Peace be with you.
Friends, all the readings this week are about the law
in different ways.
And I'll speak just here as an American to my fellow Americans.
I think we have a kind of ambivalent relationship
to the law.
On the one hand we're kind of a freedom-loving people.
And we began our country in a great act of rebellion
against the king, and “Don't tread on me.”
We've got that very strong kind of individualist strain.
On the other hand, we're a very litigious society.
We're kind of planted thick with lawyers.
Think of how many of our founding fathers were lawyers.
Think, too:
our culture was very influenced by Protestantism.
Both Martin Luther and John Calvin,
at early points in their careers,
were lawyers and law students.
And so we both kind of love and hate the law.
We see the beauty of it, and we see the limitation of it.
And that really is the motif, I think, of the readings for today.
So let me look first at the positive side
—how the Bible reverences the Law.
Listen now from our first reading from Deuteronomy.
"Now, Israel, hear the statutes and decrees which I am teaching
you to observe….
Observe them carefully, for thus you will give evidence
of your wisdom and intelligence to the nations.”
Now, look at the nations of the ancient world,
from Babylon to Syria, Greece, Egypt, Rome;
they were the great military and political powers.
Israel?
Yeah, maybe for a short time during the reign of David
had some political clout, but for the most of its history,
Israel was a little, overrun, sort of colonized nation.
Think of Greece giving us philosophy, and think of the arts
that flourished in other cultures. Israel didn't have those gifts.
What did Israel have though? The Law.
The statutes and decrees that God gave to his chosen people.
The Law, the Torah, was the pride and joy of Israel.
Now, here's a basic principle that I'm going to stand by.
The more we reverence something, the more we surround it with laws.
Let me say that again.
I think it's true across the board.
The more we reverence something, the more we tend to
surround it with laws.
Let me give you an example.
I'm wandering around in a vacant lot in the city somewhere.
It's full of rocks and weeds.
And I say, "Hey, can I pick up one of those rocks?"
“Well, yeah, I don't care. It's not worth anything.
Do whatever you want with it.”
"I mean, could I take one of those rocks home with me?"
“Yeah. I don't care.”
"What if I took it and painted it? Would that be okay?"
“Well, yeah, of course.”
No one cares about the rocks in the vacant lot.
That's why there are no laws around it.
Now compare that with,
as I often did when I was a student in Paris,
approaching the Louvre Museum.
“I just walk into the Louvre. I'm going to go up,
take paintings off the wall.
I think I might improve that painting;
I'm going to add a little paint to it.”
Come on.
The Louvre is surrounded by laws.
You have to stand in line, and you have to get the ticket,
and then you've got to be ushered a certain direction.
There are people all around you.
There are all kinds of implicit laws, right,
about visiting a museum.
If I start running through the corridors,
I'd be stopped in thirty seconds.
I start shouting, making a fuss —they'd take me out.
I go into the room where the “Mona Lisa” is, where there's
all kinds of guards and people watching me.
There's cameras watching me.
If I said, “Hey, that's a lovely painting, but I'm going
to add something to that.”
I'd be arrested immediately, right?
What's my point?
The more we reverence something, the more we surround it with laws.
Laws are not oppressive.
Laws are beautiful ways that we protect and enhance
those things that we consider valuable.
Here's a maybe sillier example.
Just the day before now I'm filming these words,
I played golf, which I love to do.
And anyone that's ever played golf knows that golf
is a game that's filled with laws.
First of all, the laws of the swing, you know?
There's a right way to swing, and about a million
wrong ways to swing.
And we're all very interested in getting those laws of golf
into our bodies.
More to it, the actual playing of golf is filled with law.
You have to tee off at a certain place.
I can't say, “I'm going to tee off thirty yards ahead
because I feel like it.”
No, no;
there's a right way to do it.
I can't go and improve my lie if my ball's in a funny spot.
“Oh, I'm just going to move that and improve it.”
No, you can't do that. It's against the laws of golf.
I hit it out of bounds.
“Well, I'm just going to drop a ball;
I won't take a penalty stroke.”
Well, no, then you're not playing golf anymore.
I hit it in the water.
“Hey, I'm not going to worry about that.”
I hit my ball on the green; I don't repair the ball mark.
I hit ahead of someone that should be hitting ahead of me.
No, golf is filled with laws.
And trust me, golfers know this.
If I start violating the laws of golf, they're going to
get after me pretty quickly.
I mean, my fellow players are going to remind me:
“Come on man, you can't be doing that.” What's the point?
Golf is something that golfers feel is wonderful,
and rich, and beautiful.
And so we tend to surround it with laws.
Okay.
What's the most important, beautiful thing there is?
Living the moral and spiritual life.
To live our life now in proper harmony with God;
there's nothing more important.
“Oh, therefore, do whatever you want.
Don't worry about it.”
“Hey, sure, live according to your desires.”
“Who are you to tell me what to do?”
“Don't tread on me.”
“I'll live that life any way I want.”
Give me a break.
I mean, anyone that reverences the moral and spiritual life
welcomes the laws that govern it,
that teach us how to live this life.
Now listen to this from our second reading,
from the Letter of James. I love this.
“Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you
and is able to save your souls.” What's the word?
Well, that's the Torah. The word of God's law.
Humbly —don't give me this
“Don't tread on me” business, and “I'm in charge”
and “Autonomy” and “I govern my own life.”
