Jesus and "The Rule of Law"

This is a long sermon with a long introduction: 

Around the year 586 before Jesus the Babylonians defeated the ancient Israelites and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem. About 20,000 people, 1/4 of the population including many leaders, were exiled to Babylon over a period of about ten years.

While in Babylon (near present day Baghdad) these Jews wrote much of their history and laws, what we often call the "Old Testament." But it is only "old" if we think that the Greek scriptures about Jesus the Christ supercede the Hebrew scriptures, which were the Bible to Jesus.

About 50 years later the Persian king Cyrus conquered Babylon and released the Jews from their captivity. Ezra, a leader of those who returned, launched a long and sometimes secret campaign to rebuild the temple. The majority who remained had not worshiped God or followed the law while the leaders had been in exile. The story is that on their return Ezra organized the priests and planned to read the law, probably most of the book of Deuteronomy, to the people.

We don’t know how accurate this story is, but much that is in it is most likely exaggerated. Whenever an ancient story says “everyone” or “all the people” did something, it probably did not happen that way.

Selections from 5 chapters, Nehemiah 8-13 (edited)

All the people gathered together into the square. The scribe Ezra, (these were people who could read and write), brought the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel. The priest Ezra brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding. 

He read from it facing the square from early morning until midday, in the presence of those who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law.... And the Levites, the priests, helped the people to understand the law, while the people remained in their places. So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.

The reading took a long time, and Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all of them, “This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.” For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. 

The people heard the law and pledged to adhere to the law of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord our God and his ordinances and his statutes. Then the leaders of Judah came up onto the wall, and there were trumpets and cymbals, harps, and lyres. The singers sang. The people offered great sacrifices that day and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; and [always a second thought] the women and children also rejoiced.

The joy of Jerusalem was heard far away. (END OF READING)

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SERMON:

In early 2020 when listening to the news about the rule of law, I suddenly thought, 

        "Hey, this isn't new. This is in the Bible.

         There is something deep and important and religious here, and it is being ignored.

 What is happening in our country today echoes something I remember 

                from the history of Ancient Israel."

"The rule of law" describes how we rule ourselves by electing legislators

who write laws, a president who carries them out,

and courts who settle disputes about those laws through interpretation of our Constitution 

that establishes our whole system of government.

The phrase, "the rule of law," is shorthand for how we write our laws through representatives

and how this replaces having a king who can decide what the laws will be.

The concept of "the rule of law" has been in the news regularly since 2016.

So I turned to the stories of Ezra and Nehemiah, which led me to Deuteronomy, 

where most of the Hebrew laws are given.

Now this isn't easy for Christians, because we in the churches have been told 

that the law of ancient Israel was basically a bad thing, 

that there were too many of them and that they diminished the lives of the people.

Jesus objected that requirements and obedience to laws 

sometimes prevented people from helping those in need.

Added to this is the Apostle Paul, who frequently and at length 

spoke of how the law corrupts faith, 

                        so that what one does in obedience to law cannot satisfy God.

But Jesus quoted the law frequently.

As a good rabbi, he summarized the Ten commandments in two tablets: 

Love God and love your neighbor.

Jesus rediscovered and re-interpreted the ancient law of Israel, 

which had been abused and misused in his time.

This had happened before, so in Ezra and Nehemiah we have a story 

of a people who re-discovered the law long before Jesus,

        and found in it something of great importance that they had lost.

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So let’s listen to the law beginning in Chapter 6 of Deuteronomy

which outlines the laws and the principles underlying the laws of ancient Israel.

You aren’t likely to read Deuteronomy, so I have done it for you.

I have summarized what the people of Jerusalem would have heard 

        when the forgotten laws were read to them, causing them to weep.

Some of this you know.

The tradition is that Moses wrote the Torah, meaning both all the law,

and the first 5 books of Hebrew scripture, so Moses is speaking:

“This is the great commandment—the statutes and the ordinances—

        that the Lord your God teaches you to observe, 

so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly 

        in a land flowing with milk and honey, 

        as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has promised you.

        Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 

        You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, 

        and with all your soul, and with all your might....

Two reasons are given for why the people should love God and neighbor:

The first is an old idea of a "just" God who will punish people for not doing what God says.

The second is that the people should "Do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, 

        so that it may go well with you and so that you may go in and occupy the good land 

                that the Lord swore to your ancestors."

Finally, we are told "If we diligently observe this entire commandment before the Lord our God, 

        as he has commanded us, we will be in the right.”

This means that obeying the law puts us on the right side of God.

Obeying the law makes us "righteous."

We need always to be reminded that the Bible often translates Justice as Righteousness.

The ancients were telling the people first that laws come from God.

The authority of the law was that it came from God.

This authority was passed down to kings and priests, who were thought to be chosen by God.

