Friday 1 June 2018

Rules

A sermon for Trinity 1 :-

Where would we be without rules? Maybe a lot happier and a lot less hassled, you might think. After all, rules can be a bit of a bore. They’re frustrating and annoying, and they stop us doing what we like. But live a few days without rules and I suspect we’d be ready to ask for them back. Life wouldn’t be safe without the rules of the road, or the rules that govern, say, electrical installation or plumbing standards. And, though just now we might be shaking our heads over the new GDPR - General Data Protection Regulations, if you’ve been asleep for the past six months - the fact is we do need rules to make sure our personal information is handled properly, not sold on to others or used in ways that annoy or worry or endanger us. And that’s before we get to criminal law and all that that involves. I’ve been burgled, and while the police didn’t catch those guys I’m glad they were at least tried to, and that they took it seriously as a crime - against the rules, against the law.

Religious and secular laws and rules are different things in 21st century Britain; but for Jews at the time of Jesus, they were one and the same thing. They would be for Orthodox Jews today as well, in that God’s law governs every aspect of their life. And prominent within the commandments given by God to Moses, from which all the rest of the law derived, was this: remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. If you don’t keep the Sabbath, you don’t do honour to God. He rested on the seventh day; so should we. No lifting burdens, no harvesting crops, no work at all.

The Pharisees kept these rules rigorously and diligently; Jesus, however, did not, or so it seemed. His disciples had been plucking ears of corn as they walked through the fields on the Sabbath, for no better reason than they were hungry, and Jesus had done nothing to stop them. Pharisees saw it happen; they were looking out for opportunities to challenge Jesus so they could discredit him, so they could show the people just how far short he fell from their own high standards.

We’ve heard the story, and also Mark’s account of one of the many healing miracles Jesus performed on the Sabbath. He seems almost to have made a point of healing people on the Sabbath; and here he even does it in church, or in the synagogue. Now of course, Jesus was very much in favour of keeping the Sabbath; where he differed from the Pharisees was in how you go about that. What does keeping the Sabbath really mean?

The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath, was how Jesus put it. And that applies not only to that particular rule about keeping the Sabbath, but to all our rules and laws. It’s a test we need to apply. Put most simply, does this or that particular rule add to the health of the community, or detract from it? Does it apply a burden? Well, yes, of course it does - all rules are in some way burdensome, all rules restrict our freedom to do just whatever we want. But is that burden balanced by a benefit? It should be, if a rule is good. Good rules make our lives better by balancing my rights and freedoms and hopes against yours. And notice that word “balancing”. If a rule is designed to make life really tough for one group just so that another group has it easy or is given a dominant place, then that law is wrong, unjust, immoral - ungodly, I would even say.

“That’s just the way it is, some things will never change.” Lines from a song by Bruce Hornsby and the Range that was a chart hit around the world in, I think, 1986. Written by Bruce Hornsby, the lyrics of the song challenge the idea that segregation (in the deep South of the United States) was just how things were, how things always had been, how things were bound to remain. You’d even hear voices saying that’s how God wanted things to be; to challenge segregation was to challenge God’s order. The Christian witness of Dr Martin Luther King was countered by voices on the other side that also claimed the authority of God and of the Bible. Some things will never change.

Rules govern our lives, and they do need to. We need our own freedom to do whatever we want to be to some degree curtailed, so that other people too may have a measure of freedom, and we can live safely and happily and well together. Good rules aim to ensure the greatest good for everyone. But not all rules are good; Jesus told the Pharisees, who it has to be said loved their rules, that where the law was used to stop good things happening that need to happen then that law needed to be challenged.

Christians are supposed to be law-abiding, tax-paying citizens. Our default position, if you like, is that we’re loyal and obedient to whatever government is in charge of our daily lives, and to whatever system of law is in place. But, as Jesus makes clear, that loyalty to the state must never be at the expense of our first and prior allegiance to God. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself.” That is the summary of the law as given by Moses, and we’re reminded of that at every communion service.

If the rules imposed by others stop us from serving God as we ought, and prevent us from loving our neighbour as we’re called to, then we should be ready to ignore such rules - to oppose them and campaign against them, for God wants better for us than that. Christians should be the first to stand up against injustice; but a combination of niceness and fear often keeps us quiet. Martin Niemoller, who as a Lutheran minister spent seven years in Nazi prison camps, wrote this: “First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.” Those words are inscribed at the Holocaust Memorial in Washington DC.

Good rules are there so we can to live together safely and well;  God gave us the Sabbath Day because he knows that folk need a rest and a change of pace in life; but he didn’t give it so that people could beat each other over the head with strictures about what you’re allowed to do and what you’re not allowed to do. If you let the Sabbath stop good things from happening, then you’ve got it wrong. And the Sabbath is certainly not there so that one group of people can lord it over another saying, “Look how wonderfully good we are, unlike you sinful lot!”

As ever when we hear what Jesus says, we’re to go and do likewise. And that means valuing and keeping the rules, because  most rules, most of the time, are good and will serve us and protect us, and the very best of them will make particular space and provision for the weak and the vulnerable. But that’s the point about rules and about ourselves as disciples: rules are there to serve us, and we are there to serve God; the Sabbath is there to serve us and not to enslave us. Get that perspective right, and we can start to live.

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