SERMON PREACHED BY FR NEVILLE CONNELL

LENT 3 SAN DIEGO 19^th MARCH,2006

Some thirty years ago, I worked in the Diocese of Kuching, which covers Sarawak and Labuan in Borneo, amongst the Iban or Sea Dayak people. Gradually I came to know about their customs.

The first Christian, Church of England missionary arrived in the 1840s,

Yet long before then the Dayaks had established a rule of law, covering the events of daily life, and particularly the rites of passage, even divorce.

The Australian aborigines have their own system of law, developed over thousands of years, somewhat blood-thirsty in part. Can there be a society, however simple, without some system of law? It does not seem so.

So the Hebrew people came to have the Ten Commandments. They reflect a settled society, but even so are very early. How does law arise? Certainly through human interaction, or response to what the community considers to be human failings. Or it is imposed by a ruler, council of elders, or the community as a whole by vote of some kind.

The Book of Exodus makes clear that the Ten Commandments were given by God. To break the law then became not just a matter of an offence against the community, but also an act of disobedience to God.

What we call sin. Chapter three of the Book of Genesis seeks to explain the human tendency to disobedience in the story of Adam and Eve.

The sin of Adam and Eve, the original sin, was pride. Adam and Eve wanted to be like God. We see in the story covetousness, greed, blame-shifting, sin

The Ten Commandments became, along with lots of other subsidiary regulations, for God’s people the Hebrews, the rule for their community life, long ago. Have they any relevance today?

The first four commandments lay out our duty to God, the remainder, our duty to others. They have enormous relevance to us today.

We are reminded not to make other gods than the One God – things like material progress, power, money, sex, which can so easily assume godlike status in our lives, become like graven images. To take the Lord’s name in vain is to deny or reject this world as God’s world, to deny his rule over His world. Sunday is the Lord’s Day; we give this day for worship of God,

so that the rest of the week may be dedicated to Him.

Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple is a dramatic illustration of the Jewish authorities’ failure to love and honour God, by blaspheming the Temple.

Only Temple money could be offered, hence the need for the profit-taking money-changers. The animals needed for offering were sold in the Temple. The space for Gentiles to worship had been taken over by this scene of blasphemy.

The family is the smallest form of community, so to honour one’s parents is to honour the community of which we are all part. Life is God’s gift; we must therefore honour it. The body is thus God’s gift, and so must be used in ways which honour God. Adultery is therefore a failure to honour a commitment made with one’s body. But lust itself is also a failure to honour the body of another.

To respect other people’s property is to honour the owner. To covet is to fail to honour the owner of what one desires. To honour another means that one will not gossip or spread slander, to fail in love for the other by spreading false witness.

St Paul knew the Commandments very well, but he is honest enough to tell us that found it very hard to keep them, In our somewhat convoluted Second Reading. “We know that the law that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the Law is good. So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

(Romans 7:13-25). But he went on struggling with sin; the sacrifice which is of our nature as Christians is in the struggle. It is in this that we are made holy, even if very slowly.

And in his despair, St Paul reminded himself that the strength for our struggle is not in ourselves, but in God. “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”.

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