“Love is the Foundation”
Exodus 20:1-4; 7-9; 12-20
Rev. Beau Brown
I know it may sound odd to some, but I love policy. I love creating policies, I love analyzing policies, and I even love abiding by policies. As a pastor, one of the most enjoyable experiences for me was sitting down with a group of elders and helping provide structure to new or existing ministries. When the General Assembly announced that every congregation needs to have a child protection policy, I jumped at the opportunity to help congregations create and implement their own. In my mind, good policy allows everyone to understand what is expected of them and can lead to safer and more effective organizations. Now, I certainly understand that, in many places, policies are just something to have in a binder on a shelf somewhere, providing very little in the way of organizational guidance. Yet, when policies are up-to-date and simple to understand, they really are powerful tools in community-building.
Now, you may not be quite as in love with policy as I am, but I do believe there is something within each of us which craves structure, however loose it may be. Generally speaking, we appreciate knowing what we should do and what we shouldn’t do within a given context. Sure, there are those of us who are “rebels without a cause,” but even then, a good set of policies helps us know which rules to break! Nonetheless, we humans are made for relationships, and healthy relationships need guidelines. So, this is exactly what God offers to the people of Israel as they continue their journey through the wilderness.
At this point, the people have been rescued by God from Egypt, fed with miraculous treats from heaven, and given the best spring water the Sinai has to offer. God has proven to them over and over again that He loves them and will be faithful to them through all kinds of trials. God has earned the right to be heard by the people of Israel. But imagine for a moment that none of this had ever happened. Imagine if Moses showed up one day in Egypt, walking around with two stone tablets, and said, Hey, there are these laws that you need to follow because God says so. I’m quite sure the people would have said, “Get out of here! Leave us alone! Don’t you see we have enough rules to follow?”
No, they needed to experience the love of God before they could truly receive the law. There’s certainly a lot of talk about law and order in our society these days. And rightfully so. There are places in this country that really do seem to have abandoned any semblance of order. Though a very strong majority of protests have been completely peaceful this year, even a little bit of violence and destruction is far too much. And since we’re in an election season, the stakes seem even higher, with candidates all over the map claiming that they will be the ones to establish order in our communities. Yet, if the giving of the Ten Commandments teaches us anything, it should be that for rules to make a lasting difference, they absolutely must have love as their foundation.
Without a track record of sacrificial love and care, policies mean very little. Like most lessons in my own life, I learned this one the hard way. At the last congregation I served, the session wanted me to help them make a decision regarding a controversial issue. Well, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to put my love for policy-making to work. So, I laid out a whole plan: we’d form a committee (of course, we’re Presbyterians!), they’d gather input from the whole congregation, and then come back to session with a draft policy recommendation. The session loved the idea, but there was only one problem: It was my first session meeting!
Almost immediately, I started hearing through the grapevine that some people were not very happy that I was already trying to change everything. Of course, it wasn’t my goal to change anything and, in the end, we ended up with a policy that looked very similar to the previous one. However, that’s not how it was perceived. For a vocal minority, I was this new, young, whippersnapper that thought he could erase a couple hundred years of tradition. Had they gotten the chance to know me better, it most likely would have been a different picture. If I had been there long enough to visit them in the hospital and bring them flowers and listen to their stories, they may have given me the benefit of the doubt. I’m not saying everyone would have been happy with the outcome, but perhaps they would have seen that I cared deeply about them.
I couldn’t be the “law and order” guy because I wasn’t yet the “love and care” guy. When people know deep down in their bones that you love them and want what is best for them, it’s magical. I’m quite certain that the main reason we even know about the Ten Commandments today, the reason that they have been preserved for thousands of years, is that the people understood that their foundation is God’s love for them. The commandments matter so much because they are reminders of God’s deliverance and protection; without the love behind the law, it would be meaningless.
Several years ago, while I was in seminary, I got to visit a Hebrew Temple in Louisville, Kentucky, on the Sabbath. It was truly one of the most beautiful times of worship I had ever experienced, but the part that really took the cake was the reading of the Torah scroll. Up until that moment, when I heard the word “scroll,” I thought of something about the size of this bulletin. However, a typical Torah scroll, which contains the first five books of the Bible, is about the size of a large set of building blueprints. About halfway through the service, an assistant carried the scroll forward, and it was adorned with this beautiful cloth and precious metal. The assistant carried it with such reverence that I was completely swept up in the moment.
And at that moment, I got the strong impression that these people love the law not because it contains some good ideas about how to live your life or simply because it forms the basis of their tradition; they treat the law with such honor because the love of God is at the foundation. They seek to follow the commandments because the one who made the rules is the God who will stop at nothing to prove His love for them.
And by God’s grace alone, we Christians are part of this same tradition. As the Apostle Paul said, through Christ, we have been added into this community of faith, into God’s everlasting plan to redeem and make his love known to every single nation. And that’s exactly what we’re celebrating today on World Communion Sunday. Right now, as people all over the globe are being invited to partake of this bread and this cup, we stand in awe at the millions of people who have experienced the grace that is at the foundation of the law, people who have trusted Christ and now seek to follow God’s commandments, people who now know that the greatest law is love. And that’s a policy that anyone can get behind!