Law: Commandment ??

Rev. Brian Thorpe

Readings: Exodus 20:1-17, Matthew 5: 7-20

I think could say with reasonable certainty that each of you have been involved with and in the church/Christian community for quite some time. Correct?

Have you ever stopped to think about why; why you have been involved in Church life for as long as you have?  

It’s an interesting question, one which as much as I would like to get into a discussion about that question, I’m not going to do so. I simply wanted to pose the question: although in passing I have noticed there are those who find it a difficult question to answer.

Let me pose another question. In your involvement with and in the Christian community is there anything that really got to you; that really got up your nose, so to speak. Or have there been, or are there issues which cause you to question why, why do you continue to be involved when there are a whole host of other things you could be doing?

Once again this is huge, and we could be here till next Sunday discussing it.

Beyond the rough and tumble of congregational life the ‘why’ question is one I have asked myself from time to time, particularly when there are what seem to be contradictions.

This was especially in my early days in my late teens, early twenties after what I call my John Wesley experience.

I was told of, and taught about, Jesus’ love: this is the love which the apostle Paul wrote about as freedom from the Law. Yet, that wasn’t the full story. I read about law and commandment in the gospels, with my confusion summed up in a pamphlet with various Bible verses which were meant to be of help and inspire in various situations, and which talked about the ‘golden rule’. Can you quote this golden rule? Then there is the commandment to love in John 15.

Can you appreciate my confusion? On one hand there is ‘freedom’, yet on the other there are rules and commands, some of which seem quite harsh. What to make of all of this?

You might have guessed from the readings what the theme for today is: Law: Commandment

As we feel our way into the readings, I invite you to reflect on what is your understanding of commandments and law. And yet another question: can you be commanded to love? Think about this, can you be commanded to love? In your life and relationships where does love come from?

That question places us at the foot of Mt Sinai as Moses came down from the mount, and delivered what are commonly referred to as the Ten Commandments’: a misnomer if ever there was one. 

Placing ourselves at the foot of Mt Sinai means we need to appreciate that we are in a different time, and different culture: doing this means casting aside the prism of our time and culture when reading the Bible – an issue many don’t appreciate, and/or find hard to do.

Standing at the foot of Mt Sinai means appreciating that Hebrew people thought very differently to what we do; so, they would have heard Moses’ words very differently to how we hear them.

I mentioned that ‘Ten Commandments’ is a misnomer: it is more accurate to say that these commandments, so called, are actually Ten Words of life. Let’s explore.

The Exodus reading begins with a declaration: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the house of slavery”. This declaration gives context to the words of life which follow.

These words of life are the expression of relationship; a relationship between the Lord God who brought the people called God’s people from slavery into a whole new life.

This relationship, freely given in love, by the Lord God was pure gift in which the Lord God was committed to this people and invited those people to live in relationship with the One whom Moses was told is the great I Am.

Living in this relationship those people are called to express that relationship by living in reverence go God; reverence which was clearly shown by how the community/nation lived its life. This life together is expressed not in commands imposed from above, so to speak. Rather this life together is expressed by living in mutual respect/love for each other in personal relationships, and in relationships in the wider community. These Ten Words of life give expression to this way of life. 

Earlier I posed the question ‘can you be commanded to love?’. I suggest that you actually can’t be commanded to love. In reality love stems from your relationships, does it not? This is what these ten words of life express – a life lived in thanks and reverence expressed in community and national life because of the gift of life given by the great I Am. This life, at its best is an expression of divine justice.

Rather than being absolute laws or commands, Israel knew these Ten Words of Life were the revelation of the nature of the God who delivered them into new life. Can you see the difference?

Writing when he did Matthew would have been aware of the attitude that lawlessness, anything goes, was OK because Jesus had supplanted the Law/Torah. Clearly in our reading this morning Matthew says ‘not so’. But what did he mean?

Clearly the Law/Torah and the prophets had not been abolished or supplanted; rather Jesus’ intent was to fulfill the Law/Torah.

An online dictionary told me that to fulfill something is to complete an obligation; which I guess is what many people would generally understand what is meant by fulfill. That’s not the case here in Matthew. 

Born into the time, culture and faith tradition he knew Jesus would have been aware of the nature of the Ten Words of Life. Given that insight he would have been acutely aware of how the Ten Words of Life had become a crushing burden, or yoke, on the lives of people. 

What is happening here is that in fulfilling the Law Jesus is saying he is calling people back to the intent, the fulness, of the Ten Words of Life, which is, as we have explored, is to live in reverence and response to the very nature of God. This is about grace, this is about love, it’s about being called into new life – not obligation.

These words in Matthew come after Jesus has declared just who the people of God are: they are salt, a valuable commodity at the time, and light. It seems the salt had lost its saltiness and the light had been dimmed. In the call for renewal later Jesus would say he could lift the burden, the yoke of obligation (Matthew 11:8-30) which the life of faith had become for many.

In the question of being commanded to love and the new commandment we read of in John 13 it’s important to observe, and it will be in passing, what is being said. 

In John’s context commandment is an unfortunate word because what is being said is that the people of God are being commissioned, entrusted with the new being experienced as people graft themselves into the vine of the love we name God.

For me this is a crucial issue, and the source of huge frustration. Why? Because the Christian community runs the risk of living contradictions: on one hand it will preach love, yet on the other there are those will seek to place burdens/obligations on people, to be more authoritarian. 

In my congregation it’s the practise to read from the NIV with the words being screened as they are read. I like to follow reading the NRSV. It’s interesting to note, and for me disturbing, that there is often a harder edge to the NIV translation.

On long reflection it seems to me that law is much easier than the radical nature of love – which is the very nature and heart of God. To be fair, there are those for whom the boundaries and comfort of rules are necessary. Yet, as I hope we have appreciated here, it’s not the full story.

This is no idle speculation. It’s been, and is, quite a year with nation wide bushfires, and now a pandemic. ‘Eyewatering debt and the bleakest of Christmases’ was the by-line on the ABC website on Friday quoting Michelle Grattan – and she’s not wrong. These are desperate times, the issues are huge, and it’s not going to change any time soon.

The Christian community is called into new life, abundant life John called it, and has been commissioned to live and proclaim that life to a needy world. Just what is lived and proclaimed is a real issue: law or grace at a time when for many the Christian community is regarded with suspicion, or is irrelevant, and yet there is great need. It’s crucial, I suggest, strongly, to appreciate the importance of what we have been reflecting on because the reality is, we have been called to be salt and light to a needy world, have we not?

Amen