Love one another

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Originally published in the South Jetty Newspaper

Tuesdays March 11-April 8; 6:00 Our Dinner Series for Lent will focus on "Love Incarnate"  

Love one another

In God's glorious sense of humor, we will be learning about God's commandment against adultery on St. Valentine's Day weekend. I've been teaching a class on God's commandments this season using the introductory Ten Commandments known as the Decalogue as a guide and the adultery commandment happens to fall on that weekend. It has been a fascinating conversation as we look deeply into the meaning of each commandment and grow beyond our assumptions. There are little things like learning that the Sabbath Day is not Sunday, but Saturday. We also learned that taking the name of the Lord "for emptiness" or "in vain" is not all about cuss words, but about the responsibility of calling ourselves God's people, and behaving as such. In my case I call my self a Christian--calling myself after the name of Christ. So following the commandment means remembering my life represents Christ. The whole process of exploring God's commandments has reminded us that when we read scripture there is always a level of interpretation. Even the English translation bears the results of interpretation of the translators. We study what the commandments meant then, when they were written down in the five books of Moses, and then we prayerfully consider what they mean for us here in our own, very different historical context. 

Yes, human nature remains the same. God's loving providence remains the same. I am not, however, going to pretend that I follow to the letter all 613 commandments given in the books of Moses, the Pentateuch. Those commandments given to the Hebrew people to be life-giving as they grew from a wandering desert tribe into a small nation sustained their community. The commandments given to Moses were a guide for the survival of displaced people trying to settle and become established after living under the oppression of slavery. God rescued them, freeing them from that oppression. The commandments begin, "I am YHWH your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from the house of serfs." (Everett Fox translation) God made a covenant with them following the rescue. God's commandments gave them guidelines for their survival. The first four commandments focused on their relationship with the divine, the next six were about their relationship with one another. Study of the commandments in our own time helps us understand the importance of establishing healthy boundaries and order within our community and how to treat the less powerful among us, lest we become like those slave holders God rescued us from in the first place. 

There are many ways to live. Many codes of ethics we might follow. There is the popular model of doing whatever we want to do, whatever seems like the most beneficial to me in the moment. We can follow our whims and desires, seeing ourselves as the center of our universe. I don't endorse that perspective. I believe it leads us back into a life of fear, oppression, and death. 

Instead, I believe we are each and all to consider our calling as people of God in our own time. What are the life-giving practices that sustain us as God's children? How might we orient our lives to God's loving providence (the first four of the 10 commandments) and what does that mean for the way we treat our fellow creatures, especially the less powerful among us (the next six commandments.) Finally, how might we as Christians, who by our baptism have died to the old life of being enslaved to sin and have been raised to a new life of freedom in Christ, follow Jesus' own commandment to his followers, "Love one Another." 

Love. It's not our contemporary sweet interpretation of Valentine's day. St. Valentine was a bishop who defied his emperor to empower young people to be married. He was executed for following his calling. He did not take the name of Christian in vain. The love Christ commands us to love with is Agape-love. It is about empowering those who are less powerful. It is courageous in the face of the destructive forces of evil in our world. Agape is the self-sacrificing love of Jesus which sustains us to follow our calling in life. Our God-given freedom is to exercise the joy of loving others: to empower others to live free lives that God has given us. This is our commandment: to love one another.  

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