Well Cut Gem

We all need guidance toward the best life we can live. Everything is wide open, and humanity is given to cultivating order from the openness which can feel fearsome and moving toward the chaotic. A city fellow was driving through the country, and admiring the neatly planted rows of the picturesque crops. He saw a farmer with his tractor idling near the fence. He pulled over for a chat. The city guy said. This land is so beautiful; it is glorious what a person and God can accomplish together. The farmer said, “Well you should have seen the mess this all was when God had it on his own.” Oh, dear!—probably not the best attitude. But we do like structure and order, and we are driven to bring it about.

The lessons this Sunday bring us to recall the giving of the commandments of God through Moses to the Hebrews moving into the wilderness. It is the passage, Exodus 20:1-17. This is an elaborately offered version of the commandments. A chiseled down version proposed by scholar, Moshe Weinfeld, looks something like this:

1.    I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods beside Me.

2.    You shall make you no carved likeness.

3.    You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

4.    Remember the sabbath day to hallow it.

5.    Honor your father and your mother. You shall not murder.

6.    You shall not commit adultery.

7.    You shall not steal.

8.    You shall not bear false witness against your fellow man.

9.    You shall not covet.

In our Book of Common Prayer, treatment of the commandments appear in the Outline of the Faith on page 847. And we also use them as an intro to the Holy Eucharist sometimes (BCP p. 350). They are a gift from God and a symbolic nugget of the whole of our relationship with God. I will close with a poetry form that makes a gem shape of the body of the verses to close.

Holy
Ten Commands
the Almighty delivers
from the holy mountain
in the wilderness of Sinai
the heart of the covenant shown
Carved deep in two tables of stone
injunctions that  draw us to God
guidance for our good relation
unity with Yahweh promised
a treasure offered
clear gem
given