All Laws Are Not Equal

14  Pentecost Cycle B proper 17 September 2, 2012

Song of Solomon 2:8-13 Psalm 45:1-2, 7-10

James 1:17-27  Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Lectionary Link

  The teaching  of the Gospel lesson for today is this:  All laws are not equal.  And while it is important to have laws, having too many laws actually might get in the way of freedom for living.  There are lots of laws that we would like to do without, certain tax laws,  deed restrictions, dress codes and rules that seem to deny some basic freedoms. 

  Human life consists of many laws; some of those laws are what we might call morally passive laws.  We would call scientific laws morally passive since they simply try to describe the behavior of natural phenomenon.  Water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit at sea level.  It is not good or bad that it does so, and we don’t place any moral value on such a law because human action and motive cannot make it so.

  The laws that pertain to human behavior are many; they are found in human societies ancient and in ours.   For any group of people who have tried to live together well, there is needed structure and order for preserving life and health and the well being of the common good.

   Thou shalt not kill.  That’s a pretty important rule for the health and safety of the human community.  Thou shalt pick up after your dog in the park.  An important rule but not the same level as “Thou shalt not kill.”  Though if it happens on your lawn and the dog owner doesn’t seem to care, it can cause bad thoughts to arise.

  There are also rules that pertain to ceremony and cultural protocol and if one does not know these rules one can truly offend without knowing it.  In a good portion of the world it is impolite to leave your shoes on when visiting someone’s home.  It is protocol to leave one’s shoes at the door.

  Some rules are secret and are meant only for insiders.  Lodges and clubs have secret rules and members take an oath not to disclose the rules.

  So the validity of a rule or law is affected by how widely it is known or promulgated.  The validity of a law is also supposed to be determined by its reasonableness and whether it is truly accessible for whom it is to apply.

  When Jesus walked in Palestine, he found within the Jewish religious community a Judean religious elite.  This elite group had elevated and magnified minutiae and lesser ceremonial rules to the level of the big ones, the Ten Commandments.  The laws of ritual purity were very important to those who believed themselves to be truly the official spokespersons for God and who believed themselves to be the official gatekeepers for those who were to be admitted to God’s favor.

  In Palestine, water was an issue.  Peasants did not always have the same access to water for ritual purity in the same ways that the Judean religious elite had.  The religious elite were wealthy enough to build a micro-society within the greater social order and they had rules for this micro-society that governed membership.  And Jesus found that the vast majority of the countryside peasants and the simple laborers and fisherfolk did not have access to that small micro-society.  And the message of the religious elite was this:  If you don’t and are not keeping the rules of our micro-society, that is a sure sign that you do not have God’s favor.  Because if you are not in our society, you are not in God’s society either.

  And that is what really ticked Jesus off.  The Gospels often portray Jesus as one who is violating these religious rules.  The Gospels have Jesus in sarcasm speaking against the elevation of minutiae to Olympian importance.  In another place Jesus said, “You strain to catch a gnat, but you let the camel go through.”  That is simply an ironic way of saying, “You’re missing the point of God and religion and you’ve got your priorities all wrong.”

  The words of Jesus were meant to indict and convict those who elevated minutiae to top priority while being totally blinded to some very big issue.

  The words of Jesus apply to us because sometimes we are so worried about gnats we do not recognize the camels and elephants that inhabit our world.  It seems as most faith communities fix rules and laws that are exclusionary.  You can’t receive communion unless….You have to be celibate to be a valid sacramental minister…You have to fast an hour before receiving holy communion…you have to believe this particular formula for the salvation of your souls…you have to believe exactly this about the Holy Scriptures…  There are hundreds upon hundreds of subtle little rules that govern who we accept into our company as being valid in God’s sight.  We can get so exorcised about all of the minutiae of church membership we are blind to our great failures to love God and our neighbor as our self.  Our tiny rules can make us blind to justice.

  If the great rule is to love God and our neighbor as our self, should we be more concerned about the correct view of the Holy Eucharist or about the fact that lots of people are starving in our world and in our country?  Should be more concerned about total immersion or sprinkling in baptism than the availability of clean drinking water to all in our world?

  I am not saying we should be over-whelmed by world hunger and poverty; I’m just saying that in the big scheme of things, we should not let the petty church political stuff cause us to lose perspective about the big principle of life, “loving God and our neighbor as our selves.”

  I think if Jesus were here today visiting every church that existed, he would continually challenge all of us about our priorities.  He wouldn't single us out or the Baptists or the Lutherans or the Roman Catholics, because his words are what one might call, “equal opportunity convicting.”  Liberal or conservative, it doesn’t matter, his words will always convict us about our priorities.  His words will convict us about making the petty into the dominant motivation of our lives.

  How is the ritual washing of our hands going to help us love God with all of our hearts and loving our neighbor as ourselves?  But how about getting clean drinking water to all of the people of this world?  How about getting water for irrigation to starving people?  This would really be a way of making the world ritually pure through the use of water.

  If the ritual use of water in our faith ceremonies does not inspire us to get water to those who need it, then our ritual behavior is the equivalence of malpractice.  And Jesus was hitting very hard at the malpractice of religion.

  The words of Jesus will always confront us with our potential malpractice of religion where we are content with micro-rules of ritual and doctrine, but let the big issues that pertain to loving God and our neighbors go unattended.

  Let us live under the conviction of Jesus today, knowing that we are failing in some very major ways.  It is a good place to live because it makes it easy to ask God for mercy, forgiveness, and grace for the amendment of our lives.  And if we have the audacity to ask God for mercy, forgiveness and grace, then perhaps we too will offer the same to the people in our world and life.  Amen.