Cyrus, Caesar, and Christ

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 45:1-7, Psalm 96:1-13 and Matthew 22:15-22.

Cyrus the Great was a Persian ruler who not only overthrew his grandfather and father but went on to conquer the Babylonian empire in October of 539 BC. The people greeted him as a liberator. One of the first things he did was issue an edict that let peoples conquered by the Babylonians return to their homelands. He also let them restore their places of worship. This included the Jews, who had gone into exile in Babylon in 586 BC. It's no wonder he is mentioned favorably in several places in the Old Testament, specifically in 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Daniel and Isaiah. In today's passage from Isaiah, God calls Cyrus his anointed. This is not because Cyrus worshiped the God of Israel. We know from the Cyrus Cylinder, which recorded this decree and was discovered in 1879, that he was devoted to the god Marduk. Cyrus was simply used by God to let his people return to Judea and rebuild their temple, just as Cyrus let other peoples go home and rebuild their pagan worship spaces. He didn't privilege one religious group over another.

Nevertheless, in this passage God is letting Cyrus know that he is in fact the only God. He is ultimately in control. “I form light and create darkness; I make peace and I create disaster; I the Lord do all these things.” (My translation) Think of God as a chess grandmaster. We are free to make whatever moves we choose but he always has a countermove and a strategy. In the end he will be victorious. We can either try to work against him or work with him.

And each of us has gifts and talents which we can use for him or against him. Some people have gifts that enable them to become leaders in government. Some have gifts that enable them to become religious leaders. And those are two different roles. Even in ancient Israel, there was the king and there was the priesthood. And there were the prophets as well. The king was expected to set the tone of reverence for God and care for God's people. But he was not a priest. He may on occasion prophesy. But he was not a prophet. (1 Samuel 10:9-13)

Remember that Israel having a king was not God's original plan. (1 Samuel 8) He permits Israel to have one but warns them of the dangers of giving one man so much power. God is his people's king, as it says in today's psalm. Any earthly ruler operates under God and is accountable to him. When David committed adultery with the wife of his soldier Uriah and then had her husband killed in battle to cover up Bathsheba's pregnancy, Nathan the prophet confronted the king about his sin. (2 Samuel 11 & 12) Confronting and correcting the king is part of the prophet's job. And David's sin has real consequences. He has problems in his family. Because he has shed so much blood, David cannot build God's temple. (1 Chronicles 28:3) Being a king, and even one after God's heart, does not give him carte blanche to act however he wants to. (1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22) He is expected not only to enforce but also to personally obey God's laws. (Deuteronomy 17:18-20)

It was common for kings to be seen as God's representative on earth and many kings even declared themselves to be descendants of a god. Peoples in the eastern half of the Roman empire often worshiped the genius, or protective divine spirit, of the emperor. After the emperors died, they could be declared to be gods by a vote of the Roman Senate. Yet Caligula liked to dress up as one of the gods. The Senate did propose dedicating a temple to Nero as a living God. Domitian was called “master and god” in imperial documents. The temptation for a leader to see himself as a god is an old one.

Tiberius, the emperor during the time of Jesus, was a reluctant emperor and only allowed one temple to be dedicated to himself and the Senate in Smyrna. He was not deified after his death. It would have been his face on the coin shown to Jesus during the incident reported in today's gospel.

The setting of this controversy is important. Jesus is teaching in the temple. His critics are trying to trip him up and get him to say something that will get him into trouble. Their question about whether it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar is a trap. The taxes paid to the Romans who occupied what used to be an independent Jewish nation were not popular. Jesus would lose the crowd if he said paying them was lawful. If, however, he said it was not lawful to pay those taxes, he would be uttering treason in the eyes of the Romans. And the Antonia fortress, housing the Roman garrison in Jerusalem, overlooked the temple. Everyone was really interested in what Jesus would say.

Jesus knows this is a trap. He asks to see the coin with which the tax was paid. They bring him a denarius. And this shows that they were in fact hypocrites. They shouldn't have had this coin on them. The whole reason that moneychangers were allowed in the temple was because Roman coins had graven images on them. Tiberius' face was on one side of the coin and his mother Livia, portrayed as a goddess, was on the other. The inscription identified him as the “son of the divine Augustus” and the “chief priest.” They were idolatrous. In order to make donations to the temple or to pay the temple tax you had to change these coins for local shekels.

So they give him a coin that should not be on the temple grounds. Jesus looks at it and asks “Whose head is this and whose title?” Nobody repeats the blasphemous title but his critics simply say, “Caesar's.” So Jesus replies, “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's.”

