Then God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
Exodus 20:1-4
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labor and do all your work.
Exodus 10:7-9
Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand over the land of Egypt, so that the locusts may come upon it and eat every plant in the land, all that the hail has left.’ So Moses stretched out his staff over the land of Egypt, and the Lord brought an east wind upon the land all that day and all that night; when morning came, the east wind had brought the locusts. The locusts came upon all the land of Egypt and settled on the whole country of Egypt, such a dense swarm of locusts as had never been before, nor ever shall be again. They covered the surface of the whole land, so that the land was black; and they ate all the plants in the land and all the fruit of the trees that the hail had left; nothing green was left, no tree, no plant in the field, in all the land of Egypt. Pharaoh hurriedly summoned Moses and Aaron and said, ‘I have sinned against the Lord your God, and against you. Do forgive my sin just this once, and pray to the Lord your God that at the least he remove this deadly thing from me.’ So he went out from Pharaoh and prayed to the Lord. The Lord changed the wind into a very strong west wind, which lifted the locusts and drove them into the Red Sea; not a single locust was left in all the country of Egypt. But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go.
Exodus 10:12-20
Jesus said, “Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all. [And after they have reigned they will rest.]” Jesus said, “If your leaders say to you, ‘Look, the (Father’s) kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is within you and it is outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty.”
Jesus said, “The person old in days won’t hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live. For many of the first will be last, and will become a single one.” Jesus said, “Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you. For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed. [And there is nothing buried that will not be raised."] His disciples asked him and said to him, “Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe?”
Jesus said, “Don’t lie, and don’t do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed.”
The Gospel of Thomas, Lines 2, 3, 6
You shall teach them to your children, and you shall speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk on the road, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
Deuteronomy 6:7
Nine Commandments is the title of a book by a man named David Noel Freedman, who is one of the greatest Biblical scholars of our time. I met David Noel Freedman when I went to UCSD to hear a lecture by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, a feminist theologian from Harvard Divinity School. It was raining hard that night, and I noticed and old man, bent over and walking with difficulty, go into the hall sit down next to Dr. Fiorenza.
After the talk, I joined a long line of people waiting to talk to Dr. Fiorenza. I had brought a copy of my manuscript for a play called Mother’s Milk and Moon Cookies that I hoped to give to her. My place at the end of the line happened to be directly in front of the old man’s seat.
“Hello,” I said. “My name is Bonnie. What brings you here tonight?”
He looked me up and down.
“Obviously, you don’t know who I am,” he said.
“No, I don’t,” I said.
“My name is David Noel Freedman,” he said. The name meant nothing to me.
“My name is Bonnie Tarwater,” I said. “What do you do?”
“I work here at UCSD,” he said.
“Oh!” I said. “I am an alumna. What do you teach?”
“I teach the Bible,” he said. “Clearly, you don’t know who I am.” I’m thinking to myself, I am so sick of academics – they are always so full of themselves.
“I am the editor of the Anchor Bible,” he added.
Now the light went on. This little old man was the most famous, most prolific editor and scholar of the Bible in the world. The Anchor Bible is the one I read every week.
I made my apologies for not recognizing his name and thanked him for his contributions to my own spiritual life as well as the lives of millions of other Christians. We became fast friends. I helped him with errands and shuttling him to various appointments. He promised to help me with the play. He was a crotchety old guy, and I spent a lot of time feeling annoyed with him. He died a while ago without ever mentioning my play, although he did come to preach at my San Diego church once.
Some time after his death, I received a call from a woman who said that David had given her my play too edit. It turned out that he had more generosity of spirit than was apparent to me.
The tenth commandment is “You shall not covet.” Exodus uses the Hebrew word for covet – tachmod – but in Deuteronomy uses titavveh, which means “desire.” The tenth commandment is completely different than all other nine because it deals with motivation rather than action. Killing, stealing, adultery – all are actions. Number ten forbids an attitude. To break number ten is to break God’s law, not Israelite or human law. Number ten is more like the seven deadly sins, which include coveting or desire, greed, pride, envy, sloth, anger, and lust. It is like what the Buddha said: all suffering arises from desire.
