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Posts Tagged ‘law’

God’s Command

Posted in Lectionary, Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 31, 2015| 1 Comment »

listentogodIf it’s true that God commands at all, then it would behoove us to know what that would be like. How do we hear or see God’s commands?

Yet he gave a command to the skies above and opened the doors of the heavens . . . [Psalm 78:23, NIV] ; And he [Jesus] continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! [Mark 7:9, NIV]

On a recent NPR broadcast, they were discussing the evolution of hearing in medicine. For so long, all diagnoses were based on what a physician or healer could see in addition to the report of the patient. However, with the advent of some basic technology (the stethoscope), a doctor could not “hear” inside the body. In fact, they posited, that sight is like a movie screen, ever before us, but sound is like a swimming pool, all around us. The trick is to learn to discern what we are hearing.

Sounds are everywhere. We tend to tune out most of them. Even in the “silence,” there is sound. And certainly, inside the body, there are a multitude of noises and vibrations.

In the midst of all the clamor, we are told, there is also the “still small voice” of God.

There are many recorded commands of God in the Bible. For this reason, this book guides believers. But I believe there have been interpretations and assumptions about the commands: which are truly the commands of God and which are the fabrications of humans? Which are culturally grounded and which are unbound by time or space or geography?

We are also faced with the mystery of the law articulated through the Jewish history and God’s commands in the Old Testament and the power of grace with the appearance of the Messiah in the New Testament and Jesus’s commands.

It is for this reason that we must look within and without. We must read and contemplate and engage in conversation. But we must also pray, meditate, and spend time within the secret places of God alone.

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Enticed to Turn Away

Posted in Lectionary, Time Up to Pentecost, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 11, 2015| Leave a Comment »

enticedWhat does it mean to be enticed to turn away? Intellectually, of course, I understand that to be enticed is to lured or beguiled by an expectation or hope for something better. But this phrase comes at the end of a long list of plentiful promises including a “land flowing with milk and honey” in which generations would experience fertility in their families and their land. They were promised a win-win. And yet, the warning came too and in the end, proved to be on target. Never enough.

 Observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, and so that you may live long in the land the Lord swore to your ancestors to give to them and their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey. . . . Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. [Deuteronomy 11:8-9, 16, NIV]

Human beings are notorious for never being satisfied. Most of us who live in the West are prime examples. We have more than we need and we want more still. I am no stranger to this dis-ease. I am living within the norm of this culture and mind-set. Only until we travel to other countries where people walk to a pump for their water or eat the same staple food every day or die of an unchecked pandemic, do we have our eyes opened for a season.

We have it all and yet we are enticed away by the “other gods.” Do we really imagine that the mere facade of better, faster, or bigger will be the antidote to what ails us? I am ashamed at the number of times I have allowed myself to covet what others appear to have, to know, to enjoy.

Not today then. I choose to wrap myself in the armor of God’s contentment. If only for a little while, I will be mindful of “Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise, Christ in the heart of every man [person] who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.” [St. Patrick]

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Sin Happens

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 16, 2014| Leave a Comment »

freedomInteresting. In today’s world, how often does a person use as their defense, “I didn’t know” or “Nobody told me.” And as a result, they believe this lack of knowledge absolves them of the crime. You’d think we’d get over it. After all, the “I didn’t see the stop sign” defense does not work in court, nor does “I didn’t know the speed limit” prevent an officer from giving us a ticket. And yet, we still say it and claim it and believe it.

 If anyone commits a sin by violating the directives I have given you—even if he was unaware of it—once he realizes it, he bears the guilt and must still accept the consequences. [Leviticus 5:17, The Voice]

The law works differently than grace. The law is immutable and enduring. The law has not gone away because of grace, it still exists; it is only our relationship to the breaking of law that has changed through Christ. For this reason, “. . . all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” [Romans 3:23] Sin still exists. Intentional or unintentional, blatant or secret, repeated or isolated, sin happens. Mistakes happen.

mercy on meInitially, I wasn’t fond of the centuries old Jesus prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner” because I didn’t see myself as a sinner. I saw myself as foolish perhaps or selfish, but honestly, it wasn’t like I had killed anyone. (Why killing seems to be norm for being a sinner, I don’t know, but most people who say this phrase, use that act as the litmus test.)

