Grace and Blue Laws

PROPERS: THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR B 

TEXT:       EXODUS 20:1-17                                           

PREACHED AT RESURRECTION, STARKVILLE, ON SUNDAY, MARCH 3, 2024 (My first Sunday back at Resurrection)

 

ONE SENTENCE:        There is a higher calling than the Law; it is Love of God and our Neighbor.

 

Today’s first lesson is one of the most familiar in all of scripture.  If you are of a certain age and have watched Cecil B. DeMille’s epic, The Ten Commandments, this passage if very familiar to you. It would bring back vivid images.

 

I suspect that pulpits are thundering this morning where the lesson is being read. It’s easy to hammer people with these rules.

 

I have a different take – and that take cannot be reduced to the simple accusation that I am viewing the Ten Commandments as the Ten Suggestions.

 

To begin, let’s simply look at the fourth commandment. Remember that the commandments are divided – the first four pertain to our relationship to God, the last six govern our relationship to other people.

 

Anyway, the fourth commandment is quite clear.  It says:

 

“Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.”

 

The Sabbath Day has been set aside as a day of rest – just as Genesis tells us God rested on the seventh day of Creation.  It is quite clear.  Having traveled to Israel 14 times over the years, I have seen how seriously, and literally observant Jews take this commandment. Businesses shut down; people stay home. Jerusalem is quiet.

 

Contrast that for a moment with Starkvegas. Some 50,000 people gather in Davis-Wade Stadium. People tailgate and barbeque at what used to be Dysfunction Junction.  What is happily called Baseball Water flows freely. Revelry is in the air.  On winning days, a good time is had by all.

 

And we all enter the stadium to watch young men on a field of grass break another religious prohibition – Leviticus 11:27. They touch the skin of a pig. 

 

I don’t have an issue with any of that.  I just want us to know that we are breaking the fourth commandment.

 

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The irony for us is that the sabbath is on Saturday – he seventh day of the week.  The first day of the week, Sunday, is much quieter – but that is not an issue for the Ten Commandments.

 

Which takes me back a ways. I recall one of the hottest political debates of the mid-1960s was whether Blue Lawsshould be eliminated – the state laws which prohibited businesses from operating on Sundays.  The misguided reason was that Sundays were the Sabbath.

 

If you recall those days, you know how quiet Sundays were.  The Mississippi Legislature hotly debated this controversial issue.  It was, for some, the third rail of politics in those days – and there was no shortage of third rails.

 

I was a Methodist then. And burned indelibly into my memory is a sermon our small, quiet, unassuming pastor preached on a Sunday in the midst of that controversy.

 

John Cook, the gentle Methodist pastor who molded me more than he will ever know, preached his sermon from Mark 2:27 where Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”

 

In my young mind, enough said.

 

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            The Hebrew Laws largely found in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy were viewed by early believers as a gift from God.  They were aimed at guiding a large, migrating, meandering people, wandering through a dry wilderness.  Those statutes brought order to chaos. Many people still view them as a gift – but the many, many laws and their interpretations are hard to live by.

 

            Jesus took it one step further.  He emphasized love for one another and love for God as the standard by which his followers would be guided.  He gave us the summary of the Law – to love God and your neighbor. He was not alone in simplifying the Law for his first century listeners.

 

In a sense, it is both a harder and easier standard.  But it is the challenge before us.  It is the reason leaders of the church debate some issues so hotly. 

 

            That is why we are given a heart and a conscience and are guided by the Holy Spirit. It is so that we may walk through a minefield of ethical choices, making our best decisions.  And when we stumble, having made heartfelt decisions, grace will be there for us.