We spent six Sundays exploring God’s nature and character as presented in Deuteronomy – a late entry in the Torah, a retrospective look at Israel’s freedom-in-covenant with God presented as preparation for their entry into the Promised Land. 

Justice is God’s idea. The question of whether the church should leave “politics” alone is in dispute. We don’t live in a theocracy, thanks be to God; but doesn’t our faith speak to our ideals of justice, freedom, individual responsibility, and the communal good? Deuteronomy 1:9-18 (4:41-43, 9:1-13); Psalm 68:4-10.

You can’t always get what you want. God is not a soft touch; and with God, there are consequences for our (individual? collective?) tendency to want what we want, rather than what God wants. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how nicely you ask, or how sure you are that you know what should happen next. Deuteronomy 1:19-45, 3:23-29. Psalm 25.

Idolatry is the most basic threat to faith. Really the entire book of Deuteronomy is a repetitive stay against false gods, the treacherous allegiances we pledge to any other god but God. We’re less inclined than our ancestors to fashion idols out of clay, but equally inclined to bend our knee to powers and principalities that don’t have our best interest in mind. What are God’s recommendations (commandments!?) for preventing our disloyalty? Deuteronomy 5:1-16; Psalm 77:11-20.

We tend to take more than our share. We are hunter-gatherers, always on the lookout for more resources, comforts, pleasures for ourselves. Our wants compete powerfully with what God wants, at least in our own hearts. What recommendations (commandments!?) does God have for keeping us in good stead with our neighbors? And how does Jesus extend the trajectory? And what does any of that mean for us? Deuteronomy 5:17-21; Matthew 5:21-30.

Listen, and don’t forget. The quickest way to idolatry is forgetfulness, and the myths of self-reliance and self-service that we put in place of God’s work on our behalf. The community that remembers where it came from, and how it got to where it is now, is powerful indeed. Deuteronomy 6:1-25; Mark 12:28-34.

Spiritual commitment has material consequences. We sometimes talk of Christian faith as a spiritualized, internal, privatized experience. But for ancestors, as for us, discipleship has externalized, material consequences. Our resources come under the command of God’s imagined future, and we practice little instances of the cosmic reign of God in our open-handed sharing of the fruit of our labor. Deuteronomy 14:22-29; 15:1-18; 26:1-15.