It's not just a clever way to avoid their trap but a profound statement of our relationship to human government and to God's kingship. Caesar, through the Roman government, issues the coins. His image on them tells us to whom they ultimately belong. Also money relies on trust and thus makes a large economy possible. Money that is issued by a stable government and which keeps its value lets people trust their financial transactions. So Jesus is saying that government has a valid role in civilization. But human government is not the only thing that matters.

Money may have images of humans on it, but humans also bear an image. We are all created in the image of God. (Genesis 1:27) Just as the image of Caesar says that a coin has a value, so too the image of God in us says that humans have an inherent value. That's why God tells Noah that shedding the blood of humans is serious. (Genesis 9:6) It is a desecration of God's image and murder is symbolic deicide. Jesus reaffirms that connection between humans and God when he says that whatever we do to others, especially those who are hungry, thirsty, under-clothed, sick, imprisoned or resident aliens, we do to Jesus. (Matthew 25: 31-44) Jesus is God Incarnate and in him we see most clearly the unblemished image of God. (Hebrews 1:3; Colossians 1:15; John 14:9)

So Jesus is saying that money and other things can belong to human government but that people belong to God. As C.S. Lewis said, next to the elements of communion, the most holy physical thing you can encounter in this life is your fellow human being. And just as it is against the law to mutilate, cut, deface, disfigure or perforate money with the intent to destroy it, make it unfit to circulate or to commit fraud, it is against God's law to intentionally mutilate, injure or otherwise harm another human being to take them out of circulation.

Notice too that Jesus refers to the things that are Caesar's and to the things that are God's. The things of Caesar are the lawful instruments of government: taxes, political offices and functions, government agencies, the police, and the military. What, besides humans, are the things that belong to God? That would include the instruments that he uses: churches and church organizations, the freedom to gather and worship him, and the freedom to spread his word and do the good works to which he calls us.

One reason James Madison included the separation of church and state in the first amendment to our Constitution to keep religion from being an arm of the government, as it was in Britain and Europe at that time. Just like ancient kings and emperors claimed to be divine, governments love to say that their policies and laws are divinely approved. That makes it seem sinful to criticize or disagree with them. It allows them to paint their perceived enemies as enemies of God. That's why it is not only wrong but dangerous to claim that the US is a Christian nation and should be run only by Christians. Just which Christian denomination would that be? A mainstream one or one that has a lot of doctrines and practices that are specific to their version? What if some group like the Westboro Baptist Church took over the government? To prevent that, the first amendment of the Bill of Rights says the government cannot establish or prohibit a religion.

Jesus clearly limits the authority of human governments. And he did so at a time when nobody could elect their government leaders and nobody could tell the king or emperor that certain things were off limits to him. We live in a different situation these days. Yet there are those who wish to end democracy and do away with elections and have said so publicly. There are rich individuals who want to use their power to make the government do what they want, like cut their taxes, give them contracts and do away with any regulations that will hold them accountable. There are elected politicians who want to end the process which would allow anyone else to be elected.

A leader who had godlike power that no one else could limit was a feature of the world Jesus and the early church inhabited. When told to stop proclaiming the good news of Jesus, the apostles said to the authorities, “We must obey God and not men.” (Acts 5:27-29) I hope it doesn't come to that today.

Ultimately the imperial cult of the Roman empire could not shut up the church or stamp out the gospel. Christianity was an illegal religion for the first 300 years of its existence. In that time, it grew from a handful of people to 6 million, or 10% of the population of the empire. That was enough for Constantine to make it legal in 313 AD. I just wish that the emperor Theodosius 1 had not made it the official religion of the empire in the year 380. That wed the church, the bride of Christ, to the state. That made the things of God the things of Caesar as well. And it recast the things of Caesar as the things of God. Mixing these two not only dilutes the appeal of the gospel—think of all those beautiful empty churches in Europe that used to be state churches—but it also corrupts the church. When Caesar took over the authority of God, that was when it became acceptable to force people to convert rather than to persuade them. That was when it became acceptable to hate rather than love our enemies. That was when it became acceptable to injure, harm and even kill people in the name of Christ, thinking that the mere existence of non-Christians was somehow a dire threat to the church.

It makes you wonder if those who think that way really believe that God is in control. Do they really believe Jesus when he said that the gates of hell could not prevail against his church? (Matthew 16:18) Do they trust in the power of Christ or do they actually trust in the power of Caesar? Fortunately, in our day and age we can decide to keep the things that belong to God out of the hands of Caesar. 

