Ten words of freedom

To soften the hard edge of these sacred commandments that are presented in Exodus 20, the Rabbis' would often tell a joke - such as 'when Moses came down the mountain, he began by telling the people: well, there is good news and bad news; the good news is that I managed to talk the Lord down from 20 commandments to ten; the bad news is that adultery is still on the list.' Or, when Moses had a headache, what did he do? He took two tablets. Or, when the Lord asked Moses if he wanted a tablet of the law, Moses asked him how much they were. When the Lord replied that they were free, Moses said, 'okay, I'll take two.'

All jokes aside - and especially those jokes aside - what we encounter in this text, which simply presents God speaking 'these words' - it is not until Exodus 34 that the title of the Decalogue, literally, the ten words is given - is a sacred covenant that is deeply founded in grace and freedom. Scholars tell us that the covenant is an example of a Suzerain treaty, and it is God who first identifies the parties: 'I am the LORD your God' and we are 'you' who he brought out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

I capitalise the word Lord to emphasise the point that in the book of Exodus, the Lord only uses the special name that he reveals to Moses in their encounter at the burning bush in the wilderness a total of three times. In Exodus 3:14, when the Lord tells Moses that 'I am who I am', and again in Exodus 6. The Jews called this name, the Sacred Tetragrammaton - the four holy letters of Y-H-W-H. This is the last time that this name is used in Exodus (and never in Numbers) - although it is often used in other books, including anachronistically in the book of Genesis. It is as if the writer wants to preserve the sacred name to these key moments to highlight the covenant that is being entered into.

When we look carefully at the structure of the text, we can see that the three positive statements that punctuate the unnumbered list, provide an ordering of the commandments into three groups of commandments - the first three that deal with the right ordering of our relationship with the Lord; the second that orders our lives or worship ('keep holy the Sabbath'), and then the last group, that in the Hebrew text begins the fifth commandment with 'Honouring your father and your mother' leading into the last five commandments. [In the church, we are used to numbering the commandments according to the structure, not of the Hebrew bible, but of the Greek Septuagint text, which combines the first two commandments into one and separates the final commandment into two. The Hebrew numbering is to be preferred, but it may provide cause for confusion when a penitent confesses to a sin against the sixth commandment, leaving the priest to discern whether they likely mean murder or adultery!]

It is also worth noting that the final commandment is entirely internal; no one can ever truly judge how much another person is guilty of coveting - and so it provides a necessary corrective to the rest of the list.

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Sunday 3B in Lent. 9'31"

Blessed by the face of God

In the perception of the so-called general public, when people think about God - if indeed they ever think about God, the idea that will probably be conjured would be more like the idea of the force from Star Wars, then the biblical reality of God. Likewise, the idea of heaven as somewhere up there - a long way away from us - is a convenient place to store an inconvenient god. But this also is not the biblical vision.

As we celebrate today the feast day of Mary, the mother of God on this first day of the new 2012 calendar year, the readings that the church presents us with provide an opportunity to reflect anew on the place of God in our lives. So let us turn first to the teaching on blessing provided by Numbers 6. Just as we turn to the gospels - Matthew 6 and Luke 11 - to find the teaching of Jesus on prayer when he invites us to pray the Our Father, so we should turn to Numbers 6 to know what it means to receive and be a blessing.

When the Lord tells Moses to teach the sons of Aaron to pray and bless like this, we should hear the same direction being given to us, because in Exodus 19 the whole people are invited into covenant with God, as a kingdom of priests. In the blessing of Numbers 6, there are 6 elements in the three lines of the blessing. The first reminds us that whoever shares the blessing - priest or people - it is God who does the blessing; we simply share in this work.

1. May the Lord bless you
2. and keep you;
3. May the Lord shine his face upon you
4. and be gracious to you;
5. May the Lord uncover his face to you
6. and bring you peace.

When we turn to the Gospel today, from Luke 2:16-21, we see at least three elements that can help us to bring this teaching of blessing into our worlds. In reverse order within the text, they are: pondering and treasuring the word of God; being astonished by the words and works of God; and when we finally know what God wants of us (through this pondering and being amazed by God) then we cannot remain lost in procrastination - like the shepherds and like Mary - we must hurry to where God wants us to be.

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Recorded at St Paul's, 8am (9'13")

The empty God

To make sense of the gospel today, you need to see what has been happening earlier in chapter 25 of Matthew's gospel. At the beginning of the chapter Jesus and his disciples have made their triumphant entry into Jerusalem on the day that we now call Palm Sunday. He then proceeded to cleanse the temple, driving out the money changers and sellers. It is at this point that he is confronted by the scribes and chief priests who ask by whose authority this country-bumpkin from Galilee is acting like this? Jesus, as the good unoffical Rabbi, responds by putting a question to them about John the baptist's authority - from God or man? When they refuse to answer he then tells the story that is the Gospel today. Closely related to this passage is the utterly sublime hymn that forms the major part of our second reading today, taken from the letter of St Paul to the church in Philippi. The hymn called the Carmen Christi, is usually considered to pre-date the letter and thus is the earliest declaration of the church to this question of the authority of Jesus to act like this - 'his state was divine.'

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Recorded at SJV, 8.30am (9'23")

At the end of Mass, it was announced that Bishop Peter has appointed me as assistant priest to the parish of St Paul's Camden (Fr Michael Williams is the parish priest). Camden is the largest parish in NSW and the Diocese, and is growing rapidly with many young families. I will live in the presbytery in Camden; Fr Michael lives in Narellan. The appointment will take effect on 6 October 2011. At this stage there is no priest available to take my place here in the Lumen Christi Pastoral Region.

God is love

When you read through the scriptures, one thing that modern readers might expect are passages that point to proofs for the existence of God. And yet there is not a single place that we can turn to to find something even remotely close to a De Deo Uno (Concerning One God) treatise that you find in classical and medieval theology. In fact the closest that you get is the statement that begins Psalm 14 and 53 - 'The fool says in his heart, "There is no God".' The bible - like all of the ancient near east, simply takes for granted the existence of God.

So what does the bible tell us about the nature of God? What are the images that you find that can help to illuminate the profession of faith of the early Church that God is three in one?

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Recorded at St Brigid, Gwynneville, 9am (10'49")
Trinity Sunday | John 3:16-18