Love the Law
Many years ago, sometime in the mid-70s, I drove about halfway across the country from southeastern Iowa to Philadelphia to get my graduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. Along the way, I stopped in Ohio to spend a couple of days with my elderly grandfather Abe Kaufman, who lived with my spinster Aunt Sarah, the youngest of my father’s eleven siblings.
I arrived on a Friday and the next morning, Saturday, Aunt Sarah informed me that it was “wash day” and asked if I had anything that needed to be washed. I understood that by “wash day” she meant “laundry day,” but I had just left home and my clothes were all clean.
What happened next almost caused me to laugh out loud. You see, my father was raised Old Order Amish. That’s the Christian denomination that takes very seriously Jesus’ admonition that we, his followers, are not of this world; we do not and should not “belong to” worldly things.
One of the ways they live that commitment is by not electrifying their homes. That powerline that would have to come from the “worldly” power grid onto their property would be a permanent connection to “the world,” and therefore was prohibited by Old Order Amish law.
So I was actually quite curious about how Aunt Sarah was going to “do the wash.” I suppose I expected tubs of water, a washboard, and so forth. Instead, she wheeled a generator out of a closet, poured gasoline into the tank, fired it up, and plugged in the washing machine.
I tell you this story not to make fun of my relatives or of a religious institution that forbids powerlines but allows plugging into gasoline powered generators--although that indeed takes creative law-making!
Rather, I tell the story to help us reflect on the relationship between “the Law” and all religious rules and standards, and the Good News of God’s love for humankind that Jesus came to embody and deliver.
It would be easy—and fun—to conclude from today’s Gospel story, that Jesus came to obliterate the law. This story, in conjunction with other New Testament teachings that God loves us and is always ready to forgive, indeed forgives before we even ask, seem to add up to “anything goes.” Therefore, you can do anything you please! Whoopeee!
I have indeed heard Christianity criticized for that very thing: What’s the point of a religion that bases everything on the concept of mercy and unconditional love and forgiveness? Why would or should anyone “behave”?
But that’s of course not really the point of the story. How appropriate it is that on the very day we read the story of Jesus invoking the wrath of the Pharisees by allowing his disciples to pick grain to eat, and he himself healing on the Sabbath, we also read from Deuteronomy God’s institution of the Sabbath as a holy day of rest.
Jesus says, the Sabbath is made for us, NOT us for the Sabbath. What’s not to love about that? Far from being a burdensome mandate that we must grudgingly keep to avoid the wrath of God—or, more likely, the Pharisees among us—God established the Sabbath for our benefit.
Here’s the point. The law is for us to love, not to hate. Because the law is made for us. It is to remind us to do things that are good for us, like rest, and give a rest to all those who work for us or to our benefit. The law recognizes that every person and thing—even the land and the critters—needs rest.
The law recognizes that it is not good for us to steal from one another or exploit one another for our own personal gain. The law recognizes that it is not good for us to lie to one another or bear false witness against one another. The law recognizes and upholds many things that make for a better social order for humankind.
But the law is not God and is not perfect. Never confuse the law—even God’s law—with God. God is bigger even than God’s law, which is exactly what Jesus means when he says, The Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.
The law must always be applied with love and compassion and mercy and sensitivity to different situations and circumstances. That is how Jesus fulfills the law: by showing us how to apply it with love and compassion and mercy and sensitivity to different situations and circumstances.
What Jesus is arguing against in today’s Gospel story is not the law per se, but “legalism,” which is using the law as a cudgel. Legalism is taking a line of scripture out of context and using it to beat up people.
Now to revisit the story of my Aunt Sarah and her generator for a moment, it’s important to note that not all “legalism” is the same. Yes, it is “legalism” to have a rule against powerlines and then an exception to the rule that allows gas-powered generators.
But that’s a pretty harmless—I would even say “silly”—form of legalism. It hurts no one. Moreover, the Amish are a pretty loving, compassionate and merciful community. They help each other, they care for their elderly and anyone else who can’t care for themselves, and they are known to be more forgiving than most of us could manage.
The legalism that Jesus speaks against is the legalism that does harm, and not only that which does harm, but fails to do the good God has put within our reach to do. Jesus healed people, thus for him to fail to heal the man with the withered hand because it was the Sabbath would have been a form of harmful legalism.
Sadly, some of our Christian brothers and sisters seem to think that our job is to use the Bible to beat up people. And it is certainly possible to do that. The Bible says many things and can be made to say many things by how a given reader selects and uses various passages.
But beating up people with the Bible is not our job. Our job is fierce, unending, ever-compassionate, ever-empathetic love. Our job is calling ourselves and others to live a life in accordance with the law out of pure gratitude for the love bestowed upon us. Love is our response to the law. Love is how we live the law.
In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.
(Deuteronomy 5:12-15; 2 Corinthians 4:5-12; Mark 2:23-3:6)
