Rules

The scriptures referred to are Luke 13:10-17.

It's become a cliché. The protagonist is an uptight guy who always follows the rules. Then he encounters someone who encourages him to break them. When he does so, hijinks ensue and in the end he is a better person for it. It's the plot of just about every comedy from Bringing up Baby to Ferris Bueller's Day Off, as well as every romantic comedy—even, to an extent, The Sound of Music. After all, Maria gets Captain von Trapp to loosen up, doesn't she? And the nuns sing about the problem with Maria being such a free spirit. The only comedy I can remember where there are real consequences to breaking the rules was Risky Business.

Breaking rules is now something almost every hero does, because it's the only way to do the right thing. As a former paralegal and a nurse my wife and I have had to stop getting upset when TV detectives break into places without a warrant, rendering everything they find inadmissible in court, or when the hero doesn't go to the hospital when shot or knocked unconscious or just yanks out his IV and leaves to go after the bad guy, somehow not leaving a trail of blood or passing out from blood loss, because they never put pressure and a bandage on the IV insertion site. Apparently rules, whether legal or medical, are made to be broken.

The idea behind this trope is that nobody likes the rules because they either stop people from having fun or they stop people from doing what's right. But that's a pretty sweeping criticism of what keeps our civilization, or any organized group, running. The most common car accident on US-1 is a head-on collision. Does anyone really think things would go better if there were no traffic laws? Would you really want your morning commute to look like the Mad Max movie The Road Warrior?

On a more serious note, the HBO documentary series The Anarchists shows what happened when a group of people who don't believe in governments gathered for a convention in Acapulco and found themselves dealing with a murder in their community. Do they call in the police, an arm of the government? If personal freedom and free enterprise are paramount, how do you handle drug dealing, which was at the heart of the murder? If reason and self control are the only acceptable restraints on personal behavior, how do you take care of those whose untreated mental illness makes them a danger to themselves and others? The original organizer of the conference loses his family's money in a scam involving bitcoin, favored by anarchists because there's no government regulation. He later dies, refusing to go to the hospital to spare his family losing what little money they have left. One anarchist admits that their movement attracts extremely broken people, people who don't want to or can't follow rules. So can you have a community, much less a caring and healing community, if the basic attitude is “Every man for himself?” After the murder, attendance at the next conference drops by 70%. At the end of the series many of the key figures are questioning whether their ideology is actually naive and incapable of dealing with messy reality.

We need rules. Some rules are necessary for the most basic forms of organization, like having people line up to get their tickets for an event, a problem the anarchists encounter. Some rules are moral. They are there to prevent people from harming one another and even themselves. There is a saying that “You can't legislate morality.” But even secular folks would agree that some governmental laws are essentially ethical, penalizing murder, theft, and deception. What you can't do is make people moral merely by passing a law. Laws are not magical. Otherwise US-1 would be one of the safest roads in the world.

The reason why even law-abiding people sometimes question the rules is when they see them used to harm rather than protect people, or when the rules protect those who harm others. The Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850 let slave hunters go after runaways even in free states and prevented anyone from aiding the slaves or obstructing their capture. Those involved in the Underground Railroad, which helped escaped slaves make it to freedom in the North or even Canada, were breaking the law. The law harmed rather than helped.

So let's look at today's gospel. The rules of the Sabbath are laid out in Exodus 31:12-17. Basically it says that no one is to work on the Sabbath, which Jews observe from sunset Friday till sunset Saturday. Anything that can be done beforehand, like preparing meals, is to be done then rather than on the Sabbath. Rabbis eventually delineated 39 categories that were considered work, or deliberate activity. They then extended these categories to anything similar. Thus the prohibition of winnowing wheat from chaff was expanded to separating anything to render it edible, like picking bones out of a fish.

Now healing is not one of the categories of prohibited work but Pharisees back then debated whether even praying for healing on the Sabbath was allowed. Obviously the synagogue leader in today's story holds to the more strict interpretation. Or he may have been thinking of the principle of preserving a life called pikuach nefesh, Hebrew for “watching over a soul.” Judaism is not so callous as to let someone die rather than break a rule in the Torah. An Orthodox Jew is allowed to break any Biblical law, except idolatry, murder or a forbidden sexual act, if it is necessary to save a life. So, for instance, Jews who were being hidden from the Nazis by Gentiles were allowed to eat non-Kosher food if that was all that was available. Observant Jews may give first aid or drive a woman in labor to the hospital on the Sabbath. Saving a life is a higher priority than most of the 613 laws in the Torah.

However this rule is specific. The person whose life is being saved has to be an identifiable individual, not just “people in general or in the abstract.” And the situation has to be life threatening and require action to prevent possible death. And this is probably why Jesus was criticized. The woman he healed was crippled but not dying. She could after waited until after sunset Saturday.

But Jesus wasn't having it. He points out that his critics wouldn't think twice of untying their ox or donkey on the Sabbath so they can lead them to water for a drink. And untying a knot is a specifically prohibited category of work. But if they will release an animal on the Sabbath so it won't suffer thirst, how it is wrong for Jesus to free this woman from her suffering? Everyone sees the common sense in this.

This isn't the first or last time Jesus gets criticized for healing on the Sabbath. In Mark 3, Jesus sees a man with a shriveled hand in a synagogue. Before healing him, he asks, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” (Mark 3:4) Then he has the man stretch out his hand which is restored to normal. Jesus is essentially extending the principle of preserving life to restoring anyone who is sick or disabled to good health. In Matthew's version, Jesus elaborates: “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” (Matthew 12:11-12) This is a typically rabbinic form of argument, comparing something minor to something important to make a point. If it is good to help an animal in distress on the Sabbath, how much better is it to help a human being.

