Beyond the Law

The scriptures referred to are 14:15-21.

My wife was talking on the phone to someone when she mentioned an upside to our enforced sheltering in place 24/7. “At least we know that when we both retire we won't kill each other.”

And part of that is that we both enjoy watching other people kill each other. That is, British people. We spend most evenings consuming British entertainment and they either involve a person traveling through time and space in a blue box or one of the many British detectives tracking down that small island nation's innumerable murderers. And apparently it is a requirement that every person promoted to detective be (a) psychologically damaged, (b) have a dark secret in their past, and/or (c) be willing to break the rules to catch the killer. And apparently the laws in the UK do not throw out evidence obtained through illegal searches without warrants or confessions beaten out of suspects. At least that's what one would conclude from these shows.

The cop who breaks the rules is such a cliche in cop and detective shows that I find it refreshing when they present someone who can do the job while remaining within the law, like Deputy Police Chief Brenda Johnson in The Closer. In fact she knew the law so well, she could use it to snare otherwise very clever criminals on little known points of the law.

Let's face it: in real life we don't want the police or indeed any government officials to feel free to break the law when it suits them. Rule of law is essential to a society running smoothly and justly. We do not live in a time of kings who rule by divine right and whose will is the law. The framers of our Constitution specifically set up our government to avoid that.

That said, the people who put together our Constitution did not cover every possible eventuality. They gave Congress the power to set up a postal service but didn't specifically say they must do so, nor that mail needs to be delivered to every address in the US, however remote. Yet not to do so would favor those in urban areas and really hurt those of us who live in rural areas. Imagine if people didn't receive their Social Security checks or other payments or jury summons or other governmental notices or their medicine in the mail because it was not convenient or profitable to do so. Rigid adherence to what is federally mandated and not going one step beyond would be unfair to an awful lot of the people in this country.

Applying laws to certain specific circumstances can be tricky. In general, we don't want vehicles to speed on our roads. Yet we make exceptions for police cars and emergency vehicles. But what if a passenger in your car suddenly clutches his chest and says he is in pain and can't breathe? You might feel that as a matter of life or death this justifies you going over the speed limit provided you don't endanger your passenger or other vehicles on the road. And if a cop pulled you over and judged that your passenger was indeed having a heart attack, he might tell you to follow him and give you tacit permission to break the speed limit at that time without fear of arrest. Officers do have a measure of discretion in such matters.

The Bible contains a great many laws and commandments and we are enjoined to obey them. Yet even the Bible gives examples of instances when certain moral values override the law. When on the run from King Saul and hungry, David and his men took and ate the showbread in the tabernacle which only the priests were supposed to eat. Peter and John preached about Jesus even though the authorities specifically told them not to, the two disciples saying they must obey God rather than men. Jesus routinely healed on the Sabbath, which his opponents considered a violation of the fourth commandment. To be sure, he didn't consider healing others as work, which would be prohibited, but as acts of compassion, similar to rescuing an animal in distress. It seems common sense to us but to some people all laws are equal in value and must be obeyed whatever the consequence.

Paul wrote of he and his colleagues being “servants of a new covenant, not based on the letter but on the Spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” (2 Corinthians 3:6) He is not advocating living without laws but if all laws must be observed strictly, you will fall afoul of them and thus technically be an outlaw. Have you ever gone over the speed limit when not transporting a dying friend to the ER? Have you ever failed to put on your blinker before turning? Have you ever ridden your bicycle on the wrong side of the road or failed to stop as a car must in the same situation? Have you ever downloaded music or printed copyrighted material without permission or compensating the creators? Our body of laws is so extensive that one civil rights lawyer reckons that the average person breaks 3 laws a day!

Jesus and Paul are not against following the commandments per se but are against extensions and interpretations of the commandments that get wrong the Spirit behind them. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount does give interpretations and extensions that get it right. For instance, he feels it is not enough to merely prohibit murder but we should go all the way back to the root of violence, which is being angry with others to the point of diminishing who they are: your beloved sibling in the faith or a person created in God's image. And some thought that the corollary to the command to “love your neighbor” was “hate your enemy.” But Jesus says the logical extension is to love your enemy as well. Paul is not against Jewish Christians following their laws about diet and circumcision but against them expanding them to be mandatory on Gentile Christians. That goes against the whole purpose of Jesus dying on the cross for our sins and the Spirit of the good news of God's forgiveness and grace.

It's not that laws are inherently bad and should be gotten rid of. Jesus and Paul are not advocating anarchy or lawlessness. But the law needs something else: the Spirit.

In our gospel passage Jesus, on the very night he will be betrayed, talks about both his commandments and the Spirit. Because as his disciples we need both. We cannot hope to obey his commandments without the help of the Spirit. Conversely, Jesus' commandments help us know if we are being guided by the Holy Spirit or by our own natural inclinations. Urges to hate our enemies or the enemies of Christ or to use violence against them do not come from the Spirit of God. For that matter we mustn't use the law as an excuse not to help people. Jesus, as we said, did not let the Sabbath rules keep him from healing people or the disciples from preparing themselves a meal. The law should not be used to harm people or to avoid meeting their needs.

