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God’s Promises: This autumn, we’re learning alongside the youngest among us in Church School. We look at the early characters of the Hebrew scriptures and how God’s promises bring hope for the future, with guidelines on how to love God and love others in ways that bring life and hope to all.
What were some of your ‘family rules’ growing up? Were you allowed to eat on the sofa? Did you have to have to stay at the dinner table until everyone was finished? Did one sibling get to divide the cookie in two and the other sibling get to choose who got which half? Were there n0n-swear words that you still for some reason weren’t allowed to say? How about when you lived with a roommate for the first time – what rules did you establish for harmonious living? Perhaps you had a chore wheel, a 24-hour dirty dishes amnesty, or a ‘whoever uses the last of the butter has to buy more’ rule? During the early days of the pandemic, my friend and her husband had an agreement written on a white board on their fridge, that said “rules of hermitage: all arguments must be held in British accents’
This Sunday we hear the story of God giving the Israelites foundational rules to live by, known today as the Ten Commandments. Some of the commandments, such as “do not murder,” feel like they go without saying (akin perhaps to ‘don’t pinch your sister just because she found the first piece of sea glass on the beach trip’), while others bear repeating again and again (when’s the last time you really took a sabbath?).
What is the relevance of the Ten Commandments in a society that has already enshrined many of them in law by outlawing things like perjury, theft, and murder? How do we as progressive Christians proclaim (or perhaps reclaim) the value and ongoing relevance of the Ten Commandments in the midst of Christo-nationalists who want to post them in classrooms and courts alike?
Join us for worship at 11 am this Sunday in our sanctuary and online to study, pray, sing, and ponder God’s family rules together!
In faith,
Amy
