Obedience or faith?

     After a week of vacation (which included two Sundays), we are back at it with an interesting and far-reaching chapter of The Story, titled, "New Commands and a New Covenant."  It is the story which takes up the latter half of Exodus, all of Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, the portions of scripture which I joke used to keep me awake during my 24-hour on-call stints as a seminary student at the hospital.  They are the portions of scripture which are easily glossed over and are the reason that many think that religion is a bunch of rules to follow.
     Indeed, if you were to only read these chapters, it would seem that way.  The conversation between God and Moses include rules (or laws, in the Jewish tradition) that can generally be divided into two categories: how to deal with others and how to deal with God.  In the rules in dealing with others we get all sorts of topics from diet and apparel to loans and lawsuits.  In the rules in dealing with God we get all sorts of topics like how to worship and how to offer sacrifices.  But rather than getting bogged down in the details of each law, let's look at the why of the law.

     The why all comes down to what God tells Moses in the days following the Exodus from Egypt, when God delivered the Israelites from slavery into freedom, when God says, 

You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. ~ Exodus 19.4-6a

The law is set so that the people shall be God's treasured possession.  Now if you know me, you know that the English language and grammar are very important, and these verses are one reason.  Let's talk about the word shall, shall we?  
     The word 'shall' is often used interchangeably with the word 'will' yet more than will, shall indicates a future inevitability.  For instance, you knew that when I said, 'let's talk about the word shall, shall we?' that I was going to do it.  Regardless if you wanted it or not.  And that is the grace in the midst of all this law.  God will treasure these people out of all the earth, and they shall be a priestly kingdom and a holy nation whether they want to or not.  It is more than God willing it to happen, indeed because God wishes it, it shall happen.
      Now this statement from God marks what is called the Mosaic Covenant, one of the five covenants in the Old Testament.  The first was the Noahic Covenant, and was regarding the destruction of the whole earth with flooding - God covenanted never to destroy the whole earth again.  This covenant did not require any action from anyone on earth.  It is an open, unrestricted promise that no matter what, God will not do this.  The second was the Abrahamic Covenant, and regarded the promise to make Abraham into a great nation, to bless all the world through him.  This covenant is based on the understanding that Abraham will trust God's promise, going to a new country and waiting for the promised heir.  Now the third covenant, the Mosaic Covenant is dependent not on trust in God's promises, but on obedience to the law.
     We Christians are not people of the Abrahamic Covenant, but are part of a later covenant made that we will come to in a couple of months.  However, that does not mean that this scripture is not for us.  This scripture shows us something unbelievable about God and God's love for all of creation.  God who made the whole cosmos, who can create catastrophic floods, who can do great miracles and powerful feats, knows us.  Knows our names.  Knows who we are, what we like, and our innermost thoughts.  And God 'shall's' us into holy people - not because of our obedience (remember, we are not people of the Mosaic Covenant) but because God loves us. 
     As I ponder these covenants, and my own relationship with God, I wonder how obedience and faith work together, and how my relationship is affected by each of these.  Thankfully I know that regardless of my faith or obedience, God shalls me as God's own and God knows my name.
* Artwork: Moses receiving the tablets of the law on Mount Sinai, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55133 [retrieved October 8, 2013]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Meister_der_Bibel_des_Patrice_L%C3%A9on_001.jpg. 
* for more on the Covenants, a good source is 5 Covenants of the Old Testament.