6 Epiphany A
February 12, 2017
Deuteronomy 30:15-20 Psalm 119:1-8
1 Corinthians 3:1-9 Matt.5:21-24,27-30,33-37
The Beatitudes of Jesus are teachings about our relationship to the law. In the time of Jesus the law had many of the same complexities that we experience in our world today. Laws need to have authority behind them. The greatest authority of the law in the time of Jesus was the Caesar of Rome and the enforcement agencies of the Caesar in Palestine through puppet kings and governors. They used their legal system, soldiers and police to enforce the law. Within the Roman control, the Jews had their own practice of law which pertained to social, cultural and religious behaviors. But the Jewish practice of their laws did not and could not have the same force of law which the Roman law had. We today often have the conflict of conscience between the laws and practices of religious people and our own American Constitution.
Jesus told his followers that their righteousness had to exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. The words of Jesus called the Beatitudes, are in my mind, are teaching insights about how we are to be related to God's law.
Scribes and Pharisees were the clergy of their time. What is the relationship of clergy to religious law? In Christianity, religious law is called canon law. Canon law is for the church what Sharia law is for the Islamic community and what the Torah is for the Jewish community. If one's religion dominates an entire group of people then the religious law and the secular laws can seem to be one and the same.
What do clergy do? They enforce religious laws as administrators and religious legal judges. In the Episcopal Church we have laws. The Constitutions and Canons of the Episcopal Church, the Constitutions and canons of the Diocese of El Camino Real and the parish by-laws of St. John the Divine Episcopal Church. When I was ordained I made a vow to keep church laws and to enforce them. As an American citizen, I make a pledge of allegiance to our country and our Constitution.
One relationship with the law might be called the enforcement of prescribed behaviors. The clergy whether priests, scribes or Pharisees had the duty of enforcing the religious rules for the upkeep of their official religious institutions. An observant Jew would make every public effort to appear to be in compliance with the religious rules of the Jewish institutions, in order to be in good standing for participation in the synagogue or Temple rituals.
St. Paul wrote as a rabbi who had been taught to be a fully observant Jew. He was also a Roman citizen from the city of Tarsus and so he would have also complied to the rules of the Roman authorities. But St. Paul was one who wrote an entire letter to the Roman church about a different kind of law. He called it the law of the Spirit. In the law of the Spirit, he said that love fulfilled the law because from the inner motive of love one would always do what is right. He said that the law of the Spirit was in contrast to the law of the flesh.
The Beatitudes are actually a presentation of the law of the Spirit within the narrative of the words of Jesus Christ. The Roman law and the laws of the Temple and synagogue enforced a kind of social engineering of human behaviors. One purpose of the law is to train people to behave in ways that can keep public order and support the over riding purpose of the community.
Roman laws were for the purpose of maintain allegiance to the Emperor and especially paying taxes. Synagogue rules were for the purpose of keeping members distinct and separate in their Jewish identity. What Paul and Jesus both revealed is that people could be observant Roman citizens and observant Jews but still have the wrong motives within their hearts. People could observe all of the religious rituals but at the same time neglect people who were suffering and in need.
The beatitudes reveal the divide that happens between the practice of rules and the actual law of the heart. With the exaggerated statements of the beatitudes Jesus was trying to show how the people who practiced religious laws often missed the point of the great laws of the Torah.
What was the point of the great religious law? Yes, it was to instruct, teach and prescribe right behaviors, but it had a greater purpose. The greater purpose was to expose the impossibility of keeping the law of God perfectly. While we may think that we can keep the ten commandments by loving one God, not having idols, keeping Sabbath, honoring family, respecting life, telling the truth, not stealing or lying, the last commandment of the ten is the impossible one. Thou shalt not covet. You shall not have wrong desires. And that is where we all fail. We may not murder but we have may have anger and desire of harm toward others. We may not kill someone but we easily call them a "stupid fool." We may not commit adultery but we may have the wrong desire of lust for someone. So while on the outside we can appear to be good and law abiding, on the inside we can be seething cauldrons of contrary desires.
