New Rules

The scriptures referred to are Exodus 34:29-35 and 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2.

Somewhere there is probably a commentary on the Revised Common Lectionary written by someone on the committee that compiled it. And I hope that somewhere it explains the quizzical way they picked the beginnings and endings of the passages we read each week. Context is important in understanding anything and especially when trying to understand the Bible. So I wonder why sometimes the readings don't start one verse earlier or end one verse later in instances where it would greatly help us know what we are discussing. Otherwise it is the job of the preacher to spend a chunk of his or her sermon reading aloud as well as explicating the verses not included.

In our New Testament lesson we are plunked into the midst of Paul's comparison of the old and new covenants. Were I the editor of the lectionary I would have included most if not all of the paragraph preceding our reading in 2 Corinthians. Paul is referring to our passage in Exodus about how Moses' face glowed after he talked to the Lord and how it unnerved the people of Israel. The point he is making is that even so, the glory accompanying the giving of the old covenant eventually faded. And so he says in verse 11: “And if what was transitory came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!”

That is the hope to which he points in verse 12—the glorious and everlasting nature of the new covenant. Unlike the old one it is not going away. The Jews already had to accommodate the fact that parts of the old covenant could become irrelevant. When they were taken into exile in Babylon, the many parts of the Law that dealt with the temple and the priesthood were inactive because the temple had been destroyed. That led to rabbinic Judaism, and the religion came to focus on the Torah and obeying the rest of the Law. That's the form of Judaism we have today, because there is no temple and thus no sacrificial system. In Jesus' day the temple was back in action but the parts of the Law dealing with the king were invalid because there was no Jewish king, just a Gentile emperor.

Not only did parts of the Law become inapplicable because of things that no longer exist, but provisions had to be made to deal with stuff which had come into being since Moses presented the Law. So the scribes and Pharisees formulated what came to be called the Oral Law. These were ways in which the Mosaic Law was extended and adapted to things not covered by it. And it came to be considered as binding as the Written Law. For instance, one could not work on the Sabbath but what constituted work? The rabbis eventually came up with 39 categories of work. Was tearing a piece of paper work? Yes, because it is too close to cutting something to a shape. What about separating good fruit from bad? Yes, because it is a form of winnowing, selecting and sifting. Today rabbinic law forbids flipping a light switch on the Sabbath because it is essentially kindling a fire. And you can't even touch electronics on the Sabbath. As culture changes and technology develops so have the prohibitions. The Oral Law is a tacit admission that parts of the Mosaic Law would otherwise have become outdated.

Now some of these are considered hedges around the Torah, rules that stop you at a point so early that you won't even get close to violating the actual commandment. It's like an alcoholic deciding to not even go to restaurants with bars, so to avoid temptation. Still in some cases these hedges around the Torah smack of putting a safety fence a good mile from the lip of the Grand Canyon just to make sure no tourist falls in.

Rabbis even designate some of the commandments as chukim, decrees that are observed even though there is no obvious explanation for them. This would include the prohibition against making clothing that mixed linen and wool or against boiling a kid in its mother's milk. In fact, some rabbis admit that there are no logical reasons for the dietary laws. They simply obey them because they are part of the Torah. Rabbis contrast these with mishpatim, laws that make sense, like prohibiting murder or bribery.

The new covenant inaugurated by Jesus is not about ceremonial rituals or Bronze Age governmental regulations or dietary laws. It is not about the 5 different kinds of sacrificial offerings and which is appropriate for which occasion. Jesus' sacrifice took place once and for all and his covenant is about the ethical implications of that for those who follow him. Jesus did what he did out of love and he said the commands to love God and love one another supersede all other laws. The other commandments derive from these two and no other law is greater than they are. (Matthew 22:40; Mark 12:31)

There is another way in which the new covenant is different than the old. Of the 613 commandments in the Torah, 248 were positive but 365 were negative. So nearly 60% of the old covenant was about restrictions, what you shouldn't do. The commandments to love which Jesus prioritizes are positive. Obviously you don't do certain things to those you love because they harm or betray them. But love more often impels you to find ways to help and enhance the well-being of the beloved. When you are in love you find yourself doing things you would not ordinarily have done, like changing diapers and going to events you normally wouldn't attend. You find yourself taking an interest in the things your beloved does. Love expands what you do and what you pay attention to.

So the old covenant constricts your actions while the new covenant expands them. But that depends on whether you are limited by words written long ago or by the Living Word of God, our Lord Jesus. Rabbis realized that without extending the range of the old covenant through the Oral Law it becomes irrelevant. Under the new covenant what guides us is the Spirit of our Lord. And because he is God and God is love, love expands the circle of who we care about as well as the range of what we do. And because we have more options, as Paul puts it, “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

That greater freedom under the new covenant is seen as soon as Jesus begins his ministry. First off, Jesus heals on the Sabbath which the scribes and Pharisees see as a violation of the Law. (Matthew 12:11-13) And it does violate the Oral Law, that is, the traditional interpretation of the law, but it does not break the letter of the written law, and is in perfect alignment with the Spirit of the law. When Jesus touched a leper to heal him (Matthew 8:2-3; cf. Leviticus 13:45-46) or touched a dead body (Luke 7:11-17) or let himself be touched by the woman with the hemorrhage (Matthew 9:18-25), that would make him ceremonially unclean, yet he didn't go through the period of isolation and ritual to cleanse himself. Imagine how few people he could heal if he did that after every one. Jesus told a man whom he healed on the Sabbath to pick up his bedding and go, though this was considered work. (John 5:8-15) He taught women (Luke 8:1-3; 10:38-42) and though this was not forbidden in the Old Testament, in the Jerusalem Talmud, a compendium of the Oral Law, Rabbi Eliezer says, “The words of the Torah should burn rather than be taught to a woman.” So Jesus was certainly violating the orthodox interpretations of the Law.