Signs of Life

 The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 25:1-9, Philippians 4:1-9 and Matthew 22:1-14.

During my 40 years of nursing I have taken care of hundreds of patients. Most lived and got better, a few died. And after a while, you develop the ability to instantly, upon walking into a room, tell if a patient lying in bed is either sleeping or has passed away. I think it is the absolute stillness of a body that not only is no longer breathing but which is without any movement whatsoever. And I just learned that video can detect a heartbeat by picking up on tiny color changes in the face that occur when blood pulses under the skin. Supposedly it is so subtle that people can't see it but computers can, which helps them distinguish between deep fakes created by AI and videos of real people. However, I wonder if a nurse or a doctor can also sense it, albeit unconsciously.

Most deaths that I have witnessed, or come upon just after it happened, are peaceful. That and my own near fatal car crash, in which I passed out because of a collapsed lung and woke up later out of a coma, have left me unafraid of death. Mind you, there are certain ways I would not like to die. But death itself does not hold terror for me. If given a death sentence at my age, I would more likely experience regret over things I would never live to see, like my grand kids growing up, or ever seeing my great grandchildren. I am glad that my father got to see his great grandchild a month before his death.

And that is the real sting of death: losing loved ones. Death is the ultimate separation. If a friend or relative moves away, you can still see them, either through a visit or by video call. But once a person has died, that is the last time we will see and talk to them. I wonder if it's really hard for the relatives and friends of celebrities who've died to see pictures and movies of their loved ones everywhere. Robin Williams' daughter has asked that people stop making AI videos of him. Can you imagine how creepy that would be? And yet there are companies who are trying to sell people on the idea of having an AI version of a deceased person made that can, through audio and video sampling, interact with those they left behind. To me, that is the ultimate denial of the reality of death.

Yet the belief in a life after this one is a persistent feature of human psychology. More than 100,000 years ago, in the Qafzeh cave in lower Galilee, not far from Nazareth, humans were buried with grave goods, like tools, that seem to indicate belief in an afterlife. I think it is safe to say that we are the only animals who not only know that we will die but who also envision that death is not the absolute end of our existence.

In our reading from Isaiah, the prophet is praising God for all the wonderful things he does, like protecting them from their enemies and offering a refuge for the poor and needy. And then he moves on to an even bigger concern: death. After talking about a great feast that God will prepare for all peoples on Mt. Zion, he says God will destroy “the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the covering that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever.”

This passage is interesting for 2 reasons. First, there is the connection of a banquet with death. Throughout most of the Hebrew Bible, Sheol is where all the dead go and it is a gloomy place of dust, decay and darkness. There is no praise and indeed no thought or speech. (Psalms 30:9; 94:17; Ecclesiastes 9:10) There is no rejoicing or banqueting. But here we see the Lord setting out a fine banquet that is to be shared with all people.

Secondly, at this banquet where people are feasting, God “will swallow up death forever.” And this is in contrast to an earlier passage in Isaiah where we are told of God's impending judgment on his people who take from the poor, oppress them and grind them down. (Isaiah 3:14-15) In response God says, “So Death will open up its throat, and open wide its mouth; Zion's dignitaries and masses will descend into it, including those who revel and celebrate within her.” (Isaiah 5:14) Those who were partying when they should have been helping the poor will be swallowed up by death. It is possible that Isaiah was calling up a picture of the Canaanite god Mot, who was the personification of death and swallowed up people when they died. But in today's passage, God reverses that. He swallows up death. The enemy of all peoples will be no more. And we are told, “Then the Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces...” This is echoed in Revelation where we read, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will not exist any more—or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the former things have ceased to exist.” (Revelation 21:4)

The God of the Bible is the God of life. He created life and everything that goes with it, like food and drink and joy. Death is the negation of all of that. It's like how a black hole sucks in everything around it and lets nothing out, not even light. God is the opposite. He is the source of all that is good. Which is why good things tend to be found together. For instance, where there is genuine love, you also find compassion, justice and mercy.

In our passage from Philippians, Paul tells us to focus our minds on a group of good things. We are to think about whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, anything that is excellent, and anything worthy of praise. These things go together, because they are signs of moral and spiritual health. Their opposites are also often found together: things that are false, dishonorable, unjust, sinful, disagreeable, not recommended, substandard and worthy of scorn. They are symptoms of things that are morally and spiritually unhealthy. Left untreated, they will eventually lead to death.