The Spirit not only helps us obey Jesus' commands to love God and love one another properly, he helps us when we have to go beyond the actual words of the commands. How do we show such love, especially in situations not covered by scripture? For instance, I have talked about how during times of persecution, especially under the emperor Decius, Christians were required to make a sacrifice to the emperor as a god or suffer imprisonment and even death. Some Christians defied this imperial law and suffered because of it. However, some church members tried to get around it, by paying someone to impersonate them and do the sacrifice in their name, or else they just bribed officials so they could have a certificate of sacrifice as proof. Some fled the cities where the sacrifices were required. But some did do the sacrifice so as not to suffer. After the persecutions were over, some of the people who did these things wanted to return to the church. But other Christians, who had been imprisoned or tortured, or who lost family in the persecutions, were adamant that these cowards remain excommunicated.

What should the church do? On the one hand, these people had not stood up as witnesses to Christ. Some had actually renounced the faith. Jesus warned the disciples about persecution and told them that the one who persevered to the end would be saved. (Mark 13:13)

And yet forgiveness is a defining characteristic of God, of Jesus and of his followers. Peter denied Jesus at his trial and after the resurrection, Jesus reconciled with him. (John 18:17-27; 21:15-17) Jesus told the disciples to forgive someone who had wronged them 70 times 7. (Matthew 18:21-22) He also said that only blaspheming the Spirit was an unforgivable sin. (Mark 3:20-30)

So a conflict arose. Some bishops would allow those who had merely bought a certificate without actually doing the sacrifice back into the church after a period of penance, usually 40 days. Those who had done the sacrifice could be readmitted to the church only when they were at the point of death. Lapsed clergy could be readmitted but were stripped of their offices permanently. Different bishops dealt with the problem in different ways, some harsher, some more tolerant. In some places, like Egypt, Rome and North Africa, the local diocese split. Eventually the position that people could be readmitted to the church after a penitential period of anywhere from 3 to 5 years prevailed.

Essentially the conflict was between those who wanted the church to be the pure bride of Christ in the present age (Ephesians 5:25-27) and those who looked to Jesus' parable of how the Kingdom of God is like a field where weeds are growing up among the wheat and which is which will be sorted out at the last judgment. (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43) One vision was of the church as the spiritually and morally elite and the other of the church as a community that welcomes and forgives repentant sinners and helps them grow into the likeness of Christ. The latter approach won out and I think the Spirit was moving the church in that direction.

That said, I don't think that means the bishops and priests and theologians on the other side were not hearing the Spirit. We don't want to condone immorality or moral cowardice among followers of Jesus. For instance, we don't want churches to shield pedophiles. What good is a church that does not hold us to higher standards? If you have diabetes, you shouldn't go to a doctor who says, “You're fine the way you are. You don't have to stop eating certain foods or exercise or consider taking medicine that will reduce your scarily high blood sugar.” On the other hand, you wouldn't want a hospital to refuse to admit you because you are too sick and will make its statistics on the health of its patients go down. As Jesus said, it is precisely the sick who need the doctor to call on them. (Matthew 9:12)

The word used of the Holy Spirit in our passage from John is translated “advocate” but it has a lot of other meanings, like “advisor,” “counselor” and “helper.” The law, with its description of how one should behave perfectly, is like a medical text telling you what your BMI and heart rate and blood pressure and blood sugar should be. But you need more than mere words to achieve that. You need someone like a doctor or health coach to help you get there. That's what the Holy Spirit is like. Or to change the metaphor, let's say the law is like a map of Mt. Everest. That's essential if you're going to climb it but that alone won't get you to the top. For one thing no map can show you all of the challenges and obstacles you will encounter on the way. You need a guide or sherpa to help you get to the summit. That's what the Spirit is like.

Jesus wants us to obey his commandments to love God and love each other. But we can't do that on our own. So he sends us his Spirit to help and advise and guide us, even when we must go beyond the specifics mentioned in the Bible. If we listen to him and trust him, he will show us how to get through dangerous and unfamiliar terrain. And when we do fail, he is our advocate. He knows our hearts and God's heart and intercedes for us. (Romans 8:26, 27) Of course we need to admit when we are wrong or have sinned. But, unlike what some people think, including a disturbing number of Christians, God is extremely forgiving. As it says in 1 John, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9) All unrighteousness, not just some. And, yes, God wants us to be pure, but we can't purify ourselves. Only he can.

The law shows us how we should act. It doesn't give us the ability to do so. That comes from God's Spirit. And that is the freedom Paul speaks of: freedom to do the right thing even when on the surface it looks like it goes against the law. It's the freedom Jesus exercised when a strict reading of the law would have kept him from meeting basic human needs, like restoring others to health. It is the freedom to put the good of people over everything that insists it is actually more important than people.

And Jesus knew we would encounter situations that the written Word of God doesn't explicitly cover. Like today, when we find ourselves trying to figure out how during this pandemic we can both make a living and go on living, how we can feed our family and serve others without endangering either. Which is why we need to listen to someone who is wiser, who has the good of everyone in mind, whom we can trust: the Spirit of God who made us in his image, who gives us life, who produces in us love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, which no law can provide and which no good law prohibits.