Have you heard the saying, “Good fences build good neighbors”?
It comes from the Robert Frost poem, “Mending Wall.”
The poem is about the conversation and mutual effort of neighbors meeting in the spring to walk the line of a stone fence between their properties. Each walks on their own side, patching holes, re-stacking stones that have fallen, adding new ones from the field, doing the work of maintaining an old New England stone fence.
At one point, New England had more than 240,000 miles of stone fences. They stood about mid-thigh high on a grown man, and mostly corralled sheep. Even today, if you walk in the woods in New England you will come across what look like piles of stones. If you look, you can see the mounds of fallen fences. Stone fences were often built with stone collected from clearing fields for pasture and cultivation. Cold New England winter weather heaves the ground and brings more stones to the surface making spring maintenance of walls both practical and timely.
Frost asks why bother with the fence when he grows apples and his neighbor has pine trees, neither of which are likely to escape a broken fence. To which the neighbor sagely replies, “Good fences build good neighbors.”
To my dismay, I discovered that this saying has been co-opted by the immigration debate to argue for fences that keep people ‘where they belong.’ If only the people using the saying that way had read the poem! The poem promotes conversation, shared efforts, and neighborliness for the sake of thriving together.
The reading from Exodus is also about a conversation, this one initiated by God about how God’s people would live in covenant with God. These ten words or commandments give a framework for Israel’s relationship with God. We can read them as loving limits that guide us toward God’s ways of justice, grace, and dignity.
I can see some of you may be thinking, “Wait a second. I learned the 10 Commandments as a set of “don’t do”s. Don’t do these things, or else God will punish you.” Which can feel like being on the kid end of endless rules parents and school set for you. We didn’t have a say in setting these rules. Why should we obey?
Root of the word obedience is Latin audire, like audio, meaning “to listen.” Doing what is right to obey God (or your parents or teachers) is listening, or responding to a call, an invitation to shared efforts to building and maintaining a relationship. Sounds a bit like texting a neighbor in the spring to find a time to work on the fence together.
If we look at the 10 words as setting out God’s vision for living a full and healthy life that holds integrity with our faith, we see (be patient, there are 10):
1 - Love the one God who leads and liberates us. Who has been there with and for us, who will not abandon us even when our attention strays.
2 - Worship only that God, because giving our hearts and allegiance to anything else only leads us away from the fullness of life-giving relationships. Focusing our attention on fear or accumulating wealth or power or beauty ultimately leads to a self-perpetuating empty spiral of promises that expire too quickly. See Word #1 about God’s abiding presence.
3 - Make sure the things we attribute to God are of God and reflect God’s ways of justice, grace, forgiveness, dignity.
4 - Rest is a vital part of a whole and healthy life with thriving relationships. Rest is complete detachment from work and necessary chores. Rest includes play, delight, detachment from devices, as well as sleep and nutrition.
5-10 - Relationships and community form and inform us. Loving one another as God loves us means:
acknowledging our history and the people who formed us,
loving the lives of others as much as our own,
remaining faithful to the relationships that give us life and to which we have committed ourselves,
respecting one another’s belongings, bodies, safety, and dignity,
humbly and honestly taking responsibility for our actions and their consequences,
being satisfied with what we have, and happy for our neighbor’s successes.
God speaks these 10 words as an invitation to a relationship with clear limits. Limits that guide us into loving God and one another, with grace and justice. Living with integrity to our faith and God’s call takes work. Sometimes painful work that is both humbling and liberating.
Lent is the perfect time for walking the fence line of our relationship with God. Picking up the tumbled stones of our lives. Wondering how that one got dislodged and so far away from where it started. Clearing the field of new stones that have emerged, adding them to the wall. Remembering God’s call to a whole and healthy life. Listening and renewing our relationship with the God who loves us and offers us forgiveness.
In the words of the Psalmist (19:13-14):
Above all, keep your servant from presumptuous sins; let them not get dominion over me; then shall I be whole and sound, and innocent of a great offense.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.
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