Sunday, August 2, 2009
(You Shall Not Covet)
Exodus 20:17;
Matthew 6:19-21
Minister of Discipleship
According to many health studies, one of the
greatest threats to our lives today is heart disease. We are warned to watch our cholesterol numbers and just the
thought of a nice greasy cheeseburger sends some people into a panic. We are told about the importance of getting
cardio-vascular exercise multiple times each week, which is one of the reasons
the YMCA here in town is currently expanding their “cardio room” to handle the
increase usage. It is even possible to
buy your own blood pressure testing equipment to insure that your blood
pressure is staying in check.
I believe there is an even more dangerous and deadly form
of heart disease that isn’t getting nearly as much publicity today. It is R.H.S. – Restless Heart Syndrome. I got this label from one of the earliest
and most famous of all the Christian writers, St. Augustine. In the opening paragraph to his
autobiography, Confessions, he addressed God with these now
famous words, “our heart is restless until it rests in you!”
It’s amazing
that someone wrote these words in the 4th century and yet they are
still so on-target for our 21st century world! We still have restless hearts. We live in a restless society that is
continually searching for the right “look” or the right car or the right family
or the right vacation. We buy CDs and
10-step books looking for the answers.
We attend workshops or meditation classes. Advertisers lure us with pictures of the perfect get-away or the
peaceful spa that will wash away all our troubles. All this just to try and fill our restless souls.
The danger of R.H.S. is that our restless hearts begin to
covet those things we do not have and think we need; we are always searching for the answer to take away the
restlessness. This is the warning given
to us in the final Commandment – Thou Shalt Not Covet. Coveting is the inability to be at peace
with yourself or your life. It is a
sign of a restless spirit that wants more and more thinking that will satisfy
the longing and restlessness within. In
her book on the Ten Commandments, Sister Joan Chittister describes it like
this:
“I am left with nothing else to do but to compare
myself to everyone around me, to run feverishly through life –trying to catch
up, trying to win, trying to amass outside myself what I do not have within me:
peace, satisfaction, a sense of wholeness.”
[The Ten Commandments – Laws of the Heart, pg 114]
St. Augustine
learned from his own restless life wanderings and the bad choices he made in
his early adult life that the hole within our souls we are trying to fill can
only be filled by God. He learned just
what the Ten Commandments are trying to teach us…..Nothing else will satisfy
the longing we experience – not idols, not fantasy trips or amusements, not control, not human relationships, not
things, not success. No, only God can
bring peace to the restless heart.
Jesus also understood this very well. He reminded his disciples that what you
treasure is where your heart will be focused.
If you treasure wealth, your heart will lead you to fill it with wealth. If you treasure “stuff,” your heart will
lead you to fill it with “stuff.” If
you treasure power, your heart will lead you to fill it with power. If you treasure recognition, your heart will
lead you to fill it with recognition.
But, Jesus knew that any time we try to fill our hearts with such
worldly “treasures,” these transient things, our hearts will continue to desire
more and more. We will not be at peace,
because only God can fill that empty place in our hearts.
There is a story about a young man who was struggling
with his life. No matter how hard he
tried he never felt satisfied with his life.
He had studied at the best schools so he would have knowledge about all
the greatest questions of life. He had
tried to find the perfect wife so they could have the perfect family. He had tried to build the perfect
house. He had tried to find the perfect
career and earn enough money to satisfy his longings. He had gone on several journeys to some of the most beautiful and
exotic spots in the known world in search of answers. But nothing satisfied his deep longing. He looked around him and continued to be envious of someone with
a bigger house or a more beautiful wife.
He seemed to always meet someone who knew more than he did about some
subject. Even though he was successful,
he continued to see other merchants in the town square who had more than he
did.
Finally in desperation, he went to the village priest and
asked what he needed to do to find peace for his life. The priest recommended that he needed to go
out into the desert to visit the wise old hermit who lived there. So, the young man headed out on his
journey. Eventually, he found an old
man sitting outside a small common hut.
He thought to himself, surely this can’t be the answer to my searching,
but he had tried everything else and he had traveled a long way. So he approached the old man. He explained that he was looking for the
answer that would bring an end to his longings and his restless spirit. The old man nodded and said, “follow me.” The old man led the young man to a small
stream and said, “kneel down here beside me.”
When the young man kneeled down, the old man grabbed him by the ears and
held his head under the water. He
continued to hold it down as the young man struggled and struggled. Just as the young man was about to pass out
thinking he would drown, the old man released him. And then the old man said, “when you want God as badly as you
wanted air just a moment ago come back to see me. Then I can talk with you about the answers you seek.” How badly do you want/desire God this
morning?
If I could choose one short passage from the book we have
been reading this summer, this is the
sentence I would choose: “Only God is really enough.” [Ten Commandments – Laws of the Heart, pg 123] That sums it up for me. Only God is really enough. We will never find the answers to our
seeking, we will never find true peace or satisfaction or wholeness until we
desire God more than anything else!
This is the eternal cycle the Ten Commandments – The only way to avoid
breaking Commandment Ten (Thou Shalt Not Covet) is to return to Commandment One
(Put God First). Think about
it….Commandment One reminds us that God has to be our treasure, our point of
origin and focus. And, Commandment Ten
is a reminder of what happens if our hearts do go searching for something other
than God. All the commandments
in-between are great guidelines and warnings about staying on the right path,
on God’s path, for our lives.
One of my favorite “theologians” of the late 20th
century was Dan Fogelberg – the singer and song-writer. In his last album before he died of cancer
he included a song called, “Holy Road.”
A portion of the text has God saying the following:
“I laid a
bounty in their hands
And only
gave them ten commands
But they
never learned their lessons well….
That’s when
they fell
Off of the
holy road….”
The chorus went on to cry
out, “Children, get back to the Holy Road…we must get back to the Holy Road!”
It’s hard to
know how to end a sermon series like this.
But, Dan Fogelberg’s words have helped remind me once again that God has
created a beautiful world. If we will
just look we can see that beauty all around us. And, we must also remember that we are a part of that beautiful creation
and that deep within each of us is beauty – beauty designed to blossom when it
is nurtured and fed by its creator.
These Ten Commandments we have been studying are nothing more than a way
for us to remember that we are created by God to live from the inside out. If this world is to continue to be the
beautiful world God created and intended, we must go deep inside and fill our
restless hearts with God so we can all walk together on the Holy Road.
Communion is a
very physical way to remember that as we receive God’s grace (i.e. eating and
drinking the element of Holy Communion), we are filled with God and called to
live God’s love from the inside back out into the world…..
During Communion play
video….
YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwJEdo1FlMo