Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9
James 1:17-27
As we as a country have made our final turn toward election day, I’ve noticed a picture being shared quite a bit on some social media platforms, and, for once, its a picture or post that doesn’t make me cringe. It’s a list of suggestions for how to post an interact on-line around political discussions that, hopefully, will prevent discord and vitriol. I know some of you have seen it as well, because you’re some of the folks who are resharing it in your social spaces. The text on the picture reads:
Between now and Tuesday, November 5:
POST WISELY!
- Contribute to discussion – not division.
- Don’t take the bait!
- Check. Your. Facts.
- Resist memes, cheap digs and name calling (That one is a little funny coming from a meme.)
- Create constructive content.
- We can transcend bitterness and be our better selves – even when we disagree.
The original author, as far as I can tell, is a Catholic parish priest in Colorado names Father Austin Fleming.1 The ideas here shouldn’t be all that new to us, but they are helpful reminders of ways to interact with each other in a time of heightened emotion.
It’s helpful to be reminded of some of our grounding beliefs, our guiding principles, as we face challenging times – and that doesn’t just apply to election seasons.
The book of Deuteronomy is the fifth book in the Older Testament of our Bible and the last book among those known as the Pentateuch. It is presented as Moses’s final discourse to the Israelites before they enter the land of their ancestors, but it was more likely compiled over the course of about 25-85 years in the 6th and 7th centuries before the birth of Jesus, when the people of Judah, the descendants of those who wandered with Moses in the wilderness, were facing threats from their enemies and experiencing exile in Babylon.
So it was an historical remembrance written and edited in a time when God’s people were feeling existential pressure, when they were living as underdogs surrounded by powerful nations, when there were influences from outside their community pulling them in multiple directions, offering tempting ideas that promised prosperity in exchange for loyalty, threatening to divide them by tearing at what held them together in community.
The story those people of God wrote down, the way they framed their history and their unifying story, was by remembering another time in their history when the community faced a great challenge, a potentially divisive challenge, a time when they could be pulled in multiple directions and ultimately pulled apart as they moved back into a land that their ancestors had left many generations ago. They remembered what God’s people had needed another time they stood on shaky ground, or actually a cliff, a literal and metaphorical precipice as they looked from Mt. Nebo on the east side of the Jordan river into the land to the west, to which they were returning.
Cliffs are scary places to stand. That’s sort of an understatement, isn’t it? It’s almost ridiculous, it’s so obvious. Standing at the edge can be absolutely terrifying. Have you seen the pictures and videos of people who literally hang their tents over the sides of sheer faces of rock? Would you sleep there? I know I wouldn’t. There aren’t enough strength tests on climbing ropes that could ever convince me that is a good idea.
No, for most of us standing on the edge is not a comfortable place to be, and we don’t usually choose it for fun time. We may even do everything we can to avoid them – the edge of a rock formation, the edge of a health decision, the edge of a job transition, the edge of relationship, the edge of a life stage, the edge of a new school year, the edge of a new program year, the edge of a leadership change, the edge of a political season, the edge of an election. All of these edges can make us feel uneasy, uncertain. We may wonder what the next best step is, how we will move forward, how we will stay grounded, how we will make our way down from the high ledge and move into the inevitable new reality. Or we may feel ourselves moving toward one of those involuntary reactions the human body tends to choose during times of stress or when faced with a perceived threat – fight, flight, or freeze.
Moses’s address to the Israelites gives us another option, though. When Moses looked out over the edge, when he saw that they were at the end of their wilderness journey, and were ready to enter the land from which their families had come, he took some time to talk to the Israelites, to remind them of some very important things.
“So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I’m teaching you to observe.” The law. The rules God had given him to give to the Israelites to govern how they should live together AND live with others. I know it doesn’t sound quite like the pep talk we might imagine – a bunch of rules… a whole bunch of rules actually… chapters 12-26 worth of rules… and all of those rules on top of the first recitation of rules that came in the books of Leviticus and Numbers. But that’s what Moses takes the time to do (a lot of time to do) in his last speech to the Israelites. He takes time to tell them yet again, all the rules God has told them for life in the land together.
