Mutually accepted rules, regulations, procedures and polices are needed if we are to live together in harmony with the common good as our main objective.
One of the things that I have always struggled with is rules and regulations that seem to be barriers at times to getting things done. On my Sabbatical, I have been engaged in a retelling of the biblical story. This means reading and rewriting the story in a progressive, feminist voice. I just finished the book of Leviticus. What a lot of rules, statutes, and policies! As I read them I wondered “why even bother?” These rules are, for the most part, irrelevant and no longer applicable to life as we know it. Most we would reject outright and others appear to be quite silly.
So why would it be important for us to include these in our sacred story? I thought about that for a while and what surfaced for me was that these statutes represent the desire of a people to live together safely, with integrity and in peace. Living in community can be difficult at the best of times particularly since each of us have a variety of ways of interpreting and understanding. So, in order to live together with the common good as our main objective there must be standards agreed upon by all.
We are not that different than the ancestors. While these same rules may not apply to us, it is necessary for us to have mutually accepted rules, regulations, policies and procedures with the aim to live in harmony and grow together in honesty and love.
I think that this has certainly been highlighted during the COVID pandemic. Like the specific rules found in Leviticus, the regulations in place at this time, hopefully will one day no longer apply. They certainly will hold no meaning for the generations yet to be born. For them, as they listen to the rules, years in the future, they too will find these irrelevant and perhaps even silly. However, at the moment they are in place for the good of all humanity so that we can live together in safety.
Where is Divine in this? For me it can be seen and felt and heard in the collective care of community for one another. In following rules, for the time that they are necessary, we live into Jesus’ words “whatsoever you do for the least of these”.
May it be so.