Picturing the Covenant

Our texts for this week are primarily from the book of Exodus--Exodus 19:1-8 and 20:1-17, which you can read here. These are the story of God forging a covenant with the people of Israel from atop Mount Sinai--a covenant that begins with God articulating what we now know as the Ten Commandments.

In my reading and reflection this week, I have been perhaps most intrigued to come across some remarkable works of art that strive to picture the Ten Commandments--not as numbers or words on a tablet, but with color and image that help us understand what really living into these words might mean. I am posting four of these works (two by the same artist) below for your reflection. Then I invite you to consider (and post, if you dare): if you had to picture what the Ten Commandments look like not on tablets of stones, but as lived in a community today, what would a community living by this covenant look like? A lot of these are images of how NOT to live--what would an image of embracing this covenant look like?

See you tomorrow in worship, I hope!

A woodcutting from Poland:

Modern artist Keith Haring's installment of images on the Ten Commandments:

The illumination of this passage from the St. John's Bible (on display now at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond):