“Nobody gets over the Ten Commandments; they don’t go out of style,” said the Rev. M. Craig Barnes at the 10:45 a.m. Sunday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. His theme for the week is “Ten Signposts to Freedom” and the title of Sunday’s sermon was “Choosing a God.” The Scripture text was Exodus 20:1-6.
“I can see what you are thinking — ‘Oh good, five more days of a Presbyterian wagging his finger at you saying thou shalt not,’ ” Barnes said.
He then told a story comparing the Ten Commandments to the North Star. A novice sailor had the overnight duty on a ship, and the captain told him just to stay focused on the North Star. The sailor fell asleep and drifted. When he woke up, he went to the captain and said they had passed the North Star, and what should he do now?
“Nobody passes the North Star and nobody gets done with the Ten Commandments,” Barnes said.
According to Barnes, the commandments persist because there is profound truth in them.
“In the words of John Calvin — ‘All Rise’ — they persevere because they are a grace,” he said. “They are the laws written on our hearts by the finger of God and provide a means of loving God.”
God has always been a loving God, he said.
“Love did not come into the Scriptures with [the Gospel of] Matthew; grace is on every page,” the pastor said. “As we heard in the responsorial psalm this morning, we shelter under God’s wings. That is grace. We started using the canted psalm in one of my churches and a lady said to me, ‘It sounds a little Jewish.’ They had them long before we did. God is always gracious and caring, and the Ten Commandments are part of this. God leads us by grace to freedom.”
God is a liberator who insisted on our freedom, Barnes said. The Ten Commandments are signposts used to get there.
“After 400 years of slavery, God could have taken the people of Israel on the Way of the Philistines, a road that goes along the coast [of the Mediterranean] to the Promised Land. There was security and Starbucks along the way. God chose not to use the shortcut and went south to the desert.
“This was so they would learn to depend completely on God,” he continued. “It is always on the hard road that we learn about freedom and how to keep it. Freedom arises out of our soul. If we are pursuing an idol, then we are headed back into slavery. It is on the hard road that we have transformational experiences. Think about your own life and how many transformational experiences you had on the easy road.”
Barnes used marriage as an example of freedom with limitations. He talked about presiding at weddings and said that he always sees the bride and groom take a quick look into each other’s eyes as the ceremony starts.
“I can see that they are thinking ‘So far, this marriage is working out just great.’ I take a moment and look at the worn out couples in the front pew and think how many times they have looked into each other’s eyes and seen hurt, fear or disappointment but they are still married. They have learned on the long, hard road where you will find transformation.”
He added, “If it were up to me I would do pre-marital counseling about six months after the wedding when they are not on the Way of the Philistines but have turned south to the desert.”
Barnes told the congregation that we always learn from our limitations.
“They learn about 30 minutes after the ceremony that they did not marry Jesus,” he said. “Nobody can make you happy or free. We all have a fantasy about what freedom looks like. I saw a dog with a broken tether on the highway. I am sure when it broke the tether it thought it was free, but on the highway it looked like terror to me. We all try to get rid of our tethers, to live without limits.”
Everything in the Ten Commandments is found in the early creation stories, he said. God set up the Garden of Eden with a tree in the middle that Adam and Eve could not eat from.
“This was God’s idea of paradise; he created it with limitations. It had to drive Adam and Eve nuts to live with that in the center of the garden. There are 999 trees we can eat from and where do we put our tent? Under the tree we can’t have. Freedom is living within our limitations. How do you lose the garden? By eating the one thing you can’t have. Now it is paradise lost.”
Barnes drives a Honda Accord, but one day as he passed a BMW showroom, he saw a roadster that he had to take out for a test drive. When he brought it back, the salesman said, “It feels like freedom, doesn’t it?”
“I laughed and said, ‘No, it feels like a mid-life crisis,’ ” Barnes said. “Do we really think a car will make us free?”
Barnes dropped out of college to find himself.
“We were doing a lot of that then, and I found myself working the midnight shift at a gas station in New York City,” he said. “There was a man who came by every night, homeless and an alcoholic. One night he came out and sat with me by the pumps and said ‘I like you. You and I have a lot in common.’ I called the registrar the next day and went back to school, back to the hard road of getting a degree.”
Whatever other gods or idols we have will always drive us back to slavery, he told the congregation.
“We think the next job will make me free, updating my resume will make me free,” Barnes said. “We turn guilt or hurt into idols. Forgiveness means to be free, to be done with.”
In writing about the raising of Lazarus, Barnes discovered that Jesus did not open Lazarus’ tomb. Others rolled the stone back and Jesus called for Lazarus to come out.
“Jesus did not like tombs very much; he did not spend much time in his own. We are always on a journey toward freedom. We don’t have to be enslaved by guilt, hurt or the fantasy about the next thing. Thanks be to God.”
The Rev. Robert M. Franklin presided. Nancy Waasdorp read the Scripture. Paul Roberts served as cantor for “Your Love is Finer Than Life,” Responsorial Psalm 63, setting by Marty Haugen. The Hymn-Anthem was “God is our Refuge and Strength” by K. Lee Scott. The text was Psalm 46 and “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” by Martin Luther. The anthem was “Think on These Things” by Craig Courtney, text from Philippians 4:8-9. The offertory anthem was “How Firm a Foundation,” setting by Leo Nestor. The organ postlude was “Toccata and Fugue in D minor, S.565” by Johann Sebastian Bach. The Chautauqua Choir sang under the direction of Jared Jacobsen, organist and worship coordinator. The Mr. and Mrs. William Uhler Follansbee Memorial Chaplaincy provides support for this week’s services.
The Chautauquan Daily 
