Lent 3 - Re-Commitment

We continue to navigate our way through Lent, revisiting the five major covenants of the Hebrew Bible, and seeing how the covenants play out in the life of Jesus and in the early church. We also strive to see how those covenants relate to and affect our own lives, as we continue our series “the 5 Rs of Lent”. Over the past few weeks we’ve talked about remembrance and repentance; today we’ll talk about re-commitment.

Now, commitment is one thing. We commit to lots of things: would it surprise you to know, though, (and I have no idea how people are actually paid to study stuff like this) that someone recently figured out what the number-one thing is that people are most likely to commit to?

Care to take a guess? A spouse? Children? A church? A religious leader? A political party, or stance?

Nope. A TV show. Many individuals show the highest degree of commitment to a favourite TV over anything else in their lives. They won’t reschedule a meeting to make a kids’ soccer game, but they’ll miss a soccer game for the next episode of ‘Survivor’. A parenting magazine – a parenting magazine – that my wife subscribes to featured a few month ago how to host a mom’s “de-stressing” night with a few friends and (their suggestion) watching ‘The Bachelor’.

If I found my wife watching ‘The Bachelor’ I’d make darn certain the next channel group we subscribed to in the Macintyre house featured at least 20 hours of fishing shows, every day. At least you can learn something from a fishing show.

But does it surprise you, what people are willing to commit to? I know my generation. We’re the people who brought you the “highest commitment to TV” statistic. Yet we’re not alone in that – we learned somewhere, obviously.

In fact, I’m pretty certain we learning it from the Bible. Despite the fact that we like to turn the bible for examples of people whose lives were completely committed to God, we miss that they were a tiny fraction of the populace.

The Israelites, in fact, were probably more faithful to Ba’al – a central Mesopotamian deity – than they were to the God who brought them through the wilderness. We read today of Moses receiving the Law on top of Mount Horeb today; realize that, at the same time, the Israelites are at the base of the mountain building a gigantic golden calf for Ba’al. Moses has been on the mountain sixty days! If the Israelites had dedicated half as much time to either a) doing what God asked and cooperating with each other; or b) worshipping the God who brought them out of Egypt and whom they just watched part the sea, 10 commandments wouldn’t have been necessary.

There could’ve just been one: “The Lord thy God says: ‘keep doing what you’re doing. It’s all right’.”

But they don’t. And the very first commandment speaks to that: you shall have no other gods before me. And, just in case that’s hard to understand, God added a couple of sub-points:

1(a): no idols of things in heaven, no idols of things on earth, no idols of things under earth

1(b): I’m serious about that. Don’t worship idols.

1(c): seriously, don’t.

It takes five verses (out of seventeen in the reading today) to get the first commandment spelled out. God is obviously committed to the Israelites. He’s done the ‘Noah’ thing; he’s promised to Abraham; he’s delivered the Israelites. All God is laying out for the Israelites is a way that they can commit themselves back to God.

Shouldn’t the Israelites, of all people, found that a little easier than most? But they don’t. A few years into the future Jesus finds that they have turned the Temple of God – the very place where their own religious people say that God literally dwells – into a marketplace. Worldly wealth is more serious business than worship.

So, where is our commitment? If we’re talk about re-commitment today, is there any hope for us? The problem is the way that we’re ‘wired’ to think about commitment: we don’t like failure. If we keep failing, we give up. It’s not even “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” That’s a business maxim. That’s how you build the Temple. Our problem looks more like “we can’t measure success of failure, so there’s no point in trying.”

The issue with commitment to God is that, for Christianity, there’s nothing to succeed at. Paul says that: he’s the best of the best, has done everything, but that means nothing. God’s foolish decision to choose us as God’s people means that we don’t work at our salvation. It’s given to us.

But we still feel the sting of the law, don’t we? We still have a cultural memory of a time when you needed to be in church in order to be a good person. I still encounter people, who, when they see me, immediately change into Mother Theresa: “Pastor, we’ve been planning to come to church more often, but we’re feeding the poor and volunteering, and so busy. But we promise that we’ll come to church more often.”

And seriously, do you think I care? I don’t. But I am far, far, more concerned that people are not even understanding what a commitment to God looks like, let alone feels like. Do you need to come to church to be a Christian? No. But, if you’re Christian, you need the church. Because you need to be part of a community, a body, to find the encouragement and strength to re-commit yourself daily to the Christian walk. It is commitment given out of thankfulness and relationship rather than necessity and duty.

In Martin Luther’s Small Catechism (page 1160 in the worship book), Luther begins his explanations with the 10 Commandments, and he asks the question: “What does this mean?” What does it mean, when God asks “you shall have no other gods.” And the explanation of the first commandment goes like this: “we are to fear, love, and trust God above all things.”

‘Fear’ in Hebrew is another word for ‘respect.’ Not the fear that we have of so many other things. At the same time, there is a necessity to realize that God is, in fact, far more dangerous than a “Tickle Me Elmo” doll. God loves fiercely, and cannot stand human sin, so God took action to stamp that out. Through the death and resurrection of Christ, through our baptismal promises, God acts to commit God’s own self to us.

Every other commandment that is explained begins with the first one: “we are to fear and love God.” There’s a good reason for that: Luther also wrote that if we could ever keep the first one, then all the others would fall into place.

We are to fear and love God.

Fear, and love God so that we may believe that when God makes the promise to us in our baptism that we are his children we are truly God’s children.

Fear, and love God so that when the bread and wine are broken and shared with the promise “take, and eat; this is my body” and “take, and drink; this is my blood” that those we take and eat and take and drink knowing that God is truly present to us, broken and poured out for us so that we may be renewed and restored.

Fear, and love God so that we can commit and re-commit our lives, knowing that our failures and shortfalls are forgiven, and that we are truly the people of God, fed and nourished by God’s own grace, redeemed and restored in God’s own place.

Fear, and love God so that we come to understand commitment as more than a fondness for a TV show, or a value-oriented claim in which we get something in return – but as a thankful response to God who loves us, a desire for a relationship that is deeper and bigger than us.

Let the people of God say amen.