1 Kings
21:1-10, 15-21A; Psalm 5:1-8; Galatians 2:15-21; Luke 7:36—8:3
Preached
by Ian Lasch
Our
epistle reading today, much like both the Bible and Christianity itself, begins
with the law. The giving of the law on Mount Sinai was a transformative event
in the history of a people who only then became a nation. It was a moment which
would come to define them, and us, even millennia later. And while Paul has
some very interesting things to say about the law, we ought to delve a bit into
the background of the law itself before we get to his points about it.
There
is a tendency, particularly among us as Christians, to think only of the
Decalogue (meaning “ten words”), or the “Ten Commandments” as we know them, when
speaking of the law. The Decalogue is very important, but an article I read
recently about it by Leon Kass referred to it as the preamble for the law,
which seems like an apt description. The Decalogue gives a framework for the
law; an idea of what the law entails. The first four commandments concern how
we should relate to God and the last six are about how we should relate to our
fellow human beings. But the Decalogue is just a bird’s eye view. The full Law
of Moses contains some 613 separate commandments and is spread out within four
different books. I promise I won’t go into too much detail, but I want to
highlight just a couple of parts of the Decalogue, not because they’re any more
important than the rest, but because they give us an idea about the intent of the
law.
The
fourth commandment or word is to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy; as
it’s given to us in Exodus it explicitly parallels creation, which wasn’t
finished until God desisted, and admired the whole of creation, and saw that it
was good. But that article by Kass brings up the point that it also echoes
their experience with manna in the wilderness during the exodus from Egypt.
During this time God provided for them when they feared they would starve, by
raining food on them from heaven, but only for six days out of the week. Every
day, they’re to gather only what they need, except for the sixth, when they
should gather enough for two days, so that they can keep the Sabbath. This
shows Israel, and us, that this world in which we live is not a world of
scarcity, but a world of plenty… that God will provide sufficiently for our
needs, and that we shouldn’t work endlessly to try to accumulate more than we
need… that we cannot be grateful if we’re always worried about getting more.
The
tenth commandment or word says, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you
shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or
donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” This as much as tells us
that those desires we have to accumulate or possess, to be consumers, are often
contrary to God’s plan. Just as we are told to stop struggling and working for
one day out of the week, we find out that we shouldn’t be as enamored of stuff
as we are.
These
two commandments, again, don’t represent the whole of the law. But they give us
at least a small idea of what the law intends. It’s important to have at least
a little bit of the background of the law, because it is such a major part of
who Paul is. It’s a law that he spent his life pursuing, up until the time of
his conversion, and he knew it inside and out. Even at the time of writing this
letter, he continued to try to live by it, so it’s all the more surprising when
he says that a person is not justified, or rectified, or made righteous by the
works of the law. That always seemed a bit counterintuitive to me. It never
seemed to make much sense. I mean, how could someone not be righteous, if they
follow the law? But God isn’t concerned only with how we behave. He also cares
how we think and feel. Is it compassionate to refrain from murder because it's
against the law? Is it charitable to pay taxes, even knowing that some of that
money will be used to take care of the poor, if we only pay taxes to avoid jail
time? Is it faithful to refuse to cheat on a spouse only for fear of the
consequences? In these cases, the law is meant to be a minimum standard that
all should follow, and if we congratulate ourselves for doing the bare minimum,
the only righteousness we get is self-righteousness. That’s why the law cannot
make us truly righteous. To be truly righteous depends on our intentions, on
our heads and our hearts. And this is what God wants to change.
Luckily,
Paul gives us a solution. While we cannot be made righteous by following the
law, we are justified instead through faith in Jesus Christ (or, perhaps more
accurately translated, through the faith or faithfulness of Jesus Christ).
Paul tried to find righteousness through following the law, and it didn’t come.
Through the law he died to the law, because that way did not lead to life. It
was by pursuing righteousness through the law that he found out it wasn’t
possible. Paul found out, just as we know, that by being crucified with Christ
through our baptism, we are set free and made right. As the epistle could
alternately be translated, “I have been crucified with Christ and yet I live.
But it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” This “I” who no longer
lives in Paul is a word familiar to us, thanks to modern psychology. The Greek
word is “ego.” By sharing in the crucifixion, Paul has put his ego, his self,
his desires and wishes, to death. They no longer live in him, because he has
decided to let them die so that Christ may live in him instead. This may seem
extreme, but it’s something that Christ himself told us several times. In the
Gospel of Mark, he tells us that a house divided cannot stand. No one can
plunder a strong man’s house without first tying up the strong man. And we know
that our desires are strong. In the Gospel of Matthew, he tells us that no one
can serve two masters. We cannot serve both God and Mammon, a Greek word which
means “wealth” or “material possessions” or even “greed.” We cannot serve God
if we’re trying desperately to get more stuff.
And
so, like Paul, we try to put those earthly desires to death. We strive to
submit to God’s will, even knowing that it means subjugating our own. By being
baptized into Christ’s crucifixion, so we live. But not us; Christ lives within
us. Knowing this, we cannot help but be forever changed. Christ lives in us; in
each and every one of us. He lives in me and he lives in you, just as he lives
in my neighbor, and in my friend. He lives in my coworker and my acquaintance.
He lives in my competitor and my enemy. And this is the intent of the law, for
us as Christians. We still try to tithe to God’s church and to keep the Sabbath,
but not because we'll feel bad if we don't or we think it's expected of us. We
still remain faithful to him, but not because that’s the letter of the law. We
still try to love one another as Christ himself loves us, but not out of guilt
or obligation. We do it because Christ lives in us, in each and every one of
us, and without the gifts we are given by the grace of God, not one of us would
have a dime to our name, or breath to draw, or one minute of time on this
earth. All that we are and all that we have is because of God, and it is only
through him in Christ that we are made righteous.
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