22 March 2006

More liberating words from Walter Brueggemann in the chapter "Duty as Delight and Desire."

It is our desperate effort to reduce or "Solve" the wonder of "the Holy one in our midst" that leads to such distortions as law and grace, freedom and servitude, unconditional and conditional. No such pairing can adequately contain the inscrutability, liveliness, danger, and unsettled quality of this relationship. Israel thus knows that Torah is guidance, in order to be joyously "on the way," a way that constitutes the well-being of the relationship.

How often do you hear the idea of Torah as "guidance, in order to be joyously 'on the way'"? It happen occasionally but not enough. Too often, Torah is see as law and law becomes the opposite of grace and that...is the end of the story. It is as though we do exactly what Brueggemann suggests - we distort...we reduce. When that takes place we miss the beauty and the liveliness that come into our lives when we look again at the way of life we are handed with something as foundational as the words of covenant at Sinai, for example. Sometimes I become discouraged when talk of the faith is so caught up in nailing things down that we begin to lose the imagination that has helped to liberate faithful people throughout time. At first, I think of fundamentalism or literalism. So much is "nailed down" that life looks mechanized...life is walked through not engaged...life wears blinders. There can be so much fear and anxiety created within a covenantal relationship that we miss the grand and beautiful experience and freedom of the love that creates the covenant. But we need not go to the fundamentalist to experience people trying to "nail" things down to one may to live. We can look at our own Lutheran church. There can be enough anxiety produced that we do not let ourselves be dialogical with texts and with one another. We do not let ourselves be as free as Luther looking at the decalogue. One sees "thou shall not" and then the other see...thou shall...look what we are invited to be...look, live, expand. And yet, those ten words are still kept in our hearts as guidance or even steps to a dance for life as one writer put it.

Connection: Remember if we get too involved in "nailing" things down in our life...we don't go very far and we miss the great expanse of God's Reign. We nail pictures to a wall to remind us of good times, hold onto beautiful images, be amazed at talent, to make the life around us shine with color and brightness, and keep us aware of who we are. But in the meantime we are free to travel, experiment, change, and reaffirm whose we are. Remember, picture nailed to a wall can also be taken down, given away, and simply discarded. Lives nailed down can be a more difficult project to undo.

Come Lord of Life and lead us beyond what we want to see and how we think life is to be led. Lead us into the depths of the joy of your love that calls us out to be a new people, gives us a way to walk, and then invites us to dance a bit on the way. Amen.