My teacher James Arne Nestingen once said, “Every preacher should preach through the Ten Commandments once every three years.”

Ideally, a sermon series on the Decalogue would run twelve weeks -- one week to proclaim the theological context of the law, ten weeks for the commandments themselves, and a final week to proclaim the paradox that we are freed from the law in order to make ourselves subject to the neighbor in love (see Galatians 5:1-12). Ideally.

But the realities of the calendar often impinge on ideals. So, the way that the Narrative Lectionary lays out the summer of 2014 allows for only four Sundays on the Ten Commandments. The first week is intended to provide the theological and narrative context for the law. The second week is devoted to Exodus 20:3-11, which is the first table of the Decalogue -- those laws that govern our relationship with God.

The third week’s text is Exodus 20:12-16 -- which includes most of the second table of the law, those laws that govern our relationships with each other. And the fourth week is devoted solely to the coveting commandment(s). The decision to have a single ...