Calvary Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee
August 31, 2003
The Twelth Sunday After Pentecost

Law, Love, and Our Life Together
The Rev. Canon William A. Kolb

Gospel:Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
(This sermon is also available in audio)

According to St. Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus said, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Yes, Jesus came to fulfill the law--with love.

This is one of St. Paul’s consistent themes: law and love--the challenge of choosing between a life in which law rules, or choosing a life in which love rules. By “law” we can mean anything from the Ten Commandments to the first five books of the Bible--rules, regulations, guidelines to keep society civilized. If love is the central goal of the Gospel, on the other hand, that makes law secondary…important but secondary.

St. Paul gives us some guidance in his letter to the Romans, when he says, “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.” Or, again in Romans: “Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” And in Galatians: “The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Paul is saying that if we live and act in accord with love for others, we will automatically be in accord with the Law. Freed from externally-imposed law, we can fly free, because we are guided, directed by God’s love acting within us and through us. But Paul also says that we need law as long as we remain capable of wanting to be our own god. Humanity has not yet come so far that the earth is a perfect reflection of God.

I believe the answer is a balance--a balance between love and law. (The seed thought for this comes from Psalm 89, where we hear the Psalmist address God: “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; love and faithfulness go before you.”) One without the other presents a problem because justice (law) without love (mercy) can easily be cruelty; and mercy (love) without law (justice) can easily be sentimentality and nothing more.

There are those, probably in the majority among Christians in America, who believe that to be “good Christians,” we have to obey the rules. This applies especially to rules about sensitive things, like sex. That said, this question arises: Are the two decisions by General Convention right or wrong, moral or immoral? People of sincere faith and conviction come down with different answers to that question. I believe it is critical for the spiritual health of every parish in the Episcopal Church today, for us to work, each one of us, within our own mind, heart and soul to realize that those who disagree with our answer to this question, are just as “good Christians” as we hope we are. But the question of right and wrong is not my point or even my subject.

No, the question I am asking this morning is a different question. It is this:
Is the main purpose of the Church to follow the rules, with love as a factor helping us toward that purpose, or is the main purpose of the Church to make us more loving, with rules as a factor helping us toward that purpose? Another way to put that question is: What kind of leaven are we primarily called to be in society? Is the Christian Church here to keep order or to spread love?

Now there are those who want all love, no matter what it does to the Church. A good example of this group was the “Love Children’s Movement” that sprang up in the Sixties in this country. And there are those who do not want the law to be softened by love no matter what that does to the Church. An example of that were the many, many churches in Germany who got on board the Nazi bandwagon. If we are to have a balance of rules and mercy, of law and love, neither of those two kinds of groups can help, and they obviously can hurt.

When I was a freshman at the University of Florida I took a survey course about religion. As I studied Moses, it seemed to me thus: here was a man trying to get a lot of people from point A to point B, from Egypt to Israel, from slavery to the Promised Land. He has encountered among his people some destabilizing behavior. In fact, Biblical experts tell us that where the Bible says that the people were worshiping a golden calf, what that means is that they were having sex orgies. And so Moses went up the mountain and waited for God to help him get these people to the Promised Land without a societal breakdown. And then Moses came down the mountain with the tablets, the Ten Commandments. But when I was 19, I figured Moses wrote these rules himself, in order to control the society he was leading. When I was older and very involved in the life of the Church, I came to believe that God can do anything, including inspiring Moses as he composed these guidelines for wise living. But what still bothers me is the way this religious leader used God’s Word to get the people to behave in ways that would help him achieve his social goals.

Can we deny that the Church and Christianity itself has always been used to mold social patterns, to keep society from getting out of control? I believe that the Church has been used, among other things, to regulate and control society so that there will be law and order, so that there will be civil behavior throughout the world.

Now that is important and necessary, but I don’t think Jesus actually had that in mind as our number one priority when he said, “Follow me,” and “Feed my sheep.” What Jesus had in mind, as a matter of fact, was to make the law a living servant of love. Living, like "living water" that sometimes moves and changes.

Jesus came because God’s wisdom had been organized, categorized, indexed and locked in, as though every rule and every regulation that was right in that age, was right for every generation, forever. Now I tend to be more conservative than I was years ago (I have German blood in me and I like order and predictability), but I find that kind of “autopilot” law a stranglehold. One of the grace-filled gifts of Jesus Christ is our empowerment to trust him enough to be open to his word, rather than being totally opposed to any new understanding of God’s Word.

Law is important, rules are important, but what makes Christians distinctive, when we are able to do it, is to be loving even when we are not liking. An ancient Roman official was said to have said, after having observed early Christians and their ways, “Look at those Christians, see how they love each other!” It was St. Paul in Corinthians who said that love was the greatest, even above faith and hope.

This current controversy is a real test of all that. Jesus says, “Even pagans love those who love them.” He might have said, “Even pagans love those who agree with them about important things.” It is easy to allow disagreement about things that don’t strike at our deepest feelings. In this time, we are challenged as a denomination to show forth to the world a bond in Christ that overcomes differences about things that really matter to us. I did not say that that bond erases the differences or silences us. I am saying that we have the opportunity here to lift up a love that transcends what we can do ourselves, and therefore makes God’s involvement obvious to all who care to look.

We are called to love each other enough to make room for disagreement. We are called to make the Episcopal Church U.S.A., such a big tent that all may be under it in love; responsible through study, prayer and public worship and free to follow God where we believe God is leading each of us.

Episcopalians are known for our love of reason, for being a community that blesses openly questioning whatever we think doesn’t come from God. We are a denomination that has a better chance than most of being able to “speak the truth,” as we see it, “in love,” and to continue as one community of faith. We Episcopalians are being given the chance to build on the foundation of our Anglican traditions. Those include civil discourse and the sincere and full inclusion of those who don’t see things our way.

In the language of the Chinese, a wise and ancient people, the word for crisis and the word for opportunity are the same word. We are at a critical juncture in our history. And we have a great opportunity. We are called to rise above our “us-them” human inclinations, and to focus our greatest spiritual energy on deepening our commitment, and our “thoughts, words and deeds” on truly being that people “who love each other.”

Amen.

Copyright 2003 Calvary Episcopal Church

Gospel: Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, 2 they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. 3 (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the
tradition of the elders; 4 and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) 5 So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, "Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?" 6 He said to them, "Isaiah prophesied rightly
about you hypocrites, as it is written, 'This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me; 7 in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.' 8 You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition."...14 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand: 15 there is nothing outside a person that
by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile."...21 For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, 22 adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person." NRSV

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