With the enforcement power of kings, the law was not to be trifled with.

But the law was not just a matter of the temples or the churches. 

Ancient Israel, ancient Greece and Rome, and ancient tribes 

such as the Hau-de-no-suan-ee (Iroquois) of New York 

were the inventors of Constitutions, 

                        modern representation and democracy, and this rule of law.

All of them taught that the law is good because it expresses the values

which manifest our idea of what we call God.

Therefore, to mess with the rule of law 

is to undermine and threaten all that is holy and sacred 

and is to be treated with awe if our lives to have meaning

                        and if we are to be able to live in a structured and orderly society.

Today we understand that God is not a real person. 

I personally describe God as the spirit behind our highest human values,

Our human, American rule of law is no different than ancient Israel’s rule by God’s law.

The law is intended to declare what is right and good and just.

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So the Israelite law begins with the command: 

1. You shall not exalt yourselves.

So now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? 

Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways,

to serve the Lord your God [by obeying the law!]

with all your heart and with all your soul... for your own well-being.... 

For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, is not partial and takes no bribe, 

executes justice for the orphan and the widow, 

loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. 

You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. 

We can hear echos of the issues of our present day and our violations of these ancient laws.

All who have ears, hear today’s news in the book of Deuteronomy.

2. There are laws on what foods to eat and which cannot be eaten. 

This was the ancient way of bringing preventive health care to the people.

3. There are detailed laws on giving tithes for the temple and the government. 

This was early socialism, the novel idea that we are not isolated individuals 

with no responsibility for our common life together. 

We should share the cost for all the things that help us create and maintain communities,

our common basis for economic growth and social progress.

4. They went so far as to say that:

Every seventh year you shall grant a remission or cancel all debts.

This shows an early understanding of how unregulated 

buying and selling leads to economic inequality 

which must be corrected and made right somehow. 

Such cancellation of debt probably never happened as written here, 

but there are numerous laws here to alleviate the poverty 

        of those who lost their lands and wealth to weather or oppression.

5. You shall appoint judges and officials throughout your tribes, 

in all your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, 

and they shall render just decisions for the people. 

You must not distort justice; you must not show partiality; and you must not accept bribes, 

for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of those who are in the right. 

6. Kings must be controlled in order to have justice: "Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue...." 

When you have come into the land and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, 

        “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,” 

you may indeed set over you a king but you are not permitted to put a foreigner over you.... 

Even so, he must not acquire many horses or wives for himself..., 

Also silver and gold he must not acquire in great quantity for himself.

7. There are laws forbidding all magic and superstitious nonsense and con games.

This was the way they protected reason and science such as it was.

8. God continues to give laws against lies and for truth:

You may say to yourself, “How can we recognize a word that the Lord has not spoken?” 

If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord but the thing does not take place or prove true, 

it is a word that the Lord has not spoken. 

The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it.

9. There are laws against crime and to protect the rights of the accused:

You must not move your neighbor’s boundary marker

Only on the evidence of two or three witnesses shall a charge be sustained. 

Punishments shall be limited and proportionate to the offense.

10. Laws are given for every case that came before the early sages and judges:

There are rules of Warfare, for treatment of captives,  

the Right of the Firstborn and rules for inheritance.

You may not withhold your help from a neighbor. 

AND, You shall make your house safe for others.

There are laws concerning Sexual Relations, adultery, rape, 

prostitution, loans and debts, marriage and divorce, kidnapping.

There are rules for the prevention of contagion!

There are laws for making loans and collecting on them.

There are labor laws:

You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers, 

        whether other Israelites or aliens. 

You shall pay them their wages daily before sunset, 

because they are poor and their livelihood depends on them.

Business shall be conducted fairly:

You shall not have in your bag or in your house two kinds of weights, large and small. 

Many laws deal with immigrants:

You shall not deprive a resident alien or an orphan of justice. 

Anything left in your field after harvest shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow. 

I have omitted many important and relevant laws.

Finally, the last Law: You shall offer First Fruits and Tithes gratefully.

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In conclusion, Deuteronomy summarizes the ancient rule of law, 

This was the law of Jesus, and our laws are not much different.

Laws are often abused, but at their best they are an attempt to declare 

what is right and good for individuals and for society.

Some laws are punitive and require retribution.

Higher laws are concerned with “distributive justice,” which is about equal justice before the law.

"Equal justice before the law" is inscribed on our Supreme Court building.

The purpose of the ancient law was to put us on the right side of God.

Obeying the law would make us "righteous" or just.

The Hebrews believed that the law came from God, and that God required justice. 

We might say that behind the law is the creative power of life and love, which we name God,

which reflects our highest and deepest values, such as love, mercy, and justice.

Jesus said, "Seek first the rule of God" and everything else will follow.

“In England,” Tom Paine said, “The King was the Law. Here the Law is King.”