Bore me to death with that.
I know the culture says it all the time, but it's nonsense.
It's as stupid as saying,
“Let me just swing the golf club any old way I feel like it.”
“Let me walk through the Louvre without any sort of restriction.”
No one thinks that's right.
So, James says, correctly,
"Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you
and is able to save your souls."
The laws that govern the moral and spiritual life
—and again, forgive all these golf examples.
But when the laws of the swing are not just things
you read about in a book, but they're now part of you.
So in bad golfers like me, they're not sufficiently part of me.
But the better you are, the more you've internalized
the laws of the game.
They're now second nature to you.
So James is saying, with regard to the word of God,
the laws of God, humbly accept them into your heart.
Let your life now be governed by them.
Don't be resistant to God's law, but rejoice in it as fully
as the ancient Israelites rejoiced in God's great Law.
Okay?
So you say, “So far so good. I get it. I get it.
That's the beautiful side of law.
But is there a shadow side to the law?”
And the answer is clearly yes,
and we can see it, I think, in all kinds of ways.
You know what image comes to my mind
—maybe it's a stupid image—
but think of a knight from the Middle Ages,
and he's got his armor on, right?
To protect him.
But let's say that armor has become so heavy,
and it's so thick, and so cumbersome
that he actually can't fight in it anymore.
And weirdly, the very thing that's meant to protect him
makes him more vulnerable.
The law there —and there's a symbol I'm using—
the law that's become so overgrown, fussy, legalistic,
that it's actually undermining its own purpose.
Let me now read you something from the Gospel.
It’s from the Gospel of Mark.
And Jesus is, as he often is, in conversation with the Pharisees.
"The Pharisees, in fact, all Jews, do not eat without
carefully washing their hands, keeping the tradition of the elders.
On coming to the marketplace they do not eat
without purifying themselves.
There are many other things they have traditionally observed,
the purification of cups and jugs and kettles and beds.”
So the Pharisees are challenging Jesus:
How come your disciples don't follow all of these fussy,
dietarian ritual prescriptions of ancient Israel?
What does Jesus say? Listen.
"Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as
it is written: ‘This people honors me with
their lips, but their hearts are far from me….
You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.”
Now see, friends, there’s a really important distinction.
God's commandment: Is Jesus for it?
Not only is he for it, he's the very Incarnation of it.
So Jesus is the Torah made flesh.
So of course he's for God's commandment.
That's the beautiful side of the law.
But does this tend now, in the course of history,
to get overgrown with a multiplicity of merely human traditions,
which maybe in the beginning were very well-intentioned,
in fact served their purpose, but in time have become
more of an obstacle?
Think of that knight trying to fight in armor that's too heavy.
It's actually getting in the way of one's relationship with God.
Can we see these merely human traditions, perhaps,
as something we can separate or distinguish
from the commandments of God?
Now, I want to give you an example, here.
This just came across my radar screen a couple days ago,
on the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Mother.
And it came up, I think, on my Facebook feed.
It was a little film, it was on YouTube,
from the declaration of the Assumption in 1950.
And it was fascinating.
St. Peter’s Square, filled with hundreds of thousands of people.
This long procession of bishops coming in, at the end of
which was Pope Pius XII,
who was going to declare the doctrine.
And he was in full vestments, and he had this tall miter on.
And he was up on the “sedia gestatoria.”
And maybe younger people don't know what that means,
but it was this elevated chair the pope sat in.
And then it was carried through the crowd.
And then around him there were ostrich feathers
that were fanning the pope as he went.
Now, beautiful day? Yeah, sure.
Declaration of this wonderful doctrine of the Church.
Beautiful.
The laws of the liturgy, the laws of Catholic ritual,
the pope himself —all of that,
beautiful expressions of the law.
But what struck me was this, as I watched it.
Beginning really with Paul VI, the pope stopped using
the “sedia gestatoria.”
John Paul II I don't think ever used it once.
I haven't seen an ostrich feather anywhere near a pope
since about 1965.
Did we get rid of
—let's say around the time of Vatican II—
certain human traditions?
Which look, I'll grant you, at the beginning —beautiful.
Because that's part of the kind of court ceremonial of Europe,
some of that probably going back to the Roman or Byzantine empires.
Okay.
As a way of honoring the pope —I get it, I get it.
But had it become clear, let's say by 1965 or so,
that these things were actually getting in the way of the
Church's evangelical mission?
That the papacy was looking more like a kind of distant
monarchy than like a vibrantly engaged evangelical office.
Compare that, let's say, to John Paul II’s style.
Now, you see the point I'm making, I hope.
What's beautiful in the law? Of course
—all these great things that are meant to structure us.
But are there elements of the law that are more kind of fussy,
they've become overgrown, they become finally repugnant
to their original purpose?
And can we find the courage and the wherewithal
and the intelligence to make that distinction?
Now, I'm going to close this here;
there's much more that could be said.
But if you doubt me that people have a hard time
making this distinction, go on the internet almost
any time of the day or night.
And people, a bit Like the Pharisees in this Gospel,
who are fussing about a lot of things that are much more
human tradition than authentic divine law.
I think it's a very important part of religious prudence
and wisdom to be able to make that same distinction today
that Jesus made long ago.
And God bless you.
Thanks so much for watching.
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