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The perils and the rewards of God's law

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8. (Lectionary 125, Sept. 3, 2006)

The word "deuteronomy" means "second law." This book of the Old Testament is intended to be a repetition or restatement of the Law that God gave to Moses and the people of Israel on Mt. Sinai after they had fled from Egypt. While Deuteronomy is based on the law that Moses taught, it seems to have arisen in the form we have it today somewhat later. Originally it may have come from the Northern Kingdom, but was then revised and put together more or less in its present form during the reign of King Josiah, a king of Judah who spearheaded a religious reform in the last quarter of the seventh-century B.C. (after the Northern Kingdom had been destroyed).

In Deuteronomy, Moses is presented as giving final instructions to the people before their entry into the Promised Land. At the beginning of the book, we have a kind of historical overview of the events that had brought the Israelites to their present position, ready to end their wandering and enter the land that God had promised them. This overview is followed by 26 chapters in which Moses is presented as giving final instructions to the people. The last four chapters of Deuteronomy deal with the choice of a successor for Moses and with the death of Moses.

The text that constitutes our Overture reading for this Sunday is from near the beginning of the book. It is a bridge passage between the historical overview and Moses' extended discourses about the details of the Law. It speaks of the general blessings that are involved in God's gift of the Law to His people.

First of all, Moses calls on the people to be faithful in their observance of the Law. Full and exact obedience to the directions of the Lord would remain the basic condition of the people's continued possession of the land that they were about to take possession of.

In the second half of our reading, Moses offers some deeper motivation for their observance of the law. Their willingness to do what God commands would be a sign of their intelligence. It would demonstrate their wisdom, their ability to recognize the true values of their human existence. But even more significant than the content of God's Law was the nearness of God that was implied in the law. By giving this body of directions to His people, God was entering into a unique level of intimacy with them. Israel would be unlike any other nation in its closeness to God.

This was why the law would be so important, so central in their life as a nation.

In this reading, Scripture teaches us that the law of God, God's directions for living out the existence that He has bestowed on human beings, is not a series of restrictions and prohibitions, but a gift. In the moral and spiritual directions that God gave the Israelites - and us - we learn how we can best bring to fulfillment the potential that God has put into the life of each one of us.

Generally speaking, the ability and the determination to follow directions are indications of intelligence. This is even more the case when the directions are aimed at bringing meaning and fulfillment to our one human life. Still more is obedience to the law a sign of intelligence when the one giving the law and the directions is the Creator who knows His creation inside and out and who loves His creatures in ways that surpasses all human understanding. It is a sign of wisdom to follow God's law. It is a sign of folly to neglect it.

This reading provides a focus for our understanding of the Gospel reading (Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23). (Note that we have now returned to the Gospel according to Mark.) Jesus is being accused of being soft on the law, of not insisting that His followers carry out all the Jewish ritual precepts with full rigor. Jesus replies to His objectors that they have twisted the purpose of the law. They have made human ritualistic traditions into God's will, while forgetting that what is important is not so much the exact fulfillment of traditional rubrical practices as dedication of the heart and mind to the goodness that the Lord offers us. Evil is less an exterior deficiency than an internal direction of the heart.
These two readings are about the perils and the rewards of God's law. If we respond to it appropriately, we grow ever closer to God, ever more into what God intended us to be, ever nearer to the Lord. If we make the law into a complex of merely superficial observances, we twist it into a kind of self-help mechanism that can only lead us astray.

For reflection and discussion

Do I look on God's law as gift or as restriction? Why?

How do I experience the nearness of God?