This defined the rule of law.

We argue about laws if we think they are are unfair or unjust, and we disagree about that.

We bring laws up to date when we have learned new truths  about human life and behavior.

But with reflection we realize that we cannot live without the rule of law, 

because ultimately it makes us human.

The Age of the Spirit

(Acts 2:1-21, The Story of Pentecost, and John 15:26-16:15, excerpts)

I always thought of Pentecost Sunday as the first Sunday of the Season of the Spirit, 

        which begins Pentecost Sunday in May.

But Pentecost Sunday is not the first Sunday of a new season. 

It is the last Sunday of the Easter season.

It is about resurrection as much as it is about Spirit

and it is about Life every bit as much as resurrection is about life.

The story of Pentecost tells how the first followers of Jesus were distraught and confused 

after the crucifixion of Jesus.

They didn’t know what to make of tales of an empty tomb and appearances of Jesus.

The book of the Acts of the Apostles, which is sometimes called “The Acts of the Holy Spirit” 

begins with these apostles, sad because Jesus has left them.

The writer, who also wrote the Gospel of Luke, seems not to have known of  of the Spirit, 

as an Advocate for his followers when he was gone.

For many, the Holy Spirit became another name for God’s grace and presence,

as a way to deal with the absence of Jesus.

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At a conference 20 years ago, I was talking with Paul Laughlin, 

a Bible professor and Methodist who is about my age.

We went to different seminaries in the late '60s and early '70s.

He asked me, “Did you ever think about what we weren’t taught in seminary?”

I replied, I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it. 

He said, “We weren’t taught world religions and the Spirit,

the two most significant things about religion since we graduated.”

In the ‘60's mainline Protestant seminaries didn’t teach these things.

E.g., we didn’t know about Pentecostals, now more than a fourth of all Christians in the world 

        and the fastest growing part of Christianity.

But by the early ‘70's, as the world began changing and ever more rapidly, 

people everywhere began to talk about something called “Spirituality.”

Now at my old Presbyterian seminary there is a course on World Pentecostalism,

taught by a professor who is a Bishop in the Church of God in Christ, 

and who sits on the board of trustees at Oral Roberts U.

That’s pretty much of a shock to me.

And the faculty now includes Baptists and Jews and Catholics, so we are left with the questions, 

“What does it mean to be Presbyterian?”  And “What does it mean to be Christian?”

Let’s look at that church name “Pentecostal.” 

It says something about the importance of Spirit

to the large number of Christians who identify with that name.

They emphasize direct personal experience of God through baptism by the Spirit, 

and gifts of the Holy Spirit such as speaking in tongues and supernatural healing.

It began in 1901 when many people were dissatisfied with the organized churches, 

when Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Episcopalians were the comfortable upper classes. 

Pentecostals would hate sermons like this one.

They wanted a religion of the heart, with emotion, evidences of the love and power of God.

These evidences included the realities that they they overcame racism, 

allowed women to preach, and saw nothing dishonorable about being poor.

We can only imagine what Presbyterians then would have thought of it.

Little wonder that many people called Presbyterians “the frozen chosen.”

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I and others have told you how we are today in a period of great transition 

from the world that we have known, in which we grew up,

to something we cannot yet understand or fully imagine.

There are many writers who think that all this change and perhaps this fear of the future 

is the cause of the decline of churches,  and our national political divisions. 

Last month I spoke of how we live by violence and must learn to live by non-violence.

I think of Spirit as the opposite of violence, 

by which I mean that it is difficult if not impossible to think of, or live with the Spirit of God 

which is the Spirit of the Good, and practice or defend violence at the same time.

As many as 85% of Americans consider themselves “spiritual” in some way.

Perhaps Spirit is so desirable because it is non-violent.

To seek the Spirit is to seek non-violence.

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Spirit is more than just an event or a season or the highest value of particular churches.

It turns out that Pentecostalism and spirituality were not new.

In the 1100s a man you and I have never heard of,

thought the Christian church was in a lot of trouble.

[Joachim of Fiore was] an Italian monk who studied the Bible 

and said some interesting things about world history:

He called the time before Christ the Age of God the Father. 

It was a time of fear.

The time after Christ was the Age of the Son. It was a time of faith, understood as belief.

Believing the right things became more and more important, 

and the followers of Jesus became churches controlled by Popes and Bishops and priests.

A third era began, church structures became destabilized and decentered. 

It would be a time for fewer, but committed and active believers. 

This new time would be the Age of the Spirit. 

It would be an unsettled time, but a time of love.

Father, Son, and then Spirit. Fear, Faith, and then Love.

But the age of the Spirit was postponed, or derailed

        by the Reformation which brought an Age of the Word, 

        with strong emphasis on the printed word and the preached word. 

Spirit was mostly ignored until Pentecostalism arrived 125 years ago.