So why are we made in the way that we are made? Why are we given laws to follow and yet inside of us often have desires that are wildly non-compliant with the laws? Is not this the great moral dilemma in life? To be required to be good and perfect even while we don't always actually desire to be so?
The secret of the contradiction between desire and behaviors, is that in the moments of despair, guilt, disillusionment and failure, we are brought to seek to find the perfect Spirit of God within us. The demand of the law brings us to seek the perfection of knowing God's Spirit within us.
When Jesus reveals the variance between wrong desire and actual behaviors, he is showing us to the redemptive moment when like the Psalmist we cry, "Create in me a clean heart O God and renew a right spirit within me." Without having our wrong desire exposed, we might just believe that our good public religious behaviors are enough to attain. Many people attain religious behaviors and in so doing become "holier than thou" people who use their performance to judge others harshly.
But Jesus said that if anyone looks honestly within, they will have to admit that their desires and their behaviors are often in disagreement. Behaviors are indeed very important, especially in things like murder, lying and stealing, but when Jesus gave us the standard to be perfect like the Father in heaven is perfect, he gave us the true and indeed impossible standard. And who can keep that standard? The Holy Spirit. And Jesus is one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit resides within us and become our perfect heart, even while the rest of us continually is to learn to be better in the direction towards God's perfection.
The words of the beatitudes of Jesus are shocking words because they show that God loves us so much to give us such a high standard. God wants us to know that only through the grace of God's Spirit within us can we participate in a perfection which is derived from God and not our own.
God wants our relationship with the law to be better than the apparent way in which the clergy practice it. Clergy have to practice religious laws; it's their job and they are paid to appear to do so. We have to exceed the righteousness of the clergy; we need to seek the law of the Spirit. We need to be always seeking to have a clean heart and a renewed right spirit within us. We need to have the energy of coveting desires converted and transformed to become worship energy toward loving God and our neighbor.
Let us be thankful that Jesus exposes the desires of our hearts because he cares about how the deep energies of our lives become articulated and used for the creative words and deeds of love, kindness and justice.
May God help us to be shocked by the desires of our hearts to seek the clean heart that only God can give us when we discover the Holy Spirit in our lives. Amen.
Deuteronomy 30:15-20 Psalm 119:1-8
1 Corinthians 3:1-9 Matt.5:21-24,27-30,33-37
The Beatitudes of Jesus are teachings about our relationship to the law. In the time of Jesus the law had many of the same complexities that we experience in our world today. Laws need to have authority behind them. The greatest authority of the law in the time of Jesus was the Caesar of Rome and the enforcement agencies of the Caesar in Palestine through puppet kings and governors. They used their legal system, soldiers and police to enforce the law. Within the Roman control, the Jews had their own practice of law which pertained to social, cultural and religious behaviors. But the Jewish practice of their laws did not and could not have the same force of law which the Roman law had. We today often have the conflict of conscience between the laws and practices of religious people and our own American Constitution.
Jesus told his followers that their righteousness had to exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. The words of Jesus called the Beatitudes, are in my mind, are teaching insights about how we are to be related to God's law.
Scribes and Pharisees were the clergy of their time. What is the relationship of clergy to religious law? In Christianity, religious law is called canon law. Canon law is for the church what Sharia law is for the Islamic community and what the Torah is for the Jewish community. If one's religion dominates an entire group of people then the religious law and the secular laws can seem to be one and the same.
What do clergy do? They enforce religious laws as administrators and religious legal judges. In the Episcopal Church we have laws. The Constitutions and Canons of the Episcopal Church, the Constitutions and canons of the Diocese of El Camino Real and the parish by-laws of St. John the Divine Episcopal Church. When I was ordained I made a vow to keep church laws and to enforce them. As an American citizen, I make a pledge of allegiance to our country and our Constitution.
One relationship with the law might be called the enforcement of prescribed behaviors. The clergy whether priests, scribes or Pharisees had the duty of enforcing the religious rules for the upkeep of their official religious institutions. An observant Jew would make every public effort to appear to be in compliance with the religious rules of the Jewish institutions, in order to be in good standing for participation in the synagogue or Temple rituals.
