Sermon – Loving the Law or Its Freedom
Romans 13:8-10; Exodus 20: 1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Farmville Presbyterian Church
October 8, 2023
– Love is the best law
My family moved to Virginia from South Carolina in the middle of my seventh-grade year. I’ll be the first to admit that that is not the most ideal time to replant your kids, but one thing that my family did do as new residents of the Old Dominion was what any sensible Yankee born, southern raised, young teenager would do – get a Patriot’s Pass to Colonial Williamsburg. I don’t know if Williamsburg still has these, but I imagine they do. This is the annual season ticket to the historical tourist hotbed of the early American experience. We went a number of times, and it was so fascinating to me to venture into colonial life, walking from shop to shop and seeing how things were done back in the 18th century. Of course, we had our tricorn hats and kiddie guns. Maybe I would have even signed up to be a minuteman back then. It did not occur to me until really just now how completely touristy that is, but this experience did kindle in me a longtime fascination in that period of our nation’s history. That was when the entire future of our nation was on a knife’s edge. One breeze in one direction or another and we could have very easily ended up in a very different place. When Thomas Jefferson was governor of VA during the Revolutionary War, he did a fairly lousy job in some serious ways, and some leaders in Virginia were rethinking the whole governor idea for a more kingly model. Can you imagine a king of VA? It’s hard to imagine now, but when there was no real United States of America and the individual states were still basically in their infancy being so new, everything was really up in the air. They had to make everything up as they went along.
If you also enjoy colonial history and that fascinating, formative time of our country, you may become a fellow student, too. The cost is low but serious. You know what it is? It is the consti-tuition. I promise that’s my only joke today.
But the actual constitution is something that we have largely taken for granted for our part in the great American experiment. It feels like it has just always been there, but I imagine you have heard that some think the constitution is threatened today with all of the political wrangling and fighting between the parties or within the party if you’re a Republican. Here’s the interesting fact of it all: the constitution really does not exist unless we act like it exists. It’s just words on a page. Still, it is our guiding document and has held us as a people for 235 years. Every generation has decided to recommit to what we think it means, to its ideas as they make sense.
The Ten Commandments are a lot like our constitution. I find this super interesting. The Israelites when they left Egypt had never really been a people before. They had never had a real nation of their own, no king, and not even a religion – not their own. They did not know what God this was who was leading them into the wilderness. All they knew was that this God seemed to have great power and that this was the God that some of their ancestors revered and followed, but this God was largely unknown, this God of their deliverance. The gods they had known were Egyptian ones. This was something different, something the world had never seen. Now, the people were wandering through the wilderness without much of an idea of what all of this meant. They needed to be formed into a people WITH God. They needed their own constitution to guide their life together, and that is exactly what they got. The Ten Commandments and the rest of the Law held their shared life as a people. It regulated their life as a community and as God’s people. You should see that the first four of the commands regulate our life with God, and the last six regulate our life with each other, but they are all connected. How we treat others is a reflection of what we think of God, and how we think of God informs how we treat others.
It is impossible for us as Christians to truly appreciate how these commands shaped their life, their culture, their religion, and their sense of justice. The chapters that follow today’s reading flesh out what it looks like to follow the Law. And following the Law was the tricky part. It might be similar to how today we cannot really imagine what it was like to be alive in America 250 years ago. We can visit historical places, but the way they thought, talked, acted, and regarded each other is so different from today. Science, medicine, family, economy – it was all different. It would even be hard to recognize their notion of God. Worship was different, too. I do not know how widespread this practice was, but because services were so long (because preaching was so long), they had people walking up and down the aisles with long sticks with wooden balls on the end. If you began to doze off, you got a whack on the back of the head to wake you up. Even on those hard benches, it would have been hard to stay awake sometimes. Thankfully, the only group I have to worry about here is the choir. Maybe I should toss mints back there every once in a while to see if they are still with us.
Our differences with our early American fathers and mothers are only a couple of hundred years old. Imagine how far removed over a thousand years would be. Yet, that is the time between the days of Moses and the days of Jesus. Those commands, that law, had been kept and lost and reinterpreted and abused through the centuries. Any law, depending on how it is used, can guard community or injure community. It can always be weaponized – a way to target others with accountability much more than one’s self. If you do not believe me, just think about how much we apply our standards to others without ever measuring up ourselves. The same thing that makes me angry, bad driving for instance, is something that I excuse or ignore when I do it to others.
So much of Jesus’ teaching and ministry was directly in the face of the Law. This seems so strange for someone who is the Son of God, the same God who gave us the Law. It is strange until we see that some people loved the Law more than they loved God. They loved the power, the control, the authority that the Law meant to them. They got the Law confused for God.
We cannot love anything more than God: not the Bible, not the church, not the Law, not our traditions, not our worship, not our leaders, none of it more than God. And God is Love – capital “L” Love, so it should not surprise us AT ALL that Jesus said the best of the Law was to love God with everything we have and our neighbor as much as ourselves. It should not surprise us, either, when Paul says that the fulfillment of the entire Law is to love.
This is especially remarkable since Paul was one of those people who lived the Law day in and day out for his whole life. Ge grew up loving the Law and learning the Law and would have given his life for the Law – until he met a different Lord. In fact, Jesus called Paul to give his life for him, and Paul never looked back. He knew what it was like to hold the Law central in the heart. He knew how hard it was to understand the Law in better ways. He knew how hard it was to let go of the black and white letter for the way of the heart. The Law is about Community: building Community, holding Community, guarding Community, and honoring Community. The Law is not about who’s in or out. It is not even about who’s evil and who’s good. It is about whether you are willing to love God and your neighbor. It is about whether you care to freely live for love.
Jesus told a story about a man who was beaten up and left on the side of the road for dead. Two religious leaders both went by, one after another. Each should have been moved by compassion for someone suffering at death’s door. Each should have reflected God’s heart. Both could have done something but didn’t. Maybe they justified it in their own mind. The Law prevents you from touching something that is dead or you become unclean. Not only did they not help, but they also moved to the other side of the street to avoid any contact at all. It would be a hassle to have the appearance of uncleanness. You’d have to wash.
Then, there was the man’s enemy by birth. A heathen who should have spit on the man dying in the gutter, but he took compassion and cared for him and provided for his healing in abundance. I am going to ask the question differently than Jesus with the same point? Who lived out the Law for that man? Who kept God’s Law really? Who followed the heart of God? Yes, that was the story of the Good Samaritan, and clearly the Samaritan man lives out God’s law better than the men devoted to God’s Law. It is no different today. Posting commands does not make the world a better place. Reciting words does not change hearts. Promises can always be broken by the best of us. What wins is love. What changes hearts, minds, and communities is love. The Gospel in one word is Love. The Law of God happens when we show the love of God. That is the kind of law that anyone should want to keep.
To God be the glory. Amen.