Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost October 4, 2026 with The Rev. Javier Almendárez-Bautista

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be holy and pleasing in your sight, O Lord, or rock and redeemer.

Amen.

I've been on a kick lately, a kick enabled by the people who put our Sunday lectionary together.

Exodus has been on my mind for much of the past month.

This happens to be the third sermon I've written on the book of Exodus.

Beginning with the calling of Moses at the burning bush, crossing through the waters of the Red Sea, we now find ourselves at the scene that establishes the moral and legal foundation of the ancient Israelite people, the proclamation of the law on Mount Sinai.

If Moses' cry to Pharaoh, let my people go, is the ancient Israelites' declaration of independence, you could say that to the scene at the foot of Mount Sinai is their constitutional convention.

If the only person present, however, is the prophet Moses.

The rest of the people prefer to sit this one out.

When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, 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.

We'll stick to the back pew, Moses, they seemed to say.

And who can blame them after all that they've witnessed, the plagues of Egypt, the pillar of cloud by day, and fire by night, the sea's parting at the prophet's command, it may be best for them to keep their distance.

Now, tradition holds that there are roughly 613 commandments in the Hebrew scriptures, 613 mitzvah, meaning obligation or command.

They cover everything from moral and civil issues to liturgical and ceremonial matters.

Collectively, these 613 commands make up the Talmud, but the ten words at the beginning of Exodus chapter 20 capture the imagination in a way that the rest simply cannot.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

In a sense, the Ten Commandments are timeless.

But because of that very quality, because of their broad appeal through the centuries, they are also liable to interpretation and reinterpretation.

Amid the culture wars that rage over the origins of our very own nation, plenty of folks are eager to use these words as a cudgel in their fight to define what this country is and by extension, what it is not.

The argument is often less about the Ten Commandments themselves than it is about a certain kind of anxiety about national identity.

If the Ten Commandments ever enter the news cycle, you are more likely to learn about the people arguing about them than about the commandments themselves.

The commandment, remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, is rarely invoked, for instance, to argue about the importance of fair labor practices.

The command you shall not murder is only selectively applied, and very rarely so when it comes to casualties and overseas conflicts.

In light of the politicized environment in which these words live, the key to making sense of them might be to recover their strangeness, to accept that they are embedded in a larger story of a people of faith, a people whose history is not completely synonymous with our own.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago when we read the story of the crossing at the Red Sea, everyone imagines themselves a righteous Israelite.

No one imagines themselves a member of the oppressive Egyptian regime.

To be a Christian, however, means to accept that at any given moment we might be both.

And so as we make our way to the foot of Mount Sinai today, let us take a leaf from the Israelites' book and approach with humility, at a distance, so to speak, with much fear and trembling.

Let us discover, in the words of the theologian Karl Barth, the strange new world within the Bible.

By making the familiar foreign, we might just discover the truth about our origins.

Now, the clue to understanding these ten words might be found in the very first one.

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.

This is a command that tells a story of its own.

Before we get to our duties and obligations, we remember who brought us here in the first place.

A God who liberates.

When God called Moses to action from the burning bush, God proclaimed, I hear the cries of my people, I see their suffering, I remember my promise to their forebears.

The mighty hand and outstretched arm that brought the people out of Egypt is a God who remembers those who have been forgotten and listens to those who have been ignored.

This is a God who takes the well-being of those on the underside of history seriously.

Yes, the commands are a list of do's and don'ts, of duties and obligations, but the root motivation is liberation.

Outside of this context, the words are meaningless, a resounding gong and a clanging cymbal.

True freedom, however, is not simply doing whatever you please.

Doing anything and everything you want is actually the surest way back into slavery.

Enslavement to greed and selfish ambition, addiction to the forces that prioritize short-term whims and desires at the expense of long-term flourishing, dependency upon worldly success and fickle wealth to determine our value.

Freedom to do anything we want is no freedom at all.

If we accept the fact that my well-being is bound up in yours, that true fulfillment is found in belonging, that we all prosper when we care for one another, we must also accept the responsibilities that come with it, directing our energy and efforts toward preserving the well-being of our neighbor.

This is the freedom to which God invites the people called Israel, and the freedom of the Christian as well.

A freedom to be with and for one another.

And that is the true meaning of the covenant at Sinai.

An invitation into the vulnerability, freedom, and responsibility of belonging.

It is akin to singing in a choir.

Sure, you have to follow the music, you have to learn your part, you have to show up to practice, but when you do so, something beautiful happens.

Out of the many, one, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Now, I do not have time today to go into detail on each of the commandments.

We will say that for another sermon series.

But I will leave you with something that doesn't quite come through in the English translation.

Each of these commands are addressed in the second person.

You shall do this, you shall not do that.

In Hebrew, however, the addressee isn't plural, but singular.

It's not y'all, it's you, you individually.

Each command is addressed to the individual Israelite.

The well-being of the many is the responsibility of each and every person.

There are no exceptions.

Friends, we are all responsible for protecting and nurturing the liberty to which we have been called.

But it is impossible to be a Christian alone.

We are one body with many members, and we do our best work when we remember that, when we refuse the forces of this world that would divide us, and put our trust in a God who has promised to provide enough for us all.

May we put our trust in the one loving, living, liberating God, and may we rejoice in our obligation to seek the welfare of our neighbors near and far.

Amen.