St. Paul wrote as a rabbi who had been taught to be a fully observant Jew. He was also a Roman citizen from the city of Tarsus and so he would have also complied to the rules of the Roman authorities. But St. Paul was one who wrote an entire letter to the Roman church about a different kind of law. He called it the law of the Spirit. In the law of the Spirit, he said that love fulfilled the law because from the inner motive of love one would always do what is right. He said that the law of the Spirit was in contrast to the law of the flesh.
The Beatitudes are actually a presentation of the law of the Spirit within the narrative of the words of Jesus Christ. The Roman law and the laws of the Temple and synagogue enforced a kind of social engineering of human behaviors. One purpose of the law is to train people to behave in ways that can keep public order and support the over riding purpose of the community.
Roman laws were for the purpose of maintain allegiance to the Emperor and especially paying taxes. Synagogue rules were for the purpose of keeping members distinct and separate in their Jewish identity. What Paul and Jesus both revealed is that people could be observant Roman citizens and observant Jews but still have the wrong motives within their hearts. People could observe all of the religious rituals but at the same time neglect people who were suffering and in need.
The beatitudes reveal the divide that happens between the practice of rules and the actual law of the heart. With the exaggerated statements of the beatitudes Jesus was trying to show how the people who practiced religious laws often missed the point of the great laws of the Torah.
What was the point of the great religious law? Yes, it was to instruct, teach and prescribe right behaviors, but it had a greater purpose. The greater purpose was to expose the impossibility of keeping the law of God perfectly. While we may think that we can keep the ten commandments by loving one God, not having idols, keeping Sabbath, honoring family, respecting life, telling the truth, not stealing or lying, the last commandment of the ten is the impossible one. Thou shalt not covet. You shall not have wrong desires. And that is where we all fail. We may not murder but we have may have anger and desire of harm toward others. We may not kill someone but we easily call them a "stupid fool." We may not commit adultery but we may have the wrong desire of lust for someone. So while on the outside we can appear to be good and law abiding, on the inside we can be seething cauldrons of contrary desires.
So why are we made in the way that we are made? Why are we given laws to follow and yet inside of us often have desires that are wildly non-compliant with the laws? Is not this the great moral dilemma in life? To be required to be good and perfect even while we don't always actually desire to be so?
The secret of the contradiction between desire and behaviors, is that in the moments of despair, guilt, disillusionment and failure, we are brought to seek to find the perfect Spirit of God within us. The demand of the law brings us to seek the perfection of knowing God's Spirit within us.
When Jesus reveals the variance between wrong desire and actual behaviors, he is showing us to the redemptive moment when like the Psalmist we cry, "Create in me a clean heart O God and renew a right spirit within me." Without having our wrong desire exposed, we might just believe that our good public religious behaviors are enough to attain. Many people attain religious behaviors and in so doing become "holier than thou" people who use their performance to judge others harshly.
But Jesus said that if anyone looks honestly within, they will have to admit that their desires and their behaviors are often in disagreement. Behaviors are indeed very important, especially in things like murder, lying and stealing, but when Jesus gave us the standard to be perfect like the Father in heaven is perfect, he gave us the true and indeed impossible standard. And who can keep that standard? The Holy Spirit. And Jesus is one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit resides within us and become our perfect heart, even while the rest of us continually is to learn to be better in the direction towards God's perfection.
The words of the beatitudes of Jesus are shocking words because they show that God loves us so much to give us such a high standard. God wants us to know that only through the grace of God's Spirit within us can we participate in a perfection which is derived from God and not our own.
God wants our relationship with the law to be better than the apparent way in which the clergy practice it. Clergy have to practice religious laws; it's their job and they are paid to appear to do so. We have to exceed the righteousness of the clergy; we need to seek the law of the Spirit. We need to be always seeking to have a clean heart and a renewed right spirit within us. We need to have the energy of coveting desires converted and transformed to become worship energy toward loving God and our neighbor.
Let us be thankful that Jesus exposes the desires of our hearts because he cares about how the deep energies of our lives become articulated and used for the creative words and deeds of love, kindness and justice.
May God help us to be shocked by the desires of our hearts to seek the clean heart that only God can give us when we discover the Holy Spirit in our lives. Amen.
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