That together part is pretty important, because that fight, flight, or freeze response I mentioned before – those involuntary reactions we have to perceived threats, even threats like change or uncertainty – those are pretty individualistic responses. What Moses is doing when he talks to the people of Israel, what the scribes of Judah and the people in exile are doing when they record this historical memory, is trying to get the people to think communally. They’re trying to counter individualistic responses and remind God’s people that they belong to something bigger. They’re trying to bring them back to the words and covenants and commandments that unite them, that define them, that describe their relationship to God and set the parameters of how they will live as God’s people both together in their community and when they face their new neighbors with whom they may disagree.
As they stand on the edge of a whole new reality, a whole new set of challenges, a whole new landscape for life, Moses stops to talk to them about who they are and whose they are, so that they don’t lose sight of God as their Lord AND so that the people who see them will know how great their God is. Their life together can and should point to the one who frees when others seek to bind. Their life together should point to the the one who gives abundantly, rather than withholds. Their life together should show the world that the people they are is formed from the God they worship and that God is one who cares for the hungry and thirsty, the dispossessed and indebted, the widows and orphans, as James reminds us in his letter.
At the edge of a challenging season or a new reality, as we face changes in our own lives, in our church, and in the nation, we would be wise and discerning to remember what we have learned about how we are called to live together and live in the world. Deuteronomy, based on our assumptions, seems like a really strange place to start, but it turns out that Deuteronomy is the book of Hebrew Scriptures that Jesus quotes the most throughout his teaching and ministry.
“People don’t live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of God’s mouth.” That’s Deuteronomy.
“You shall not test the Lord, your God.” Deuteronomy
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your should, and with all your might” Deuteronomy (which Jesus paired with Leviticus to also teach us to love our neighbors as ourselves)
These nde more are all Deuteronomy, but that’s not all we have to draw on as we are pulled together to face what is before us.
In this church a cross section of our congregation was recently asked by the session to draft new language for our core values, mission, and vision. Based on our conversations guided by consultants and prayerful discernment of God’s call, grounded in what we do and who we understand ourselves to be as Christ’s disciples in this time and this place, the mission, vision, and values drafting team presented beautiful and faithful statements that the session adopted without exception last spring. Over the coming weeks and months, including during our stewardship season as our value statements will form the basis of our theme for the annual campaign, you’ll start seeing these in newsletters and brochures, on slides and in sermons. They are intended to help us to understand who are, what we are called to do, and how we can show up in the world in faithful ways, witnessing to God’s love – doing what God has commanded, not just hearing it and speaking it. They are intended to bind us together with each other and with God, so that knowing who we are and whose we are, we can face the challenges before us with courage.
Beyond our own community though—
On his original Facebook post about how people might interact online during a contentious election season, a friend of Father Austin’s asked him: “When the choices are between good and evil, does this alter the formula?” Father Austin responded, “The formula is intended to remind us that political differences don’t excuse us from the command to love our neighbor, nor from the counsel to do what is just, to love what is good and to walk humbly with God. Your own writing,” Father Austin reminded his friend, Paul, “is an excellent example of confronting what’s wrong by speaking the truth plainly and naming substantive possibilities for resolving contact – without resorting to the ad hominem, the cheap shot, or snide commentary.”
When we face the challenges that life throws at us, our involuntary responses might be to attack, to withdraw, or to do nothing and hope no one sees us. But those aren’t the only options before us. We can choose other ways based on the people God has formed us to be. We can choose to rely on what we have been taught. We can choose to remember who God has called us to be. We can choose to make our way down from the cliff, and enter the landscape before us, guided by the rules of community God has taught us in word and in the Word, Jesus our Christ. We can choose to live as God’s people who make peace in the world.
Let us be doers of the word, not merely hearers. Let us put all that we have been taught of grace and love and mercy and justice to work in the world around us. Let us be the people God has shown us we can be and let us embody the salvation God works for all people.
For Some Reason 