Sweetwater Presbyterian

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The 8th Commandment

The Eighth Commandment

This was a conversation I had with one of my children one afternoon when they were elementary school age. We were in a park and I looked over and my child was playing with one of those expensive Tonka Trucks. I said, “Where did you get that?” The answer which is often a universal child answer especially when they want to avoid answering a question was “I don’t know”. “Oh” I said “You were sitting on that grass and all of a sudden this truck just appears in front of you and you begin to play with it?” “Uh-Huh” they nodded. “I really doubt that is what happened, where did you get it?” Now my child knew me and knew how persistent I was and knew that at some point the truth had to come out so the next attempt at an answer was “Over there”. “You got the truck over there? Want to be a little more specific?” “Over there” and the finger pointed direction. “You are doing better” I answered “but you haven’t quite located the origin of this truck yet. Come one, let’s walk and see where this truck came from.” So we did and we came to a blanket someone had laid out with picnic supplies and other toys laying on it. “From this blanket?” I asked. “Yes” my child said a little sheepishly. “And you didn’t think that maybe it belonged to someone else since it was on someone else’s blanket?” I got one of those child eye looks that said, “Yes I know I did wrong but I’m cute and you won’t hurt me will you?” So I said, ‘Put the truck back where you got it and don’t take things that don’t belong to you. OK?” “Ok” the child with a hanging head said and the truck was returned to where it came from.
The 8th Commandment - Don’t take things that don’t belong to you. Easy? Simple? Yes and No. Like all the other commandments we have looked at, there is so much more to this command other than just not taking things that don’t belong to you. This command also involves not providing for others, stealing someone’s dignity, not giving what we owe, withholding our help.
As you read through the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy where the God takes the 10 Commandments and turns them into specific rules and regulations there are an abundance of interpretations of this commandment that are way outside the bounds of what we think of as stealing - I go into the convenience store and take a pack of gum - stealing. I go into the store and buy a few things and when I go out I realize I forgot to pay for something and I figure it is too much trouble to go back in for a $1.00 item - stealing. I take tape from the supply room at work and take it home cause I don’t figure they will miss it - stealing. I borrow my neighbor’s rake and never take it back - stealing. My neighbor is starving and I have plenty of food and I don’t offer any to them - stealing. You don’t get that library book back - stealing. you fudge on your expense account or your print out copyrighted material from your computer or download a song you didn’t pay for cause there is a website that lets you do that even though it is technically not right - stealing.
This commandment really asks us to think about how we obtain what we have and if we have done it fairly and honestly and ethically.
One of the greatest Christian influences in my life was an older minster who I became very close to as I began my ministry. He became very ill and I would go and visit him and he said he was glad that someone would come and he could expound what he learned from his many years in ministry to someone. He had a lot of experience and had fallen on disfavor with the powers that be during his later years and was kind of cast aside. He felt he still had a lot to offer and I gave him that opportunity. And he gave me a great deal of advice and stories of what he learned and what I will never forget, and he expounded on this at every visit, was the importance of ethics in the life of a Christian, especially in the life of a minister who is to set a good example and in the life of a church who is to be ‘the light of a community’ and an example to the world. He said that the church could prove that even a group of people can make the right choices.
Ethics is simply the idea of making the ‘right’ choices - choices that may cost your more money or more time but you know it is the right thing to do and there is no hint of doing anything under the table or for the wrong reasons. Just because something is legal doesn’t necessarily mean it is right. Breaking an ethical barrier always results in stealing something from someone - even if they will never know or never miss it. Breaking an ethical barrier may not even bee a possession or a thing - but can involve someone’s feelings or ideas or principles.
God’s laws about stealing get pretty specific throughout the first 5 books of the bible - what if I take an apple off the tree in my neighbor’s orchard and eat it and don’t pay them for it. They will never know will they? And all the evidence is gone cause I ate the apple - stealing. There is even a rule that says if you steal something from someone who stole it from someone else you are still a thief yourself.
There is a whole section of the book of Exodus where this commandment is described which deals with fair business practices. It was considered stealing of you prohibited someone else from being about to do business; if you charged excessive interest rates; if you used unfair weights to measure out goods. At in this same section we are told to guard carefully what we have borrowed.
Jesus shifts the idea of stealing from taking something that doesn’t belong to you to withholding what is due someone. Render unto Caesar’s what is Caesar’s as Jesus calls us to pay our taxes fairly and if we don’t - it is stealing. Being fair in whatever we owe to someone - the attitude of trying to withhold what we owe, trying to wriggle out of responsibilities through some obscure loophole - stealing.
Then Jesus addresses stealing in the terms having two coats and not giving one to someone who needed it…. of caring for those who were hungry and lonely and prisoners - those who were in any kind of need. What we are ‘stealing’ is the opportunity to share the excess we have with someone who doesn’t have basic needs.
Fundamental to our understanding of ourselves and our relationship with God is the knowledge that everything we have comes from God. The Bible is clear that we are not given these things solely for our good - we are given things to be used for the benefit of the community. “To much is given much is expected”. And this just doesn’t mean possessions and money but our talents and abilities which we are expected to use for the common good.
The idea of hoarding is in the Bible sense ‘stealing’ for ourselves what someone else could benefit from.
We see this in the concept of gleaning which comes from this section of scripture that deal with laws about stealing. Gleaning is the Old Testament rule which tells farmers they are only allowed to make one harvesting pass through their fields and whatever is leftover from this first pass at harvesting is to be left for the poor - and if you did not follow these guidelines you were considered to be a thief - taking from those who need what is to be found in these fields.
So if stealing is not only taking something that doesn’t belong to us but also withholding that which ‘belongs’ to someone else whether in a real sense or in the idea that everyone has the right to the basic needs.
The prophet Malachi addresses ‘stealing’ in the terms of the tithes and offerings. This is Stewardship season after all and ‘tithes and offerings’ sort of creep into everything we do. Malachi points out that when we hold back our tithes, we are stealing from God and we are blocking the flow of God’s blessings and bounty through us and toward the work of God. Malachi says that if we don’t consider withholding tithes as stealing then it will be a short leap to not thinking anything is wrong with taking the Tonka Truck left alone on someone’s picnic blanket.
In the bible, the word tithe refers to 10%. The portion of one’s resources God asks that we use to maintain the faith community and its mission. The word ‘offerings’ is a Biblical word which means what we give over and above our tithe and is usually designed to special purposes. What the Bible is saying is that if everything we have is 100% and we truly believe everything we have comes from God, then God is saying that 90% of everything God has given us he has given us to use for ourselves and he asks a mere 10% for his work - and God will honor that by making it enough.
It is hard for us to hear these thought that ‘stealing’ in its Biblical use means even holding back what God asks us to give…
The 8th Commandment - don’t take what isn’t yours, and don’t withhold what you can share with others, don’t take from someone even the intangible idea of their dignity and their ideas and the value of their opinions, don’t withhold from God the things of God.