David Noel Freedman noticed something about the Hebrew Bible that had never been noticed in history. He noticed a pattern previously unrecognized and undetected. In the books spanning Exodus to Kings, the nation of Israel is presented to the reader as thoroughly defying its covenant with God by breaking each of the Ten Commandments, one by one, book by book, in order, until there is no commandment left, leaving God with only one choice: the destruction of the nation. After the last commandment is broken, we have the destruction and exile of the Jews in 722 BC. Then in 586 BC, God’s chosen people are exiled again, “No longer to live securely in their “Promised Land.”
The story, then, of the Jewish people is the story of how the Jews break all the commandments.
David writes: This is “skillfully woven into Israel’s history – a message to a community in exile that their present condition is not the result of God abandoning them, but of their abandoning God through their complete disregard for the covenant obligations as embodied in the Ten Commandments.”
What David recognized was a projection of himself, a master editor. He saw that these books of the Hebrew Bible were compiled by a Master Editor like himself who is responsible for the placement and interpretation of Jewish history.
We read a Jewish scripture every Sunday, for this is our history. Jesus was a Jew and it is his and our ancestry. Our history then, is about our disobedience and our disregard for the covenant obligations embodied into the Ten Commandments. When we do this we are in exile, alienated from God and all of creation.
In our class we are studying the Gnostic gospels, which also have just recently been discovered and are being studied seriously for the first time in 2000 years. David Noel Freedman has convinced me that there was a master editor of the Hebrew Bible and that it was never noticed until this time.
In my own study of the Gnostic gospels, I similarly believe we are able to see something about Jesus and Christianity and wisdom that were unable to see before. As humans, we project ourselves onto our world. Just as we do with a Rorschach ink blot test, we all see something of ourselves because we are seeing and perceiving the world through our own eyes and our own lives and experiences. This morning and every Sunday in worship, I invite you to see through your own eyes. In our class on mysticism and Gnostic gospels we are being invited to see God and our religious experience through our own eyes. Next week we will sing s song about Mary Magdalene. She sings, “I am sitting here wanting memories to teach me, to see the beauty in the world through my own eyes.”
Yes, we need teachers like David Noel Freedman, and Elaine Pagels and all those who have devoted their lives to the exploration and interpretation of our Bible, but we also need to read it and learn from it for ourselves. This is what I believe Jesus is teaching us in our reading this morning. Jesus said, “If your leaders say to you, ‘Look, God’s kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is within you and it is outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living God. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty.”
The Ten Commandants are something important to teach our children, as expressed in the words I read from Deuteronomy. As we get older, our spiritual needs and journey are different. For those over 50, Jesus’ words are, I believe, very significant: “Do not lie and do not do what you hate.” Hopefully, we have gotten the lessons of the nine commandments. Many of us are here to learn about our own desire. We need to learn to be honest with ourselves. We need to know the divinity within us so we can project our own holiness onto our world. We need to project the God that is within us. As Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you and it is outside you.” Let’s commit to working on our desire, our covetous nature.
We are so often like the disciples in the Gospel of Thomas: we get confused and are all over the map. We want to know how to live. We, like the disciples, ask, “Do you want us to fast? How shall we pray? Shall we give to charity? What diet should we observe?”
As Commandment Ten suggests, let us this morning be reminded to work on our motivation, and be truthful with ourselves, know ourselves. Sometimes our motivation is not what we think it is and we lie to ourselves. Not doing what we hate is a good beginning place to try to find the kingdom of God within ourselves. God and Jesus want us to know our own divinity and worth, to love ourselves enough to not be achievement-oriented, to know that we are loved and worthy just as we are. We are not human doings; we are human beings.
I am sitting here wanting memories to teach me to see the beauty in the world in my own eyes.
I am sitting here wanting memories to teach me to see the beauty in the world through my own eyes.
May our projections of our holy selves enable us to see with new insight. David Noel Freedman saw his own genius and divinity as a Master Editor in the Hebrew Bible he knew so well. May we be Gnostics as we honor our own experience of God and the sacred, as the Tenth and most important commandment.
Amen.
And here is the transition I’m concerned about …
I changed “unrecognizable and undetectable” – which implies that no one could have recognize the pattern – to “unrecognized and undetected.” The pattern was there all along, so it was possible for someone to have recognized it. No one did, though, until he did.
What class?