Love and the Law: Exodus 19:3-7, 20:1-17 - Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

On September 16, a 22-year-old woman in Iran named Mahsa Amini died in the custody of the state’s “morality police.” Her “crime” was violating the state’s dress code by not “properly” wearing a headscarf in public.

Commandments by Charles Clegg on flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0

On August 15, Iran’s president signed into law a stricter dress code than the one that’s been in place since 1979, and hundreds of women have been arrested for immoralities, including dancing and visiting hair salons.

Since Amini’s death, demonstrations have erupted all throughout the country against the oppressive morality laws and the morality police who allegedly killed her. The government response to the protests has been brutal. Scores have been arrested, and over 150 citizens have been killed.

Sadly, millions of people live under such laws. The Nuremberg Laws in Nazi Germany, Apartheid in South Africa, Jim Crow Laws, and Sharia Law are enacted in the name of morality, justice, or public safety. In the end, these laws are their own form of lawlessness, because they legitimize oppression, suppression, exploitation, and even violence against certain peoples to benefit those who create and enforce those laws.

From God’s point of view, however, law and morality have nothing to do with controlling or exploiting people. Law and morality exist to promote peace, justice, and human flourishing for everyone.

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This is why God’s first order of business, after delivering the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt across the Red Sea, is to enact the Ten Commandments.

For 400 years, Pharoah’s word was law. Do what Pharoah says or die. But now, with Pharoah out of the picture, there are no rules—which means that conditions are ideal for the Israelites to descend into lawlessness. It’s likely that the Israelites were still celebrating their miraculous liberation and the destruction of their captors when God takes Moses up Mount Horeb to receive the stone tablets.

Please understand: God is not trying to spoil their fun and make their lives miserable. On the contrary, God has big plans for his people. God has chosen them out of all the peoples of the world to be his own, and to bless the world through them.

Therefore, the Ten Commandments are not a burden. They are a gift. God calls the Commandments a covenant—which is to say, these are the conditions upon which God can fulfill his promises. God is telling them what they must do, so that when they arrive at the Promised Land, they can settle there and prosper. God is telling them what they must to so that they can live as his people, and he can be their God.

The commandments are about more than just rules. They are about relationships. This is something our confirmation students know by heart. Right relationships are the bedrock of a healthy society; and they are the bedrock for people to be in relationship with God. Unfortunately, most conversations about law and morality have less and less to do with covenant, and more to do with fighting culture wars.

Extremism has infected our current political discourse—either with the creation and enforcement of highly-restrictive laws and regulations which restrict people’s ability to make decisions about themselves and their children and put them in the hands of the state; or the elimination of laws and regulations which end up sacrificing public safety, public health, and justice in the name of freedom.

As these culture wars are fought, a new morality is taking hold, and these are its laws: If it feels good, do it. Greed is good. Might makes right. The ends justify the means. Only the strong survive. Be a winner, not a loser.

But you cannot have a society if you hate half the people in it, or if you care only about your welfare and the welfare of people like you.

Do you remember what Jesus said about the greatest commandment? There are two: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength; and you shall love the neighbor as yourself. The neighbor, by the way, includes your enemies and all the people you don’t like.

Each of the commandments (except for one) exist as prohibitions. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me…” “Thou shalt not kill.” But like the Third Commandment, “Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy,” all the commandments lay an obligation on you. In other words, for everything you must not do, there is something else you must do. You must seek your neighbor’s welfare. You must look out for others’ interests with the same urgency you look out for your own. You must be responsible, and you must be accountable.

Hurricanes, pandemics, poverty, terrorism, monsters armed with nuclear weapons ruling nations and waging wars, bigotry, hopelessness—these are the enemies we should be fighting. Not each other. And these are the enemies we can defeat. How do we defeat them? By obeying the words of God’s covenant.

Ultimately, the most loving gift God could give to his chosen people, after their freedom from slavery, was the gift of the Law; the Ten Commandments. When people get along with each other, everyone does well. Even in the vast, arid desert, where food and water are scarce and the dangers are many, obedience to the commandments makes it possible for the people to live according to God’s purpose—to become a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.

God has taught us what is good for all time. Through obedience to the words of the covenant, there is life. Our obedience has the power to heal this broken and troubled world. So be your neighbor’s keeper; embrace both freedom with responsibility, forgiveness with accountability, self-sufficiency with interdependence.

Love the Lord. Love the neighbor. Live the Law.