March 11: The Ten Commandments Repeated
♫ Music:
WEEK FIVE - READING THE SCRIPTURES
March 11 - March 17
Reading has been, historically, a corporate act. Only with the rise of literacy in the early modern world did reading become, in many cases, a solitary act. Moreover, not only was it a solitary act but it became a silent act too. Monastic historian Jean Leclercq once explained that in the Middle Ages, it was common for monks, when they read alone in their cell, to still say the words aloud. They did not read silently though they may have read quietly. Thus, reading was multisensory in which one would see the words on the page and hear them spoken aloud. It is only a short step from there to see how reading, when it becomes silent and solitary, is mostly done to gain information. However, reading was, originally, not only corporate, but frequently it was a corporate act of worship. The words of God were read aloud in the assembly so that everyone would benefit from them. Thus, in Lent let the words of God be read individually but also corporately – as acclamation.
Day 26 - Sunday, March 11
Title: The Ten Commandments Repeated
Scripture: Deuteronomy 5:1-22
Then Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: “Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the ordinances which I am speaking today in your hearing, that you may learn them and observe them carefully. The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. The Lord did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us, with all those of us alive here today. The Lord spoke to you face to face at the mountain from the midst of the fire, while I was standing between the Lord and you at that time, to declare to you the word of the Lord; for you were afraid because of the fire and did not go up the mountain. He said, ‘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, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
‘You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.
‘Observe the sabbath day to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you, so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to observe the sabbath day.
‘Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be prolonged and that it may go well with you on the land which the Lord your God gives you.
‘You shall not murder.
‘You shall not commit adultery.
‘You shall not steal.
‘You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
‘You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, and you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field or his male servant or his female servant, his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.’
“These words the Lord spoke to all your assembly at the mountain from the midst of the fire, of the cloud and of the thick gloom, with a great voice, and He added no more. He wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me.
Poetry: Say Yes Quickly
By Rumi
[Translated by Coleman Barks]
Forget your life. Say God is Great. Get up.
You think you know what time it is. It’s time to pray.
You’ve carved so many little figurines, too many.
Don’t knock on any random door like a beggar.
Reach your long hand out to another door, beyond where
you go on the street, the street
where everyone says, “How are you?”
and no one says How aren’t you?
Tomorrow you’ll see what you’ve broken and torn tonight
thrashing in the dark. Inside you
there’s an artist you don’t know about.
He’s not interested in how different things look in moonlight.
If you are here unfaithfully with us,
you’re causing terrible damage.
If you’ve opened your loving to God’s love
you’re helping people you don’t know and have never seen.
Is what I say true? Say yes quickly,
if you know, you’ve known it
from the beginning of the universe.
PRACTICING DEPENDENCE AND FREEDOM
Moses stood before a rag-tag group of former slaves, freed from Egyptian oppressors just forty years prior by the God of their fathers. The community may have been standing within view of the land God had promised a generation ago, as they stood ready to hear Moses offer his final words of exhortation and encouragement, words intended to continue shaping these people into a nation called “Israel,” before they finally entered that Promised Land. Moses’ final words make up the book of Deuteronomy - cue the trumpets of Tsar' Iudeyskiy, Op. 95, because this moment is indeed triumphant.
It had been a rough 40 years since the great Exodus, when God redeemed Israel from slavery through signs and wonders, and the blood of the Passover Lamb painted on doorways to signal the angel of death to move on to the homes of their oppressors. Their God proved his power, but the parents and grandparents of those standing before Moses that day struggled in life after slavery to embrace the freedom provided by dependence on God’s gracious and loving law.
Their struggle makes sense: for generations the stories of the God of their fathers conflicted with their experience of the Egyptian gods’ power, embodied in Pharaoh as the sun-god Ra and from whom they received no respite. For centuries these people had been habituated and socialized into slavery, Egyptian values and mores, and the psychological trauma of being chattel. For centuries their very survival depended on pleasing the capricious whims of those who held them captive.
Reorienting the community’s trust toward the God of their fathers would take God’s profound and patient work. It took a generation of embodied community practice for Israel to begin believing that this God, who for 400 years seemed to have forgotten them, would care for them through provision of manna (enough for one day, no need to store up extra), water springing forth in the desert, protection from warring tribes, and direction in a column of cloud and fire. And in return, they did not need to break their backs in creating monuments to His name. They need only, as Jesus would succinctly sum up 4000 years later for the teachers of the law pictured in Bubrov’s work, “Love God and love neighbor” (Luke 10:27). They need only keep this covenant, reiterated by Moses there on the banks of the Jordan, designed to bring about flourishing and freedom in community before God.
