A broad shape and an over-arching principle
Ordinary Sunday 30: 23rd October, 2005
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's, Eastern Hill
For six weeks or so we have, as it were, been negotiating the stream of this part of the gospel according to Matthew, travelling through some pretty rough water. We have had parables about rejection and division; we have seen the Lord set up with some confrontational questions; we have been made aware of some implacable opponents. We have reflected that such attitudes and issues are as much contemporary as first century. The question last week for instance relating to matters of church and state invited our careful discernment: there are things that are God's; there are things that are Caesar's. Christians have responsibilities and obligations in both areas. That quietened the Sadducees, says Matthew.
Now today another question to the Lord from another hostile source – a lawyer: Which is the greatest commandment of the Law? That is a serious issue for those whose lives are to be shaped and whose access to God is to be made either possible or impossible, by the careful following of an extremely detailed code of laws. If the response is about relationship to God, then is that to say that how you live is of lesser consequence? Alternatively, if the greatest commandment is said to be something to do with say social justice, does that mean that what is due to God is less essential? We can see the difficulty at once. So could those questioners and so could the Lord.
The question of the place of the Law we remember is where mainstream Christianity generally parted with the earlier tradition. Christians came to understand themselves as living under grace rather than the law. Foundational differences that were to distinguish Christianity from Judaism on this major issue are to be found first in so many of the teaching parables and actions of the Lord himself in the gospels, where those outside of or in breach of the Law as held up as exemplars. Then there is the huge and startling paradigm shift evidenced in the obvious opening up of the gifts of God to the gentiles and pagans recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. There is that first Pentecost (Acts 2) where all those people from so many backgrounds and cultures were all so evidently blessed, setting the scene for further fundamental change. We remember particularly how hard it was for the apostle Peter leading up to the joyful baptism of the whole household of the Roman Cornelius (Acts 10). None of them lived under the law or the old covenant. Ultimately most significant of all is the apostle Paul and his whole new emphasis on the mission to the Gentiles, the outsiders, the uncircumcised, who were not required to comply. This is developed in all Paul's letters but presented most comprehensively in the Letter to the Romans.
We find we are dealing with development and substantial change of religious thinking and teaching moving away from a meticulous compliance with the Law of Moses, towards an approach that offers much more room for those coming new to the faith, who do not have that background at all. The emphasis is going to shift from an approach that entails attention to a great deal of detail – with laws, directions and obligations impinging on each and every aspect of a human life, either individual or community – towards a much broader overall shape and guiding direction, leaving the details to be worked out in the particular cultural or other circumstances. That is an enormous shift. Even today, some of our Christian brothers and sisters do not seem to have quite made it.
We are familiar with the Ten Commandments (Deut: 5). They are central and clearly they are what the Lord is about to make his response based upon. But there are many more requirements in the books of the Law. Our first lesson from Exodus 22 has three such examples: one requiring kindness and care to the stranger and the vulnerable widow and orphan; one forbidding the lending of money at interest within the community (now that's an interesting one isn't it?) and the third forbidding the confiscation of a cloak as a bond – even if that is all the person has. There are hundreds of others in Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy – some weighty and of great consequence still today, providing the basis for many of the underlying principles of our own Common Law or the European Civil code. But there are others that are well past their use-by date.
There are two entire and definitive chapters of Leviticus (13 and 14), for instance, on the response to skin diseases. That was very important for a society that so feared leprosy and needed such quarantine rules in the absence of treatments or understanding. The harsh regulations were probably prudent 2,500 years ago. But we have moved on just a little since then. Lev 11 is a whole chapter precise and specific about ritually clean and unclean meats, determining just what can and cannot be eaten. Much of it is plain common sense and a good public health policy, especially in the absence of refrigeration. It famously though includes the condemnation Lev 11:12 "Everything in the waters that does not have fins and scales is detestable to you". I am very pleased to say that we have moved along a little since then too. I do enjoy my seafood.
There is a problem here though for those Scriptural fundamentalists who say that every Biblical verse is of equal weight and consequence and that a law is a law is a law. I fear that there could be some warriors in current religious battles who are today happy to highlight their own particularly favourite condemnations from this ancient code of laws, relating to say gender or sexuality, who might have for instance nonetheless recently enjoyed some prawns or scallops or lobster. They too would stand condemned under this code. It is to be hoped, by the way, that they did not happen to be wearing a garment made of two different materials, since that is also expressly forbidden in Lev 19:19. The Bible says. Therefore, end of discussion.
How silly this can become. How easily then consideration of these matters can end up in trivialities. That is what happens when every last i is dotted and every t crossed, and then the whole thing is transferred to other cultures and other times across many centuries and expected to be readily or appropriately applicable. It is just not going to work. What is needed rather is a broad shape and an over-arching principle that allows everything to be placed and considered in its own specific context.
That broad shape and over-arching principle is in fact what we have been given in this morning's gospel.
To the lawyer's question 'which commandment in the law is the greatest?' Jesus cut through all that undergrowth: "He said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind'. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself'. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Mtt 22:37-40.)
'Love God and love neighbour' is indeed a summary of the thrust of the two sections of the Ten Commandments. The first ones deal with relationship to God. The second section of those Commandments in various ways addresses the standards of life in community. They are direct and comprehensive in overall scope.
There is another sermon at least in the requirement to love your neighbour as yourself, as well as another, to remind us of that central teaching about the nature of neighbourliness that we find in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Another sermon could speak of the remarkable joining together into one indivisible whole of the God-directed and the community-directed obligations of a religious person.
But this morning we have started with the big picture and that joyful responsive freedom and way of grace that is here offered for peoples of every condition and culture. Truly, as Peter was to declare: 'God shows no partiality' (Acts 10:34). Thanks be to God that this is so.
The Lord be with you.
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