The Restless Heart

Exodus 20:17

 

A Sermon Preached by Peter Ilgenfritz

April 30, 2006

University Congregational United Church of Christ

Seattle, Washington

 

The woman remembered hearing the commandment when she was a little girl.  She looked up at her mom, “What’s a covet?”

 

“Covet” is an old fashioned word that we don’t hear much except in old-fashioned places like the Bible.  As Kevin Gray said in our middle school gathering this morning, “covet” means “to envy”.  

 

There has been a controversy about what this last of the 10 commandments is all about.  

The first four of the ten commandments are all about our relationship to God.  The last six commandments are about our relationships with other people.  We can see when people are following these commandments – when people are honoring their parents, when people don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t lie.   But what about coveting?  

 

Is this commandment, “Do not covet your neighbor’s house…” about something like the other commandments that you have to do – about literally taking someone’s house and property away?  Or is it a completely different kind of commandment than the other commandments about a feeling or emotion you have – and that feeling of just wanting someone else’s house violates the commandment?   That is the controversy, the argument, people have had over how to understand the last of the ten commandments. 

 

How we read and understand scripture depends most on who we are and our experiences in life.  People read the same scripture and hear it, understand it in different ways because of the different experiences they have had.

 

This morning I will tell you about how I understand this commandment because of some of the experiences I have had.  And most importantly I want to invite you to think how you understand this commandment because of who you are. 

 

My thinking about this commandment began on a fall evening 20 years ago.

It is twilight.  An October evening of 1986.  Dave and I are walking down a little street in the city of Quebec.  We pass an apartment building and there at street level we look across the street into a little kitchen where two men are making supper.  Two plates and a candle are set on the table.  I remember that scene so well, because we talked about it for years.  It all seemed so utterly impossible to us then that we would ever be able to live together.  That we too might come home to a little place like that at the end of the day and put supper on the table together.  

Was it wrong to desire, to desire so strongly that home and what we imagined those two men we saw through a window had together?

 

Some people do and would say “yes”.  That there was something wrong about our desiring not only of what we imagined these two men had but our own love for one another. 

 

We had just realized six months before that night that we who had been two best friends at school had fallen in love with each other and no one save a counselor at our school knew anything about it.  Not our friends, not our families.  No one.  Maybe we believed what the world said that something about our desire, something about our loving was wrong. 

 

If you are someone who stands outside of power in some way you know that this commandment has been twisted around to keep people without power from expressing their hearts and desires.  It has been used to keep things as they are.   And it doesn’t feel like much good news.  Greg Bowers wrote his “Cantata for a Sacred Union, A Gay Wedding Cantata” that we are hearing in worship today based on poets who were either gay or lesbian or wrote about same-sex love.  Many, like Michelangelo, did so amidst a great deal of personal torment about their feelings.  Others faced criminal persecution for expressing their desire, their love. 

 

We stand in a long legacy of those who have said to gays and lesbians – do not covet, do not desire your neighbor’s house and what they have.  You cannot have a home together or a marriage license. Your desire, your loving is wrong. 

 

We stand in a long legacy of those who have said to the poor – do not covet, do not desire your neighbor’s home.  These people worked hard and earned what they got.  Turn your desire to God and away from wanting mere worldly possessions.  Stand in the soup kitchen line, wait outside the shelter for a cot.  That is what we can give you and with that you should be content.    

 

A stand in a long legacy of those who have said to kids with a little money in their pocket who just want to go out and play ball with their friends.  Wait!  Stop!  You need to see this movie!  Buy this movie!  Play this brand new video game!  These are the things you really want to do, don’t you?

 

We who stand outside of power in some way have learned to repress our loving, our longing for justice, our hoping for a more full and free and better life. 

 

So because of my experience, I’ve had trouble thinking that this commandment is just about an emotion or feeling we have.  In my experience, people can and have used this commandment to keep people from wanting, desiring what is really something they should want and desire and need.  The commandment has sometimes been used to keep people in their place. 

