Torah as Tao

Third Sunday in Lent       March 19, 2006

(Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19:7-14; Romans 7:13-25; John 2:13-22)

It is said God made us in his image, but it’s probably equally true that we make God in our image.  Or, at least, relate with God through the images that we’re familiar with in our own lives.  It could hardly be otherwise.  God in God’s own reality is so beyond our comprehension, so other than what we know in everyday life that the mystics who have encountered the full vision of God are left in silence, in the “cloud of unknowing.”

To speak of God at all is to speak “as if”.  People who, in their daily life, had Lords and Kings spoke of God as Lord and King.  The image of God as judge comes from people who had access to, or were taken to court.

The image of God as father resonates with us all because we’ve all had fathers.  And yet, this image can be colored in many different ways, since each of us has had a different experience of father.  Is God, as father, stern or affectionate?  Is God as father present or absent?

The image of a “covenant” with God came from people who established relational covenants and treaties defining mutual responsibilities.

The 10 commandments have usually been interpreted in that context.  God agreed to be the special God of the Hebrew people, to lead them out of slavery, protect them from their enemies, and give them a home in the promised land.  And on their part, the Hebrew people agreed to follow these commandments.  They wouldn’t make graven images or take God’s name in vain.  They would remember the Sabbath and honor their parents.  And they wouldn’t murder or steal or commit adultery or be a false witness in court.  On the whole it seemed like a pretty doable program.

The problem was that the Hebrews noticed that it didn’t always work.  Sometimes they defeated their enemies.  Sometimes their enemies defeated them.  They got the promised land, but once they had it, they had to share it, and the had to defend it, and sometimes they were conquered.

They had an inherent belief in the trustworthiness of God, and couldn’t believe their God was just arbitrarily breaking the covenant. So, when it didn’t “work” the way it was supposed to, they looked to themselves to see what they were doing wrong.  They elaborated on the commandments and worked out, in intricate detail, what specific actions were required or forbidden.  The result was a much more complicated law, the ritual law of sacrifice and temple worship, the dietary laws and laws of dress and behavior, the Sabbath laws.  And through countless cases and appeals and discussions they worked out 613 subsections of the commandments and thousands of regulations besides…a whole way of life.

Christianity, however, came to look at things in a very different way.  When Jesus overturns the tables of the money changers he isn’t only making a statement about greed in relation to religious institutions, or the corrupting symbiotic relationship between religious institutions and the state that was represented by the coinage involved in such exchanges.  He’s making a statement about the basic interpretation of the divine/human relationship as a kind of “transaction”.  “I’ll do this for you, God, if you do this for me” which is at the heart of this contractual understanding of the covenant.  “You shall not make my father’s house a house of trade” in a deep sense, in a spiritual sense.

Jesus says with his words and his life that God loves us unconditionally, and that if we can only open up to that love, and love in return, without judgment or fear, all good things will flow from that.

Saint Paul, as well, understands this unconditional nature of God’s love.  Paul experiences the fullness of God’s love and acceptance, even though he knows he doesn’t live up to the rules and regulations.  “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…Wretched man that I am!  Who will rescue me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

So for Jesus human behavior flows from a pre-existing relationship of love with God, and for Paul human behavior is rendered irrelevant by grace.  Neither accepts the traditional, and most likely current, view of the covenant as an I’ll-scratch-your-back-if-you-scratch-mine kind of bargain with God.

And I think all that calls us to look again at how we might interpret the 10 commandments, from a radically new standpoint.

The commandments can be seen as something other than demands, other than requirements for getting through the narrow gate, something other than limits on behavior we would otherwise engage in if we were allowed to.

They can be seen in, in fact, as an offering, a gift, a guide, a map, a path to a happy and fulfilling life lived within the unbreakable promise of the unconditional love of God.  They offer a way to behave so as to be most open and aware of that love, and to respond to it with the least amount of stress and discomfort.

In this understanding, the best translation for the Hebrew word “Torah” might not be the English word “law”, but the Chinese word “Tao” or “way”, more like the law of gravity than speed limits. The commandments then are not something we do for God, but something God does for us.

Take the commandment to have only one God.  God doesn’t need such a unified vision. We do.  God is one whether we think so or not.  But our thinking so and acting so gives us a unified life.  We come to understand that it’s all connected and all related: our inner dreams and the outer galaxies, mathematics and music, sex and politics, joy and sorrow, life and death.  And that understanding makes a difference in our lives.

The commandment about graven images speaks of the importance that I’ve stressed again and again from this pulpit, not to objectify God, or life, or other people, or ourselves.  But to understand that in reality, theologically, psychologically and even physically all is in flux, all is change, all is becoming, and to try to grab on and hold it and control it only leads to desperately addictive delusion.

Not taking God’s name in vain means that we need to treat our spiritual lives with seriousness and respect.  Honoring the Sabbath gives us a break, gives us a breath, gives us a chance to stop doing, and doing, and doing all the time, and just be.  And it gives God a chance to just be with us. It makes all time holy.

Honoring father and mother involves more than our just having good family values.  It’s the acknowledgment that we are part of a long, long chain, and whether we conform to or rebel against the tradition from which we’ve come, the effect always depends upon the cause, and the cause is, in some way, fulfilled in the effect.  We’re never alone.  We all come from somewhere and it’s wise to address that with a certain honor, or compassionate forgiveness, if that’s what’s called for.

Refraining from murder, adultery, and theft keeps us from buying into easy solutions that end up solving nothing, and only create more problems for ourselves.  Not being a false witness or coveting requires an acceptance of life the way it’s been given.

There’s a saying that life is what happens while you’re making other plans.

I think very often our religious life is seen as a kind of preparation, our moral life as a kind of qualifying exam for something yet to come.

But really it’s this life that God has given us, and, in the moral and spiritual wisdom of the love story that is scripture, God shows us how to make the most of it, so we can shape the spirit of God in our place and time the way that God intends.

Jesus doesn’t come to give us a warning, to say “shape up or ship out”.  He comes that we may have life, and have it abundantly.

Thanks be to God.