In today's Gospel reading, Jesus tells a parable about another banquet. The setup is that a king is giving a wedding feast for his son. We are told, “He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited...” In other words, these are people who have already received and accepted invitations. The king is now sending word that the food is ready. “My oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered.” This is a lavish feast. One fattened calf could feed a village. He doesn't want the food to spoil. But now the people who had previously accepted the invitations are too busy to come. This would be a grave insult, especially to a king. Still he sends out messengers to get people to come as they had agreed to. When some of the invitees actually mistreat and kill some of his slaves, they receive a punishment they should have expected. So then he sends his slaves out to invite anyone, good or bad, to the banquet. In the parallel passage in Luke, they are told to bring in “the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.” (Luke 14:21) The king wants the wedding hall filled with anyone who accepts his invitation.

In Matthew's version, the king “noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe.” When he asks the man how he got in without proper attire, the man doesn't answer. And we think, “That's weird. The king has invited people from the streets. How could this man have gotten a wedding robe at such short notice?” But the king would know this and since it would be an insult to appear with dirty work clothes, some commentators posit that the king provided wedding garments for the guests. For this man then to refuse the garment provided would be an insult. And he knows this because he can't even come up with an excuse. So he is ejected from the wedding banquet.

Garments often represent righteousness in the New Testament. (Galatians 3:27; Revelation 7:13-14) In Revelation, the bride of the Lamb of God, that is, the church, makes herself ready. We read, “Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear. (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of God's holy people.)” (Revelation 19:8) Since the fine linen was given, the righteous deeds were also given by God acting through his people. And we do see folks who supposedly accept God's invitation to enter his kingdom but who do not avail themselves of the righteousness he provides through Jesus. That healing of our sinful self comes through his Spirit, whom we receive when we accept Jesus, especially at baptism. As Peter says at Pentecost, “Repent, and each one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:38) Having the Spirit is an essential part of following Jesus. Paul says “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. Now if someone does not have the Spirit of Christ, this person does not belong to him.” (Romans 8:9) Even for those who have the Spirit, it is possible to not respond to the Spirit because Paul also admonishes us not to quench or extinguish the Spirit. (1 Thessalonians 5:19) And the vital signs that we are in the Spirit and that the Spirit is in us is that we produce the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23)

This parable is about accepting or refusing God's invitation to become part of his kingdom. The people who previously said they would come didn't. So God extends his invitation to everyone. Some who say they accept it refuse to do what goes along with accepting Jesus. Once a man who claimed he was a Christian actually told me that to say he should change his lifestyle and turn from his sins was legalistic because we are saved through faith and not by works. True, but in that same passage he was quoting Paul says, “For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; it is not from works so that no one can boast. For we are his workmanship, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we may do them.” (Ephesians 2:8-10) We are not saved by works but we are saved for them. When I had my accident, I wasn't made better by walking; I was made better by trusting the surgeon to cut me open and put me back together. But he did that so that I could walk. If, as I've seen patients with hip or knee replacements do, I refused to do my physical therapy, I wouldn't walk again and the surgeon would have fixed my legs for nothing. Being able to walk was a sign of my recovery, that I was getting better, that I was reclaiming my life.

God is the source of life and of all good things. And Jesus illustrates this by depicting the kingdom of God as a banquet with lots of good food. It is a joyous celebration of the wedding of Jesus, the Lamb of God, and his bride, the church. And as we see in Isaiah, it is also a celebration of the end of death. God's eternal life will swallow up death. God will live with us and wipe away all our tears. Death need not spell our permanent separation from God or our loved ones. We need only to accept God's invitation, gratefully receive the righteousness given us by Jesus, and let his Spirit work through us to make us better people, people who are not out of place at his banquet, who can't wait to celebrate being with God and enjoying all the good things he has in store for us.

It's the Law

The scriptures referred to are Exodus 10:1-4, 7-9,12-20 and Matthew 21:33-46.

In the Hippocratic oath that doctors take, there is the statement, “First, do no harm.” The oath nurses take, named in honor of Florence Nightingale, has a similar but lengthier statement that we will abstain from “whatever is deleterious and mischievous, and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug.” It's kind of obvious that we in the healing arts should not do anything that causes harm. It's a good basic rule for morality and ethics as well. For instance, while the Golden Rule is pretty much universal, it is most often stated negatively; that is, don't do to others what you wouldn't want done to yourself. That is the low bar that we expect everyone to understand and live by. If you can't help someone, at least don't make things worse for them.

