at the First Congregational Church of Stoughton

United Church of Christ

I’ve been thinking a lot about rules lately – and I’ve decided they’re fickle things.

Most recently, I was hoping that I could find some straightforward rules for developing a sermon, since I have never done this before – a fact that will become increasingly evident to you over the next few minutes. But my search ranged from overwhelming complexity –a Google inquiry on “rules for sermons” generates 85,300 responses – to complimentary simplicity – “You’ll do fine. Just be yourself.” Neither of these is particularly helpful in discovering sermon rules.

But actually, my thoughts about rules have had more to do with this time of year – late April. It is after all, the time when the rules of nature begin to manifest themselves - in the growth of new plants, the advent of nicer weather, and the change from winter’s starkness to Spring’s full color palette.

Except this year, when our flooded basements and streets competed for our attention with the barren coverage of our standard home owners insurance policy rules. But we deal with these exceptions to nature’s rules as best we can, and move on to other mainstays of the April season – like income taxes.

Now the rule is that we file our income tax returns on or before April 15. Simple and straightforward.

Except this year - when it’s May 11 for most of us. And other years when April 15 falls on a weekend, like in 2006 and 2007, or if the ides of April falls on Patriots Day, like it did on 2002 and will again in 2013. In those cases we get an extra day - or two days - or three days – and this year an extra 25 days. So the rule is to watch for April 15, unless it’s one of those years when we don’t have to.

But less seriously, and more to my area of interest – April is the time when baseball season gets underway, and one of the beauties of baseball is that its rules are easy and consistent. Well, maybe not. The Official Rulebook of Major League Baseball is 137 pages long – you can look it up. And while I have been a baseball player or fan since I was a child, I’m still hard-pressed to fully explain the infield fly rule – or to justify the use of a designated hitter in one league, but not in the other. But I’m ok with most of the rules, most of the time – at least in baseball.

But we come to Church – at this time - in this place – to step back from the mundane rules and concerns of secular life, and to focus on more important matters - our spiritual lives – our relationship with God and with each other – and how we can begin and continue to transform ourselves, our families, our communities and our world.

We ask – Are there rules that will consistently help us to reach these goals? Author and minister Wayne Muller posed the question well. He wrote a book entitled, “How, then, shall we live?” and that’s a question we can all wrestle with.

I know I have – especially in the last 2 years – since I was initially diagnosed with prostate cancer. It’s amazing how one little word – cancer – can focus your mind on life’s big questions. By the way, I’ve had all the proper medical care – surgery, radiation, and medication - that people in my situation should have – and the doctors tell me that I have a lot of years still ahead of me. But the focus is still there, and Muller’s question remains, “How, then, shall we live?”

Now I know that in every aisle of this church there are multiple copies of the Bible – and many people would gently point to the Bible and tell us to follow those rules. And that’s a great start.

For example, in the 20th chapter of the Book of Exodus, the 10 Commandments direct us to refrain from murder, stealing, lying, swearing, and all that coveting – and these are solid principles.

Not worshipping other gods, not working on the seventh day, and not having graven images to bow down to rounds it out. These are good rules. Yet in seeking to know “How, then, shall we live?” the Commandments seem to focus primarily on what we shouldn’t do, rather than on what we should do. So, how, then, shall we live?

There are a lot of other rules in the Bible – especially in the Hebrew Bible – the part we call the old testament. In fact there are more than 600 rules in the first 5 books of the old testament. A lot of them relate to diet and slavery and sex and slaughtering animals and ritual cleanliness.

There’s pages of very specific rules about how to deal with a person with leprosy – that was a big concern among the early Jews. Those leprosy rules involved (and I quote) “two clean birds and cedar wood and crimson yarn and hyssop”. I don’t think people follow most of these rules anymore – even those who may know what hyssop is, and where you might get some.

And I suppose it’s a good thing that a lot of these old testament rules have been set aside, since it seems that breaking many of those rules required that you be executed. These certainly aren’t the rules that I’m looking for. So, how, then, shall we live?

Then someone pointed me to some much better, much simpler rules in the old testament. The rules are in the Book of Micah, and while I’m told it’s a famous passage, I’ll confess that I never heard it before the last couple years. It seems that Micah was a contemporary of the prophet Isaiah, and I suppose was, to a large degree, overshadowed by him. The context of the passage is that the people of Israel were pleading with God to tell them what kind of sacrifices they needed to offer to make God happy. In the preceding verses they’re wondering if “thousands of rams” or “rivers of oil” will be sufficient. Micah’s famous response is this: