Love and the Commandments

During the last confirmation class of the year, I asked the confirmands what rules they have in their families. They listed off the basics - curfews, chores, and respect for their parents among other things. Then I asked about other rules they have in church and in school, and what would happen if there weren’t any rules. Their answer was plan - we would be hurt.

God also has rules for us, commandments. In today’s scripture lesson Jesus tells us to keep the commandments as a way to abide in the love of God. In the Hebrew Scriptures, which we refer to as the Old Testament, there are 613 commandments. 613 different things to obey in your relationship with God and relationship with each other. 

Today, most Christians do not obey all 613 commandments. They were written for a specific time and context that doesn’t apply any more. For example, I doubt that any of us have a copy of the Bible that we have written by hand, even though Deut 31:19 says that every person shall write a scroll of the Torah for himself. And how many of us recite grace after meals? (Deut 8:10) Do any of you enjoy eating pork, lobster, clams, shrimp, oysters or crabs? (Deut 14:9)  And I think we all wear clothes with mixed fabrics (Deut 22:11)

Other laws are unclear - such as whether or not turkey can be eaten. And other laws never actually were celebrated. For example, during the year of Jubilee, to be celebrated every 50 years was to be the Sabbatical year - when the land lay fallow, all debts were forgiven, and all debt-slaves were set free. 

The truth is, we all pick and choose what laws to follow. Sometimes you will hear Christians claim that Jesus came so that we are set free from the law, but that does not mean that we do not need to follow the commandments. For we believe, like our Jewish brothers and sisters, that God gave us the commandments in love. They are God’s way of protecting us, even when we do not think that we need protecting. 

However, as I said before, commandments are contextual. Think of it this way. As you grow older, you are given more responsibility and receive a different set of rules to follow. As I got older, my bed time changed. And now that I no longer have a bed time, I am responsible for making sure that I get enough sleep. When I was younger I did not need to worry about speed limits, but with the right to drive a car comes the need to abide by the rules of driving, including stoping at stop signs, yielding at yellow lights, and following the speed limit. 

But, there are certain commandments that do not necessarily need any context. They are timeless and we are all called to abide by them. For the people of God, these are the ten commandments, which can be summarized as loving God and loving your neighbor. When I was little, I remember seeing the ten commandments written on paper stone tablets taped to my classroom wall and having a patient Sunday School teacher explain that the first four commandments tell us how to show our love for God and the second six how to love our neighbor, but they are all held together by love.

The first four commandments are: Not to have any other gods, not to make a graven image of God, not to take the name of God in vain, and to celebrate the Sabbath. We could spend weeks discussing each of these commandments, but let us briefly explore them today. God reminds the Israelites before the commandments are even stated where they come from by saying, “I am the Lord your God.” These commandments come from God as a way of celebrating preparing to enter the Holy Land. They are about to enter a new stage of their journey, enter into a new context, marked by new rules. God has seen the people stray up to this point - wanting to turn around and go back to their old way of life, because this one seems to hard. Yearning for security instead of God’s will for them. God therefore tells them to have no other gods, in other words not to put anything, not security, comfort, family, friends, money, Baal, or the gods from any other country before their God, because God is jealous for their (and our) love, attention, and devotion. This is also why graven images were not to be made of God, so that the Israelites did not try to capture God in an image or worship something they called God that in fact wasn’t, for God cannot be contained. 

The name of God is sacred. People had a habit of taking an oath they had no intention on living into in the name of God, thus making it trite. It was also to prohibit God’s name being used in the practice of magic just to get what one wants. God’s name was not to be interjected into blasphemy. All of this was to prevent people from making God into a magical solution and making sure that God was honored properly. 

Lastly, the Sabbath was to be kept. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, a fellow provisional elder once told me that keeping the Sabbath was the only commandment that we proudly break. But God created us in the image of God and God rested on the seventh day to model for us what it means to find rest and provision in God’s very being. In other words, with this command God is reminding us that God is all we really need to be fulfilled.

The second six laws are focused on our relationship with each other: honor your mother and father, do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness and do not covet. Some of these seem pretty straight forward, do not kill another human being because they bear the image of God and do not steal from another person. Other’s are connected to these two such as do not covet - in other words do not wish that you have what another person has, which is what leads to stealing, and do not commit adultery, which is stealing someone else’s spouse. Others are a bit more complicated such as do not bear false witness - because it takes away another person’s honor and does not bring honor to God who is the source of all truth.

And others are straight forward, but hard to follow at times such as honor your mother and father. Dishonoring one’s parents by hitting them or cursing them was punishable by death, under Hebrew law. While this is no longer the case in today’s society, the basic premise is the same, honor your mother and father because to dishonor one’s earthly parents is linked to dishonoring one’s heavenly parent, God. This honor does not depend on the worthiness of the parent, it is simply to be given, not earned. This commandment is seen eight different times in the scriptures. This requires that children obey their parents, as long as their requests are reasonable and permissible under the other commandments. It also requires that children let their parents know that they are safe when they are traveling. A child must never put their parents to shame or speak poorly of their parents.

I know from experience that sometimes it is hard to honor our parents, especially when we enter into the age of independence, but we are commanded to do so by the Lord of Love. And in return, God commands that parents teach children, refrain from showing favoritism to any one child over another, train a child. In other words God requires that parents give their children the ability to thrive in the world by teaching them about the commandments and demonstrating what love is through their words and actions.

Today is mother’s day, a day when we celebrate the love our mother’s have shown us. As I was browsing through Hallmark cards to give my own mother, I was struck by how many thanked moms for showing love and teaching their children throughout life. In a way the cards were saying thank you for teaching me the commandments and loving me enough to show me the right way to live.

On this day, we also remember that God is our Heavenly parent, who gave the commandments our of Divine love for us. Divine love so we can love one another. Commandments that have the potential to become so much of who we are that we choose them freely, choose to love one another and to love God, not because of the bounds of legalism, or trying to be perfect, but because it shows honor to the one who loves us. God loved us enough to give us commandments to help keep us from being hurt. And yes, not all of the commandments apply to us today that are in the Bible because we live in a different place and time. But surely these 10 defined by loving your neighbor and loving God are a good place to start. If only we will accept them as our yoke, as a way to honor the one who loves us so much that we may no longer be called servant or child, but friend. Amen.