Why follow the commandments? Homily for Week VI Ordinary Time, 2011

Of all the many things the church calls us to…developing a healthy prayer life…participating in the Sacraments…feeding the hungry…clothing the naked…educating our children in the Faith…there is one thing that stands by itself as not only the foundation of our existence as people…but more so as the single most challenging call of all…obedience. There’s no doubt about it…obedience is just plain difficult. It flies directly in the face our personal creativity…our desire to make something of ourselves…our thirst for self actualization and self promotion. Obedience stands in direct opposition to just about everything Modern America tells us and generally nobody likes to be told what to do.
But Obedience is the most basic expression of Christianity. It is an indispensible ingredient of Discipleship…the epicenter of the God – Person relationship. And we see it every time we come to mass…at this altar…when we re-experience over and over again Jesus’ own obedience to the will of the Father accepting even death on the cross. And so…it’s really important for you and me to have a precise…authentic…well informed appreciation for obedience. Because it’s directlyin obedience where we come to our fullest understanding of Christian personhood which always calls us to renounce our own will in favor of God’s will.
I’ve shared this idea with you all before…Whether we realize it or not…we are the product of obedience. We are hard wired for obedience. We didn’t choose our parents…we didn’t choose our ethnic background…we didn’t choose our hair color…our eye color…our personalities…our body types. We didn’t choose the century in which we live…the country in which we were born. We didn’t even choose our gender. Almost everything that makes us who we are was chosen by someone else…someone outside of ourselves. I’ve heard it put this way…The most dangerous person in the world is the person who is guided by no one. The person who trusts only his or her own will. The person who obeys the attractions of their interior voice but refuses to listen to voices of others.

I bring all this up because Obedience is what we’re talking about today in these scriptures. We hear…and know very well…the ten commandments…in all their forms…the ones in Exodus (these are the Catholic ones)…the ones in Leviticus…and now this further enfleshing of “the rules” by Jesus in our continuation of the Sermon on the Mount.
All week long I’ve been grappling with what I might share today on these rules for life. At first I was going to talk about people wandering in the desert and an old man trying to keep em in line. Then I was going to talk about how we’re all children of God and children must have the rules given to them over and over again. Nothing was really working though. Finally I got the spark for my homily when I read the first line of the first reading. If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you and you shall live. Why keep the Commandments? Quite simply so that we can live. And that’s it. We keep the commandments because they keep us alive. So I continued with this idea and I came across the most simple…most basic…most down to earth explanation of why we keep the commandments, from one of my favorite spiritual thinkers, Fr. Ron Rolheiser. It’s nothing dogmatic or difficult to understand. In fact, what I’m about to share with you…as to why we should follow God’s commandments…is one of the most diffusing of frustration explanations I’ve ever heard. I think you’ll agree. It’s a list of un-pretentious…simple…down to earth…and obvious reasons.

So why follow the commandments? 1. Because it’s not good to live alone. All ten of the commandments are about living with God and each other. Just look at them. God is your God…live with him. Go to church on Sunday with each other. Your mom and dad are good…live with them. Don’t kill people…live with them. Don’t lie…it causes distance between you and others. You get the idea. We follow the commandments because it’s simply not good to live alone.

Why follow God’s commandments? 2. To take my rightful place within the human family. We’re born naked, helpless, and literally connected to someone else by an umbilical cord. Then we grow up and we spend years trying to disconnect ourselves from our closest relatives…we become independent…we seek our own way. Then we finally become adults and realize that to be is to merge back into the human family…and we begin again following the rules of God’s family. This is easy to see when I go to the retirement homes in the area and someone wants to go to confession. Bless their hearts…there’s not much to confess. They’ve finally found themselves by obediently and really simply becoming little the children in the family again. Why follow the commandments…to take our rightful place within the human family.

Why follow the commandments…3. because God asks me to. Pretty basic. Neither God’s call nor the Holy Spirit are private property. Us making something of ourselves independent of God is just false…it’s not an authentic result of human condition. To be a person is to be in relationship with the Persons of God…Father…Son…Holy Spirit. To not be in relationship with God is to cease to fully exist. And so following the commandments…just like coming to church by the way…is the physical proclamation that we are in relationship with God. Follow the commandments because God asks you and me to.

Why follow the Ten Commandments…4. Because 10,000 Saints before me have done so. We should follow God’s rules because…by far…the majority of good and faithful people have done so for 2700 years now. God’s Commandments have stood the test of time. Who am I to change something so fundamental to humanity for so long? The saints of yesterday and the saints of today are pretty darn unanimous that following these rules are pretty darn effective in keeping things going in an ordered way.

Here’s three more really good reasons to follow God’s commandments…5. To help others carry their sins and to have others help me carry mine…6. To dispel the self absorbed, self obsessed, fantasies about myself and come to realize that there is a great big world outside of me with a lot of other people besides just me here on this planet…and finally 7. Why follow the commandments….to practice for heaven and what life will be like when we get there when we live forever. Which brings me back to the first line of our first reading from the wisdom of Sirach…Why follow God’s commandments…because ultimately they will save you and you shall live.