During Jesus’s ministry, he called his disciples to the highest plateau of faith by telling us to walk the paradox line: love enemies, go the second mile, enter through the narrow gate, turn the other cheek, and so forth. And then, he tops these off with the ultimate impossibility: “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect!” [Matthew 5:48] What? Absurd. That’s inaccessible. No one can do that. No one can be even close to the perfection of God. And I can just imagine Jesus smiling: “Yep. That’s the point.” And apparently, anything less than perfect is sin.

Sin is part of life. But how do we respond to it? Do we yield to sin and its backlash (as they say, “Karma is a bitch”) or do we call on the power of the Cross of Christ to stand between? It is the point.

sacrificePeter writes, “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” [I Peter 4:8] But Christ’s love covers ALL sins. We are encouraged to model our behaviors after Christ and practice love so that we can learn to be more generous of heart to one another. But there is only One who covers them all, from small to large.

Own up to the sin. But even better, own up to the sacrifice of blood that protects us all from the kismet of life’s choices.

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Royal Law

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 25, 2011| 2 Comments »

I have never noticed the phrase, “royal law” before. A brief swing through the commentaries explains its use: coming out of the kingly era, a pervasive and useful thing, a suitable thing for everyone. Nothing has changed.

James 2:8
If indeed you [really] fulfill the royal Law in accordance with the Scripture, You shall love your neighbor as [you love] yourself, you do well. [Amplified]

This “royal law” continues to be as powerful today as it was in biblical times. And yet, I don’t follow even this basic of basic mandates from God as I should.

There are personal kindnesses that I give to myself that I withhold from others.

And despite my tendency to be hard on myself, pushing myself to limits of time and energy, I still extend more grace to myself than I do to others.

The “royal law” restated is similar to the “golden rule” or “golden law” to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” [Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31]. But Jesus was not the first to speak this law, nor were the Jews in Leviticus 19:18. These can be found in ancient manuscripts of the Babylonians, Chinese, and Greeks.

This is a human law. This is a foundational law to people living and working amongst each other.

There was a time when it was very popular to wear wristbands and jewelry with the letters WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) and ultimately, the answer would be the “royal law.” This law is for everyone: for every religious belief. It holds no boundaries.

And so, I wonder, why don’t humans use it, live it, abide by it? It’s not just evil in the world that throws this law under the bus. It’s regular people too, who have lost faith in the simplicity of kindness, generosity, and good will.

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Power of an Indestructible Life

Posted in Eastertide, Time Up to Pentecost, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 28, 2011| 2 Comments »

This is another place where modern Human trips up. An indestructible life smacks of Superman and other “super heroes.” Miracles in general are not the food of modernity. We are all about logic and facts and evidence. But, I can only ask those who cannot fathom the miraculous, what if?

Hebrews 7:14-16
For it is clear that our Lord descended from Judah, and in regard to that tribe Moses said nothing about priests. And what we have said is even more clear if another priest like Melchizedek appears, one who has become a priest not on the basis of a regulation as to his ancestry but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life.

What if there was that indestructible one who wielded enough power to sustain life (and that crosses all dimensions of living), forever?

In these mid-range chapters that I am studying in Hebrews, the writer (and personally, I don’t hear the voice of St. Paul at all), the whole point is to examine the believability of Law changing because the priesthood was changed forever with the coming Messiah. That Jesus, as Messiah, was of another tribe (Judah) and like Melchizedek (who is mentioned several times in Hebrews 7), the ancestry does not line up with the law of the time. Melchizedek had an unknown genealogy while Jesus was affiliated by his birth mother to the wrong one and the next leap is Jesus’s true genealogy as divine.

