The 8th Commandment as Lenten Discipline

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

(8^th Commandment)

As we move through this 500^th year since the beginning of the Reformation, many of us are renewing our acquaintance with various writings and resources from and about that medieval movement that changed the church and impacted the world. A great place to begin is with Martin Luther’s Small Catechism. A great time to begin is the season of Lent.

Local faith communities might shape Wednesday worship around sections of the catechism or add a brief time for exploration and discussion of the catechism before or after worship. Families could briefly read and discuss parts of it once or twice a week before saying grace at dinner. Individuals might slowly read through, meditate on, and journal about the catechism in devotional time two or three times a week.

However we engage this important booklet, it won’t take long to realize that its content is not just for memorization by kids or catechism classes and it’s wisdom is as relevant today as it was the day Luther wrote it five centuries ago. Take his reflection on the eighth commandment, for example:

What does this mean? We are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations. Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light.

If there was ever a time and place when this understanding of that commandment has been needed it’s here and now, in this country, in social media and public discourse, and in our churches. Scan through your Twitter or Facebook feed. Listen to ten minutes of a news program. Reflect back on your own conversations over the last week. How many lies or unverifiable false claims have been made about others? How many times has someone been betrayed or slandered or their reputation sullied in some way?

The answer? Too many. Too much of our conversation (and thinking) about others these days blatantly breaks the eighth commandment. It’s one thing to disagree, even vehemently, or to not understand another person’s choices. But, it is another thing altogether to use the disagreement or lack of understanding as an opportunity to lie about, betray, slander, or seek to destroy the reputation of a fellow human being created in the image of God.

Every time we catch ourselves in or supporting this sort of sinful behavior it’s time to repent, trust the forgiveness offered in Christ crucified and risen, and to lean into and offer to others the new and abundant life of Jesus by taking every opportunity to instead “come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light.”

Now there’s a Lenten discipline that, empowered by the Spirit and by God’s grace, will not only change us, but will transform our churches, our communities, our country, our world.

Using Lent? Using God?

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news. [Jesus; Mark 1:15]

Sometimes, I wonder if the season of Lent has become yet another wonderful gift that we tend to grab hold of with our grubby little hands and curve in on ourselves to make it all about us.  And by pulling it so tightly to ourselves, I wonder if we squeeze the very life out of it.

Think about it: we tend to focus on what we give up (like chocolate or some other thing in which we usually take delight) or what we take up (like more worship services or more time at the soup kitchen or more prayer). We talk about our sin, our repentance. We take these forty days to focus on my purpose, the state of my spiritual life, breaking my bad habits and disciplining myself into new and better habits.

 Borrowing from St. Augustine, Martin Luther called this “incurvatus in se,” curved in on oneself.  In his lectures on the biblical book of Romans he says that our nature is so deeply curved in upon itself that we turn the finest gifts of God into something just for ourselves and hoard them. Indeed, Luther says, we use God to achieve our aims. [Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans, Kindle location 6745]

It’s no wonder an old friend of mine often ends his emails during this season with “Have a miserable Lent!”

The truth is, if Lent is only about us, our sin, our struggles, our habits, then we are – and will be – miserable people. There is no hope in that, nothing to pull us out of our inward, downward spiral, no power within us to set us free. Left to ourselves these forty days, we may find ourselves crawling into Easter laden with despair rather than lifted with resurrection joy.

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.

Notice that here, at the very beginning of his public ministry, Jesus does not say something like:

Thank goodness you all have finally disciplined yourselves enough, given up enough, added enough devotion and service to your days, turned away from enough sin that God is finally convinced that you are ready for God’s reign.

No! Jesus just shows up as God’s son, in the power of God’s Spirit, at God’s appointed time to announce the nearness of God’s kingdom and to invite folks to simply pay attention and trust that God is up to something new and good.

Repent, and believe the good news!

Repentance is, first and foremost, less about turning our own lives around and more about being opened to the newness God brings near in Jesus. It’s about welcoming the reign of God, trusting it and letting it shape us and our days. To repent is to let go of our white-knuckled grip on trying to be good, to get it right, to be what we’re afraid we are not.

In that letting go and trusting the good news of God’s nearness, we are set free from that inward curve and are turned outward to true and abundant life. And we are moved to share it as freely as we have received it.

The disciplines of Lent are not bad or wrongheaded in and of themselves. They can be ways in which God works in us to open our hearts and hands to welcome and share God’s reign. But the good news, the best news, is that Lent begins and ends not with us, but with God.

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.

So Jesus says at the beginning of these forty days. And then he walks the talk all the way to Jerusalem, through the cross and out of an empty tomb, for us and for the world.

Repent and believe this good news!

May your Lenten way be scattered with the wonder of the God who draws near long before you take the first step!

[You may listen to Bill's recording of this piece through the Indiana-Kentucky Synod website: http://www.iksynod.org. Click here: IN-KY Synod Lenten Podcast]