Law and Possibility
by Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
Exodus 20:1-4; 7-9; 12-20
October 5,2014
“We are not alone.” You may recall that was the tag line for the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” in the late ‘70s. Richard Dreyfus plays a man who has had a “close encounter” with a flying saucer and he begins to act crazy, building mountains out of mashed potatoes and so forth. It turns out that the mountain he is imagining is the meeting place—the point where aliens at last reveal their presence to the Human Race. It is ultimately a benign encounter, but what the movie gets at so well is the confusion—the sense of being mad, of cracking up—that one would experience when first confronted with that terrifying reality—and the sense, most of all, that you will be forever changed, that the individual, and humanity itself, will transcend its limitations when we discover that “we are not alone.”
The Children of Israel stand at the foot of Mount Sinai and they are terrified. For the first time in all history, the veil has been lifted and that which is hidden has been revealed. There is a god bigger than any that had previously been imagined—a god of all that is, transcendent, beyond human experience, and yet deeply personal, seeking relationship with us. It is a close encounter of the ultimate kind. As Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg observes, “the illusion of (human) self-sufficiency is shattered.” It puts to lie the myth we make for ourselves that god is only inward. God is shockingly, disturbingly OUTWARD, mysterious and unknowable, yet also as near to us as the air we breathe and seeking to by known by us. The experience is overwhelming to the people, and they say to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will obey; but let not God speak to us, lest we die” (v. 16). They Have discovered that they are not alone—and it terrifies them.
It terrifies us.
The Ten Commandments are proof that we are not alone. There is a God to whom we are responsible and there are human beings whom we must treat with respect. Our lives are not just about us. There are others–and the Great Other, God–to whom we Are obligated. It is not me–it is my relationships that matter, especially my relationship with the transcendent God of Mt. Sinai.
The people are terrified of the deeper meaning of the Ten Commandments. It is too much to bear, so what they ask Moses for instead is that he interpret the Law for them—essentially they’re asking, “Make the Law a list of rules that must be obeyed. Please, please, don’t make it a relationship with God. We don’t think we could bear it.”
And that’s how we tend to interpret it to this day. The Ten Commandments are a list of rules to be followed. To view them as the terms of a relationship that we are to honor, a relationship with God on the one hand, and with our fellow humans on the other—is too hard. It asks too much of us. So we prefer that we just be told what to do: “You, our leaders, our pundits, our preachers, you speak to us, and we will obey. But let not God speak to us, lest we die.”
But Jesus viewed the Law differently, as a deep, heart-felt commitment to a relationship with God that is far deeper than just obeying rules. Our practice of morality is entirely based on the fact that we are not alone. He viewed our obedience as founded on love—of God and one another. He hearkened back to Jeremiah’s principle that “the law be written on our hearts.” He calls us to what he calls “excessive” or “peculiar” obedience, where our desire to do right by others and God comes naturally from our relationship with God–the one thing the terrified Israelites, and we, most fear.
Laws and rules have their place, and since nearly half this church is lawyers anyway, I certainly don’t want to run the legal profession down. But laws can and should point us to something deeper. The Formula of Concord of 1577, which is quoted in the bulletin today, points us to what the early Church reformers called “The Third Use of the Law”—essentially that law isn’t simply meant to restrain evil-doers and convict us of our sin—it’s purpose is to make us better people, by directing us to how things should be.
During the Civil Rights era, Dr. King, Robert Kennedy, and President Johnson at various points focused a great deal on passing laws that would ease the restrictions placed on African-Americans and insure they would be treated fairly. Many people complained that “passing laws won’t change hearts.” There’s much truth in that. But from a vantage point of decades later, despite setbacks of various sorts, it’s clear, looking at the generations raised since then, that there are quite different, and overall more positive attitudes toward matters of race in the United States today. That’s hardly saying that all our problems are solved. But I think it is right to say that laws have changed hearts. Old racist laws hardened hearts—they made otherwise good people assume that racial barriers were the status quo. But laws that promoted a different set of values have created a new reality, where we’ve transcended previous assumptions.
That’s what the Reformers meant by The Third Purpose of the Law. Laws can point us toward the transcendent—how we can be better than we are. But only—only—if we understand that they aren’t simply rules to be obeyed, but the guidelines of a relationship.
Likewise our giving to the church during stewardship season is something we often treat as an obligation, a commitment to pay a bunch of bills for programs, staff and building. But stewardship is really about relationship. It’s about our relationship to God, who gives us all, and to this church, not as a building, but as a community of believers, fellow travelers on the road to spiritual wholeness.
The rabbis teach that “Sinai must be continually re-experienced” so that human beings can, through the study of the Law, experience Limuda ke-netinata—the same “unnerving revelation” that the people discovered on Sinai. If we’re really seeking to know God, we need to experience a sense of “cracking up…an experience of incoherence…” and a sense that God’s Law isn’t just a checklist of things to do, or rules to be obeyed, but almost its opposite: “a meditation full of questions.”This is because
Man is at the same time the person to whom the word is said, and through whom there is a revelation. Man is the site of transcendence. … Perhaps…seeking, desire, and questioning are therefore better than possession, satisfaction, and answers. (Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Particulars of Rapture, pp. 277-8)
To recognize that each of us is “the site of transcendence”—essentially little Mount Sinais—is a terrifying thing. It means that we have to consider anew how we are to behave in the light of the complexity of relationships we inhabit. As feminist theologian Seyla Benhabib notes, “Moral autonomy can also be understood as growth and change, sustained by a network of relationships.” (Seyla Benhabib: Situating the Self: Gender, Community, and Post-Modernism in Contemporary Ethics. New York: Routledge, 1992, p. 51.) I’d also note, challenged by a network of relationships. Especially on World Communion Sunday, we are reminded that in our high-speed, interconnected world our network of relationships is larger than it’s ever been. We in our community are experiencing this interconnectedness in a very deep way right now as the Ebola virus we’ve heard so much of in East Africa has landed right here in DFW. To apply simple or formulaic answers to the problems that plague the modern world will force us into isolation and self-involvement. The terrifying implication of Mount Sinai is that we are involved with, and responsible to, God and the people around us—and God holds us accountable.
The Ten Commandments aren’t just a list of rules but the charter document of our relationship with God and one another. They remind us that we don’t go to church on Sunday primarily for inner peace. We go because we love God, and God loves us. We don’t serve the poor and needy to get community services credits or to relieve our guilt. We do it because we have a relationship with the least of these. And we don’t give to church or charity out of obligation but because we find our relationships with God and others enriched through them.