It may sound odd, but the Ten Commandments we have read in today's passage from Exodus could be seen as the least you can do morally. Just don't do these things that either harm other people or that harm your relationship with God. All but 2 of them are negative: don't worship other gods, don't make idols, don't misuse God's name, don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't lie about your neighbor, don't crave what belongs to your neighbor. The commandment about the Sabbath is both positive and negative: keep the Sabbath holy which means don't work on that day. The commandment about parents is purely positive and the only one that comes with a promise: honor your father and mother so that you will live a long time in the land God is giving you.

Though they are mostly negative, there are positive principles behind them. William Barclay said, “The whole of the Ten Commandments are based on two great principles. They are based on reverence, reverence for God, for God's name, for God's day, for the parents God has given us. They are based on respect, respect for a man's life, for his possessions, for his personality, for his good name, for oneself.” This last one is because if you do right by God and by other people you can respect yourself as a good person.

Another way to look at them is that there are 5 principles underlying the ten. They are about recognizing and respecting the existence of others, ie, God and humans. They are about being faithful in your relationships with God and other people. They are about preserving your personal integrity. They are about preserving the integrity of society and its institutions. And they are about acknowledging and honoring the rights of others.

And you may diagram the commandments as a cross. The vertical axis is about our relationships with our creators, God and our parents, and the horizontal axis is about our relationships with our peers, the other humans we live and interact with. And we can see this in how Jesus summarized the commandments. When asked which of the 613 commandments found in the Torah, the 5 books of Moses, was the greatest, Jesus answered with not one but two. “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40) The first commandment he quotes comes from Deuteronomy 6:5 and is part of the Shema, the Jewish confession of faith which is recited by observant Jews daily and in the synagogue service every Sabbath. The second commandment is from Leviticus 19:18, a chapter that restates most of the Ten Commandments and also expands what they mean in practical ways.

C.S. Lewis compared the 3 parts of morality to an orchestra. He said personal morality is like the need to take care of your own instrument. That's why before a performance you hear the musicians making sure their instruments are working properly and are in tune. Social morality is like the way you need to harmonize with the other musicians and their instruments, keeping the right beat, coming in at the right time and not playing when it's not your part. Religious morality is like how everyone should be following the conductor and playing the same piece of music he is conducting. If he's conducting Beethoven's Ninth, you don't want to be playing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” So too as Christians we want to make sure that we are in good shape morally, that we are doing our part in our community and that we are all on the same page in doing the right thing.

And you can't get away with skipping any one of the 3 parts of morality. Self-discipline is important but by itself it's not enough. After all, Hitler didn't drink or smoke or eat meat. That didn't make him a good moral example. For that matter, the Nazis put a high value on working together harmoniously and having respect for authority. But the authority they obeyed and the goal for which they were working were evil. They did not see all human beings as equal and created in the image of God. Some people were vermin, they said. So they not only persecuted and killed Jews but also Slavic people, black people, the Roma (who used to be called Gypsies), mentally and physically disabled men, women and children, gays, Jehovah's Witnesses, political opponents, prisoners of war, and Christian clergy who spoke out against what they were doing. And since all of that obviously went against what the Bible says, they edited God's word in order to maintain the fiction that Nazism and Christianity could somehow go together. Sadly, a lot of churchgoers were fine with that.

The reason we need to have moral laws spelled out is because you can find a lot of people who will go along with the Nazis and other groups that say that some people are inherently inferior to others and do not deserve the same rights. But laws cannot make people do what is right, anymore than the food pyramid can make people eat right or road signs can make people observe the speed limit. Teaching people what is right and wrong may be necessary for society but it is not sufficient to make people good. One of the recurrent themes of the Old Testament is that while God gave his people his law, they kept ignoring it and doing whatever they wanted. They worshiped other gods and denied the poor, the needy, the widows, orphans and resident aliens their rights. (Malachi 3:5) And because they turned away from God and his just laws, he turned away from them.

But he never gave up on them. That's the part of Jesus' parable in today's Gospel that we often overlook. The owner of the vineyard keeps sending his slaves to the tenants to collect what is owed him, even after previous slaves were beaten and killed. Still he remains patient with the tenants, offering them many opportunities to do what is right. And despite the fact that they don't, the landowner nevertheless decides to send his son, hoping they will respect him. When their fate befalls them, they cannot say that he was unfair.

