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| 13 Pentecost 3 September, 2006 The Rev. Robert C. Granfeldt |
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I decided, midway through preparing my sermon, yesterday, to chuck the whole thing.
You see I was going to speak to you, in the context of this morning’s Gospel, about
Jesus’ relationship to the Pharisees.
But today is the Third of September, and tomorrow is Labor Day. It’s a holiday
weekend, and what I was working on was showing signs of getting rather long and
detailed. I suspect hardly anyone here, this morning, is really up for spending a lot of
time, thought and effort on listening to a sermon like that (much less preaching one),
so I chucked it!
So instead, I’m going to speak further and in more detail about something I’ve
spoken of before: something timely and ongoing in the world – but simpler than what
I’d planned!
Today’s lessons are about the proper relationship of God’s people to the law. Timely,
these days, given the fuss that continues in so many places – Kentucky, Texas,
Alabama, Missouri, Indiana, and on an on, and not too long ago, you may recall, in
West Chester – over displays of the Ten Commandments in and on courthouses, in
public schools, on State Seals, etc. The LEGAL premise of those insisting on the
display being that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of our American system
of justice and our laws.
Now, to most Christians, I suspect, that sounds pretty good. It’s an encouraging idea;
an affirming idea; a comforting idea; an all-around attractive idea. The problem with it
is that, no matter how much we would like it to be true, it simply isn’t. Like that other
current topic, “creationism,” an idea sounding good to a lot of people does not make
the idea true – and this idea about the Commandments as the foundation of the
American legal system just isn’t true. It’s a simple matter of history, really, and the
truth is available for any who wish to seek it out.
Our Western – our American – system of justice actually has three main roots: the
ancient legal system and the ancient laws of Rome; the Common Law system that
grew up – even from pre-Christian times – in the British Isles; and, believe it or not,
Canon Law: the legal system of the Church as it developed through the Middle Ages
and beyond! But not the Ten Commandments. And no amount of wishful thinking on
the part of evangelical, fundamentalist judges or preachers can make it so.
In fact, the Ten Commandments could hardly be foundations of law, anyway, because
they’re not truly laws, themselves, in any recognizable, technical sense. Rather, they
are a summary of the form of the cultic relationship between God and his people, the
Hebrews – laid out in ten easy sayings or “words” – designed to be easily
remembered and counted off on the ten fingers: ten fingers – ten Commandments;
how convenient! They would be no use, at all, as law, as they define no crimes;
describe no means of enforcement; prescribe no sanctions; provide for no
punishments.
What they DO – in covenant with the Lord – is describe the obligations of relationship
that God’s people – the Hebrew people – were to have with him and with one
another, a relationship that continues to evolve in the centuries after their creation,
right down to their fulfillment in Jesus Christ!
When they have been codified and solidified, and made to stand as legal
requirements, they have brought more pain and sorrow and suffering than peace and
order, and the insistence on doing so causes Jesus in this morning’s Gospel, to
remind the Pharisees, of what Isaiah said: “This people honors me with their lips, but
their heart is far from me – you are hypocrites, for you teach as doctrines the
precepts of man!”
The Commandments are of four kinds. The first three, the commandments demanding
the worship of the Lord, alone, against image-making, and against the use of God’s
Name to do harm, are commandments that stress God’s exclusive claim over the
lives of His people. The next two, calling for observing every seventh day as a day of
rest and for honoring one’s parents, are actually rather radical forms of reordering
society in new ways – ways that are not found in any other society in the ancient
world. The Sabbath regulations establish limits in the treatment of those who labor,
and guarantee the dignity and value of labor, itself (the honoring of which,
TOMORROW’S originally radical holiday is SUPPOSED to be about, but really hasn’t
been for decades); while the commandment to honor one’s parents – contrary to
meaning children should behave – is really concerned with maintaining the dignity
and well-being, not of one’s own mother and father, but of the ELDERLY – those
whom society would prefer to throw away!
The rest focus, on the one hand, on the life of the individual and the family in the
larger community, involving, in mostly incidental ways, the sanctity of human life,
marriage and sex, but on the other hand – and more profoundly – the practical social
needs of public honesty in dealing with one another, particularly in courts of law or
before the leaders of the community, and on good, old-fashioned, property rights!
These last concerns do, indeed – in, at least, some ways – find their way into the legal
codes of any well-ordered and developed society. But they are nowhere near unique
to the Ten Commandments, or even to the Bible. Indeed, so basic are they to any
orderly human society that they’re found in one way or the other in codes of law all
over the world and throughout history!
But the others – those first ones that are unique to our Scriptures – could never be
codified and enforced in law, because they are matters only incidentally of behavior –
but truly of the human heart, of faith, as Jesus so forcefully reminds us.
And while these matters of the heart can and do and SHOULD shape our mores and
our society, when we try to convert them into LAW, and IMPOSE them on one another
and on OTHERS, we find we’ve instead perverted them – “teaching as doctrines the
precepts of men”, and turned them into instruments of pain and slavery, instead of
sources of life and love.
We don’t need to install blocks of granite depicting the Ten Commandments in our
courts of law, where they can only be weakened and even perverted, and where they
can be used to cause pain! Rather, we need, as the prophet said, to let the Lord
“write them on (our) hearts,” – and we need, for a change, to try LIVING the
relationships they describe – rather than just “obeying” the words!
