out of slavery. He was doing everything for them. He was saying, “I’m delivering you out of bondage into freedom.” But now He is saying, “I’m giving you the tools, so that you can start to internalize these and start to live by them. And I’ll start to lead you from within, start to lead you from conscience.” And we can internalize the presence of the Lord. Think about it as children, finally getting to the point where they can start to make decisions by themselves, and enter into adulthood – it’s that point where they have to start internalizing and making choices for themselves.

Helen Keller, who read Swedenborg’s Writings in Braille, and was a member of the New Church, writes that “we are not born again suddenly as some people seem to think. It is a change that comes over us as we hope, and aspire, and persevere in the way of the Divine commandments.”

So the giving of the Ten Commandments is couched in the Exodus story because it’s a journey – it’s a journey of our escape from bondage, evil and disorder and its unhappiness – the unhappiness that comes with that – to a life of freedom, a life of joy and goodness and love. And what it requires is that we actually walk, we actually take a journey.

The Lord begins the Ten Commandments by identifying Himself. He says, “Remember how I brought you out of Egypt, how powerful that was? It’s time for you to do something in response now. And this is what he says, specifically: “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle’s wings, and brought you to Myself. Now, therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you will be a special treasure to me above all people, for all the earth is Mine.” When He said that the people responded by saying, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.”

So what you see there is a covenant form. We have two parties agreeing on their responsibility. And that’s why they’re called the Ten Commandments. They’re called the “Covenant”. They’re the terms of a contract between the Lord and His people. The Lord is promising us that, “I will lead you, I will protect you, I’ll comfort you. And in response to it you need to obey these laws.” And the same is true for us. The story about the Ten Commandments and the children of Israel isn’t something that the Lord gave to a certain people and said, “The rest of you, don’t worry about it.” These are for all of us for all time. And they’re given in two parts, or two tablets. The Writings talk about how one tablet defines our relationship to the Lord and the other defines how we are to deal with each other. And these commandments cover it all.

So if you’re looking for the answer to the meaning to life, or how is it that I can change my life, how can I get to heaven, the Lord is saying “Look right here.” The Writings for the New Church say that the evils enumerated in the Decalogue include all the evils that can ever exist. So if you’re thinking, “Well, I have certain behaviors that don’t really fall under the umbrella of the Ten Commandments”, the Lord is saying, “No, that’s not possible. Everything you could possibly do, I address by these laws. If you keep those laws, it will take care of those issues.”

He says again that we are made “a heaven” by the Lord. Consequently we are snatched out of hell by the Lord, and raised up into heaven to the Lord, not immediately, but mediately – that is, with means. And the means are the commandments just mentioned, by which the Lord leads those who wish to be led. Notice that if you wish to be led, this is the means by which the Lord leads you.

Again, we read, “Religion with a person consists in a life according to the Divine commandments which are contained in summary in the Decalogue. One that does not live according to these can have no religion.”

And then again, “Everyone who makes these commandments the principles of their religion becomes a citizen and an inhabitant of heaven.”

It’s no wonder that the Lord gave them in such a dramatic way. He gave them in such a dramatic way to say that these are not just civil or moral laws. These are Divine laws and if you keep these laws your life will be aligned with what the Lord wills for us. And that was very powerful.

In fact, I remember a similar – not exact, but similar – experience when I was at a camp for teens in Canada a few years ago. We were trying to re-enact the Exodus story for the children in a type of evening service where they were actually going to go on this path and have a sense that they were enslaved, and a sense that they were led out, and crossing the Red Sea, and getting manna in the wilderness, and so on. And the final part of it was to lead them to this hill where they were going to hear the Ten Commandments given. And we didn’t think we were going to be able to do the service that day because there was a huge storm. But right before the service was about to happen the storm had cleared and blown off. So it actually created a nice Red Sea for us in this gully that we were going to be walking through. They could feel the moisture under their feet.

