Sermon at St. John’s Parish Church,
West Grimstead - Morning Worship – Sunday 12th February 2017
Deuteronomy
30:15-20; ; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37
Let the words of my mouth, and the
meditation of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord. Amen
Each and
every day we face rules and regulations governing our lives. Recently I took a flight to Madeira from
London Gatwick Airport and was confronted with dozens and dozens of rules and
regulations in order to check in. What number, size and weight of bags I could
take – either in the hold or in the cabin; what goods I could pack in those
bags; how many centelitres of liquids, what types of liquid, nothing sharp,
nothing inflammable etc. etc. I had to
tick a box to confirm that I and my travelling companions had read and
acquainted themselves with all this rules and would abide by them. That was all
on the computer before we even got to the airport. On the way to the airport we were confronted
with hundreds of road signs telling us not only the way but the speed, lanes we
could drive in, warning signs, informative signs, etc. etc. and then once in
the airport going through security more rules and regulations – put metal, belts,
shoes, coins, laptops, tablets, phones etc. in different trays, take off your
shoes, move through this lane etc. etc.
Clutching my beltless trousers tightly I eventually got through all this
to eventually join our flight to Funchal.
Now all of
those rules and regulations are important, without them our security in the air
would be comprised or there would be anarchy on our roads. Having spent some seven years training to be
a lawyer and spending most of my working life as a solicitor, I am reasonably
well acquainted with our laws and the need for them – but how much easier
everything would be if the law was much simpler and common sense.
A few years
ago I had the privilege of spending a few days in Reykjavik, the capital of
Iceland, on a legal case. During the course of my time over there I enquired as
to what was the single blue volume which the Icelandic lawyers and judge kept
referring to. My legal host looked at me incredulously and responded “The
Law” meaning that contained in that one
single book was the whole of the Icelandic law – criminal law, family law,
property law, constitutional law, contract law etc. etc. Indeed all the laws which I had studied and
had to know to pass my legal qualification examinations but by reading and
having access to literally hundreds and hundreds of text books, case reports
and Parliamentary Acts. They couldn’t believe that in England we had no such
simplified and codified legal system.
However to put it into its context the total population of Iceland is
about the same as the city of Southampton so the law, although containing
similar elements to our own, is governing far fewer people.
Yes, we live
today in a society full of rules and regulations made by official bodies – but
not content to just have those, we often indulge in making rules and regulation
for ourselves in the way we lead our lives – strangling ourselves with our own
rituals and procedures which can restrict our inner spiritual growth - and not
getting back to the basics.
Our first
reading this morning is taken from the Book of Deuteronomy and is one of the
five books of the bible which make up the Jewish Law. Together with the book of Leviticus it sets
out specific rule and regulations for the Jews to follow. Our reading comes
towards the end of Deuteronomy in which the people of Israel are reminded that
by obeying the Commandments of Yahweh, God, by loving Yahweh, your God,
observing his decrees and ordinances then the Jewish people shall live and
become numerous and God will bless the people and their land.
When Moses
came down from Mount Sinai in Exodus 20, he had two tablets with him upon which were
engraved the Ten Commandments. I dare
say that you can remember all ten easily, perhaps not in the correct order, but
certainly their content. In fact there is an easy way to remember the correct
order too which I’ll save for another day – or speak to me about it during
coffee afterwards.
These Ten
Commandments were to encapsulate the entire law and I daresay you would agree
that they cover, just like the Icelandic book of Law, almost the entire
circumstances under which law is required – property, crime, family,
constitution, contract etc. But, the
Jewish Elders and Lawyers had added innumerable ordinances and rules on top of
those simple ten rules engraved on those tablets. In the same way, in English
Law we end up with masses of Statutory Instruments and codes just to define and
clarify the larger Acts of Parliament.
As these legal instruments grow and become ever more complicated so very
often illogical and difficult rules emerge far beyond the original law. We can become slaves to our own man-made
rules and regulations and our own personal rituals and our own way of doing
things. We become trapped. Like the
Pharisees, obeying not just the Ten Commandments but each and every incredible
rule set out for example in Leviticus. It is an incredible read with some
things which today we would consider weird and whacky and positively
un-PC. We can easily lose sight of God’s
wish that we develop ourselves to be his followers and disciples and lose the
importance of the basic commandments themselves.
Throughout
Jesus’s ministry, he was constantly being put to the test by the Elders and
Pharisee and Lawyers and, as we know, frequently broke the ordinances such as
healing (working) on the Sabbath and allowing his disciples to pick the ears of
corn in the cornfield on a Sabbath. He
did this often to provoke a discussion on the futility, not of the basic law,
but of the petty and unhelpful rules which had built up around the law and
which had become, in some respect, symbols of power and control by the priests
and elders.
Jesus
illustrates this point very well in his discourse in our Gospel Reading. The
context is a continuation of the Sermon on the Mount which we have looked at
over the past couple of weeks. This
Sermon was so very important because in it Jesus is taking the prophesy of
Isaiah and the Jew’s history and law as set out in the earlier books of the Old
Testament (and we have to remember that he only had the Old Testament as his
theme to preach on – neither the gospels nor the epistles had yet been written
for obvious reasons) and he uses them in
the context of the situation as he then found it in Judea and the importance of
his ministry and later crucifixion and resurrection.
He says,
that the Commandments are very specific – you will not murder, you will not
commit adultery, you will not take the name of God in vain (swearing), and so
on. But, He says, even if you don’t go as far as committing the actual act of
murder but are angry with another person you will still be judged, and even if
you do not commit the legal definition of adultery by sleeping with another
married person yet by your mere lustful thoughts towards such a woman you will still
commit that act in the eyes of God. We
can play about with semantics, we can seek to define legally words and
terminology, but at the end of the day a simple understanding of God’s
intentions is what is required. In other
words, it is time, as John Major said in 1992,
to get “back to basics”. He
reminds his audience that the Ten Commandments came from God and we should live
by the spirit of those Commandments not simply pay lip service to them and then
feel self-righteous that we can tick the
“check-in” box.
Later on,
Jesus is asked by the lawyers “which of
the Ten Commandments is the most important?” and Jesus replies that there
are two – To love God, and to love your fellow human being as God loves
us. If we obey those two “back to
basics” laws then all the other Ordinances and Rules and Regulations and
Rituals are unnecessary because we will be living a life to a code required by
God and nothing else would be necessary.
Now I am certainly not advocating that we should break the law – as
Jesus himself said “I come not to break the law but to fulfil it” meaning that
the basics rules of life are the ones which he, as the Son of God, wants to
restore – loving God and loving our fellow Humans.
To go back
to my air travel analogy, if everybody strictly obeyed the two Commandments
which Jesus heralded as the most important, then, from a security point of view
(accidents will always happen) air travel would be safer without the need for
so many regulations.
Likewise,
God wants us to be free from our own strangling rituals and regulations. To
feel free to love and worship him and to be kind, compassionate and loving
towards our fellow humans. In the words
of Louis Armstrong “What a Wonderful World” that would be.
Amen
90/11022017
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