Laying Down the Law

Readings: 16th Sunday after Pentecost

As Christ's Resurrection is the defining event of the New Testament, so God's Theophany at Sinai is the defining event of the Old Testament. Our first reading takes us to the third day, when God speaks to all Israel assembled in fear and trembling at the foot of the mountain. God begins with the aseret hadevarim, Hebrew for the "ten words." We call them the Decalogue, or the Ten Commandments.

Truly, this was the beginning of God's Covenant with the Hebrews, also known as the people of Israel, or today, the Jews — from Judea (the land of Judah), the name of their longest surviving kingdom. From this day forward, the Jews agreed to keep God's commandments, and God promised to keep them as a distinctive people, a priestly people, in that they were to be the people who lived according to God's commandments.

It was also only the beginning. In the Old Testament (or Hebrew Bible) God gives a total of 613 mitzvoth, or commandments, and the Jews would be bound to uphold them all. During the period in which the Hebrew Bible was revealed, keeping the commandments proved difficult. The archaeological record indicates that many Jews kept figurines of gods belonging to religions other than their own until the Babylonian Exile. After that, they appear to have become strict monotheists.

Then the Romans occupied the Judea and re-named it Palestine, in order to break the identification of the Jews (Judeans) with their land. Not only did keeping the commandments become more difficult — after the destruction of the Second Temple and the subsequent Roman Exile, it became impossible to keep them literally. For the next several hundred years, Jewish scholars debated how to re-interpret the commandments under such circumstances, and wrote their opinions in the Talmud.

Thus, with some modifications, Jews are still liable for all 613 commandments. If you are Christian, then so are you. Jesus quoted the Hebrew Bible, and taught its commandments. To reject them is to reject Him.

I know the usual claptrap that passes for Christian Biblical interpretation claims that, because Jesus has "fulfilled" the commandments, you are excused from your obligation to obey most of them. But you are not excused. You are forgiven.

The difference is that to be excused means to be given a free pass. God gives a nod and a wink, and you are free to direct your attention elsewhere. Being forgiven means that you are the beneficiary of the Forgiveness that was planted in this world by Christ's blood and agony on the Cross. The commandments still stand, and you are still convicted when you neglect or disobey them, particularly those first Ten. But, thank God, you are forgiven.

And yet, our Psalm tells us that keeping the commandments is sweet. It is a form of worship to perform the daily and weekly rituals of Jewish life, and to study the Torah. The various actions and restraints, large and small, create a heightened awareness of the sacred in everyday experience, and thus a heightened spiritual consciousness. It is both a joy, and as both our readings from Isaiah and Psalm 80 remind us, a serious obligation.

How serious? There were a number of competing varieties of Judaism during Jesus' earthly lifetime. Of them, only two survived the Roman occupation: one became the Judaism we know today, and the other became Christianity. After nearly 2000 years of exile and near-extermination, the former has returned to the land of its origin, while the latter has conquered the occupiers so completely that their Latin is maintained as a living language only in rituals of the Catholic Church. These two vines have survived.

It remains the Covenant obligation of Jews to uphold the commandments, to study Torah and Talmud. It remains the New Covenant obligation of Christians to go beyond the commandments. At first glance, we Christians seem to have the easier path — fewer details to learn, fewer rituals to remember. Until we remember that Jesus said (Matt 16:24, Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23), "Whoever will come after me, let him take up his cross, and follow me."

We console ourselves that our righteousness is not earned by obeying the commandments (aka the Law), because in truth, we cannot obey them perfectly. Instead, we claim a righteousness that has been given to us by God through Christ himself. All He asks is that we follow, wherever He may lead, through whatever hardship, even through death. And to go joyfully, passionately, straining forward toward the goal, as the Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Phillipians.

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Make the Most of your Model

Readings: Holy Trinity Sunday

In 1674, Thomas Ken wrote a hymn called Awake, My Soul, and with the Sun, which ends with the following verse, now sung as the Doxology in many of our Christian services:

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. On this first Sunday after the Pentecost we celebrate and meditate on God's revelation to us that we may think of God as a Trinity of three Persons.

Indeed we may. But must we? Must we believe that the Absolute Reality of God really is this unity/trinity of three distinct Persons emanating from one Godhead?

I don't think so. For one reason, whenever you begin to think about God instead of being in relationship with God, you are thinking about your own idea of God, which is at best a toy model of God, and at worst an idol. All theology is thus tinged with idolatry, which means that we can only take theology as a guide, a pointer to the One who is beyond all theology. And so, the Trinity is a theological construct. Because it fits so well with the New Testament, it qualifies as a model rather than an idol. And it's a model with many virtues. But as for it's being the Absolute Reality of God, well, as Paul says, "Now we see through a glass darkly."

Yet another reason leads me to assert that the Trinity is a model. The historical Jesus and his companions during his public ministry would have rejected such a notion. Yet, neither he nor his followers could be critiqued as "un-Christian." Instead, the notion of the Trinity reflects the opinion of the early Church following Jesus' Resurrection. Indeed, it may even reflect some secret teaching of the post-Resurrection, pre-Ascension Jesus that was kept circulating in oral tradition and not written (not explicitly, anyway) into the New Testament.

Now, although the Trinity is a model, it isn't "just" a model. It's a great model, fitting nicely through all the wickets in the New Testament, and with the experience of God reported by Christian mystics through the ages. We have Jesus, who declares "All that Abba (the Father, or 'Daddy') has is mine," Jesus' emphasis that we are to relate to God as "Daddy," and the Spirit of Truth which came over the assembled worshippers at Pentecost. Indeed they go together, three faces of an inseparable Unity.

It's not so complicated, really. Certainly not so complicated as imagining God to be the ten Sefirot of Kabbalistic Judaism. And indeed, among the Sefirot one finds the Shekhinah, the Spirit (or in Hebrew the "Ruach" or breath of God) who is feminine, and corresponds well to the Holy Spirit recognized by Christians. She is the Sefirah who spends so much time the world of humans.

But let us not fight over whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father (Eastern Church) or from the Father and the Son (Western Church). That's just arguing over how the Tinker Toy sticks of your model are joined together. If prayer can be compared to making love, then too much concern with this kind of theology can be compared to, shall we say, "going it alone."

So step outside. Consider that the skyscape is brought to you by God, that your breath is breathed for you by the Spirit of God, and that next to you is the Son of God, admiring it all through your eyes.

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