Law

​Ash Wednesday – 2025                                                                                 LSB #’s 500, 979, 801
Genesis 1:9-10
 
And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, & let the dry land appear.”  And it was so.  God called the dry land Earth, & the waters that were gathered together He called Seas.  And God saw that it was good.
 
LAW
 
 
Mark Twain once saw a man shot in the street.  It gave him bad dreams.  He dreamt over & over again that some idiot had put a large family Bible on the old man’s chest to help him, but it only made it harder for him as he labored to breathe.  Twain then remarks, “In my nightmares, I gasped & struggled for breath under the crush of that vast book for many a night.”[1]  
As we enter a season of repentance, we need first to come to terms with what we think of the Bible, particularly of God’s law.   If we think of the Bible as a book of arbitrary rules & boundaries that systematically restricts our humanity, crushing the life out of us like an anvil on our chest, then it’s going to be difficult to engage in anything like true repentance.  
If we’re honest with ourselves, we’d likely end up with resentment.  We can try to act like good Christians & conform externally to the demands of God’s law.  However, if we’re not convinced in our hearts that this way of life is what humans look like when we’re thriving, then, we run the risk of accumulating bitterness & resentment against our Creator.  
The creation account in Genesis 1 encourages us to think of God’s law not as a heavy burden, but as a set of boundaries that open up space for life to flourish.   Take day two of creation.  God separates the waters from the waters.  He installs the sky to keep the waters above away from the waters below.  That space is where life flourishes.  
As the account continues, God fills that space with land, plants, birds & animals.  Last,
but not least, God puts Adam & Eve there.  If God had not established the boundary, we’d have nothing but watery chaos.   The fish might be ok.   The rest of us wouldn’t have a chance.  Since we are created in the image of God, we imitate this boundary making activity in many aspects of our lives.  
We build houses, which are like artificial skies that keep the waters away from us.  We clean those houses, which is another way we impose order on our environment & try to keep chaos at bay, giving us a safe space to live.   Likewise, the rules we impose are, hopefully, designed to keep danger & chaos at a minimum.  
“Don’t play in the street,” is not an arbitrary exercise of impulsive parental control.  It is meant to keep our children safe.  God’s laws are precisely that kind of boundary.   The 5th commandment, “You shall not murder,” sets a limit on human behavior that prevents chaos in society.  If you remove that rule from human conscience, what would daily life be like?  
You’d have to be suspicious of every stranger.  You’d have to be on guard at all times, ready to fight or flee.  You could have no pleasant interactions outside your immediate family.  If you step out into the world, you step into a chaos that would exhaust & overwhelm you. 
Returning to the example of our homes, what would happen if we took the view that the structure of our house is arbitrary & overly restrictive?  I don’t like that my kitchen window separates me from the outdoors, so I break it!  That wall is in my way, so I tear it out.  That went well, & I take out another wall.  Oops, that was load bearing.  Soon the rain is pouring in!  
The ashes this evening are a sign, & a reminder, that we as the human race have wrecked our home.  God formed Adam from the dust of the ground & breathed into his lungs the breath of life.  But when Adam & Eve broke God’s command, God pronounced the curse, “Dust you are, & to dust you shall return.”  He reversed the original creation by taking back the breath of life, leaving Adam to revert to the dust from which he was taken.  It’s poetic justice.  “You don’t like the way I put you together?  Then I’ll allow you to fall apart.”   That is the situation for each of us.  Our bodies are the houses that we destroy through sin.  The ashes remind us that we all labor under the curse that is turning us back into dust. 
There are some sins for which that is obvious.  An addict, for example, most likely knows that he is ruining his own life, even if he cannot find the strength to break free on his own.  Much sin, however, is more subtle than that.  If we pay attention to the hints that life gives, we put together the clues that something is not right. 
From the outside, it looked like John had the perfect life.  Married with two children, he had a good job & a spacious home.  Everything was going his way, but none of those things filled the emptiness & vague sense of longing that he had.  It was as if he had some sort of wound in the core of his being.   He lived, in Thoreau’s words – a “life of quiet desperation.” 
A sense of emptiness is a clue that all is not well.   It’s a hint that our decisions & achievements have pulled us out of step with the way that God designed the universe, & us.  True repentance is coming to terms with those things that pull us out of step with God.  It means desiring to put them away & to live more & more in the space where life can flourish. 
It can sound doable, but we do not have the resources to fill our own emptiness, much less to overcome death & condemnation.   As we approach Easter, we recall that our Savior talked about a house.  Not just a house – a temple.  “Destroy this temple, & in three days I will raise it up.”  (John 2:19 ESV)  
The temple Jesus was referring to was not the one in Jerusalem, but the temple of His body.   He took our place under the ancient curse & allowed death to claim His holy flesh.  That satisfied God’s curse upon sin.  On the third day Jesus raised His body, restoring life & immortality to the human race.  In our struggle against sin, we long for the day of our resurrection to perfection & glory.  There, all who have trusted in God’s promises will flourish forever & ever.  It is that hope which makes true repentance possible. 
The hope of eternal life as a free gift, lifts the weight of the law off of our chest & allows us to breathe.  As the Holy Spirit breathes through us, the law can function as a set of boundaries which open up space for life to flourish, even here on earth.   May the Holy Spirit enable you to see the safe space created for you by God’s law.  Amen. 
 
 
 
God, whose almighty word chaos & darkness heard & took their flight: Hear us, we humbly pray, & where the Gospel day Sheds not its glorious ray, let there be light!       Spirit of truth & love,   life-giving, holy dove, speed forth Your flight;   move on the water’s face, bearing the lamp of grace, & in earth’s darkest place let there be light!     Holy & blessèd Three, glorious Trinity, wisdom, love, might!   Boundless as ocean’s tide,   rolling in fullest pride, through the earth, far & wide, let there be light!  Amen.  LSB 979:1, 3-4.


[1] Harriet Elinor Smith ed., Autobiography of Mark Twain, vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 158.