Law

Scripture: The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 22), A.D. 2015 B

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Our readings today all involve keeping God’s Law, so we’d better be clear as to what exactly the Law of God is.

The story of the Old Testament is fairly simple in broad strokes. God, being love, creates a world both good and free. Human beings misuse our freedom to break down the original harmony that existed between God, Man, and the world. So God comes up with a plan to fix things—a way to save the world through love rather than through force. Phase one involves picking the most unlikely of souls, a withered old homeless man named Abraham, from whom to raise a chosen nation. Phase two involves using this nation, Israel, to bless all the peoples of the world.

So far, so good. Now, in order to make Abraham’s family into a unified nation, God gives to Israel the 10 Commandments, the divine revelation of right and wrong. Keeping these commandments will restore harmony and cause life to flourish. They are, as I’m sure we all know: “I am the Lord your God; you are to have no gods before Me. You are not to make for yourselves any false idols. You are not to use the Name of the Lord your God in vain. You are to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. You are to honor your father and your mother. You are not to murder, nor to commit adultery, nor to steal, nor to bear false witness, nor to covet.”

10 Commandments. Very straightforward. Easy to carve on a pair of tablets. Of course you may have noticed that the Old Testament clearly contains a lot more than just these 10. In point of fact, there are 613 Commandments found in the books of Moses, 613 laws that God’s people Israel are to follow. That escalated quickly. But all these other laws are really just case law. They are specific applications, ways that God’s people try to live out those 10 big Commandments in everyday life.

So, how many of these 613 Commandments must we keep—we who are not of Abraham’s blood—in order to fulfill God’s Law? As it ends up: seven. Just seven Commandments apply to non-Jewish peoples. They’re called the Noahide Laws, the laws to be kept by everyone alive following Noah’s Flood, and they hew pretty close to the 10 Commandments. The Noahide Laws are: don’t worship idols; don’t murder; don’t steal; don’t practice sexual promiscuity; don’t blaspheme; don’t be cruel to animals; and make sure that your society’s laws are just. Not too bad, huh? If we can keep these seven laws, we will have restored the original harmony and beauty of Creation, and live in the world as God intended it to be. So—how do you think we’re doing?

“O Lord, who may abide in your tent?” sings the Psalmist. “Who may dwell on your holy hill? Those who walk blamelessly and do what is right, and speak the truth from their heart, who do not slander their neighbors and do no evil to their friends.” In other words, not me. I most certainly do not walk blamelessly. The Law of God is so simple, so elegant. “What other great nation has statues and ordinances as just as this?” Yet I cannot for the life of me keep even these seven commonsense rules.

Jesus makes it even simpler. When asked what the most important Commandment is, the very heart of God’s Law, Jesus says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s it; that’s the Law. Couldn’t be simpler. And again, the question becomes—so how are we doing?

Love God, love your neighbor. Love God, love your neighbor. Do that, and you have fulfilled the Law. Do that, and you are righteous in the eyes of God. And damnation, we just can’t do it, can we? We just can’t keep that Law. It doesn’t matter if it has 613 or 10 or seven or just one great Commandment; we can’t keep it. It’s not that the Law is unfair or unjust or unreasonable. The Law is elegant and beautiful and righteous, and completely beyond our ability to keep. Once upon a time the whole of the Law was, “Don’t eat that apple.” All we had to do was not take fruit from a talking snake! And what did we do?

In our Gospel reading this morning, religious scholars and holy men from Jerusalem upbraid Jesus for not teaching His disciples to ritually wash their hands. Ritual hand washing, mind you, is not found in the written Law. It isn’t one of those 613 Commandments given to Moses. It’s actually from a different collection of oral law here called “the tradition of the elders,” a way for people to be extra pure, extra religious.

And Jesus says, in effect, you’ve got to be kidding me. Traditions and rituals can be helpful things, but they aren’t what makes you righteous or unrighteous. What matters is the heart within, from which evil intentions come: “Fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these things come from within, and they defile a person.” Now you tell me, from that list that Jesus rattles off—who is not guilty of at least one of those? Who is not guilty of at least the intention or desire for one of those? For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Yet do not despair, brothers and sisters. It is true that the Law reveals to us the glory and righteousness of God. And it is true that the Law reveals our own inability to achieve that glory and righteousness on our own. We cannot earn Heaven; we cannot earn God’s love. We’re not worthy. But thanks be to God, we don’t have to be. For the Law is only half the Word of God! It reveals to us our need for the other half, the Good News of Jesus Christ, and that Good News is this: for mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.

We can’t earn Heaven, but we don’t have to—because in Jesus Christ the gates of Heaven are thrown open purely through love, purely through grace. The Gospel proclaims that when we could not claw our way back up into Paradise, God leapt down—down into the mud and the blood—to love the unlovable, forgive the unforgivable, bringing life to the lifeless, love to the loveless, and God to the godless. The Law may kill us, but the Gospel makes us alive again!

Return to the words of the Psalmist: “Who may abide in your tent, dwell on your holy hill? Those who walk blamelessly, do what is right, speak truth from their heart, who do not slander nor do evil to their friends nor take reproach against their neighbors.” Clearly that’s not me, but that is Him! That is Jesus Christ. Jesus dwells in the Holy of Holies and He has gone to prepare a place for us there. “For what other nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to Him?” Every Sunday when we come to Church we must understand two things: that we are in real need of salvation, and that we are really saved.

Thus does the Law of God kill us by revealing the depths of our sin, while the Gospel resurrects us by revealing the depths of God’s mercy, forgiveness, and love. When we hear this living Word of Law and Gospel, it does something to us, changes us—kills us and makes us alive again. And you know what happens then? We start to do good works. We start to keep the Law, as a good tree bears good fruit. Not because we have to, not even because we are able to, but because it is Christ Who lives within us now, Christ Who has poured out His very Spirit into our hearts. He keeps for us the Law that we cannot.

In God, writes James, “there is no variation or shadow due to change.” God never changes, which is how we know that He always loves us, as He always has and always will. And God always hates sin, because sin separates us from His love. Thus we will always be convicted by the Law and always be absolved by the Gospel. This is how God kept His promise to Abraham, to save all the world through both the Law and the Messiah He has given unto Israel.

Brothers and sisters—not a one of us is any better or any holier than another. And no one is any better or holier than any of us. We have all sinned by our own fault. And we have all been redeemed by the One Who died for each and every sinner. Thanks be to God, Who gives to us and keeps for us the Law.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.