ALL ABOUT RULES...

A Sunday school teacher was discussing the Ten Commandments with her five and six year olds. After explaining the commandment to "honour thy Father and thy Mother," she asked, "is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?" Without missing a beat one little boy (the oldest of a family) answered, "Thou shall not kill."

RULES!

• What makes football different from hockey?
• What makes a collection of people into a community?
• What turned Israel into the people of God?

Answer, in each case, is “rules”!

LAW!

The 10 commandments were given to Israel as part of the covenant. Last week we were considering the various covenants, or agreements, or promises, which God made in the OT with people - last week especially we thought about Abraham and the covenant God made with him, but this is part of the covenant made with Moses, and the giving of the Law. It was the Law which made Israel Israel. The essence of the Law was the Ten Commandments - around these commandments grew up 614 commands as application and interpretation of this basic summary.

MISSION-SHAPED LAW

The 10 Commandments encapsulated God’s plan for how the community should function - the reason for the rules, the plan, was that other nations should see God, and be drawn into relationship with God as Israel was. Israel was to be a “show-case” nation, a distinctive community, in how they ordered their society, how they ran their affairs - in order to draw others to God. That was the purpose of the Ten Commandments: they were part of God’s mission.

And what did the Commandments mean? In summary: exclusive allegiance to, and love of, God; and love of neighbour.

But what do they mean to us today? Some people treat them as though they were a multiple choice test: attempt any 5... But they were given that the community should live in the Kingdom of God - under God’s rule, according to God’s plan. And because of that they still have application for us as a Church today. We may have exchanged the Saturday Sabbath for a Sunday, and we may be quite keen to make images of God the Son as a result of the incarnation, but the ten commandments still stand as a basis for our living as a faith community.

EXCLUSIVE TO ISRAEL

The nature of the commandments are not particularly peculiar to Israel (in other words, other nations have had prohibitions against adultery, murder etc., and incitements to stay faithful to their god) except in two ways: one is the collection and context; the other is one particular commandment.

The collection is unique - no other nation had this as their ethical code - and that was because Yahweh had revealed his plan to Israel. This was the basis of the covenant he was making with this people group. So the context was different, in that God was making the first move - the initiative was divine, not human; the response was human, not divine!

UNIQUE SABBATH

And the peculiar command? The one which exists in no other religion or community? The call to Sabbath observance. This is seen as something God has woven into the very fabric of time - in the way in which God established the order of things, and as part of the Creation order.

The Sabbath was - and is - a consecration of time. It’s a setting aside of time; it’s a chance to dive deeper into God; to reflect on the life and time that God has given; to rest and engage in re-creation, which will restore and enliven the rest of life.

I’m not talking about a legalistic refusal to switch on a light bulb, or only walk a certain distance; I’m talking about the gift of time, without rush or hurry, time to reflect, time to talk, to listen, to laugh, to engage with others, to think about the important things of life, to turn aside from the normal run of the mill activities and rest.

THE SABBATH & THE ENVIRONMENT

We’ve been thinking in the Lent course about the Sabbath as an environmental principle for our living. It sounds a bit unlikely and disconnected, but bear with me...

It’s been described as “The Sabbath Feast of Enoughness” - which sounds a little odd to start with, but it’s partly about realising a proper perspective on life; about re-aligning our wills with God and about learning to see things from God’s view. It reminds us that true and lasting happiness is actually not to be found in material things, but in our friendship with God.

MATERIALISM

It is possible to have enough of something! Our consumer led materialistic society hates that idea. After all, if you only bought a new item when the old one could no longer be repaired the turn over of goods would be too slow for materialism to thrive!

Materialism, advertising and our self centred culture actually wants us to be dissatisfied, not happy! Because you’d never buy another TV or hi-fi or car or outfit or whatever unless you were unhappy with what you had... Bigger and better become the main watchwords. And subtle versions of them: smaller and more compact...

Materialism - a philosophy which actually depends on us being unhappy! - sneaks into our lives and takes over like a weed unless we take our Sabbath Feast of Enoughness idea seriously.

You can have a complete, fulfilling and deeply wonderful life without ever driving a BMW, or using L'Oreal hair care products, or shopping at Sainsbury’s, or owning an iPod...

ECO-FOOTPRINT

So the more deeply we observe the Sabbath feast of enoughness the less materialistic we become - and in terms of our impact on the environment, the smaller our Eco-footprint becomes.

An “Eco-footprint” is the physical area of land needed to sustain you: to grow the food you eat, deal with the rubbish you create, recycle the air you breath etc. There’s a website ( www.myfootprint.org ) which asks you a series of questions then calculates the size of your Eco-footprint. Our household came out as 2.2 hectares - which sounded v impressive until you realise that if every human being on the planet lived like me we would need one and a half planet earths to sustain us...)

THE SABBATH: PERFECTION

Theologian Jurgen Moltman (b 1926, Protestant German Theologian) suggests that it is the Sabbath - the seventh day of rest - and not the creation of humanity (created on the 6th day) which is the pinnacle of God’s creation...

7 is a perfect number in the bible. 6 is one short of perfection: so fallen humanity is represented as 6; the Sabbath is 7. (And the number of the beast (the Antichrist) - is three lots of imperfection: 666!) So maybe Moltman was onto something very profound.

The Sabbath is about stopping and resting and reflecting and giving thanks... This is about re-aligning ourselves with God (“thy kingdom come, thy will be done...”) Meditation reduces our ecological footprint because it reminds us that true happiness isn’t located in material or external things, and materialism is undermined. We realise that we are not the centre of the universe: God is. Our role as caretakers, stewards becomes clearer, and we will want to cease those activities which don’t accord with God’ will. The Sabbath requires a letting go.

The Jubilee was an enlargement of this idea - to leave land fallow and to forgive debts every seventh year... not harvesting trees or crops so that there would be enough for the poor of the land.

If we seriously engage with this Sabbath principle it will have a profound impact on our lives, our spirituality and our impact on the environment.

Perhaps our Lenten challenge might be to look again at the Ten Commandments and in particular the Sabbath feast of enoughness, and allow the Holy Spirit to mould our discipleship more into the image of Christ.

Fr. Andrew J Perry
Rector, St John the Evangelist, Pevensey Rd, St Leonards on Sea

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