It’s funny really, the ancient peoples struggled with Jesus’s genealogy while modern people struggle with the supernatural. The people of Israel had a history of miracles; this they could accept, but his lineage was a huge problem if he was to be their true priest-king with the authority to change their laws, the foundation of their faith. While today, that’s a more insignificant problem, it’s all the other stuff: virgin birth, bringing dead people to life, sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and of course, resurrection.

But, I say again, what if that kind of power did exist? What would we do in the face of an indestructible life, that is, directed, perpetual energy?

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Anything Goes

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 29, 2010| Leave a Comment »

This is a freedom I don’t practice as much as I should. It’s so easy to get caught up in tracking all the “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” in our lives. What is it we fear so much? Why have we lost our confidence in grace?

I Corinthians 10:23-24
Looking at it one way, you could say, “Anything goes. Because of God’s immense generosity and grace, we don’t have to dissect and scrutinize every action to see if it will pass muster.” But the point is not to just get by. We want to live well, but our foremost efforts should be to help others live well. [The Message Bible]

My daughter was working with some dear counselor friends of mine the other day and in the course of their time together, she said she was planning to get a tattoo. Now, I am not a fan of tattoos at all. Five or six years ago, I told my three teens, “If any one of you goes out and gets a tattoo, I will cut it out with a spoon.” Yah, I’d say I had a bit of an attitude. But, over the years, it’s become evident that cultural acceptability of this practice is going to outweigh my threats and I can either fight it and watch them sneak into a tattoo parlor some weekend in Ocean City or I can speak lovingly, reasonably and simply abd ask them to plan it: plan it well, and to be sure it’s what they want. So far, no one has added one yet.

But that’s not really my point. Those friends ended up pulling out scriptures and telling her that getting a tattoo is a sin (I assume this is based on Leviticus 19:28, “Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves…” and other similar Old Testament passages). But, aren’t we missing the phrase, “for the dead” in this passage. The cuttings and tattoos referenced here are cultural and clearly ritualistic. Most kids and young people are not participating in a satanic ritual any more than they are by going from house to house on Halloween saying, “trick or treat.”

This reminds me of other “do nots” that have been conveyed to me in the name of sin, such as practicing yoga or visualization. Can these things be abused? Of course, but then, so can practices in the name of Christ, such as “miracles” of gold dust floating off the hands of a “healer.”

What is essential here then? Motive and intent. Christ brought freedom and that freedom “completed” the law [Romans 8:1-2].

Needless to say, we must remember, if participating in an activity gives pain and anxiety to those around us, it’s probably best not to do it, for their sakes and out of our love for them, the other (the sacred other). We can’t always know that, though, and we can’t go through our lives second guessing these things. But when we do know, when a child chooses NOT to act in a particular way out of respect and love for parents, that is a good thing. And I’m sure there are other examples of these choices.

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Freedom to Believe

Posted in Lent, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 2, 2010| Leave a Comment »

It’s ironic, when Paul the Apostle declared Christ as the Way, it was a testament of freedom to anyone who chose to believe, whether Jew or Gentile, slave or foreigner. Anyone could enter this new relationship with God. But today, the Christ message is treated as limiting, exclusive, or prescribed.

Romans 10:4
Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness [right relationship with God] for everyone who believes.

Several chapters of Romans are dedicated to the logic Paul lays out for the Jews of that time, the reasons and proof texts to support the reasons a Messiah came. He wants to convince them that the way was now open to God for anyone to believe. The season of the heart had come. “For with the heart a person believes (adheres to, trusts in, and relies on Christ) and so is justified (declared righteous, acceptable to God), . . . ” [Amplified, Romans 10:10a].

Many are guilty of limiting the Christ message, perhaps Christians most of all. We have codified the process and made rules of engagement. We have created denominations that have additional requirements such as specific types of baptism, communion practices, sins by degree, and methods of confession.

Today, we would need another Paul to set the Christians from their own chains of law.

The Christ message is one of freedom. That freedom invites us to participate in an intimate relationship with God that has never been possible before. For Christians, we must return to the simplicity of belief and confession. For non-believers, we must focus on the open door of Christ. All are welcome.

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