Wingham United Church

October 4, 2026

It’s All About Relationship

Exodus 20:1-20

Philippians 3:4b-14

Matthew 21:33-46

         We begin this morning in the wilderness with Moses and the Israelites. It’s still the early days of their journey to the Promised Land. After numerous generations of living in slavery and oppression in Egypt, they have no knowledge or memory of self-governance. They have no idea how to function as a community. They are totally reliant on Moses to guide them, but he doesn’t have any experience with this either. He is totally reliant on God’s guidance to tell him what to tell the people of Israel.

          God provides a basic list of rules that will get them started on the right path. Ten simple guidelines to help them build a life together. A strong foundation upon which to create a whole new society that will, hopefully, become an example to the entire world.

          Last week, I told you that I believe church is all about relationships, but I should not have limited that to the church. Life is about relationships. God, of course, knew this and provided these commandments to support the Israelites’ relationship with him and their relationships with each other.

          If they are going to be successful, they are going to need God. That is the only source of the wisdom and direction they are going to need if they are to survive. It was then. It is now. So, the first four of these “Commandments” are about our relationship with God.

1. You have no other God but me, so you had better listen to what I tell you.

2. You cannot worship anything you create more than you worship me.

3. Do not use my name in vain. When you speak to me or about me, do so with respect and honour.

4. Remember the Sabbath. Save one day each week to devote to the One who saved you from slavery and will care for you for eternity.

Four simple rules, based on their need to keep that close relationship with God healthy and at the forefront of their hearts and minds. What follows are six rules that govern their relationship with one another:

1. Honour your father and mother. It all starts with family.

2. Don’t kill each other.

3. Don’t sleep around. Intimacy is for the loving committed relationship, nothing else.

4. Don’t steal each other’s stuff.

5. Don’t tell lies about each other.

6. Don’t envy the things others have that you don’t. Be happy with what you have.

          That last one might be the most important because it is so often envy that leads us to disobey the others.

          Ten simple rules to get you started. Like I said, this is a foundation upon which to build, and build they did. The books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy are filled with additional rules and details about nearly every facet of life. Then the priests and rabbis kept writing more until they had another whole book of rules and regulations called the Talmud.

Some of these laws get pretty specific, and it’s hard to see the reason behind them, especially in our time and culture, like the prohibition against wearing a garment made from a combination of fabrics. What has wearing a poly-cotton blend got to do with my relationship with the person down the pew?

           The problem that arises with all these rules and directives is that it turns everyone into a lawyer. We start looking for loopholes and fine print. If there’s something we want to do, we search for some justification within the law that allows it. All these rules can also be abused by people who want to control others. They can get twisted and reinterpreted to mean almost anything, if you are creative enough.

          That is what Jesus accused the priests and Pharisees of doing to God’s people. All those rules and regulations gave them the power to control people. Most people couldn’t read, and even if they could, the scriptures were not readily available to be studied until Martin Luther and the printing press came along hundreds of years later. The temple leaders were the only source of knowledge about right and wrong the people of Israel could count on.

          Then along comes Jesus, who tells the people that life really isn’t nearly as complicated as the temple leaders make it out to be. You just need to remember one thing. It’s all about relationships. If you want a happy, godly life, your relationships should all be based on love. Love God and love each other. That was the wisdom behind the original commandments, and it is the measure by which we will all someday be judged.

           If you are unsure of what you should do or how you should act in any circumstance, hold it up to this light – is it loving? Will it harm someone if you do it? Love does no harm, so anything that causes harm is not loving. You don’t need a priest or a Pharisee or a lawyer to study the law and tell you what you should do. You already know. Do what is loving and kind and helpful.

           Jesus tells his parable about the evil servants who kill the heir to the same group of priests and Pharisees to whom he told the parable about the workers in the vineyard last week. He is trying to point out that their devotion to and abuse of the written law is not God’s way. It is not being done out of love for others, but out of their own lust for power and control. God sent prophets to tell them this, and they killed them. Now he has sent His own Son to set them on the right path, but he already knows how that is going to end. He, too, will die, his message of love and grace rejected by those who prefer power and control.

           Paul was a Pharisee. I think there is a good chance that he was one of those who heard Christ’s lesson and, at the time, did not appreciate it. Something drove him to become one of the most zealous persecutors of Jesus’s followers. Maybe it was these parables that accused him of being far from the righteous person he thought himself to be.

         He says in his letter that he was, at one time, very proud of being a rule follower and enforcer. In the eyes of the Law, he was perfect, or so he told himself. “A real Hebrew if ever there was one!” Nothing in all the world was more important to him than his devotion to Jewish Law. And here was this man, Jesus, telling him that the Law was leading people in the wrong direction, and those who enforced it were the enemies of God and God’s people. Small wonder Paul, or Saul as he was known at the time, so harshly persecuted the church.

           Then there was that little incident on the road to Damascus that changed everything. When the scales fell from his eyes, he saw that he had been wrong all along. The love and grace he was shown in his blindness opened his eyes to the truth of what Jesus had been telling everyone. It’s all about relationship. It’s all about love.

         Now, where Saul was filled with hate, Paul is filled with love. Well, maybe not quite filled. He now knows that being filled with love is the secret to Christ’s resurrection. That is his goal. Nothing else really matters. He wants to reach that level of perfect love that Christ showed him so that when his race is over, we can receive the heavenly prize of joining Christ. He’s not there yet. He has not yet reached perfection. But he keeps pressing on, growing ever closer.

          That should be the goal for each of us. To achieve that level of perfect love before our race is finished. Fortunately, because of God’s grace, we don’t have to reach perfection, but we should still press on toward that goal, not only in the hopes of being resurrected into eternal life with Christ, but for the good of ourselves and everyone around us in this life as we strive to live as Citizens of Heaven each and every day.

Rev. Colin Snyder, MDiv