But some writers think that Joachim’s Age of the Spirit may have begun in the last century.

Those first Pentecostals knew that Spirit means a disturbance of the air 

and is translated in the Bible as breath, or wind, as well as Spirit.

Spirit is about Freedom from church authorities to be in direct connection with God.

Spirit upsets; it is revolutionary; it is the power of love between us.

Spirit brings upheaval; it is uncontrolled and uncontrollable.

There are signs all over the world that millions of people in this new age think great change is needed; 

beyond what we know as civilization,

great change in the ways we live with each other, in our work and in our government.

Spirit is a way we speak of participating in a new world and a new way of being. 

Scripture speaks of being born again, of our becoming a new humanity by the Spirit.

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Worship for many has become a way to create “spiritual” experiences; 

which means more direct experiences of God.

Here is an example of how that works.

On Long Island I brought in a large canvas labyrinth 30' across into the church fellowship hall. 

(You may have walked a labyrinth and know something about the experience of walking one.)

People walked this path in silence.

Several people who walked this path broke into tears,

the experience evoked such strong feelings in them.

They described this special experience as “spiritual.”

We enter this odd ritual, and follow a path, one step after another and it can do something to us.

Surrendering ourselves to walking on this new path, our mental pathways are somehow broken,

        and we find ourselves somehow free and controlled by something bigger than ourselves.

We usually think of the Spirit in such terms of special, out of the ordinary experiences.

For too long the church has expected and hoped for 

        another mountain top experience or another Pentecost, a special revelation, 

that would make everything all right again in the churches and in our lives.

Sometimes in life we have such religious or spiritual experiences, but mostly they don’t last.

Often it is an experience when a teenager at a summer church camp.

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But I have a book that says something different about Spirit.

Joe Haroutunian wrote:  

“The Holy Spirit is not a ghostly presence or being.

To speak of the HS is not to describe a vertical relationship

of the individual with God, but a horizontal relationship with each other.

The HS is not so much in us – as it is among us and between us."

Haroutunian called Spirit "transpersonal," not just interpersonal.

It is what happens in each of us when something happens between us, 

when we speak and interact with another person.

God is both Spirit and Love, as it says several times in scripture,

If God is Spirit, God is what happens in our interactions when the Spirit moves between us.

Spirit then is the life force and creative energy that we know in our living with each other. 

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So what is the result of all our interacting, of all our loving each other?

We speak of the spirit of the age, as the set of ideas, beliefs, and aims 

        that is typical of people in a particular period in history. 

We make the spirit of the age as the spirit is manifested among us.

This was most clearly illustrated answered by Mr. Rogers, 

        the Presbyterian minister, Fred Rogers, who had his own neighborhood on television.

He said – 

    “If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet;

      how important you can be to other people in ways you may never even dream of.

      There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.” 

That other person gives a part of what you gave to them to others.

So what we say and do and give carries the Spirit to others, 

and a huge web of thought and feeling moves through society.

The predominant thoughts and feelings of each year and decade and century 

        shift and change and move in surprising and not so surprising ways.

The spirit working between us and among us makes the culture in which we live.

It impacts what we think and feel, 

and what we think and feel then in turn influences the larger culture.

It can be good or bad.

That is why our culture is always such a mixture of good fruit and awful weeds.

The power of Spirit rising out of our interactions has a dark side

because you and I don’t always think and share what is good. 

We fill the air around us with Good and bad.

        It affects us, and we are mostly unaware of how we contribute to it. 

Sometimes we interact with people who do not respect others as worthy human beings.

So there are good spirits and evil spirits as described in scripture.

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An exercise. An assignment, if you will accept it.

Keep a journal of every encounter you have with another person, 

beginning with your conversations after worship this morning.

This includes face to face conversations, phone conversations, emails, and texts.

Sit down and make a list of the people you have spoken with since worship today.

What have you received from the other?

What have you given to the other?

What do you carry away from that encounter with the other?

What effect does it have on you later?

Does anyone come back to you days later and say – 

“You know that thing you said about family or whatever? 

I’ve been thinking about it and how it applies to me.”

Or do you go back to someone in your family or a friend,

and you tell them how something they said affected you.

That’s the Spirit at work. Spiritual Presence.

I have discovered that I can change the spirit in a grocery store 

by what I say and how I say it to the clerk there.

We can’t see Spirit, but spirit is within us and between us.

Spirit is what happens between us in our interactions.

Spirituality is relational and transpersonal. 

And the meaning of all this stuff that I have made all too complicated is simply: 

We should be nice to each other. We should listen. We should be kind. 

It's catching.

We are making the culture we complain about unless we make the kind of culture we want.

We are doing the work of God here on earth. Or we are not.

"There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.”

Let’s leave something good for others and live in the Age of the Spirit.