In Jesus Christ’s Name. Amen.
You see I was going to speak to you, in the context of this morning’s Gospel, about
Jesus’ relationship to the Pharisees.
But today is the Third of September, and tomorrow is Labor Day. It’s a holiday
weekend, and what I was working on was showing signs of getting rather long and
detailed. I suspect hardly anyone here, this morning, is really up for spending a lot of
time, thought and effort on listening to a sermon like that (much less preaching one),
so I chucked it!
So instead, I’m going to speak further and in more detail about something I’ve
spoken of before: something timely and ongoing in the world – but simpler than what
I’d planned!
Today’s lessons are about the proper relationship of God’s people to the law. Timely,
these days, given the fuss that continues in so many places – Kentucky, Texas,
Alabama, Missouri, Indiana, and on an on, and not too long ago, you may recall, in
West Chester – over displays of the Ten Commandments in and on courthouses, in
public schools, on State Seals, etc. The LEGAL premise of those insisting on the
display being that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of our American system
of justice and our laws.
Now, to most Christians, I suspect, that sounds pretty good. It’s an encouraging idea;
an affirming idea; a comforting idea; an all-around attractive idea. The problem with it
is that, no matter how much we would like it to be true, it simply isn’t. Like that other
current topic, “creationism,” an idea sounding good to a lot of people does not make
the idea true – and this idea about the Commandments as the foundation of the
American legal system just isn’t true. It’s a simple matter of history, really, and the
truth is available for any who wish to seek it out.
Our Western – our American – system of justice actually has three main roots: the
ancient legal system and the ancient laws of Rome; the Common Law system that
grew up – even from pre-Christian times – in the British Isles; and, believe it or not,
Canon Law: the legal system of the Church as it developed through the Middle Ages
and beyond! But not the Ten Commandments. And no amount of wishful thinking on
the part of evangelical, fundamentalist judges or preachers can make it so.
In fact, the Ten Commandments could hardly be foundations of law, anyway, because
they’re not truly laws, themselves, in any recognizable, technical sense. Rather, they
are a summary of the form of the cultic relationship between God and his people, the
Hebrews – laid out in ten easy sayings or “words” – designed to be easily
remembered and counted off on the ten fingers: ten fingers – ten Commandments;
how convenient! They would be no use, at all, as law, as they define no crimes;
describe no means of enforcement; prescribe no sanctions; provide for no
punishments.
What they DO – in covenant with the Lord – is describe the obligations of relationship
that God’s people – the Hebrew people – were to have with him and with one
another, a relationship that continues to evolve in the centuries after their creation,
right down to their fulfillment in Jesus Christ!
When they have been codified and solidified, and made to stand as legal
requirements, they have brought more pain and sorrow and suffering than peace and
order, and the insistence on doing so causes Jesus in this morning’s Gospel, to
remind the Pharisees, of what Isaiah said: “This people honors me with their lips, but
their heart is far from me – you are hypocrites, for you teach as doctrines the
precepts of man!”
The Commandments are of four kinds. The first three, the commandments demanding
the worship of the Lord, alone, against image-making, and against the use of God’s
Name to do harm, are commandments that stress God’s exclusive claim over the
lives of His people. The next two, calling for observing every seventh day as a day of
rest and for honoring one’s parents, are actually rather radical forms of reordering
society in new ways – ways that are not found in any other society in the ancient
world. The Sabbath regulations establish limits in the treatment of those who labor,
and guarantee the dignity and value of labor, itself (the honoring of which,
TOMORROW’S originally radical holiday is SUPPOSED to be about, but really hasn’t
been for decades); while the commandment to honor one’s parents – contrary to
meaning children should behave – is really concerned with maintaining the dignity
and well-being, not of one’s own mother and father, but of the ELDERLY – those
whom society would prefer to throw away!
The rest focus, on the one hand, on the life of the individual and the family in the
larger community, involving, in mostly incidental ways, the sanctity of human life,
marriage and sex, but on the other hand – and more profoundly – the practical social
needs of public honesty in dealing with one another, particularly in courts of law or
before the leaders of the community, and on good, old-fashioned, property rights!
These last concerns do, indeed – in, at least, some ways – find their way into the legal
codes of any well-ordered and developed society. But they are nowhere near unique
to the Ten Commandments, or even to the Bible. Indeed, so basic are they to any
orderly human society that they’re found in one way or the other in codes of law all
over the world and throughout history!
But the others – those first ones that are unique to our Scriptures – could never be
codified and enforced in law, because they are matters only incidentally of behavior –
but truly of the human heart, of faith, as Jesus so forcefully reminds us.
And while these matters of the heart can and do and SHOULD shape our mores and
our society, when we try to convert them into LAW, and IMPOSE them on one another
and on OTHERS, we find we’ve instead perverted them – “teaching as doctrines the
precepts of men”, and turned them into instruments of pain and slavery, instead of
sources of life and love.
We don’t need to install blocks of granite depicting the Ten Commandments in our
courts of law, where they can only be weakened and even perverted, and where they
can be used to cause pain! Rather, we need, as the prophet said, to let the Lord
“write them on (our) hearts,” – and we need, for a change, to try LIVING the
relationships they describe – rather than just “obeying” the words!
In Jesus Christ’s Name. Amen.
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| Calvary Episcopal Church, Rockdale |
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