Deuteronomy

I have been reading through Eugene Peterson’s Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places for nearly five months. It has been a long, challenging, mostly joyful process. I just hit the final third of the book where Peterson discusses how Christ interfaces with the realm of community. He uses Deuteronomy as a grounding text for his writing and I am ashamed to admit that I don’t recall ever reading through that book of the Bible, so I started in. I stopped after the fourth chapter.

It floored me. I almost wept. I did not expect that from a code of law.

I am such a baby sometimes.

To be fair, it was not the rules and statutes, but the prelude to them that evoked this response. God gives a reason for what follows and it is nothing like what I expected. Hear this:

“See, I have taught you statutes and rules, as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?”

Moses clearly says that the law is not for the benefit of those who follow it, but for the benefit of those who do not. What a novel idea. How many people do you know, who look at Christianity from the outside and say, “Surely this…is a wise and understanding people.”?

I am used to people who look at us and say many things. I have said them too…but not that one.

This book was intended to make the nation of Israel more vital and transcendent. Not an individual. Not a person. A community.

God says, “I have made a covenant with you. Here is how you keep it.  And when you do, everyone who comes into contact with you will respond with wonder at the relationship you have with each other and with Me.”

We do not do good things for our own sake. We do not use morality for our own ends. We do not keep the law so that we can feel superior or warm inside. We do not keep the law to get us into Heaven, or conversely, keep us out of Hell.

We do these things because we have no other place to go and others are also searching. Who else has a god so near to them as the LORD our God is to us?

So then, why do people look at us and have every reaction other than glorify God? Why do they see us trying to follow God’s will and see only arrogance or hate? Is it because we have made God’s law about ourselves? Is it because we have striven as individuals to be righteous, instead of working out our obedience in community?

Can the Church do this? Are we willing to sacrifice our own images and identities to be absorbed into a community governed by God’s law and not by our own predilections and tendencies? What is it that we need to give up? What is it that we need to adhere to?

Our God is near and He has spoken. How will we respond?