We, like the Israelites, have been socialized into the systems, values, and mores of the world. God’s invitation through Moses to Israel on the river-bank of the Promised Land – to love God and love others, to continue practicing dependence and freedom – is also an invitation to us. Some during this Lenten season practice dependence and freedom with a fast from food, social media, or ways of being in the world that lead to dependence on self over God. Fasting is, as today’s poet reminds us, a way to forget this thing in your life, to intentionally turn to God and say You are great. The discipline tends to highlight the ways our hearts are more oriented to Egypt’s slavery than life-giving dependence on God. As we continue in our observance of this Lenten season, whether through fasting or other intentional engagement with the Lord, may we continue to allow the Spirit to reshape our mindsets and sink our hearts into the loving of God’s love, for it is in dependence on our Lord that we find our freedom.
Prayer:
Lord, in this corporate season of waiting and fasting, of repentance and prayer, continue by the power of your Spirit to train our minds and hearts into dependence on you. Continue to lead us out of slavery to the systems, values, and mores of this world into the freedom found in dependence on you.
Amen
Lisa Igram
Associate Dean of Spiritual Development
Biola University
About the Artwork:
Disputes on the Torah
Boris Dubrov
2016
Oil on canvas
90 x 120 cm
This painting by artist Boris Dubrov of five Jewish men studying and debating the Torah serves well in this week’s Lenten theme of sharing the word of God as a community. The composition allows the viewer to feel as though they are in the room listening to the intense and passionate debate of these learned men.
About the Artist:
Russian-born artist Boris Dubrov (b. 1979) studied art in Leningrad (St. Petersburg). At the age of 18, he immigrated to Israel. Much of his artistic growth was rooted in his years of military service in the Israel Defense Forces. Boris began learning the Torah when in the army and later became fascinated with the modern Hasidic culture of Israel that preserved the ways of the lost world of the shtetl, small market towns with large Jewish populations found in pre–World War II Eastern Europe. This nostalgia became the subject of many of his realistic works now in private collections in Israel, USA, France, Great Britain, Panama, Jamaica, Russia, and the Ukraine.
About the Music:
“Tsar' Ludeyskiy (The King of the Jews), Op. 95: The Levites' Trumpets” from the album Glazunov: Introduction and Dance of Salome / The King of the Jews
About the Composer:
Alexander Glazunov (1865–1936) was a Russian composer, music teacher, and conductor of the late Russian Romantic period. He served as director of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory between 1905 and 1928 and was instrumental in the reorganization of the institute into the Leningrad Conservatory following the Bolshevik Revolution. The best-known student under his tenure was composer and pianist Dmitri Shostakovich. Glazunov was significant in that he successfully incorporated a number of other influences in his music including Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestral virtuosity and Tchaikovsky's lyricism. While younger composers such as Prokofiev and Shostakovich eventually considered his music old-fashioned, they also admitted he remained a composer with an imposing reputation and a stabilizing influence during a time of transition and turmoil in Russia.
About the Performer:
Russian State Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1957 within the All-Union Broadcasting System. The Orchestra has had such renowned artistic directors as Aranovich, Shostakovich, and Rozhdestvensky. The Russian State Symphony Orchestra, ranks among the finest Russian symphony orchestras of the 21st century. The Orchestra is a frequent visitor of numerous international festivals in European countries and the Far East. One of the music critics of “The Star” in Great Britain wrote: “While listening to the music conducted by Maestro Polyansky, one starts thinking whether there is a limit to perfection.” The Russian State Symphony Orchestra concerts mark strict performing discipline, flexibility of phrasing, rich and warm sound, nobility of expression, and skillfully balanced sound of orchestral groups.
About the Poet:
Rumi (1207–1273) was a 13th-century Persian Sunni Muslim poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic. Rumi's influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions as his poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into various formats. Rumi has been described as the "most popular poet" and the "best-selling poet" in the United States. Rumi's works are written mostly in Persian, but occasionally he also used Turkish, Arabic, and Greek, in his verse. His Masnavi (Mathnawi) is considered one of the greatest poems of the Persian language. Rumi believed passionately in the use of music, poetry and dance as a path to reaching God.
About the Devotional Writer:
Lisa Igram’s 15 years in higher education include a variety of classroom-teaching and co-curricular programming experiences in the U.S. and abroad. She joined the Spiritual Development staff in 2012, where she especially enjoys opportunities to teach and train in spiritual formation and connect one-on-one with students. Lisa is currently pursuing a PhD in New Testament Studies at Aberdeen University, Scotland.