The Good Law

Lenten Vespers, Week One

A Reading from the Holy Gospel According to St Matthew:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

  Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

  Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

for they will be filled.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

  Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

  Blessed are the peacemakers,

for they will be called children of God.

  Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Another Reading:

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus.

I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. “Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

—Kurt Vonnegut, “A Man Without a Country”

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

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

Lent is a time for catechesis—that is, basic instruction in the Christian faith. All across the globe, catechumens are preparing for Baptism at the Easter Vigil. They are fasting, praying, giving alms, and learning about the community, the Church, which they are about to enter. We too take this time to return to our Baptism and thus renew our faith.

Lutheran catechesis begins with the Small Catechism, covering the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the Holy Sacraments, and the Table of Duties, which has to do with daily Christian life. We start with the Ten Commandments because they are a summary of God’s Law. But they are not the only summary, nor are they necessarily the best. It may be time, in fact, that we should lead not with the Commandments but with the Beatitudes.

What is the Law? Well, first up, it is universal. While law codes may vary, the notion of law, of right and of wrong, is one of the things that makes us most human. It has to do with being held to a higher standard—one not of beasts but of men. You can see this in every court, in the architecture of the place, in the vestments, the rituals, the liturgies of the judges and the lawyers. The Law is the higher standard, the transcendent ideal. It is good and evil hashed out in messy mortal life.

The first five books of the Bible are called Torah, which means teaching, or Law. And indeed there are a lot of laws in there: 613, by the traditional count. And they cover every aspect of life, from diet to devotion, from marriage to murder. Yet those 613 all revolve around the central 10, the Commandments given to Moses atop Mt Sinai.

The Ten Commandments are the Constitution creating Israel as a nation, as a people with a Law of their own. All the other laws in the Bible are case law, trying to work out those 10 in the life and the history of one specific people. And these expanded over time. There were 1500 years between Moses and Jesus: 1500 years of trials, tribulations, and taboos; 1500 years of interpretations and interpolations—only seven of which, mind you, were held to apply to Gentiles.

But Jesus doesn’t get bogged down in the details. He looks at the Torah, looks at the Law, and tells us clearly that what matters in all these ancient scrolls is not the case law, not the rituals, not the bizarre prohibitions from the Bronze Age, but its core, divine, moral heart. That’s where God is, behind and beneath and beyond it all. Jesus sums up the entirety of the Law and the Prophets as this: “Love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s it.

And this truly is universal. This truly is God’s Law for all of humankind. You don’t have to be a Christian to see it. Buddhists, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Taoists, Zoroastrians, Sikhs—everybody knows it’s true: to love your neighbor as yourself fulfills the entirety of divine Law. Everything else is commentary.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the Beatitudes, those countercultural blessings that Jesus proclaims in His Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the peacemakers; blessed are the poor. Blessed are the hungry, the humble, the mourning, and the meek. Blessed are you when you suffer for righteousness’ sake, for then is yours the Kingdom of Heaven.”

This is not a Law of externals, a Law of details. This is the Law of inner transformation, the healthy religion that seeks spiritual rebirth, and which then shines out from within, through righteous words and deeds, like a lamp which cannot be hidden. Nor is Jesus’ Law some unobtainable ideal meant to break us like waves upon a rock. Rather, this is an eminently practical religion: one of kindness, welcoming, gentleness, strength, nonviolence, and active, adamant resistance to injustice.

And there are Christians who have obtained this—we often call them saints—not to mention many non-Christians as well. Christ and the Buddha may have differed on metaphysics, but they were united in their understanding of the moral Law.

Now this of course is when I have to throw in our uniquely Lutheran anxieties about righteousness obtained through the Law. Our tradition, the Reformation tradition, came about at a time when Christians were terrorized by a Church hierarchy that benefited materially from people’s fears of death and of hell. Martin Luther was racked with guilt concerning the Law, because he knew he could not keep it perfectly. He could not love God with all that he was; he could not love his neighbor as himself. He failed and he fell short, which is what sin literally means.

His only comfort was that the conviction of the Law in his heart drove him to the Gospel, to the Good News of God’s mercy poured out for all the world in Jesus Christ. The Law showed Luther the truth of his sins; the Gospel revealed the truth of God’s love and forgiveness of those sins. And that indeed is for us the First Use of the Law. The Law drives us to Christ. The Law kills us, and the Gospel makes us alive.

But let us take for granted, then, that our eternal salvation—the destiny of every human soul—relies entirely upon the superabundant grace and mercy of God. Let us entrust that to Him, entrust ourselves and all the world to God in Jesus Christ. And then let us ask: What now? Having faith in God, having faith in the promise of forgiveness, how should we live our lives here below? What should we do with the time that is given to us? And for that we return to the Law.

Not with fear. Not with anxiety about salvation or damnation. Not doubting that God’s will is clearly stated by Christ—that not one of His children to be lost—and that in the end God’s will shall be done. But rather returning humbly to Jesus upon the mountain, and asking Him simply: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” What must I do to live the life of eternity, the Kingdom of Heaven, here and now? How should we live each day?

And to that Jesus replies, gently, patiently, firmly: “Blessed are the poor; blessed are the peacemakers; blessed are the hungry, the hated, and the humble pure in heart. Love God with all you are and love your neighbor as yourself. And everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another. This is the whole of the Law.”

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