Proper 22A / Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
In
early August, NPR shared a report which pointed out that young people born
between 1995 and 2012 (in other words, current 5 to 22 year olds) have gone or
will go through their entire adolescence with smartphones ever-present. The researcher – Jeane Twenge, a professor of
psychology at San Diego State University – found that while “members of this
generation are physically safer than those who came before them. . . they are
far more vulnerable” psychologically. In fact, she is concerned that this
generation is “on the brink of the worst mental health crisis in decades” and “she
says it’s largely because of smartphones.”
What smartphones have done, according to this researcher, is decreased
the amount of time today’s teens are spending “with their friends in person,
face-to-face, where they can really read each others’ emotions and get that
social support.” The result of this increase in smartphone use, according to
the research, may be seen in patterns of loneliness. The Pew Center tracks such things and in its
research they saw a sudden increase in loneliness around 2012 which is the same
time when the majority of Americans reported having a cell phone. “Given that using social media for more hours
is linked to more loneliness, and that smartphones were used by the majority of
Americans around 2012, and that’s the same time loneliness increases,” the
researcher says, “you can’t absolutely prove causation” but it is “very
suspicious.”[7]
When
I was 16 years old, I got my first “real” job – working in the 4C Department at
the local Sears store. My first day on
the job involved sitting in a break room with a 3-ring binder filled with page
after page of company policies and procedures and then watching a video tape
that included more of the same. Today I
could tell you very little about what those rules were. But what I do remember about that job is what
the 4C’s of the 4C department were - Customer Care, Catalog and Credit - and I
remember that those first 2 Cs – Customer Care – were what made Jan really good
at her job. And I wanted to be like Jan.
So I shadowed her – a lot. She built relationships with our regular
customers. She went the extra mile to make sure they found what they needed in
the catalog. She spent time on the phone with the corporate credit department
when a customer had fallen behind on their payments.
Several
years later when I went to work at Starbucks I noticed something
different. On my first day, I was again
sent to a training session. But this time there was no 3-ring binder sitting on
a table for me to read. Instead, their were 4 or 5 new employees from different
stores who came together to practice customer service with a manager. We practiced selling merchandise by first
getting to know the customer’s needs.
And then when we learned how to use the cash register, we practiced
apologizing for our slowness and asking for assistance from co-workers. On the one hand, it is pretty sad that we had
to practice these things because it just seems that they should be common
sense, even second nature. And yet, the
truth of the matter was that not everyone had those skills. Not everyone had
shadowed Jan from Sears.
For
the last couple of Sundays we have been hearing the story of the Hebrew people
wandering in the wilderness. After years of bondage to the Egyptians, after
being free at last, after Moses and Aaron with a lot of help from God have gotten
them out of Egypt, “The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against
Moses and Aaron” saying, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the
fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this
wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”[1]
And then, a week later (in our reading
at least – but probably years later in “real time”), the people began
quarreling with Moses again. This time they were thirsty and cried out to
Moses, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and
livestock with thirst?” And you know it
must have been pretty bad because when Moses reports it to God, Moses says, “They
are almost ready to stone me.”[2] In each of these instances – first when they
are hungry and then again when they are thirsty, God compassionately provides
the food and water the Hebrew people need to survive.
This
morning we hear another passage in this story of the Exodus from Egypt. This
time it is the giving of the Ten Commandments – the 3-ring binder of how to
live life faithful to God and in unity with our neighbors. And the writer of the book of Exodus records
the people’s response: “they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance,
and said to Moses, ‘You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak
to us, or we will die.’”[3] And this week when I read that one sentence,
I was suddenly sad. Because it felt a
bit like the first sin in the Garden of Eden all over again. Our God is a God of love and compassion, a
God who provides us with everything we need to be well – food, water and companionship. God has mastered the first 2 Cs of my 4C
world of Sears – customer care or, in God’s case, perhaps more aptly named
Creation Care. God gives us food even
when we complain bitterly. God gives us
water even when we complain bitterly. And
God does this out of a compassionate, abundantly generous heart. So why is it that the Hebrew people –
including Moses – and, quite honestly through much of our history – why is it
that we hear the Ten Commandments and our minds immediately go to strictness
and punishment and fear?
What
would happen if instead we re-imagined receiving the Ten Commandments as a gift?
A gift of love and compassion, a gift of creation care, of relationship
building? Because the fact is that these
commandments are given by God in the midst of forging a new covenant
relationship with the people. The story
begins earlier in Exodus with God saying to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the
house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites: . . . if you obey my voice and keep my
covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples.”[4] This is a far cry from a distant God who puts
a 3-ring binder on the table and tells us to read it. This is a God who wants nothing more than to
be in relationship with us. A God who is in love with us and who has nothing
but compassion for us and so gives us the tools we need to love one another and
to love God – to be God’s treasured possession.
