Thou shalt not

I’ve been thinking about Saint Joseph this week. Wednesday, March 19, was St. Joseph’s Day and we celebrated it at our Wednesday service. Thursday night I preached at the church of St. Joseph just up the street. You have to feel for Joseph. In the collect for St. Joseph’s Day, he is described as the "guardian" of God’s incarnate Son and "spouse" of his virgin mother. Something else I read called him Jesus’ "foster-father." It couldn’t have been easy.

As I thought about Joseph in light of this morning’s readings I found myself wondering, Did Joseph love Jesus? Before you immediately assume the answer is "yes," think about it. It couldn’t have been easy.

The Ten Commandments are what set me to thinking about love. Most of us probably don’t think that the Ten Commandments really have much to do with love. Love is one of those things that is difficult to define, but we know what it feels like. It is that indescribable warmth and fullness of heart, the rich joy that rejoices in being part of something bigger than yourself. Feelings of tenderness and peace. This is love… a wonderful and blessed feeling in the heart that has nothing to do with commandments.

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees decided to try their hand at stumping Jesus. So they sent one of their number, a lawyer, to ask Jesus an unanswerable question. "Which commandment in the law is the greatest?" And Jesus replied with what is now known as the summary of the law, the summary of the Ten Commandments. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Love. Love of God; love of neighbor. The essence of the Ten Commandments is love.

But how? How can these stark commandments be lessons in love? Especially when we remember that eight of the ten are cast in the negative. They tell us what we are not allowed to do. You shall not bow down to false idols. You shall not murder. You shall not covet. Noble instructions, surely, but commandments that prohibit certain behaviors or actions seem a long ways from creating feelings of tenderness and love.

The South African novelist Alan Paton has written about love in a work entitled "Instrument of Thy Peace." That title, of course, is a reference to St. Francis’ prayer. Paton is best known for his novel about South Africa, Cry, The Beloved Country. Paton died in 1988, but in his poetic and majestic writing and in his political activity, he sought with persistence to be an instrument of love and peace in a land which has known little of either. Listen to his perspective on love. "Love is not primarily giving expression to tender feelings… It is primarily consenting to an orderliness of life. To love means to bring one’s whole life under discipline… refraining from any unloving or mean or cruel act." A way for whites and blacks to love in South Africa… Love, at least this sort of love, is not about giving expression to feelings, however warm and tender they may be. Love is about refraining from acts which are cruel or mean or unloving. Or, we might say, love is given shape, given promise, given reality, as much—or more—by what we do not do, as by what we do.

You shall not covet. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not steal. You shall not invoke God’s name in vain. In general, human beings do not like to be told what we cannot do. Especially in our 21^st century American individualistic culture, we aren’t real excited about any thing, any law or any commandment, that restricts our freedom. Yes, laws are necessary for a just and respectful society. But wouldn’t it be nice not to be bound or restricted? Not to have any behavior proscribed? Take speed limits, for example. They’re necessary, of course, but who doesn’t chafe a bit under their restrictions, resent their boundaries? Laws and commandments, by definition, limit and bind us. For the good perhaps. But laws are still boundaries that restrict our freedom.

Boundaries. Commandments create boundaries. But remember what Alan Paton says about love. Love is given being, it is given shape, when we choose not to do something which would be cruel or mean or unloving. Yes, the Ten Commandments create boundaries in our lives, but let us think of God’s commandments not as boundaries that hem us in, but as voluntarily chosen boundaries that create a space… that create a space for love.

You shall not bring any of your other gods into my presence. You shall not make for me any graven images. By not doing these things, we create a space in our lives for the love of the one true living God. You shall not invoke the Name of your God in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Or we might even better turn that one around into the negative. Do not do unholy things on the Sabbath. Create a space for the holy love of God.

And with respect to you family and your neighbors. You shall not dishonor them. You shall not murder them. You shall not commit adultery with them. You shall not steal from them. You shall not bear false witness against them. And you shall not covet what is theirs. If you refrain from doing these unloving things, you will love your neighbor as yourself.

It couldn’t have been easy for Joseph to love Jesus. But Joseph could choose to refrain from unloving words and actions, to create a space, a home, for Jesus. That space is love. A home where cruel, demeaning, hurtful, unloving words are not spoken is a loving home.

It often isn’t easy for us to love our families. Whether our families are "melded", as Joseph’s was, or not; love does not necessarily come easily, especially across the generations. But we can choose to refrain from unloving actions and words. We can create boundaries that enclose a loving space, a space where actions that harm or rob are proscribed. That space is love. We may hope and pray that by God’s grace feelings may grow in that space… feelings of tenderness and warmth and affection, the feelings we call love. I like to think that Joseph came to feel heart-full love for Jesus. I know that such feelings bless many, many families. But whether or not we feel the tenderness of love or have any expectation of feeling love, we may still choose to create love. We create love when we choose what Paton calls an orderly, disciplined life, a life in which we refrain from acts that are unloving, mean or cruel.

It is not easy to love our neighbors, especially when we do not like them. It is not easy to love our enemies, yet Jesus commands us to. It is not easy, but we may choose to create a space for love, a space where we refrain from acts and words that are unloving. As the atmosphere of war swirls around us all like a whirlwind, what used to be the neighborly debate between Democrat and Republican has become personal enmity. Interpersonal boundaries of conflict are drawn between neighbors; cruel words are said. But whatever we feel at this time, whatever our opinions may be, we can still choose to draw boundaries of love, boundaries around, not boundaries between… boundaries that include and encompass a space for love.

It is not easy to love God. Again and again we are instructed to love God. It is not easy. It can seem impossible to feel warmth and tenderness towards a God who is all-powerful but so often intangible. It is not easy, but we can choose to create a space for love. We can choose to refrain from words and actions that demean God’s holiness, that rob or tarnish God’s power. We can choose not to worship gods of our own creation. We can choose to create a space for the love of God in our lives. The Ten Commandments create such a space. A space that the early people of God discovered to be the Promised Land. It is our Promised Land as well.

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

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