The law of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul…The statutes of the Lord are just and rejoice the heart…More to be desired are they than gold, more than much fine gold, sweeter far than honey, than honey in the comb. (Psalm 19:7-8, 10)

The deluge has started…This week, for sure, it started. Every day, catalog after catalog arriving in our mailbox at home. Church supplies, pet toys, kid toys, assorted home knick-knacks and décor, women’s clothing, men’s clothing, gourmet food and cooking supplies. Hundreds of millions of catalogs printed and mailed each holiday season—all them them trying to convince us that we need their items in their lives—trying to convince us that we don’t have enough. (What I don’t have enough of is recycling bin space!)

Sam Wells, vicar at St. Martin of the Fields in London and author of a book we used in adult formation this past spring, Humbler Faith, Bigger God, has a deep insight into the Ten Commandments (our Old Testament reading today). He invites us to view them not as a rulebook of stone to be planted in our public spaces and used as a weapon to exclude and shame people, but rather as a meditation on God’s abundance, a meditation about God’s enough. If that doesn’t fit with the way you’ve been taught to think about them, don’t feel bad—like so many parts of the Bible, I’m sorry to say the church hasn’t done a good job in modern times with its teaching.

To begin with, in the Hebrew in which they are written, they are not called “Ten Commandments” at all—the Hebrew means the “Ten Sayings,” or “Ten Words.” In the Book of Common Prayer, when we say them every Sunday during Lent, You see them labeled as the “Decalogue.” This is a transliteration of Greek version of that same Hebrew—literally, the “Ten Words.” That’s what they’ve been named from 1500 BC through around 1500 AD. The point of all this is that to call them “Commandments” is a dramatically different perspective from they way they were written and read for most of their history.

“Commandments…” Legalism is such an easy temptation for us; we think it gives us power and superiority over others. Legalism gives us a self-satisfying rationale for putting people either inside or outside our circle of care. Three days ago, Pope Francis, in a letter battling US bishops protesting to protect their power and legalism, said that “Revelation does not exist to achieve some degree of self-satisfaction among the church elite. Rather, Revelation is given “for the salvation of all nations.” The Pope continued on, “In our relationships with people, we must not lose pastoral charity, which should permeate all our decisions and attitudes. [This] includes kindness, patience, understanding, tenderness, and encouragement. Therefore, we cannot be judges who only deny, reject, and exclude.”

Think about the description of the laws of God from today’s Psalm that I quoted at the beginning: the laws of God “revive the soul…they rejoice the heart…they are sweeter than honey…” Sweeter than honey—that’s how Israel encountered these Ten Sayings. They were given to Israel as they had just escaped slavery in Egypt and crossed the Red Sea on dry land. There were a promise going forward of what their community—long oppressed, enslaved, suffering cruel injustices, would look like as they now lived in covenant with God. The possibility of being part of a community where these sayings define the way of life is a beautiful and hopeful thing—But somehow we’ve inherited them as if they were a threat.

As Wells says, the Ten Sayings, the Ten Commandments, are not a burden to weigh us down but a guiding star to clarify our path, and the key to that transformation is the word “enough.” None of us thinks we have enough—not enough money, not enough time, not enough room, not enough praise, not enough beauty, not enough youth, not enough technology, not enough love…All of those catalogs in my mailbox count on me thinking I don’t have enough and that they have just the exact “more” that I need to be happy.

It’s the human story since the beginning of the book of Genesis—We take the forbidden fruit, we take what is not ours, because we refuse to trust that the abundance God has provided is enough. Cain thought God’s praise for Abel was more than the praise he was given, and he killed his brother because he thought he didn’t have enough. Abraham and Sarah didn’t believe God’s promise of countless descendants was enough, and they took Hagar to bear a son. Israel was jealous of the neighboring nations leaders, and God leadership wasn’t enough so they asked for a king. The wives he had weren’t enough and David lusted after Bathsheba and killed her husband. Israel began to worship foreign gods again, because God wasn’t enough. The prophets warned that Israel’s cheating in its business deals and refusing to leave grain in the fields for the poor—that Israel’s distrust that God provides enough—would lead them to destruction and slavery again—this time in Babylon. The Scribes and Pharisees had Jesus crucified because his simple message to love God and neighbor wasn’t enough for the Messiah they wanted.

The Ten Commandments are God’s reminders that there is enough, that following God is enough, that God is enough. Anxiety that there isn’t, or there won’t be, enough—envy that someone else has more and I don’t have enough—fear and distrust that God will not provide—these are the path to a broken relationship with God and with each other. These are the path to a broken world.

Wells says it this way: “That’s why the moment in which God speaks these words is so significant. Israel has just come out of Egypt, but is already beginning to wonder if it wouldn’t have been better off staying. This is the moment when God says, ‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. I have met your deepest yearning, and have exceeded it by giving you the promise of a land to settle in. I have been with you in the darkness, listened to you in your despair, led you out of death, dispersed your enemies, guided you by my own hand. I have set you free. I am the Lord your God. The problem is not that I am not enough for you—it is that I am too much for you. Your imaginations are simply too small to comprehend me. You get anxious, and when you get anxious you start wanting more gods, more money, more things. I gave you manna in the desert, far more food than you needed. You still went out to collect on the Sabbath because you feared there wouldn’t be enough. I gave you water in the desert. But still your thoughts were straying back to Egypt. If only you could let your imaginations go and enter the land I am promising you, and let me set you free.’

“’In the meantime, here are some rules to remind you of what matters most: that I am more than enough, that my abundance is always greater than your scarcity. Have no other gods: more of them means less of me. Have no idols: they will never be remotely enough, and will lead you to forget that I am plenty. Keep the Sabbath: I will give you all the time you need. Look after your aging parents and don’t steal—I will give you everything you need. Don’t kill people—they are part of the everything I am giving you…’

“God says, ‘I have set you free. You may forget that. You may fall back into thinking or feeling that I am not enough. A lot of people do. So here are some gifts. They will help you remember your freedom. They will challenge your imagination to realize that I am a God of abundance, who gives you more than enough, far more than you could ever want or need, who created galaxies no one may ever see, who has depths of forgiveness no sinner may ever require, who gives you in Jesus more love than you could ever realize.’

My prayer this week is from Wells again: like Moses and the Israelites, I pray you will take this gift from God’s hands, and look into God’s face, and say, “May these commandments be to me always a gift and never a burden. May they always remind me that you are the one true God who has set me free. Write these words on my heart so I never forget that you are always more than enough.”