1 September 2024
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
Deut. 4:1-2, 6-9; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Freedom and Delight in the Law
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
All three of our Bible passages today pertain to God’s law. They reflect on the foundational role this law plays in our lives.
The word in Hebrew for law is Torah. But the word Torah carries so much more depth of meaning than our simple word law. It means, more broadly, teaching.
God has given us a law, and God’s law is good. But it’s about so much more than just what to do and what not to do. Right and wrong, good and bad, do this, don’t do that – this kind of black and white, straight up and down thinking shrinks and simplifies the full depth and breadth of the Torah into something we can barely recognize.
We like rules. And rules are good. Rules create order. Imagine driving down a street if we didn’t have the simple rule that we drive on the right side of the road. But rules are based on something more fundamental beneath them.
There’s a common parental retort, and we’ve all heard it. Many of you have probably said it. When a stubborn child resists following your direction and they ask why, you say, “Because I said so!”
It’s a simple as that. I said it, and you do it. But we all know it’s more significant than that. If a parent simply wanted a child to hop at their command, to do whatever foolish thing they ordered, just in order to watch their child obey them, this would not be a sign of a good parent. Quite the opposite! This is the behavior of a power-hungry autocrat.
So when a parent tells their child “because I said so,” there’s actually something underneath there! There’s a reason! It has to do what is good and right and life enhancing. It has to do with the welfare of their child and the world. It has to do with love for their child.
And the same is true of God’s law. There is something behind it, something deeper, something much more substantial.
James put his finger on it in our second reading. This divine law isn’t fickle or arbitrary. It doesn’t swing to and fro like a weathervane in the wind. It’s founded on something lasting, something indelible and unchanging. It’s grounded into the very character of God.
This James describes as coming from the “Father of lights.” But this divine light is not like that of the sun, which travels across the sky and shifts all day. James says that this divine light has “no variation or shifting shadows due to change.” No, this divine light is our North Star, our Polaris. God’s character doesn’t move about and shift its ground of being from day to day. No! God is the same, yesterday, today and forever!
This is what the perfect law, the law of liberty, is built upon! The divine “because I said so” emerges from the very character of God! Coming from the Father of lights, the law acts like a prism. It reveals the splendid character of the Almighty.
And this is why, when God gave the law, the commandments to Moses, God introduced them with the words “I am the Lord your God.” This perfect law emerges from the heart of God. And that very character of God is infused into and is what motivates the reasonings of this law we’ve been given.
This law, this Torah reflects the heart and soul of God. In, with, and under this holy ordinance resides the immovable, steadfast love of God, the right and true and faithful heart of the one who has brought all things into being.
The law is so much more than a list of what to do and what not to do. For behind it, we see a window into the heart and character of the One who gave it to us. This is why Moses told the Israelites in our first reading, that, when the nations caught wind of their law, they would marvel because it revealed justice. They’d say, “Surely this nation is a wise and discerning people!” The law witnesses the divine mind, the eternal heart, the immeasurable soul behind it. And it is good.
It was in the spirit of this law that Jesus set about his ministry. He wasn’t tied down by “ought tos” and “mustn’t evers.” No, the divine gift of Torah breathed through him in the way God intended it to act! It was a liberating, joy-infused energy!
That joyful liberty is like when a budding pianist spends hours upon hours practicing scales and arpeggios. They repeat chord progressions over and over and over. But then, with time, something happens. The tedium of the practice unleashes a liberty and ease. They have mastered the keyboard; they understand intimately the theory behind the music. And now they play with an abandon and joy that is outside of themselves.
Jesus lived in the joy and assurance of God’s unchanging love. To him, this Torah, this way of being in the world, this godly walk, was grounded in the very nature of God. And that joy-filled nature shone out of him. And that was contagious. The more his disciples hung with him, the more that joyful, liberated spirit captured them, too.
So there was bound to be trouble! There would, undoubtedly, be a collision of outlooks. For the joy of God’s Torah, the pure, unvarying life coming down from the Father of Lights had become overshadowed by a narrower way.
It had been reduced into straight forward rules about how to wash pots and pans, the proper way to eat so as to remain undefiled. The law in all its applications had been laid out so painstakingly so as to cover absolutely every situation a body could encounter. It had been converted into a “because I said so.”
But the grounding behind it, the Godly way of love and life, had been lost.
Jesus called them back to the center, back to the divine center. The law, he told them, is a holy way given to guide us into God’s right living. And when God is in the center, then nothing can defile. And this is where God wishes to reside, in our center. Here within is where the holy love of God’s pure light will heal. It will make us whole.
The observances and traditions of the elders had taught them how to wash their food and their pans. The Greek word there for Wash is Baptizo. These are all external washings.
But for what lies within, there is another cleansing. It has washed over us at our baptism, when we were baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In those waters we were washed clean through and through; we were born anew. In those waters, we encounter God’s steadfast love in which there is no variation. May we always walk in the delight and freedom of this divine love which embraces us.
