Sermon at the Sung Eucharist on the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity 2016

‘Choose life’ says Moses to the Israelites. As they prepare to enter their promised land, after 40 years of wilderness wanderings, Moses presents them with the options for their collective future: obedience or disobedience; life or death.

The first five books of the Bible tell a story. The story traces God’s involvement with his world from its very beginnings. It tells of God choosing one family, the family of Abraham, to be the means by which he shows himself to the world. As Abraham’s descendants find themselves enslaved, the story recounts a dramatic rescue, and then 40 years in the desert wastes during which the Israelites are formed as the people God wants them to be. And after all that we find ourselves here, with this morning’s reading, on the brink of a new life in the land

The Israelites have been waiting a long time to settle somewhere they can call home. Now they are impatient to cross the river Jordan and get on with it. But with a settled community comes the need for rules. What happens when there is a dispute about a land boundary, for example? How do you deal with acts of violence in a way which avoids lengthy vendettas? Every nation needs laws, and ancient Israel was no exception. And we know about the way in which these laws develop. Some are laid down by legislators, representing the wishes of the whole community. Others grow up as cases are decided and precedents are set. That is almost certainly what happened in ancient Israel too. Their laws have parallels in other nations of the time, and many of them are obvious common sense. But what is distinctive about the laws of the Old Testament is the context in which they are set.

All through the story of God and his people we have encountered laws. The books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are full of them. For the biblical writers, these laws are more than common sense, more than the rules every society needs. These are God’s laws. However they have originated, they represent what God requires in the life of his people. But they are not just a requirement; they are also God’s gift, the means by which his people may live in harmony and safety.

Before they set foot in the land promised by God, Moses offers the people a choice: life in accordance with God’s commandments, decrees and ordinances; life remembering what God has given them, and responding with grateful obedience; or death as a result of disobedience, disloyalty and forgetting. The laws are bound up with the story of Israel’s salvation. They represent God’s gift and God’s requirement, and the people’s response to them must be gratitude and obedience.

So here in Deuteronomy, we have a theology of lawful living. Here the story of salvation and the ordering of society meet. The rules that govern society are given a theological significance. In them God is encountered, and through them God asks to be honoured.

St Margaret’s has a long and honourable history of service to the nation’s law makers, and to its law keepers. We are uniquely sited here: fewer than 100 yards from Parliament, over the road from the Supreme Court, and walking distance from major departments of the Civil Service. We are also part of the larger community of faith at the heart of Westminster. Westminster Cathedral and Methodist Central Hall are but two amongst many faith groups based nearby. Hundreds of school pupils come to St Margaret’s regularly during term time to reflect on the story of our salvation.

And St Margaret’s has a committed and gifted congregation meeting here for worship Sunday by Sunday. I am delighted that members of the congregation have shown themselves willing to go forward with me as times change, and as the Church’s task changes in response.

And we have plenty for which to give thanks. We have countless opportunities for sharing our Gospel story. We are brilliantly placed to explore what a well-ordered society under God could look like today. Looking outward to our friends and neighbours in Parliament Square is part of the DNA of St Margaret’s. Praying and caring for law-makers and their advisors is at the heart of our vocation as the church in Parliament Square. To provide opportunities to reflect on the deep truths that lie at the intersection of public life and the story of salvation – that is why we are here.

The Gospels speak of Jesus’ ambivalence about the law of his day, and his ambivalence towards those whose task it was to maintain that law. Jesus commended those who kept the Jewish law faithfully; and yet condemned those who put obedience to the law above the demands of compassionate love. The moral and ethical dilemmas posed by a juxtaposition of law versus compassionate love remain acute to this day. Perhaps we might explore together what informed and sophisticated Christian perspectives might have to offer to those who carry heavy public responsibilities on our behalf?

For the authors of Deuteronomy, all law was God’s law, and all life had to be seen as a response to the God to whom Israel owed its very existence. For us, too, the ordering of society is a God-given responsibility. It is also an incredibly difficult task. Here at St Margaret’s we have an opportunity to minister among those whose task it is, to support them, to hold them to account, and above all to tell the story of salvation, week by week, as we remember the story of Christ, for whom hard and fast rules always had to come second to the demands of compassionate love.