"No person among you shall eat blood. Neither shall any stranger that sojourns among you eat blood." In these words, Leviticus 17:12 outlaws the consumption of black pudding and consigns all Lancastrians (and Scots, and others who eat such things) to a purely kosher diet. And in case you think that is an irrelevant detail, made superfluous, like the rest of the Law, by Jesus' coming, remember that it was repeated by James, at the meeting in Jerusalem where the apostles and elders finally agreed that non-Jews might join the church - provided they abstained from blood.
Laws can be useful, and it is good to remember that some of the Old Testament laws were far from negative. Leviticus 19:9-10, for example, declares: "When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap the field to its very border, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest...; you shall leave them for the poor and sojourner."
But laws have their limitations. Common sense suggests that leaving part of one's crop ungathered might have worked well in ancient Canaan, but might not be a good idea in modern Switzerland - or, even if it were a good idea, the reasons might be to do with the environment rather than with the problem of poverty!
This is also true in the modern world. How many of us have walked across a pedestrian crossing against a red light? If the road is clear, and if there are no children to set a bad example to, how "wrong" is it? Jesus might well have allowed it. As in the story in Mark's gospel about the disciples plucking grain, he might have said that traffic laws were made for us, not us for traffic laws!
The point about setting an example is important. The advantage of fixed laws is that we do not need to think about them, we can pass them on to children without the need to explain them. Paul refers to the Law as a "tutor" (Gal 3:24) - the word means someone who looks after one's children until they grow up. (And grown-ups, he says elsewhere, can eat what they like, no matter what James had said, "only take care that this liberty does not become a stumbling-block to the weak" (1 Cor 8:9) - just like the traffic lights, we may need to avoid doing something we know is safe, for fear of setting a bad example.)
Many of the laws in Leviticus were designed to mark the Jews as a distinct and separate people, with their own system of sacrifices, their own rules about touching pigs, cutting bits off their bodies, wearing strange clothes, and so on. These rules no longer control our lives, and we need to avoid replacing them with other rules aimed at setting ourselves up as a closed society. We may be special in God's eyes, but we are not a private club. Anyone can join us.
This is not to say we should not organize ourselves in an efficient way. A game like football could not work without rules. Nor could many aspects of modern life. If cars did not keep to the right, there would be chaos, or worse. But we will not end up in hell if we drive on the left, unless perhaps we do so to harm other people.
The only law that binds us now is Jesus' command to see and to serve God in other people - to love God and to love our neighbour as (and and!) ourselves. To translate this into practice in today's world is challenging. We have gained new insights into many aspects of human behaviour and of the world around us, and serving and loving our neighbour often means balancing various interests against each other. This is a debate we as Christians must join in, for we do not necessarily have "the right answers" to moral questions. Let us not cocoon ourselves inside a pious club or a holy huddle, but let us engage with others - people of other faiths, or of no faith at all. Only though our listening as well as through our talking will God's will be done.
HD