I Am Because You Are
Texts: Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-22 | Matthew 21:33-46
We have been calling them the Ten Commandments for so long that we have nearly forgotten what they actually are.
The Hebrew tradition calls them the Aseret haDibrot — the Ten Words. Not commandments. Words. They are God's utterances that call a covenant community into existence, much as God's words in Genesis 1 called creation itself into being. God speaks, and something new comes to life.
And the first thing God speaks is not a rule. It is a relationship: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." The preamble is everything. God does not introduce the Ten Words as the Creator or Almighty. God introduces them as Liberator — the One who acted first, rescued first, loved first. These words are not the precondition for God's grace. They are the response to it.
Torah, the Hebrew word we translate as law, actually means instruction or teaching. The Ten Words are better understood as the charter of a covenant relationship — the shape of life among a people who have already been claimed and loved.
And what does that charter describe? Two things that are inseparable: our relationship with God, and our relationship with one another.
Israel has just come out of Egypt — a society built on degradation, on neighbor set against neighbor in empire’s economy of scarcity and competition. The second table of the Decalogue is not primarily about individual morality. It is about the reconstruction of neighborly community — the founding document of a society built on something Egypt never was: mutual care, shared dignity, solidarity.
The African concept of Ubuntu captures it: I am because you are. My humanity is bound up in yours. You cannot separate love of God from love of neighbor. They are two sides of the same coin.
But then something happens at Sinai. As God descends in fire and thunder, the people are overwhelmed — and they pull back. "You speak to us, Moses. We'll stay over here." They want the words without the Word. The commandments without the relationship that gives them meaning.
Moses tries to draw the distinction: there is the fear that paralyzes and builds walls, and there is the awe and reverence that deepens relationship. The people choose the wrong kind of fear. And the consequence is predictable — the moment Moses is gone too long, they revert. Distance does that. We prefer law to grace because law is manageable. Relationship is not.
The gospel parable says the same thing in a different century.
A landowner plants a vineyard with extraordinary care — hedge, winepress, watchtower, everything needed — and entrusts it to tenants. When he sends servants to collect the fruit, they beat and kill them. He keeps sending anyway. Finally he sends his son. "They will respect my son."
This is not naivety. It is a theological claim: God's commitment to relationship does not calculate risk the way human logic does. God keeps reaching out. God does not give up.
The tenants know who the son is. Their rejection is not ignorance — it is a deliberate choice. They want the vineyard without the owner. The benefits of the relationship while keeping the Relationship itself at arm's length.
And here is what we must not miss: the tenants exclude themselves. God does not cast them out in some act of distant judgment. They make the choice. We so easily project onto God the image of a judge eager to condemn — but the parable shows us a God who keeps sending, keeps hoping, right up until the last moment.
We turn God's invitation into an obligation. The covenant into a checklist. The relationship into a transaction. And we wonder why we feel far from God.
Ubuntu: the wicked tenants are what happens when I am because you are is rejected. They want the vineyard without the owner — and in severing that relationship, they sever themselves from the very source of life the vineyard was meant to sustain. There is nothing to gain in self-exclusion. There is only loss — and a God who keeps reaching out anyway.
The invitation has not been withdrawn. The vineyard is still there. The charter of the covenant still stands. God is still engaging and still inviting.
The question is the same one it has always been: do we want the rules, or the relationship?