Amen!

World Communion Sunday: When Christ Makes Us Know We Are His Own World Communion Sunday: When Christ Makes Us Know We Are His Own

World Communion Sunday: When Christ Makes Us Know We Are His Own

On this World Communion Sunday it might be good to reflect on Paul’s encouragement to the Christian community in Philippi to know for themselves the peace that comes from knowing Christ has “made us his.”
Paul begins by talking about his worldly accomplishments. He’s a great success story by the standards of his society. He is Jewish, a member of God’s chosen people, born into tribe of Benjamin. Further, he is a Pharisee and has spent most of his life defending the law. He was even a persecutor of Christians, completely righteous and blameless under the law. Paul in the world of Judaism of his day was perfect.
But, he says, all of that means nothing when he compares it to what he has found in Jesus Christ. All that notoriety in the eyes of his peers he considered rubbish, because knowing Christ, being found in Christ, is all that matters. It is the only prize Paul seeks or wants or desires. He is willing, even eager, to put aside that worldly recognition “in order that he may gain Christ and be found to be part of the family of God.
And of course, we who follow Christ can understand what Paul is talking about because we’ve all experienced it, too. We know what it means to “be Christ’s own” at some point in our lives.
Knowing we are Christ’s own refers to those moments when we feel Christ’s presence, feel Christ’s grace, and know Christ’s assurance deep down in our very hearts. Today we commissioned 2 young people who will be taking a time to understand what that means for them - to be Christ’s own and to feel Christ’s presence in their lives.
Today on World Communion Sunday we are going to ecumenical and talk about John Wesley - the founder of the Methodist tradition. John Wesley speaks of his own personal experience of “knowing Christ had made him his own” in an entry from his journal for May 23, 1738. He writes, “In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ,
I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.“
What a powerful moment!
We too have those moments where we feel assured that we belong to Christ - that he has made us his. A feeling of warming and security and peace even though such moments are often short and pass by quickly - we still notice them.. We don’t have that feeling of the Spirit, that feeling of warmth in our hearts, that feeling of closeness to God all the time, there are things we can do as disciples to
remind us of such moments along the way and continue to draw strength from them.
Wesley identifies the moments of closeness to Christ as ‘a means of Grace’ - in other words these times when we just have this overwhelming knowledge of the presence of Christ, it is what Wesley calls ‘a means of grace’ and he continues to help us understand this ‘means of grace’ in outward signs and actions that are part of our relationship with God. So we think about the actions we perform in the church that remind us of God’s work in our lives - of his ‘means of grace’?
Wesley points out the works of God in worship - prayer, scripture reading, hearing God’s word through a message and the special actions such as commissioning, baptism and communion. Wesley says you cannot participate in these acts of God without feeling something, without growing in grace. These actions that seem like just ordinary things we do during worship are in actuality ways God works to remind us of his grace and the ways he breaks into the ordinary times of our lives.
For Wesley and for Paul and John Calvin and great leaders in our church the means of grace that we participate which helps us experience that closeness to God is in the Lord’s Supper - that is the place where we really experience the presence of Jesus.
The moment that Paul is talking about when the person knows that Christ has made us his own. That moment that changes everything. It is that feeling which makes all else seem like rubbish -

around the table - around the table where Jesus serves us himself - where we can really say that Christ becomes a part of us through his body and blood.
The regular celebration of the sacrament of Holy Communion is this essential act in this process of reminding us that we are in Christ and Christ is in us. One of the places Christ invites us, reaches to us, meets us, and makes know we are his very own is at his table. This is why the sacrament is central to our worship, and to the majority of Christian denominations and communities around the globe. It is why we share in World Communion Sunday instead of some other practice in our worship. Here is the universal place where we meet Christ and receive our assurance that not only do we belong to Christ, but that Christ really does live within us and when we need it, he manifests himself in that feeling we have of his love and peace and our hearts are warmed.
On this World Communion Sunday we might consider how sharing in the sacrament is, for many people, the most regular way in which Christ draws people to him and makes them his own. As we join with our brothers and sisters around this table of our Lord brothers and sisters around the world, let us join Paul in rejoicing that Christ has come to us and made us his own!

Amen!