But Jesus is just recognizing a hierarchy of values that flow from the two greatest commandments. Love impels you to heal and help others even when it goes against rules and traditions created by human beings. This is the same ethical thinking that led certain Catholics and Protestants in Nazi-occupied Europe to hide Jews, and to forge ration cards for them and to lie to the authorities, all in order to save lives.

We see this from the beginning of the church. It was the Spirit of the Lord who led Philip to preach to and baptize the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8;26-39), though in the Torah says that such a man could not be a part of the people of God. (Deuteronomy 23:1) The problem of who could join God's people arose again and again. Though God poured out his Spirit on Gentiles like Cornelius and his family and on the Godfearers who came to Jesus through Paul's preaching, there were those who felt that only Gentiles who first converted to Judaism and were circumcised could be Christians. (Acts 15) But the church used the authority granted it by Jesus to decide who can be part of the people of God. In Matthew Jesus talks about church discipline and says “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there I am with them.” (Matthew 18:18-20) And in John the risen Jesus says, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone's sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” (John 20:22-23)

One way of looking at the structure of the Bible is like an hourglass. The Old Testament is like a funnel. It starts with the creation of the whole world and all humanity and gradually the focus narrows to the descendants of Abraham, and specifically his descendants through Isaac, and Isaac's descendants through Jacob, and Jacob's descendants through Judah, and Judah's descendants through Jesse, and Jesse's descendants through David. The New Testament reverses this, beginning with one descendant of David, Jesus, and then widens the focus to the disciples, and then to the converts at Pentecost, and then to the scattered believers, and then to house churches spreading through the empire, and then to the Gentiles and concludes in Revelation with believers from every tongue and nation living with God in a new earth that is part of the new creation. God created the world and wants to restore it and everyone on it.

Not everyone will respond to his call. But some do who might otherwise give us pause, who are the modern day equivalent of the person who is a eunuch, or who is a leper, or who falls in some other category that would be excluded under the old covenant. The problem is: do we exclude such people over an identity or over circumstances which are beyond their control? Paul says no. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

As we have seen, the new covenant, the covenant of God's love in Christ, is about an expansion of who can become part of the kingdom of God. Jesus ate with disreputable people and when asked why he did that he replied, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:31-32) And we are all sinners. Everybody in this room, including the guy in the collar, is a sinner. And so is every mere human in the Bible we think of as heroes of the faith. Noah got drunk; Jacob was a conman; Moses was a fugitive from justice; David committed adultery and murder; Rahab was a prostitute; Jonah ran from God; the Samaritan woman was divorced 5 times; Peter denied Jesus 3 times. God calls and redeems and uses imperfect people. No sin is a deal breaker. No condition is a barrier God cannot overcome. Nothing that deviates from the norm can make us unlovable to the God who is love. As Paul said, “...we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” (2 Corinthians 4:7)

As Anne Lamott says, God loves us just the way we are but he loves us too much to let us stay where we are. Yes, the idea is that we will change and get better but it doesn't happen right away or overnight. As Paul says, “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.” We are meant to reflect the glory of Christ in our lives. But when we look in the mirror of our soul we don't see it all at once. We are supposed to become more Christlike but it happens by degrees as Paul says. It is a process. And it's a mirror. We are supposed to be looking at our own progress, not anyone else's.

It is by God's mercy, Paul says, that he and his colleagues were engaged in their ministry. It is by God's mercy that any of us are engaged in serving God in any capacity. He is gracious. "So we do not lose heart." We may not be perfect but we should see some changes. God's Spirit is in us and, if we let him, he is working on us. It's like when I was in rehab after my accident. The therapists and I were happy with any progress but we did not rest on our laurels. We kept pushing forward, trying to do a little bit better each day. Sometime I hit a plateau and I thought, “Is this it? Will it get no better than this?” But eventually, with their help, I would progress further. It was slow and sometimes painful. But I never forgot my goal: to walk again. And we should never forget our goal: to walk in love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. (Ephesians 5:2)

The old covenant commemorates God letting death pass over his people and his liberating them from slavery in Egypt. The new covenant is about Jesus undergoing death in our place so that he might liberate us from slavery to sin and the spiritual death that follows. It is not about inexplicable rules but a way of life that makes sense in the light of God's love and grace revealed in Jesus' life, death and resurrection. And it is abundant life; it is love running over, ever expanding the circle of who is included.

In Genesis, God makes a new world and new creatures in his divine image. In Isaiah God says, “Behold, I am doing a new thing!” (Isaiah 43:19) In Revelation, he says, “Behold, I am making everything new!” (Revelation 21:5) But new things often bother or even scare us. We are content with the familiar, even if it is not good. And often religious people are the most resistant to what is new. We try to rein in the Spirit and tell him he can only do more of the old stuff. Yet we are told that “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) How can we be new creations and not do new things?

Living things do not remain static. God is living and while he does not change in his essential character, the way he expresses his nature of love and justice and forgiveness and grace does. When he expressed himself in Jesus, the Living Word of God made flesh, that was new. When he, our lawgiver and judge, took it upon himself to die in our place for our sins, that was new. When he rose from the dead, that was new. When he poured out his Spirit on his people to carry on the mission of spreading the good news of Jesus to the whole world, that was new. God is doing new things all the time. We need to be open to what he is doing in the world around us. We need to trust him and to operate in the freedom he grants us. Just because something is unprecedented doesn't mean it's not from God. When our extraordinary, revolutionary, groundbreaking, unstoppable God is at work, expect the unexpected!