Thoughts which drive me to the cross…and therefore to Jesus!

17 Do not be unfair to a foreigner or an orphan. Don’t take a widow’s coat to make sure she pays you back. 18 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and the LORD your God saved you from there. That is why I am commanding you to do this.
19 When you are gathering your harvest in the field and leave behind a bundle of grain, don’t go back and get it. Leave it there for foreigners, orphans, and widows so that the LORD your God can bless everything you do. 20 When you beat your olive trees to knock the olives off, don’t beat the trees a second time. Leave what is left for foreigners, orphans, and widows. 21 When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, don’t pick the vines a second time. Leave what is left for foreigners, orphans, and widows. 22 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt; that is why I am commanding you to do this.  Deut. 24:17-22 NCV

One of the great words in our language is, at the same time, one of the emptiest and most debased—the word love. One can hardly speak the word nowadays, it has become so banal, so degraded. And yet, no language can actually dispense with such a word. For if we stopped speaking about love, we would stop speaking about men. We would also stop speaking about God, about him who holds heaven and earth together. In consequence, we find ourselves in a strange situation: we have no choice but to speak of love if we are not to betray God and man, but it is almost impossible to do so because our language has already betrayed love so often. In such a situation, our help must come from without. God speaks to us of love; “Holy Scripture”, which is God’s word cast in human words, raises the word, as it were, out of the dust, purifies it, and restores it to us purified

3 With regard to the time, it is certain that most people in our churches use the sacraments, absolution and the Lord’s Supper, many times a year. Our clergy instruct the people about the worth and fruits of the sacraments in such a way as to invite them to use the sacraments often. On this subject our theologians have written many things which our opponents, if they are but honest, will undoubtedly approve and praise.  

Any time I look at the books of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, I know I have to be careful.  Simply put, while the Law of Moses is not binding on those in the New Covenant, that doesn’t mean we can simply disregard it, dismiss it, and say it doesn’t apply to us.

One of the ways to deal with it then, is to look for the “spirit of the Law” rather than just the “letter of the law.” Even then, we face the temptation to make our understanding binding on those around us. You must do this, you must do that! You can’t do this… and oh my gosh – you did that! And we move quickly from talking to a person, to labelling the person “them” and talking about “them” even when they are standing right there. We try and separate from “them” as if breaking our law is somehow worse than blasphemy.

I think a better way is to look at how they Law of Moses would have us love.

Of course, then we get into the problem Pope Benedict XVI (when he was a cardinal) wrote about, the idea that we stripped the meaning of the word love away from it, cheapening it by talking about loving a cheeseburger or an piece of fruit, or confusing it with a thousand other ways that strip from it the dedicated, the devotion, the sacrifice that all goes into loving someone, loving our family, loving our neighbor, loving God.

What Deuteronomy is describing here can be seen as a loving act. Leaving behind for those who have less our excess, heck, it might even be more than our excess–if our work wasn’t focused. But in this world, where most of us don’t farm, but work in places, how are we willing to “leave behind” for others. How do we love like this, without turning it into a law that our minds can qualify and measure?

As I struggled with the passages, and trying to figure out how to not step over the line from doing that which demonstrates love, to either legalism or apathy, I couldn’t work it out. For I believe we need to love our neighbor, and assisting those around us should be done…

As I read the 5 or 6 selections set out for me each day, I often go through these thoughts, and usually 2 or 3, sometimes even 4 all resonate with each other, and I either journal the thoughts, or walk off content. Sometimes is like today though, and I get to the last reading with no clue how it will resolve.

And today it did, as my reading from the Apology of the Augsburg Confession – a theological discourse of the finest nature, provided a simple, pastoral answer to my question of how to apply to my life the lesson from Deuteronomy, and to restore the love of God.

The answer is found in regularly experience the love of God, a love that is found in confessing sins and knowing they are forever forgiven separated from me, and as the Lord Supper, the body and blood of Jesus present in the visible bread and wine, brings me into God’s presence, and He into mine, in a way that is precious and the kind of love that this passage advises – to love without thought, without considering consequence – to just give, and provide for, to show a devotion and love that is beyond expectation.

As we experience this, as we think through it, as we, dare I say it, enjoy it–God does things to us that we don’t see, we instinctively love. as we become more and more like Jesus, as the Spirit transforms us.

This is who we are to be, to share in the glory of God, to reflect it into the world, and the law simply is a description of how we live…

Ratzinger, Joseph. 1992. Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year. Edited by Irene Grassl. Translated by Mary Frances McCarthy and Lothar Krauth. San Francisco: Ignatius Press.  Feb 10

“The Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article XII Confession”, Tappert, Theodore G., ed. 1959. The Book of Concord the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press. p.180