Rules and Right – It’s All Grass
Micah 6.1-8; Matthew 5.1-12
Russ Dean, February 3, 2002
I love Nancy Westerfield’s poem about little four-year-old Micaela – and how I can relate to her dilemma. Since childhood, I too have been a watcher of sidewalk cracks. Whether stepping on every one, or avoiding them all, my eyes are still drawn down, and my steps still paced by these annoying “geometries” as Westerfield calls them. In the movie “As Good as it Gets,” Jack Nicholson plays an obsessive-compulsive writer named Melvin Udall. Udall also suffers this crack-stepping phobia, and in one wonderful scene, he hobbles down the street with his new girlfriend, played by Helen Hunt, painstakingly, psychotically avoiding every crevice, only to enter her home to find her floors a mosaic of tiny little octagonal tiles… lines everywhere!
The story of the people of God could be told, I think, as the diagnosis of “sidewalk-crack-aphobia…,” because the pull of those “sidewalk geometries” has always been with us.
When God called Abraham, the covenant was simple: I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous (Genesis 17.1-2). Isn’t that amazing? No “thou shalt not’s.” No geometries. No cracks. No rules -- just right: God invites relationship – walk before me.
As you know from reading the scriptures, and from your own pilgrimage, that walk is a difficult journey at times. And when the Israelites stumbled, in one way or another they demanded of God some definitions. “What is a ‘covenant,’ anyway? What do you mean, ‘walk before me?’ ‘How ‘blameless’ is ‘blameless…’? Give us some boundaries. We need some rules. Where exactly are those cracks?”
If you listen closely, I think you can still hear reluctance in God’s voice in these words spoken to Moses just before the giving of the ten commandments: Say to the house of Jacob… ‘I bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant (not my commandments… not my rules… just walk with me…), you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples… you shall be a priestly kingdom and a holy nation…’” (Exodus 19.4-6). But the people still stumbled and grumbled, so God finally consented: “Here are the rules: ‘You shall have not other gods… You shall not make any graven images… You shall not take the name of the LORD in vain… you shall not kill…’”
There you have it. The beginning of our religious “sidewalk geometry.” Cracks to be avoided. Cracks to be evaded. Cracks, to lure our eyes. Cracks to limit our steps. Cracks to alter our natural gate. “Step on a crack…break your momma’s back.”
The Jews called these “cracks,” The Law, and the Law became the centerpiece of the religion. The entire cultic practice of Judaism, eventually culminating in the elaborate worship in an elaborate Temple, was built around keeping the Law. And from that rather simple declaration of ten commandments, the Jews developed 613 laws – interpretations of interpretations, definitions of definitions, cracks upon cracks upon cracks.
Such legalism has been a persistent cry of religious people, but faithfulness to God cannot be defined simply by a list of “do’s and don’t’s”. For in so trying to legislate our morality before God, we inevitably turn the Law itself into God. The Law becomes a stricture, a constraint, a limit, which keeps us bound, and though there is good which comes from such binding, we must always listen for the original call. For the voice of God, which still calls to us: I am God Almighty; (just) walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous (Genesis 17.1-2).
The prophet Micah was fed up with the pious moralizing and moralism of his people. He preached in the 8th century, BCE, a time of economic and political affluence for the people of Israel. The theology of the religious elite justified their wealth, their power, and their comfort, and the rules suited them just fine, because they heard in them what they wanted to hear. Speaking in the voice of God, Micah offers sarcasm for their obedience: With what shall I come before the LORD? Shall I bring burnt offerings?… Calves?… Rams?… Oil?… Will God require the sacrifice of my own child?…
Of course, the law did require the offerings which Micah mocks, except for the sacrifice of children, which simply serves to highlight his cynicism. But he makes it clear -- God is not pleased with sacrifice, with hoops jumped and cracks avoided -- if our hearts are not right. Just do what is right, Micah says: Justice; Mercy; Walking with God.
Gary Badcock says
Religious life is about participation in the primordial mystery of God through prayer, worship, and lifestyle, all of which involves so much more than bare knowledge (paraphrase=obedience). Religion relates to fundamental issues of life and death, to what it is to be a human being, and to what it is to live in relationship to God.[1]
One of the recent advertising slogans for Outback Steakhouse declares boldly, “No Rules. Just Right.” So it is, I believe with our life with God. We will not please God living by the rules. But when we walk together, life -- divine and human -- will be just right.
Shortly after enrolling at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, the campus under-went major cosmetic surgery. The small gymnasium was partially raised and an $11 million health and recreation facility was annexed to the old gym. For over a year, the campus was in a construction uproar, but after the new facility was completed, the sidewalks had been poured, and new grass was sown, we began to notice signs on the lawn:
“Please Walk On Grass—But Don’t Make Paths!”
The minister to the seminary preached a sermon that fall, with that same title, in which he challenged his community to a life of freedom. To a life of creativity. To a life of non-conformity. To a life of walking in the grass. Creatures of habits, we fall in line too quickly, without even thinking, and like one of the hapless heard, we walk the same route day after day until the grass has been replaced by the hard-packed ground -- we might as well be on the sidewalk again, watching for the cracks.
But God called us to be free. To walk in the grass. To learn. To love. To live.
Augustine said, “Love God -- and do as you will.” I’m guessing that I’m not the only Baptist who learned to walk on the sidewalk, carefully, dancing between the cracks, and wondering what in the world was going on out there on the lawn. What an amazing lesson it was for me to come to believe that God loves us not because of what we do (or don’t do), but that God loves us -- like we parents love -- just because. And if I could learn to love God, to really love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength… I really could walk where I wanted to, and God would always be right there with me.
Jesus says that God’s blessing comes, not to those who live by the letter of the law, as if they are earning some reward, but to the “poor in spirit… the mourners and the meek… the peacemakers and the pure in heart… the persecuted and the merciful… those who hunger and thirst for right…” Walking in the grass frees us from the crippling obligations of the rules, but here’s the twist… In the grass, the love of God’s freedom and the freedom of God's love is more binding than any simple or blind or fearful obedience could ever imagine. We are bound. But we are bound…
Are you walking down life’s sidewalk? Stumbling over the cracks? Or have you ventured barefoot into the freedom of God’s green, green grass?
Micaela, with four-year-old majesty, has
proclaimed: today, we walk without stepping
On cracks. Sidewalk geometries govern Micaela’s
Feet: squares neatly set in lines, by dividers
Foreboding bad luck if you step on the cracks.
When we come to grass, Micaela perplexes,
Watching me: grass has no geometry,
And what can be met with in grass,
Bites. Less and less, as she grows, Micaela
Will learn to rely on geometries, grids, lines
Dividers, parallels, checks. The consolations
Of geometry serve but to perplex. Life
Is all grass, Micaela, all stepping on cracks.[2]
Let it be so. Amen!
PASTORAL PRAYER
Free us, O God
from a life defined by Rules:
grow us up to be mature and self-reliant,
confident of our nature and your grace;
raise our eyes from the awkward compulsion of obedience,
and paint in them a picture of the kingdom
on earth… as it is in heaven.
Free us, O God
for a life defined by Right:
draw us to relationship --
to life with friends;
to life with enemies;
to life with God;
to life.
Free us, O God
from a life defined by Rules;
Free us, O God
for a life defined by Right;
And bind us in love
that all life might be service
and all service, blessing.
Bind us, O God, that we might be free.
Through Christ our Lord,
Amen.