I remember as we were walking on our pathway down to the place to hear the commandments, the storm had moved off and you could just see the lightning, but you couldn’t quite hear it. You could see flashes in the clouds, these dark clouds. It had this sense that the Lord was there, and He was delivering these commandments to us. It was very powerful, and I actually felt, “Wow, I should really obey these laws!” And you could imagine being with the children of Israel sitting at the foot of the mountain, thinking, “Yeah, I should definitely listen to the Lord.” This is very powerful. I had that sense, and felt very obedient for a while. And of course that tends to fade, as is normal – like miracles that tend to compel for a while, and then you kind of go back to your old habits. Unless you’re really working to apply them.

The Lord gave them in a very dramatic fashion to really get it through to us what these are. “I’m giving these to you because this is the key – these are the keys – to your spiritual life.” So if we apply them we can start to make choices that help us to rise above the promptings of our lower nature. We can start to separate from that old self, that proprium. Think about it: if you were going to climb a literal mountain, a real mountain, you wouldn’t be able to take everything with you. You’d have to let go of certain things. So you can’t bring your car with you, and you can’t take your house. You can’t take your wardrobe or your stereo or your CD collection. You just can’t take it. You have to take some provisions, but you’re going to have to let go of certain things in order to climb that mountain. You can think about that as attachments to worldly things. It’s the Lord saying “If you get so focused on worldly things as most important, you’re not going to be able to rise above those things. You have to lose attachment to it, let go of them.”

I’ll give you an example of this. We had, many years ago, a family visiting our house. And they had a little girl who was probably about three at that time, I guess, and she was very possessive of her toys. She wouldn’t share them, and she was hoarding them all together. She carried all these things up to a landing on the stairs. She was holding on to them all, she could barely manage them all. “These are mine. You can’t play with me.” And it’s a beautiful picture in my mind of how we get so attached to things, and it prevents us from really enjoying life. She was so focused on grasping onto these things that she couldn’t play with the kids that were there, she was so attached to them.

We have to let go of that. The Lord says that all evils spring from love of self and love of the world. The Lord is saying “You can still enjoy these things, you can enjoy the things that I’ve given you. But you’ve got to let go of attachment to them, having them as most important.”

The Lord said, “Whoever desires to save his life will lose it. And whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” And in Matthew He says, “Everyone who has left houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father or mother or wife or children or lands for My name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold and inherit everlasting life.” The Lord’s not saying to literally give it all up and not have it any more. But what He is saying is to focus on what is higher. Be willing to rise above it. Be willing to sacrifice pride and self-love to worship the Lord alone.

One of the things we can sacrifice is our need to be right, or our desire for approval, or maybe that urge that we sometimes have to amass possessions. And these become our false gods - things that we serve, instead of serving the Lord. Which is why the Lord’s first commandment is about false gods. He’s trying to say, “What is most important to you?” So that’s what the first commandment invites us to consider. It’s “What occupies your mind? What do you dwell on? What’s going on in your mind right now?” The Lord is saying, “Whatever you spend the most time thinking about can become your god. Pay attention to where your mind drifts, and where it goes to.”

You might think, well, not many people in our culture are bowing down to graven images, or worshipping idols, or things like that – the god of fertility, and so on – so you might have a hard time taking this Divine law seriously. But never fear, we as humans find many substitutes.

Let’s look at things that come to mind, like cars and TVs, and possessions like computers and money, honor, and our home, or leisure or exercise of sports, clothes, shoes. All kinds of things can become priorities to us. What the Lord is trying to say is we need to prioritize them and take time for the Lord. The problem is that when we break this commandment we’re stealing time away from things that are important and putting it towards things that are unimportant. The problem with things that are external or worldly things is that they don’t return the energy, they don’t return the love, to us. Like money doesn’t hug you in return for all the love and attention that we might pour into it.

