Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey,
Sunday, March 7, 2021, at 8:00 and 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher
The Ten Truths
“Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our soul…” (Collect, Lent III)
“‘I am God, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of a life of slavery.
No other gods, only me.” (Exodus 20:1-3)
I cannot tell you what a joy it is for me to be back among you wonderful people, under these
trying, even tragic circumstances and in such fearsome and confining days. I understand your
priest in charge, Fr. Shearer, is taking longer than he wishes to recover fully from this COVID-
19 virus, and I know that we all continue to hold him in prayer for a complete recovery. And I
know, too, that many of you are badly missing in-person worship. I get it; but there is an
intimacy to these Zoom squares we find ourselves in, and I hope we can take advantage of this
closer proximity.
Today’s Old Testament reading is the full display of the most familiar passages of
Scripture, namely, the Ten Commandments. I’m not happy with the word “commandments” to
describe these timeless sayings. How about “Ten Truths,” for that is more likely what they are,
pointing to road directions, happy tips on how to keep straight on the highway, to prevent us
from straying onto the shoulders and wrecking. Another metaphor is of the sailboat. The Ten
Commandments or Ten Truths are designed to adjust our sails. When they work well in guiding
us, it’s all smooth sailing!
I was discussing these truths with some fellow clergy earlier in the week, Fr. Wade Renn
being among them. Fr. Renn described these truths as evidence of God’s love for us. It is like a
love letter or a letter home from father giving us advice that can sustain us for a lifetime.
I would like to hazard a quick run through of these truths and see if we can’t soften them
and even make them more relevant to our present lives and circumstances. For after all, how
many of us actively acknowledge and adhere to these precepts? To be honest, I confess that these
truths do not play a vivid part in my everyday life. In truth, they play little to no part at all. This
doesn’t mean that they have had no indirect influence on me. Of course, they have. And I assume
they have had an influence on each of you as well.
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But we probably give them more value in the abstract than we do personally. And have
you heard about the Eleventh Commandment? “Thou shalt not COVID thy neighbor’s wife.”
You thought that was corny? Listen to this: Did you hear the story about the young
minister who had just started at the local Episcopal church? Like many younger clergy, he was
environmentally-minded, and so he rode a bicycle to worship. After a month of preaching, he
finds his bike gone, and he thinks a member of his congregation must have stolen it.
So, he goes and talks to an older preacher to ask for advice. The wise minister tells him,
“This Sunday I want you to preach a sermon on the 10 Commandments, and when you get to the
“Thou shall not steal” part, really hit it hard. The offending person will feel guilty and will repent
and bring your bike back to you.”
“That’s a great idea”, the young preacher says.
So, a week goes by and he runs into the older preacher who asks him if the sermon
worked.
“Yes and no”, says the young preacher. “I preached on the 10 Commandments just like
you said, but when I got to the part about ‘Thou shall not commit adultery,’ I remembered where
I left my bike.”
Truth #1: I am the Lord your God, and the only God. You see: there is no commandment
here, just a bold, wonderful statement. God is it. God is everything. There is no other, there is
nothing other. As the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins says, “The world is charged with the
grandeur of God.” Do we feel it? Have we experienced it? How often? One hopes that we live
with this sense of awe and grandeur! God’s reality and God’s presence is everything; in fact, it is
everything we need.
Truth #2: No other Gods, only me. Isn’t that something? Nothing else, no one else need
take priority in our lives over this transcendent and yet ever-present God, who is nearer to us
than our own heartbeats: unto whom all hearts are open. Keeping this God close to us is the glory
of living.
Truth #3: And we must take abuse the sacred name of God with our silly profanities. Be
careful to respect the holy name of God. In fact, the Jews do not speak the holy name (Yahweh:
see, I said it!): it is just that sacred. We honor God’s name by honoring all of life, all of creation.
Truth #4: Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy. Keep a time holy for God, set
aside a sabbath time, a time of rest. The Jewish Shabbat is from Friday’s sundown till
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Saturday’s. The day of rest from God’s work of creation. For the Christian, we focus on Sunday,
the symbolic day of Christ’s resurrection. Just like the diastole of the heartbeat, when the hearts
refills with blood after the emptying done during systole, all of us need time to rest and to be
with the silence in which our lives are enshrined.
Truth #5: Honor your father and mother. Even for those without a father or without a
mother, this truth points to the heritage that each of us lives in. The Chinese know how to honor
their ancestors. By focusing on the fact that each of us comes from a long lineage humbles us
and helps us recognize our part in a grand succession of families and friends. We must honor
them all. We must make our families a sacred place of respect and acknowledge our larger
family. It isn’t just a question of blood lines. It is a question of identification and compassion for
every living human being.
Truth #6: No murder. In fact, the deeper meaning is to prohibit killing of any sort.
Killing is a form of dishonoring of the name and creation of God. A friend of ours tells the story
of his mother who was dying of stage four lung cancer. As she struggled and was near death, he
sat beside her and thought, “I thought how I could have saved her suffering by just putting a
pillow over her head. It was only this sixth commandment, the proscription on killing, that
stopped me.” Yes. This is a vivid example, is it not, of referring to a commandment to guide us
in our living. The wider scope of this truth is to refrain from hating, bullying or injuring others.
Truth #7: No adultery. But surely this truth is more than this. Be a trustworthy partner in
everything: in friendships, in business, in normal human relationships. Be a “true blue.”
Truth #8: No stealing. We steal when we think we must have something to make us
happy or secure. Be careful in plundering the possessions of others, for in so doing we are
chipping away at our own integrity.
Truth #9: No lies about your neighbor. This is the meaning of that obscure phrase, “Do
not bear false witness against your neighbor.” All gossip and slander have behind it an
insecurity: we built ourselves up at someone else’s expense.
Truth #10: Do not covet. Not just your neighbor’s wife, but anything. Excessive desire
eats the soul and prevents us from being grateful for what we have. We become so fixated on
something out there that is not ours and in acquiring even more of what we do have, that we
forget who we are, where we are: little children under the stars. Stop hankering for things you
don’t have, and probably don’t even need.
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So that’s a rushed summary of this most famous list of truths or commandments.
But I ask you, Do you live by them? In one sense, of course you do. But I suggest that the
way of Jesus is much clearer and much simpler. This truth is found in the summary of the law:
we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind and soul and we are to love our
neighbor as ourselves. The Prayer Book concludes: “On these two commandments hang all the
Law and the Prophets.” So, we need go no further and no deeper than this. Love of God, love of
self, love of neighbor. Are these not one love?
And if you want an even more condensed version of this summary, use the Golden Rule:
“Do to others as you would have people do to you.” This profound truth antedates Judaism and
Christianity and, in fact, is found in almost all of the world religions.
“O love, how deep, how broad, how high! It fills the heart with ecstasy.”
Faith, hope, love abide. And the greatest of these is love.
Amen.