One Sabbath Jesus and his disciples were walking through a field of grain. His disciples picked some heads of grain, rubbed them in their hands to get and eat the kernels. This would definitely be considered winnowing and was forbidden on the Sabbath. When confronted by some Pharisees, Jesus recalls the time David and his men were fleeing from the murderous King Saul and took and ate the showbread from the tabernacle, which was reserved for priests. This was a violation of the Torah but the Pharisees didn't have a problem with David's action. Jesus concludes “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” (Mark 3:27-28)

There are 2 important principles here. First, God's laws, even the ceremonial ones, were made for our good. God's laws are not arbitrary but are expressions of his nature. He is loving, just and merciful. And that is how his laws are to be observed. Thus Jesus not only healed on the Sabbath but he healed lepers and menstruating woman and resurrected corpses, even when touching them would make him ritually unclean. (Matthew 8:2-3; Mark 5:25-34; Luke 7:11-15) He should have immediately afterwards bathed, changed clothes and kept away from people till sunset, or in the case of a dead body, he would be unclean for 7 days. (Leviticus 15:19-21; Numbers 19:11) Imagine how many fewer people Jesus would have been able to heal if he followed those rules.

Which leads us to the second principle here: As the Son of Man, Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, and of all the laws in the Torah. When Jesus called himself the Son of Man, he was, ironically, not emphasizing his humanity. He was referring to the passage in Daniel where it says, “I was watching in the night visions, 'And one like a son of man was approaching. He went up to the Ancient of Days and was escorted before him. To him was given ruling authority, honor and sovereignty. All peoples, nations, and language groups were serving him. His authority is eternal and will not pass away. His kingdom will not be destroyed.'” (Daniel 7:13-14) While the phrase “son of man” could simply mean a human being, when Jesus used it as a title for himself, people would have understood that he was identifying himself with the figure in Daniel's vision who is given sweeping authority and an eternal kingdom by God.

And a king can alter any treaty or covenant he made with a lesser power. Jesus, as God's son and the Christ or Messiah, God's Anointed king, also had the authority to make a new covenant that changed the terms of the old one.

Jesus had seen people using the letter of the law to violate the spirit of God's law. They used it to avoid helping out their aged parents by saying they were leaving their estate as a gift to God (Mark 7:10-13) They made their ritual handwashing and food laws more important than moral laws. (Mark 7:5, 18-23) Their elaborate traditional interpretations of the laws weighed down people who were trying to obey God. (Matthew 23:1-4) Nobody could follow all these laws perfectly.

Jesus emphasized the moral laws over the ritual ones and then tightened them up because mere outward observation of the law wasn't really doing God's will. Jesus said it was not enough to simply not murder someone; you were also not to let yourself get angry or insult them. (Matthew 5:21-22) It was not enough to not commit adultery with someone else; you were not to indulge in leering at them nor daydream about having sex with them. (Matthew 5:27-28) You are not to take revenge or even hate your enemies but love them and pray for them. (Matthew 5:43-44) With Jesus, technicalities don't count; the point is to become like our Father in heaven, who is just and merciful towards all. (Matthew 5:48)

And yet it didn't take long for Christians to get legalistic about what Jesus said. In the Didache, an early Christian manual, it says, “...let not your fasts be with the hypocrites, for they fast on the second and fifth day of the week. Rather fast on the fourth day and the Preparation (Friday).” When Jesus said not to fast like hypocrites, he said you were not to make yourself look awful so everyone will know you are fasting and think you are really pious. (Matthew 6:16-18) For Jesus what's going on in your spirit is essential, not external expressions, which can be faked or exaggerated.

This doesn't mean Christians are to be lawless. Paul tells us to obey the authorities. (Romans 13:1-7) Of course that was before they required everyone in the Roman Empire to acknowledge the Emperor as a living god and make a sacrifice to him. This was before the persecutions under the emperors Nero, Domitian, Decius, and Diocletian. In such cases we are to follow Peter who, when the authorities forbid the disciples to teach about Jesus, said, “We must obey God rather than people.” (Acts 5:29) But even so, Christians never attacked or tried to overthrow the government. Instead they stood up to those in power as witnesses to the gospel of Jesus and even as martyrs. Today we have rights the early Christians didn't: the right to petition the government and to vote and to worship and to speak freely. As do our fellow citizens.

Rules are important. We should not blithely ignore them. But when it comes to the rules in the Bible, we should always remember what Jesus said are the two greatest commandments: to love God and to love other people. He said all of the other commandments are dependent on them (Matthew 22:40) and no other commandment is greater than them. (Mark 12:31) There is a hierarchy of moral principles and the 2 greatest commandments top all the others. God did not intend us to use his words as weapons or as an excuse to abuse or neglect others. When we use them to harm people rather than to help or to heal them, we are guilty of misusing the name of the God who is love.

Navigating this corrupt world is difficult. Rules help but they are not perfect. We are going to be faced with real moral dilemmas, situations where 2 moral values seem to clash with one another. Which is why Jesus gave his disciples the Holy Spirit with the ability to make things binding or to loosen things up as necessary. (Matthew 18:18; John 20:22-23) Rigidity in following rules and not making allowances for people when encountering extraordinary or unanticipated circumstances, is neither useful or merciful. Even cops can break the traffic laws if they are trying to save someone. And we pull over and let them pass.

So a good rule of thumb is: You should usually follow the rules. But when in doubt, do the most loving thing. Jesus did.