Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, June 26, 2022
by Dr. Kimberly Leetch, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: God expects us to treat each other as the beloved, precious, irreplaceable human beings that God created us all to be.
These middle commandments laid out expectations for keeping God’s people living healthily in community. A well-functioning community depends upon people accepting a common understanding of rules and laws that can keep a community healthy. If all people within the community adopted the same understandings, rules, and laws, then the community could operate smoothly. A community falls apart when people start encroaching on the basic rights of others.
God’s laws intended to keep people safe. By honoring the wisdom of those who have gone before us (mother and father), we can learn from their mistakes. The other four middle commandments protect us from harm. Murder, adultery, theft, and slander cause direct harm from one to another. God’s greater good for people is justice, peace, and harmony.
The way we treat each other is exactly how we express either love or disdain. The way we treat each other is a reflection of how we respect or disrespect God.
Healthy humans are hard-wired for empathy. We are not designed to harm other humans. The only way we can intentionally harm others is by dehumanization—seeing the other as not human (or at least not as human as we are). Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and the struggle to welcome and care for immigrants, all come from a place of striving to end the dehumanization of people based on color, culture, or gender. When dehumanization runs unchecked, we see white people hunt down and murder Black men and women. We see women’s bodies manipulated and put on display as if they are commodities to be bought and sold. We see migrant children ripped from their parents and placed in jail cells for months without adequate accommodations. We can normalize these behaviors because those people aren’t really human.
God says no. All God’s children are human, beloved, precious, and irreplaceable. God puts the responsibility squarely on us to do better. Not only are we called to do better, but to work so that others receive better. “You shall not” becomes “you shall,” and God expects our best.
