I’m mildly frustrated and in a fair amount of pain.
Somehow, and I genuinely don’t know how, I seem to have slipped a disc. It hurts. Before anyone suggests it, no, I have not tried yoga and I’m not going to. Right now simply standing up is about as much as I can manage.
I’m supposed to be preaching tomorrow, and I’ve had to send my apologies. Fortunately I was also able to send a full copy of the service, including the prayers and reflection, so I’m not leaving anyone in the lurch. But I still feel a little guilty about it. There is a certain irony in that.
The sermon I had written is on the Ten Commandments, with a focus on them as guidelines which enable people to live and flourish together, rather than simply a list of dos and don’ts. but right now flourishing does feel a little ambitious.
Over the last couple of days I’ve become very aware of how much thought can suddenly go into very ordinary things. Standing up. Getting dressed. Making coffee. Walking across the room. None of these are particularly dramatic, but at the moment each one needs planning.
It has also made the Sabbath command feel rather different. The command to rest is not simply directed at those who have the luxury of choosing to stop. Children rest. Servants rest. Foreigners rest. Even the animals rest. There is a limit to what can be demanded of another person. At the moment my body is enforcing that limit rather more firmly than I would like.
I’m disappointed not to be preaching tomorrow, particularly because I had enjoyed preparing the service. Time spent exploring scripture is never wasted, but sharing the reflection here, and knowing that the church I was due to preach at can still use it, does help me feel that the time spent preparing has not disappeared into nothing.
The one person who seems quite content with the situation is Tiffany. She has spent a decent amount of today sitting on me and making sure that I actually rest. Although she is slightly annoyed that my current lack of mobility means I am not quite fast enough at providing Dreamies. Perhaps she has understood Sabbath better than I have.
So, since I won’t be standing at a lecturn tomorrow, here is the reflection I had prepared on the Ten Commandments, rules, grace, and what helps us to flourish together.
What are rules for?
Tiffany, our cat, has a fairly well-developed set of rules about how the household should operate. Doors should be opened when requested. Bedtime requires Dreamies. Somebody leaving the house also requires Dreamies, although I’m not entirely sure what the connection is. Sitting on the piano while somebody is trying to play it is important, and sitting on a computer keyboard while somebody is trying to use it appears to be essential.
None of these rules have ever been written down, but Tiffany seems quite confident that we ought to know them and is perfectly willing to remind us when we get them wrong.
Human beings are quite good at making rules too. Some are written down and some are simply understood. Churches can be particularly good at the second kind. There may be nothing written anywhere about where you are allowed to sit, for example, but sitting in somebody else’s usual seat can reveal remarkably quickly that a rule exists.
So what are rules actually for?
The Ten Commandments are given to people who have already been brought out of slavery in Egypt. God does not say, “Keep these rules and then I will rescue you.” The rescue has already happened. The people are free, and now they have to learn how to live together.
Some of the commandments shape their relationship with God, and others shape their relationships with one another. Don’t murder. Don’t steal. Don’t give false testimony. Don’t spend your life wanting what somebody else has.
Then there are the positive instructions: honour your father and mother, and remember the Sabbath.
The Sabbath command is striking because rest is not just for those with power or money. Children rest. Servants rest. Foreigners living among them rest. Even the animals get the day off.
Although Tiffany would probably point out that Sabbath still requires somebody to maintain adequate supplies of Dreamies and tuna.
The command limits what one person can demand from another. Taken together, the commandments protect life, relationships, truth, property and rest. They give shape to a community in which people can live together and flourish.
Later, when Jesus is asked which commandment matters most, he says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
Then he adds, “Love your neighbour as yourself.”
Everything else, he says, hangs on these two.
That seems a useful way of thinking about any religious rule. Does it help us love God and love our neighbour?
The difficulty comes when rules begin doing something else.
In the Gospel reading, Jesus tells the story of a landowner who plants a vineyard and leaves it in the care of tenants. When he sends servants to collect the fruit, the tenants attack them. Eventually he sends his son, and they kill him too.
The chief priests and Pharisees realise that Jesus is speaking about them.
Christians have sometimes read passages like this as though Jesus were rejecting Judaism, but Jesus is Jewish, his disciples are Jewish, and this is an argument within Judaism about religious leadership and authority.
The tenants have been trusted with the vineyard, but they begin to behave as though they own it.
Religious communities can do that too. We can start to act as though God belongs to us, as though we have been given the job of deciding who is acceptable, who can lead, who has understood things correctly and whose life fits our expectations.
The rules which were meant to shape a faithful community can become a gate, and those who know the rules can find themselves standing beside it.
Jesus takes the law seriously, but he challenges those who use religious authority to control access to what was never theirs to own.
Paul comes at the same question from a different direction.
If anybody had reason to think that they had got religion right, Paul could produce a fairly impressive religious CV.
He lists his credentials: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, from the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews, a Pharisee, zealous, and as far as righteousness under the law was concerned, blameless.
Paul had the background, the training and the record.
Yet he comes to see that none of that can be the foundation of his relationship with God. What matters to him now is knowing Christ and receiving the righteousness that comes from God.
Salvation comes through grace, rather than through being sufficiently successful at following the rules.
That changes the way Paul sees his achievements. They can no longer become evidence that he is closer to God than somebody else.
He also makes clear that he has not arrived. He says that he has not already reached the goal and continues pressing on, still learning what it means to follow Christ.
Across these readings, rules are never simply about keeping order.
The commandments are given to a liberated people learning how to live together. Jesus challenges those who have turned responsibility into ownership. Paul discovers that religious achievement cannot earn what God gives freely.
Rules still matter because the way we live affects other people.
But Jesus gives us the measure: love God and love your neighbour.
So perhaps the question for us is whether the rules and traditions we inherit are helping us to do that.
Do they make space for people to live, grow and offer their gifts?
Or have we found ourselves guarding a gate which God never asked us to guard?
The vineyard belongs to God, and grace is God’s to give.
We are trusted with something precious, but we do not own it.
Our task is to tend it well, and to look for the fruit.
Leave a Reply