Guidance in the Wilderness

We take the Ten Commandments so much for granted that it is sometimes difficult to remember that our faith ancestors considered them a gift and not a burden.  Our seminary intern, Val Veo, explored that idea in her sermon last Sunday …

Guidance in the Wilderness

Psalm 19; Exodus 20:1-17

The psalmist writes in our reading today about the wonders of the Law. The Law revives the soul, makes wise the simple, rejoices the heart, and enlightens the eyes. This is not usually the language we use to describe our relationship with our own country’s legal codes.

Many drivers consider the speed limit more of a jumping off point than a firm boundary; betting on sports teams is just a harmless recreational activity; even the language of “tax evasion” makes the failure to pay one’s taxes seem more like a game than a crime. Our approach to the law is much more likely to be “what can I get away with?” rather than to see it as the life-giving gift of God that the psalmist does.

We first hear of these laws in the middle of the Exodus narrative, the story of the Hebrew people fleeing from Egypt. Brutally oppressed and enslaved, the people follow Moses out of the land of their bondage and into freedom. When they are trapped, God clears for them a way through the sea. When they are lost, God sends a pillar of smoke by day and fire by night to guide them. When they are thirsty, God brings forth water from the rocks. When they are hungry, God sends manna from heaven. When they are sick of manna, God sends them quail. God knows the needs of the people and responds, protecting and caring for them…and then? Then, God – literally – lays down the Law. The story leads us to see the commandments as yet another gift from a loving God, and yet it does seem to be an odd gift. The Hebrews of this story are a people for whom slavery has been their identity for generations; their existence has been contained and limited by their usefulness to a dominating society. Why would God – in the infancy of their freedom – impose upon them a set of laws and rules that would govern every action, every relationship, every thought, every facet of their existence?

At its most basic level, the Law sets boundaries for living together in community. Perhaps after generations of captivity, the Hebrew people had lost the ability to govern themselves, simply needed guidance, needed restrictions to direct their interactions with one another. Don’t swear, don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t cheat, don’t kill, listen to your mom and dad…Perhaps they just needed some guidelines for appropriate behaviour.

I think, though, that the Law may have fulfilled something deeper, some existential need for structure. There is, for some people, such a thing as too much freedom. In the movie Shawshank Redemption, the character Brooks Hatlen is one of the oldest prisoners. He’d lived almost his entire adult life behind the walls of a prison, had become the prison librarian and had forged for himself an identity within those walls. When presented with the prospect of parole, he attacks another inmate with a knife in order to incur another conviction that would allow him to remain in prison. When that fails and he is finally paroled, the isolation and loneliness that comes with his freedom is overwhelming. As bad as prison life had been, it at the very least afforded him structure, offered him community. His life on “the outside” – the life of bagging groceries and returning alone to his room at the half-way house – proves to be too much for Brooks; the combination of isolation and lack of structure is simply more than Brooks can handle, and he takes his own life.

Perhaps the Law provided a similar boundary for the Hebrew people. Perhaps the concept of complete freedom was for this newly freed people was utterly paralyzing, was simply overwhelming. The Law guided them, told them how to live with one another and with God; the Law liberated them from paralysis and gave them the structure within which they could live out their new freedom.

Apart from setting up boundaries governing their communal lives, the Law also serves to create and define these peoples’ identities. For the Hebrew people, the foundational rules for the community actually establish their communal identity. The rules not only govern how they live with one another, but also how they interact with the peoples they meet on the way, and those rules continue to distinguish them from the surrounding communities. The Hebrews worship differently, work differently, bathe differently, even eat differently. They are marked by this set of laws, differentiated, set apart as YHWH’s holy people.

Brooks Hatlen was overcome by an life that was isolated and seemingly purposeless. The Law guides the Hebrew people’s actions, gives them purpose, and forms them in community. The Law redeems them.

God gives the Law to the people to serve the health and wholeness of the community and is a representation of God’s care and concern for the people. The question, arises, though, of whether that care and concern on the part of the Creator is contingent upon the obedience of the people. Notice, though, that the commandments are given in the context of covenant, a covenant that is already established before the Law was given. God has already acted on their behalf; God has already saved them and claimed them. God loved them and protected them before the giving of the Law; God’s love and protection don’t depend on obedience. Observance of the Law is the people’s response to that saving action, not out of obligation or a debt owed, but out of gratitude, out of recognition of God’s love and passionate care for the Creation.

This same God, the God that claimed and called the Hebrew people, claims and calls us as well. We are a redeemed people, and we are called to live together and care for one another in community. We, too, are called to obey the Law, out of gratitude for the grace that has been given to us, out of love for the community formed by God’s hand. These commandments are the way in which we can best live together: speak truth, honor relationship, care for one another’s well-being and livelihood, hold life sacred. We obey not out of obligation or a debt owed, but rather in order to respect and honor that which God has created and redeemed, that which God continues to create and redeem.

It is through this understanding of the law that our souls our revived, we are made wise, our hearts rejoice and our eyes are enlightened. The Law is not just that which condemns us or that which we play games to avoid. The Law is that which forms us in community, guides our ways through the wilderness, and gives us life. Amen.