Think about, also, interest in self. You might think about what is your own false god that you bow down and worship. Or what is it that takes most of your time? It may not be things; it may be your own fears, or your own attention or worry. Think about how often we try to live our lives so that other people will like us, right? So we do things to seek other people’s approval and we have a lot of worry or fear that they may not like the way that we are behaving. And so we work for approval. So we might find ourselves dealing with perfectionism, because we’re driven by that need, instead of finding our, “Well, what is it that the Lord wants me to do? I’m just going to focus on that and think about my life that way.”

When the Lord says, “You shall have no other gods before Me”, you might thing of it as “You shall have no other gods ahead of Me.” So it’s really a matter of focus, or a matter of aim, asking the question, who is running the show in your life? And it’s a choice. We have a choice to decide that. “Do I follow myself, or do I follow the Lord?” And if we’re going to follow Him we have to make a decision. We first have to decide that I want what’s true and good. I have to decide that I want to obey the Lord’s commandments. I have to acknowledge that everything good comes from Him, and live my life under that premise, and that intention.

I love this phrase from the Writings that says that the Lord starts to reign in you when you not only believe that everything good and everything true comes from Him, but also love it to be so. Not only believe that this is so, but you really love the fact that that’s the way it is. The Lord said, “I am the Vine, you are the branches.” He is there to give us His life, if we will attach ourselves to Him.

Again, the goal is not to know these commandments so much as to keep the commandments. And we will be discussing them in detail over the next ten weeks, with a focus on how to apply them to our lives and make them part of our life. Because life is really what it’s all about. Every religion talks about that, but [Tom?] says the Divine test of a person’s life is not theology, but life.

In Sikhism we read, “God will not ask a man what race he is, He will ask what he has done.” In Hinduism we read, “No Brahmin is a Brahmin by birth. A Brahmin is a Brahmin by his deeds.” And Jesus in the New Testament says, “By their fruits you will know them.” In the Heavenly Doctrines we read, “In the spiritual world into which everyone comes after death, no one is ever asked, ‘What is your religion?’ but rather, ‘What is your life?’ For everyone’s life is his or her religion.”

I encourage you today to at least read the book, Rise Above It, and take the Daily Readings, and the read the Scripture. More importantly, read those truths from the mouth of the Lord. And maybe get a wrist-band that reminds you to Rise Above It. I’ve been wearing this for a couple of days now, and I don’t know how often it is that I see it. So – it’s a reminder to me that the Lord said to the children of Israel to put the law by the doorpost, or on their forehead, or on their arms, as a reminder to them to keep the law. And I think it’s a very powerful thing to remind us how to live.

I want to share with you a poem that you will find in the book, about a man who was in prison, and he found the Lord in his life and started to obey His commandments. It says:

We search for a God we can touch.
In our longing for such a God we often create false gods
Who seem not so demanding.

It is hard for us to admit the truth
That what we worship and serve really is lord of our lives.

The God I was trying to love
Was too demanding – so I looked
For other gods who would ask less of me,
And in uncovered corners of my heart, I found them.
Possessions, recognition, power!
I bowed before them, but my hunger only deepened.

The God I was trying to escape
Was too loving.
The gospel He preached was too hard.
“Love your enemy,” He taught …
And so I turned to other gods.
This God that I had tried to love and tried to escape,
This God who was too demanding and too loving,
Gathered up my false gods:
My reputation; my pride; my honor and prestige; my possessions;
My success; my own glory; my time; my friends; even my daughter –
He gathered up all these lords of mine
He gathered up all my lies and held them close to me –
So close I lost all sight
Of my true God for a while.

But my true God never lost sight of me –
(and therein lies my salvation).
For in one desperate moment,
Smothered by gods who couldn’t save me,
I prayed for a God who would.

That God “who would” now invites you to come to Him, and to learn of Him, and to take His yoke upon you. He presents to us today – he offers to us – the Holy Supper, an opportunity for us to remember Him, to take that bread as a reminder of His love for us, and how He will fill us with that love. And also the wine, as a reminder of his wisdom – the truth that leads us to Him. He offers that to us, and He says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice, and opens the door, I will come in to him, and dine with him, and he with Me.”

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