We seem to be a society obsessed with laws. To judge by news coverage of court proceedings and so many attempts to create laws to control how other people behave, one might imagine the majority of the population is employed full time in such processes! In reality most of us have very little interaction with the law and legal processes – even when we get called for jury duty it’s unlikely we actually get to participate.
So when we read about the Ten Commandments in our first reading today (Ex 20:1-17) it’s important to note how we are presented not only with the list of “laws”, probably the best known laws there have ever been, but also the context for them, the reason God gave them to his people – because he wanted to link himself to them.
How were these laws understood by the Jewish people? The psalms tell us very clearly they were considered “a source of life”, “a delight”, “a joy to the heart” – it doesn’t sound like the way we would talk about the California Penal Code, or the latest Federal Appropriation Bill…
Why so different?
Because the purpose of the laws was not to control how people behaved, it was to help sustain their relationship with their “jealous” God. Unlike all the people around them who had a plethora of gods (one for the sun, one for the moon, one for trees, one for lakes, …) the Israelites had only one – at least when they avoided falling into the trap of thinking just like all the people around them and starting to add to the list. Keeping this faith that there was one and only one God demanded discipline. That discipline required laws, guidelines on how to sustain the relationship between the people and their God. This was a God who really cared about them, cared for them, he didn’t expect a lot back, in fact he didn’t need anything back, but he did want to help them stay in the relationship.
So the laws of God are not about how we organize our society, what we think people should or shouldn’t be able to do, they are about sustaining a relationship. And this is no different from the “rules” in any relationship – if you cheat on your partner, whether your spouse, your neighbor, or your business colleague, you are damaging your relationship. If you care about your relationship don’t do it! And as your doctor might tell you when “laying down the law”, if you don’t control your weight, or reduce your alcohol consumption, or wear sunscreen, you’ll have major health issues. No one is out to punish you by these consequences, they are just the way life is.
When we hear about Jesus getting so angry with all the traders around the temple (Jn 2:13-25) it wasn’t because they were “breaking the law”. In fact they were enabling or supporting the law by providing the means for people to comply with all the rules about making sacrifices. But the whole process had by that time become so convoluted and distorted that it made a mockery of the law, it wasn’t helping people maintain their relationship with God, it was enabling the powerful to stay in power and the rich to make money.
Jesus was out to break that mould, to recreate the framework by which we can be connected to God. And that wasn’t via a temple or animal sacrifices, it was via his own death. After it happened the disciples understood what he was about. They shared in that death. So can we.