Texts:
Exodus 20.1-
John 8.2-
Every Goodie
needs an equivalent baddie.
Sir Denis Nayland Smith
had Fu Manchu.
James Bond,
of course,
has Blofeld
and Tom has Jerry –
or is it
the other way around?
Well the church
has always had
a similar struggle
between good and bad when it comes
to the commandments
and their application.
On the one hand,
it feels called
to extol
the observance of God’s law as found
in the writings
we call the Old Testament.
The problem
is these ancient books’ somewhat stark pronouncements
often niggle
with little passages
in the New Testament.
Places epitomised
by our second lesson
this morning.
Nevertheless,
despite these hints
that God’s law
needs very careful interpretation,
the church has tended
in the past
to place
its powerful authority behind a literal reading
of law.
The outcome being
a legalism
we see most poignantly
in witch hunts various
and penitent stools multitudinous.
And as a result
there are legitimate claims it has failed
to understand
those gospel incidents
when Jesus said –
hold on –
lets think about this –
lets discover exactly
what God’s intention
is rather
than what paper and ink seems to dictate.
But that was then –
what about now.
For, we are now
in an era
when the church
is powerless
and regarded
by many
as irrelevant.
How are we as a group
to promote
the value of
the ten commandments and God’s greater will today?
Well one way
is to pull up the drawbridge and man the barricades.
We could insist
on an even more fundamentalist application of each jot and tittle
of ‘scripture’.
We could invoke
the past and continue
to issue high handed – nurse knows best – condemnations.
But this form of defence
still has to face
those same annoying
bits of the Jesus story
that has tried
the church in the past.
The accounts of
when Christ dined
with tax collectors,
forgave the fallen
and drank with the unruly and chaotic.
In fact, the times
when he embraced
the sort of people
who always make up
the church
no matter how well scrubbed they appear to be.
So then –
you are advocating
that we take or leave
God’s law –
say you back to me.
An all things are relative
and nothing
is really bad approach.
Well, indeed,
No I am not suggesting
that for a moment.
For that thinking
has been an anathema
in any age
and in this peculiarly individual one –
as we saw last week –
can result
in literally holocausts.
Such a suggestion
denies
that God has made clear certain universal
and utterly binding laws.
It denies too
there are badnesses afoot.
Moreover,
to leave humans
as the play things
of sociology,
psychology
and economics
robs them
of God’s greatest gift
to them of all –
and that is free will –
the right
to chose between good
and evil.
Therefore
to solve the problem
as how the church
is to be the interface between the Decalogue
and the 21st Century,
let us exercise
our free will,
let us roll up our sleeves and do some hard work.
Let us demand
that the minds,
hearts
of our community of faith be exerted
to the fullest extent
to come up
with a better answer.
For surely
this is the time
we should demand
of our Church leaders, committees
and ourselves
to do some thinking.
For thinking needs
to be done
as to exactly
what the old testament laws meant
and then
how Jesus interpreted them.
Thinking needs
to be done upon
what is immutable
and what was
simply ‘custom and practice’ from the past.
For example
I am not sure
we want
to employ the rules
on slave ownership
or dietary laws today.
Then thinking
must be done
as how God’s commandments
are applied
to the very tricky moral questions of today
not least in medical ethics, third world aid
and human relationships.
Now of course,
as I was regularly reminded by my
old Chemistry teacher, thinking is the hardest work we can do.
But in finding
the church’s voice
in this era
so much in need
of the Decalogue’s
moral compass,
none can shirk from it.
None can hide behind
the dictate
of another person or object.
Rather let the struggle
for understanding begin
and where better than
with an open mind,
a willingness to debate
and a zeal only
to find God’s will.
In fact, we could do worse than applying
to the real commandments some of the commandments for thinking proposed by
Bertram Russell.
For he suggested
Never try to discourage thinking or you are sure to
succeed.
Find more pleasure
in intelligent dissent
that in passive agreement, for,
if you value intelligence as you should,
the former implies
a deeper agreement
than the latter.
Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth
is inconvenient,
for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
And best of all –
do not feel envious
of the happiness
of those who live
in a fool's paradise,
for only a fool
will think that it is happiness.
When Bill Clinton
met Nelson Mandela
for the first time,
he had a question on his mind: "
When you were released from prison,
Mr. Mandela,"
Clinton said,
"I woke my daughter
as I wanted her to see
this historic event."
Then the President zeroed in on his question:
"As you marched
from the cellblock,
the camera focused
in on your face.
I have never seen such anger,
and even hatred,
in any man
as was expressed
on your face at that time.
That's not the Nelson Mandela I know today,"
said Clinton.
"What was that about?"
Mandela answered,
"I'm surprised
that you saw that,
and I regret
that the cameras
caught my anger.
As I walked across
the courtyard that day
I thought to myself, 'They've taken everything from you that matters.
Your cause is dead.
Your family is gone.
Your friends have been killed.
Now they're releasing you, but there's nothing left
for you out there.'
And I hated them
for what they had taken from me.
Then, I sensed
an inner voice saying to me, 'Nelson!
For twenty-
you were their prisoner,
but you were always
a free man!
Don't allow them now
To make you into
their prisoner!'"
For, you can never be free to be a whole person
if you are unable to forgive.
Well, here
is an example
of another piece
of hard work
we must require of others
and ourselves;
and that is
the discovering
what the heart
says as well as the mind about interpreting the law.
For Mandela’s mind undoubtedly told him
of his right to be bitter;
that message
to forgive came
from the heart.
So too we must test
each and every fruit
of our solemn thought
in our hearts.
We must say to ourselves -
we are being told
or telling
accord
with what is
at the heart of the gospel – that very heart we saw
wide open
when Christ confronted
the self-
at a lynching.
We need ask –
do we know
in our hearts of hearts
that our opinion
meets the vision
of God’s will
displayed to us
in the actions of Christ.
That indeed,
each and every
moral pronouncement
by Christians meets
the rule that surmounts
all others;
the golden rule;
the core commandment that Jesus taught us
saying;
Love the Lord your God
with all your heart
and with all your soul
and with all your mind.
And the second commandment is –
love your neighbour
as yourself.
One of the early church fathers,
a man named Origen, suggested
that when Jesus
said to Peter,
"Get behind me, Satan," what he actually meant was,
"Peter, your place
is behind me,
not in front of me.
It's your job to follow me
in the way I choose,
not to try to lead me
in the way YOU
would like me to go."
Well, in that story
is the final arduous task
we must perform.
For in considering
how God’s commandments are to be applied today
we must never ever forget who we follow.
For, we are,
ultimately,
called to follow
not an ink and paper law,
or a power structure’s ruling
or another human’s statement.
Rather we are called
to follow
but one divine man.
Therefore, above everything else,
we must seek
the guidance of his spirit
in both the simple
and the difficult.
We must submit
the fruits of the hard work of mind and heart
to his online,
real-
We must truly place
his urging
above all other inputs.
For to do so
is not to be
a community
of arid and blind obedience but one
ever renewed
by a living faith;
faith that
our mentor’s walks with us and talks to us
and will not let
our feet fall too far
from the safe road;
Faith that he is alive
to the changes
and constants of our world; faith that he knows the heart and mind
of his father’s ways of truth, justice and mercy.
Faith, indeed,
that he alone
can help us
not just to know
good and evil
but to judge good from evil.
Therefore,
for the commandment’s sake,
let us turn ourselves over to the hard work
of knowing the mind
of the commandments,
the heart of the gospel
and the enlightenment
of faith.
For these alone
are the struggles
advised by Yves Congar
in the finding
the church’s witness
to a morally complex world when he wrote:
There is nothing
more urgent
than doing all we can
to know a
nd make known the will
of the true God;
the God whose last name
is pronounced -
Amen
Interpreting Church