 

Last Sunday night at our high school gathering at the Coleman’s house, one of our high school youth made me think there must be another way to understand this commandment.  Jeff said, “This commandment doesn’t sound very fair if you are poor and live in Africa or Latin America.  Why shouldn’t you want to have a house like most of us have?”

 

Last week I read an article that helped me think about another way to read this commandment.  Maybe it is not about an emotion or feeling but about really having to DO something – not just wanting someone’s house but going out and taking it. 

 

There is only one other place in scripture besides this passage where the Hebrew words for “covet” and  “house” come together.  It is in the second chapter of Micah, 

Alas for those who devise wickedness and evil deeds on their beds!

When the morning dawns, they perform it,

Because it is in their power.

They covet fields, and seize them;

Houses, and take them away;

They oppress householder and house,

People and their inheritance.  (Micah 2:1-2)

 

Micah lived sometime around 700 BCE.  He was a laborer who lived among shepherds and poor farmers in a rural village in the foothills south of Jerusalem.  And in Micah’s take on the 10th commandment, people weren’t only desiring houses, envying what other people had, they were going in and taking them.  It was happening in Israel.  Rich landowners were taking over land from small, poor farmers and making big farms out of the land.  Instead of each farmer growing what they needed to support their families, these huge farms grew olive trees for olive oil and grapes for making wine.  The rich landowners could get a lot of money for exporting these goods which was great for them but not so good for the poor farmer.  They not only lost control of their land and what they grew, they also saw none of that profit coming back to them.

 

Last month in Guatemala I heard a similar story.  In the 1950’s the Guatemalan people had elected a president who was in favor of land reform.  He proposed to buy up the vast tracks of land that United Fruit owned and redistribute the land to the poor in the country.  At first United Fruit went along with the plan and then they balked.  They turned to the U.S. government who labeled it a communist plot.  The U.S. supported a coup that overthrew the president.  To this day, you will see vast tracks of land in Guatemala used to grow food for export.  But there is little control of local peoples over their own land. 

 

In Micah’s take on the 10th commandment, this is not a commandment about a desire of the heart but really about taking land.  And suddenly, it is me, a rich North American who is left reeling.  “Well, I didn’t take it.  I didn’t do anything wrong.”, I want to say.   And just because I benefit from this way of the world by getting to eat a banana every day doesn’t mean that I have to do anything about it does it?  

 

This reading of the commandment makes me have to think about where my food comes from and who is growing it.  It makes me have to think about big issues like international trade and land reform.  It makes me think about lots that feels big and complicated and can make me feel small and disempowered to do anything in response.

 

But today we have a chance to maybe think about these issues and do something to address them.  

 

Today we are going to dedicate our renovated church building.  How will we use this church to do what it was made to do – to serve God and to serve people?   How will we use the land that this church is on today, land that is God’s land, land that was Coast Salish people’s land to serve all God’s people?  How will we be good custodians of this place that has been entrusted to us for now?  How will we use this place to help make the world a more just and peaceful place? 

 

In three weeks our congregation will vote on supporting a plan to end homelessness.   Good idea.  Sure.  Who wouldn’t be for that?  But to reach deeper into our hearts and let the homeless in when our hearts are already too full?  Could we imagine doing that?  Could we use our power to give some hope and power to those who have no place to call their own on this land? 

 

In Greg’s cantata, he quotes, James Fennimore Cooper, Jr. who put it so well,

Hard is the world that does not give

To every love a place;

Hard is the power that bids us live

A life bereft of grace.

 

Today my hope and prayer is that as we consider what this commandment means in our own lives we may we follow our hearts to our true home in love of God and love of neighbor which finally is to love ourselves and find ourselves at home.

 

And it is that we may use our power to ensure that others too will have power to hold so they too may simply live.

 

And then we shall sing, and together, it is well, it is well, with my soul.  Amen. 

 

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Sources:

“ ‘Coveting Your Neighbors House’ in Social Context”, Marvin L. Chaney, in The Ten Commandments:  The Reciprocity of Faithfulness, William P. Brown, editor.