In fact, in the book of Deuteronomy where we get another account of God’s
giving of the Ten Commandments, the section concludes with this, “You shall
love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your might.”[5] And, in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus recites
these very words and adds to them, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”
and goes on to say, “There is no other commandment greater than these.”[6] Jesus is not replacing the Ten Commandments.
Jesus is setting them back into their proper context – relationship,
relationship, relationship – with God and with one another. They are not just a random list of rules to
follow or to ignore at your peril. They
are a gift – a gift of love and compassion, a gift of creation care, and an
invitation for us to live lovingly and compassionately ourselves.
Last
Sunday night, Stephen Paddock opened fire at a music festival in Las Vegas and
killed 58 people and wounded hundreds more.
In the days since, much conversation has centered around tightening gun
control laws. And, I know you’ve heard
me in the wake of other mass shootings stating my support for focusing efforts
on what I believe to be common sense gun laws.
I still hold those views. But,
this week, it occurred to me for the first time that laws are not the only issue. The fact is, we have laws – laws that say killing
is illegal. In fact, we have so many laws about homicide that we’ve categorized
them:
·
Capital
Murder;
·
Manslaughter;
·
Criminally
Negligent Homicide; and
·
Murder
– which is further categorized into first and second degree
So we
have laws and if Stephen Paddock and others like him were willing to follow the
law, innocent lives would not be lost. So
there is no guarantee that laws by themselves would have changed the outcome
last Sunday night.
We
have a tendency to treat laws as a list of things we can and cannot do, we look
for loopholes and exceptions, and when someone doesn’t follow the laws we are
quick to look to new laws to solve those new problems. But in all of this we lose sight of the
intent behind the laws – particularly the intent behind those first ten laws or
commandments – the intent: right relationship, loving and compassionate
relationship with God and with one another.
So what do we do about that? How
do we change the focus of the conversation – away from what laws can or cannot
do – and back to the relationship building that is at the heart of those laws?
In
early August, NPR shared a report which pointed out that young people born
between 1995 and 2012 (in other words, current 5 to 22 year olds) have gone or
will go through their entire adolescence with smartphones ever-present. The researcher – Jeane Twenge, a professor of
psychology at San Diego State University – found that while “members of this
generation are physically safer than those who came before them. . . they are
far more vulnerable” psychologically. In fact, she is concerned that this
generation is “on the brink of the worst mental health crisis in decades” and “she
says it’s largely because of smartphones.”
What smartphones have done, according to this researcher, is decreased
the amount of time today’s teens are spending “with their friends in person,
face-to-face, where they can really read each others’ emotions and get that
social support.” The result of this increase in smartphone use, according to
the research, may be seen in patterns of loneliness. The Pew Center tracks such things and in its
research they saw a sudden increase in loneliness around 2012 which is the same
time when the majority of Americans reported having a cell phone. “Given that using social media for more hours
is linked to more loneliness, and that smartphones were used by the majority of
Americans around 2012, and that’s the same time loneliness increases,” the
researcher says, “you can’t absolutely prove causation” but it is “very
suspicious.”[7]
Loneliness,
isolation. Those are two characteristics
that are far removed from the loving and compassionate relationships God
desires for us. All reports thus far
indicate that Stephen Paddock was fairly isolated. When his brother was
interviewed by the media, he had this to say: “There’s no church, there’s no
religion, there’s no politics, there’s no anything. . .”[8] The brother was completely surprised by
Stephen’s actions. No church, no
religion, no politics – no connection, no relationship. Isolation. Loneliness.
God
invites us into right relationship – loving, compassionate relationship. God codifies this invitation by giving us Ten
Commandments as a sign of God’s love and compassion for us. Jesus summaries the invitation by saying, “love
God, love your neighbor.”
Do
we need to change gun laws? I think we do. But more importantly, I believe we
need to change our relationship with the law.
“If you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured
possession out of all the peoples.” Those
are words of compassion, of love, of relationship. And that is God’s desire for us: that we be
in compassionate and loving relationship with one another and with God. That’s what it means to follow the spirit of
the law rather than following the letter of the law. It is a harder course but it is the only
course that leads to life, abundant life in right relationship with our
neighbors and with our God. And we shall
be God’s treasured possession.
[1]
Exodus 16:2-3.
[2]
Exodus 17:2-4.
[3]
Exodus 20:18b-19
[4]
Exodus 19:3-5.
[5]
Deuteronomy 6:5.
[6]
Mark 12:31.
[7]
Audie Cornish, “How Smartphones are Making Kids Unhappy,” All Things Considered, August 7, 2017, National Public Radio, http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/08/07/542016165/how-smartphones-are-making-kids-unhappy,
accessed October 7, 2017.
[8]
Jane C. Timm, “’No Affiliations that Might Explain Shooting,’ Gunman’s Brother
Says,” NBCNews, October 2, 2017, https://www.nbcnews.com/card/no-affiliations-might-explain-shooting-gunman-s-brother-says-n806676,
accessed October 7, 2017.
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