Christ Church Cathedral

Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46

As we continue our weekly passages from Exodus, today we read one version of the Ten Commandments. There is another slightly different version in Deuteronomy.^[1] In churches of the protestant tradition one often sees the commandments written out on boards on each side of the altar or elsewhere in the church. In our Cathedral there is an image of the two tablets with the Ten Commandments on the ceiling stencils towards the west end of the church. Some of you, perhaps those who are a little older, will remember learning the Ten Commandments by heart, as part of confirmation classes, and possibly even in day school. One of the recent struggles in the United States, between secularists defending the first amendment and right wing evangelicals, has been about the display of the Ten Commandments in courts.

If you think you know exactly what the Ten Commandments are, it may interest you to know that in different times and places the text we read has been divided and numbered in different ways. But there is more we need to realize, if we want to see where this text should fit in our faith. If we look at the context of the commandments in the Exodus story, the first part of the passage we read this morning is generally believed to be an insertion into another story. This longer story is about a wide range of cultic and social laws given to Moses on the mountain. When, in the story, Moses came down from the mountain with the stone tablets, what was written on them was not just the ten commandments, but this whole body of cultic and social law. Scholars generally believe that the story, as we have it, grew out of the gradual coming together of oral traditions from different groups of those who eventually made up the Israelite community. Some of these arrived with Moses from Egypt, but others, possibly the majority did not. Scholars who have studied near-eastern texts and archeological remains are also convinced that in both form and content many of the laws which we see in Exodus predated the coming together of the Hebrew people, and are common to several other cultures of the time.

All of which is to say that the Ten Commandments were a set of laws which related to a particular time, a particular culture and a particular social history. They of course contain much which is of wider moral value. The prohibition of murder is a fairly basic presupposition of human civilization But also notice that the context of the Commandments is clearly that of a slave-owning, patriarchal society. We cannot, with what we now know about their origin, universalize them into the unchangeable rules for all time and all people. This becomes even clearer when we read on in Exodus, the rest of the story being about laws which very clearly belong only in their historical and cultural context. In fact, both in Jewish and Christian communities down the ages, the usual way of forming moral teaching has been to take moral precepts common to society in general and see them in the light of the faith of the religious community, rather than have specifically religious moral codes. Thus Christian morality, rather than being a fixed and unchangeable set of rules has always been a matter of dialogue with culture, society, time, knowledge and experience.^[2] This, as we have seen many times in this place, is a general situation which applies not only to moral discourse, but also to doctrinal and hermeneutical discussion. As I have said before, the idea of immutability of doctrine or morals or of interpretation of scriptural texts is a relatively recent phenomenon, dating back only to the beginning of the 20th century. It is often espoused by those who are selective in their choice of which particular immutable texts are important and this choice is often driven by both prejudices and political viewpoints.

When we turn to our two other readings of today, I think we find other reasons for espousing a different way of understanding our faith. Matthew is writing towards the end of the first century. In 70 CE Jerusalem, the centre of Jewish life, community and cult, had been destroyed by the Roman imperial power. This was not only a political and social disaster: it was also a religious turning point. From now on two religions struggled to find new birth and the struggle resulted in bitterness and separation. Rabbinic Judaism, the survivor of the end of the temple cult centered itself in Torah and the interpretation and application of the ancient texts to modern living. Christianity, with its outreach to Gentiles centered itself in the person of the Risen Christ and the weekly commemoration of the Eucharist. Matthew's gospel is to be placed and understood in the heart and heat of this conflict. But the failure to take account of its cultural historical context has so often led the church into anti-Semitism, both in theology and in action. The Shoa was not the end of this false pathway.

A generation before Matthew, Paul too had been faced with the problem of the relationship of his self understanding as a fully paid up member of the Jewish community and his experience of his relationship with the risen Jesus. It seems to me that Paul's words in the letter to the church at Philippi again provide a critique of the theological position which sees an immutability in the moral strictures of the Law, and invites us to an understanding of the continuing necessity of reinterpreting the scripture for each age and culture, parallel to, if different from, the similar tradition in the Jewish community.

I believe that it is of the greatest possible importance to maintain, pursue and make known that there is a very different way of having faith and being a Christian from that espoused by the fundamentalists, especially the dangerous fanatical fundamentalists, of our Christian community.

By way of illustrating how urgent this task is, I want to share with you a personal story about a recent telephone conversation with one of my sons. To understand the import of this, you need to know some background information and I apologize in advance if this comes a little close to what a younger generation calls "TMI" - too much information. First, my son is a research biologist on the West Coast. Second, it has been discovered that I carry a genetic variation which can result in the buildup of too much iron in the body. But it also appears that the same genetic variation gives some protection against Bubonic Plague. So, according to Darwinian evolutionary theory, it is likely that the incidence of the genetic variation will be higher among descendants of those who lived in areas where the Black Death struck, like Derbyshire in England which is the original home of those called Pitts. Although I am a Yorkshire man, my father's family came from Derbyshire. Because of the genetic nature of this problem, it was important for me to let my children and other direct relatives know, so that they could consider having appropriate tests. In my e-mail to my biologist son, (and now I come to the real point of this digression) I made the observation that I was glad I had found out that I had this genetic variation, because now I could prove that Darwin was right and the fundamentalists were wrong. In the telephone conversation, Anton told me that, in his usual way, he had been sharing the story with his university colleagues. He reported that they had been most surprised that a minister of religion could be happy that he could prove that Darwin was right and Genesis was wrong! In other words the bright young thirty something university researchers had only ever heard of the fundamentalist version of Christianity, and knew nothing of the patient work of re-understanding and re-interpreting the Bible in the modern and post-modern world which has been going on for over two hundred years. We who stand in that tradition have an enormous work of communication to do.

We live today in a multi-cultural, multi-religious world. We face a world in financial crisis caused by the amorality if not immorality of those who find themselves in charge of the world's financial dealings. We face a planetary crisis through the over-use and abuse of our environment. We face war and violence as the fanatics of the religions believe they are doing God's will. If humanity is to survive we need to build a new global ethic. To build a new global ethic, we need to re-understand our faith. For Christians, to retreat behind the Ten Commandments and a few randomly chosen other laws from the scriptures will not work and will tend to exacerbate the problems

When we have baptized Jayden Edward, we shall pray that he may have the gift of an enquiring and discerning heart. This, rather than false certainties, is a gift I believe we all need in facing the horrendous problems of our world and society in our generation.

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[1] Deuteronomy 5:6-21
[2] This insight was especially brought to my attention recently in reading Christianity by Hans Küng , Piper Verlag 1994, translation Continuum 1995.