Acts 17:22-31; Psalm 66:7-18; I Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21
The Rev. Candice B. Frazer
There are 613 commandments in Torah—the book of the law in Judaism. They include everything from not wearing clothing made of mixed fibers—goodbye polyester—to not combining milk and meat—so no cheeseburgers—to prohibitions against disrespecting your parents or adultery, both of which carry the death penalty in the biblical text.
Torah can sound a little outlandish to modern ears, but it was not until I was in Israel a few years ago that I realized how seriously many observant Jews work to keep these commandments, especially on the Sabbath. For instance, our hotel in Jerusalem had lights and thermostats programmed ahead of time so no one would need to adjust them on the Sabbath. There was even a dedicated Sabbath elevator that stopped automatically on every floor so people could simply step on and off without pushing any buttons.
Apparently, the issue is not benefiting from electricity but actively engaging it. You can ride the elevator—you just can’t press the button. Which immediately made me wonder how the elevator counts toward your Sabbath step total. You also cannot ask a non-Jew to do the work for you. So, you cannot directly ask someone to push the elevator button, turn on the lights, or change the thermostat. You simply have to say something like, “My, it’s dark in here,” and hope the Gentiles pick up on context clues.
And if your house catches on fire on the Sabbath, you may only extinguish it if human life is in danger. So, if no one is inside, you let it burn. Unless, of course, there happens to be a non-Jew nearby who can call the fire department.
The 613 commandments cover nearly every facet of daily life. Even the apostle Paul acknowledges how impossible it is for most people to keep the whole law perfectly.
Several years ago, A. J. Jacobs, a secular Jew and author, decided to spend a year living “biblically.” What he meant by that was trying to follow the Bible as literally as possible—especially the commandments found in Torah. Like Paul, he quickly discovered this was nearly impossible. Instead of attempting all 613 laws at once, he slowly adjusted his life piece by piece. He worked hard to keep kosher. He investigated whether his loafers were made of pigskin—if so, he could no longer wear them. He realized footballs are traditionally made from pig leather too, which complicated things considerably for an American man.
By the end of the year, Jacobs was walking around New York City with an overgrown, untrimmed beard, wore a white robe, ritually sacrificed a chicken, threw pebbles at a man in the park for wearing mixed fibers, and concluded that he could no longer safely sit on his own furniture because portions of Levitical purity law suggested his wife may have rendered it ceremonially unclean during menstruation.
He tells the story in his memoir, The Year of Living Biblically. The book is funny without being cynical. Jacobs never really mocks Judaism or scripture. In fact, the deeper he goes into these practices, the more appreciation he develops for both. He begins to see that many biblical laws had social, psychological, and even spiritual wisdom behind them.
But I wonder if he may have missed the central point.
Jacobs approached scripture primarily as a rulebook—a set of conditions to follow literally in order to understand religion and perhaps understand God. But Jesus does something remarkable with the law. He says the whole thing—all of it—is fulfilled in love, not abolished, fulfilled. Jesus does not hand us commandment number 614. Instead, he distills Torah to its very essence: love God and love your neighbor as yourself. In our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” That is a profoundly different understanding of obedience.
Jesus is not primarily concerned with whether you eat cheeseburgers or push elevator buttons on the Sabbath. He is concerned with whether you harm another human being, whether you diminish the dignity of another person, whether you fail to love yourself as someone made in the image of God.
The purpose of Torah was never arbitrary rule keeping. The commandments existed to shape a people into a community capable of living faithfully and lovingly together before God. The law tried to teach people how to order life toward holiness, justice, mercy, and communal responsibility. But law can only take you so far.
Eventually every legal system—biblical or civil—runs into the same problem. Once we begin legislating human behavior, it becomes very easy to move from forming community to controlling people. What begins as guidance for the common good can slowly become more concerned with punishment than reconciliation.
We still struggle with that now. We see it in politics. We see it in churches. We even see it in the way some people approach the Bible itself—as though faithfulness means finding the correct technicalities rather than learning how to love.
Biblical literalism treats scripture less like a living witness to God and more like an instruction manual where every answer exists in plain black and white if we can just enforce it hard enough. But Jesus consistently resists that impulse. Again and again, he chooses compassion over condemnation, mercy over legalism, restoration over punishment.
There are 613 commandments in the Hebrew scriptures. There are thousands upon thousands of laws in our nation and state. And again, I am not suggesting they are meaningless or unimportant. Laws matter because people matter. Boundaries matter. But Christians believe that in Christ the fullness of the law is revealed through love. Not a sentimental or permissive kind of love. But the kind of love that recognizes the image of God in another person and refuses to treat them as disposable. The kind of love that does not merely ask, “What am I allowed to do?” but instead asks, “What helps another person flourish?”
Jesus reminds us that the goal of faith is not perfect rule keeping. The goal is love. And love is the fullest revelation of God’s life in the world.
Love refuses to dehumanize.
Love seeks reconciliation over punishment.
Love values mercy more than correctness.
Love sees the image of God even in the person we least want to see it in.
In Christ, holiness is no longer measured by whether you pushed the elevator button on the Sabbath. It is measured by whether you lifted another person up when they were hurting.
It is not measured by whether your clothes contain mixed fibers. It is measured by whether your life is woven together with compassion, mercy, humility, and grace.
Nor is it measured by whether you avoided cheeseburgers. It is measured by whether you fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, forgave the one who wounded you, and loved your neighbor as yourself.
Jesus does not discard Torah. He fulfills it by revealing what it was pointing toward all along: a life so rooted in the love of God that love itself becomes the law written on our hearts. And that kind of love is much harder than following 613 commandments.
Maybe that is what Jesus means when he says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Because love does not abolish responsibility. Instead, real love transforms us so completely that we begin to desire what God desires. We live because God lives. And we can see God even when the rest of the world cannot.
Amen