This is that rare parable that is a complete allegory where everything stands for someone. The landowner is God, the tenants are the religious leaders, the son is Jesus and the vineyard is Israel. Jesus was probably thinking of chapter 5 of Isaiah. Isaiah says, “Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard.” He tells how the owner of the vineyard prepared it with loving care and yet it yields bad grapes. So he stops taking care of it and lets it become “overgrown with briers and thorns.” This passage ends by saying, “For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard cries of distress.” (Isaiah 5:1-7) Trying to reproduce the wordplay of the original Hebrew, the Jewish Publication Society's Tanakh translation renders this last part “And He hoped for justice, but behold, injustice; for equity, but behold, iniquity!”

Jesus' parable reminds us of his lament over the city where God's temple stood. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often have I longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” (Luke 13:34-35)

A society that tolerates and even condones bloodshed and injustice cannot be surprised when bloodshed and injustice increase. As Paul says, a person will reap what he sows. (Galatians 6:7) If we plant the seeds of disdain for others and indifference to their suffering, we will see those things spread like weeds and choke off the good things we wish to enjoy for ourselves. If we sow the seeds of reverence for a just and loving God and respect for all people and their rights, we will see the fruits of a good and fair society.

As we said, however, just having these laws and commandments will not automatically make people good and fair. After all, we have seen so-called Christians turn a blind eye to the principles underlying God's laws and a deaf ear to Christ's commandments to love God and other people, just as we have seen our own countrymen routinely ignore the principles of equality and justice enshrined in our constitution.

We've all heard of how superficial observance of the letter of the law can violate the spirit of the law. In Jesus' parable of the good Samaritan, the priest and the Levite who pass by the man beaten and left for dead could justify their inaction by appealing to the Jewish version of the Golden Rule, that is, to not treat people the way you would not like to be treated. They didn't beat him further or rob him. The Samaritan, however, acts according to Jesus' positive version. He treated the man the way he as a fellow human being would want to be treated. The man needed first aid and help, which the Samaritan goes out of this way to provide. Similarly religious leaders felt Jesus was violating the letter of the Sabbath prohibition on working when he healed people on that day. Jesus pointed out that his critics would not hesitate to rescue one of their animals if they fell in a hole, even on the Sabbath, (Matthew 12:11-12) Jesus also pointed out that he was doing good, which God's law was never meant to prohibit. (Mark 3:4) “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,” Jesus said. (Mark 2:27) Laws are meant to make life better for people; when a strict observance of the law is harming people or letting them be harmed, that goes against the spirit of the law.

And we cannot fulfill God's law without the proper spirit; in this case, the literal Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit filled and enabled Jesus to do his mission. (Luke 4:14, 18-19) In the same way, Jesus promised the Spirit to his followers. On the night before he was arrested and executed, he said, “If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father and he will give you another Helper to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him or knows him. But you know him for he lives with you and will be in you.” (John 14:15-17)

The Spirit enables us to keep God's laws. As God says to his people in the book of Ezekiel, “I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you; I will take the initiative and you will obey my statutes and carefully observe my regulations.” (Ezekiel 36:26-27)

After my accident and my surgeries, I needed to learn to walk again. It's harder than you think because you normally do it without thinking. I needed physical therapists to help me learn how to walk, how to transfer from my wheelchair to my bed or to the toilet. Their goal was to train me to the point where I would no longer need to think about these techniques because they would become a part of me. And they were there for me as I learned to stand and to walk. One had a gait belt around my waist, to make sure I didn't fall. Another pushed my wheelchair behind me in case I suddenly lost strength and needed to sit down. They were my support as I learned and did what was required for me to get better.

Think of the Spirit as our physical therapist, teaching and helping us walk with God. The Spirit teaches us, reminding us what Jesus, the living Word of God, has taught us. The Spirit leads us to the truth. (John 16:13-15) The Spirit also gives us encouragement and support. In fact the Greek word Jesus uses in John's Gospel, parakletos, means helper, counselor, advocate and encourager. That's why different translations use different words for the Spirit in this passage. No one English word encompasses all the Spirit does for us.

Good rules and good laws are good for us. Like all good things, they can be misused. And bad laws can allow or even call for people to be harmed, such as the laws the Nazis passed or the Runaway Slave Act passed before our Civil War that required people to turn in runaway slaves, contrary to what the Bible says. (Deuteronomy 23:15-16) That is why we need to be sensitive to the Spirit of God, the Spirit who filled and enabled Jesus. As Paul said, “For the whole law can be summed up in a single commandment, namely, 'You must love your neighbor as yourself.'” (Galatians 5:14) In the same chapter he says, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23) If we live the law of love, and produce the fruit of the Spirit, we know that we are truly following Jesus.