10-2-24 - Law/Grace

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

Want to see people get legalistic in a hurry? Bring up a “life-style” issue. It even happened around Jesus. In his remarks on marriage, divorce and adultery, he seems to emphasize the Law more strenuously than with many of his teachings. He says that Torah, the Law of Moses, provided for men to divorce their wives, but implies that this “out” was given only because of they were incapable of real love. Talking to his disciples in private, he offers no such wiggle room. To which we might reply, “Yeah, well, he wasn’t married, was he?”

Nope, we don’t get to play that card. Jesus knew the human condition well enough, and no doubt had enough married friends to understand how challenging it is for two people to put their lives together for a lifetime. Yet he offers little grace in his teaching on divorce, he who was so forgiving of people who squandered their gifts in loose living, and even those who hoarded wealth and cheated others.

This is one reason it’s never a good idea to “proof text,” find one passage of scripture to back up a position. Chances are another passage will contradict it or provide a broader context in which multiple interpretations can thrive. I think there’s a reason Jesus said these things to his disciples in private rather than to the general public – perhaps he was holding up for those who were leaders in his movement an ideal standard which he knew people less committed to God-Life might not manage.

That’s a big, wild guess, of course, if a comforting notion. I don’t know why Jesus said these things, and why he didn’t say them publicly. What I do know is that the Law is God-given – and can crush the life out of us if misused. The Law (at least in abstract) is God’s pure gift, given to impure human vessels who cannot live it fully. This puts us in rather a bind, as Paul wrote about so movingly in Romans 7 (Read chapters 4-8...)

Realizing we cannot meet the demands of God's Law can inspire different responses:

• We can give up, and toss it out altogether, living by our own instincts and reason.
• We can bear down harder, trying to legislate and control what the heart doesn’t seem capable of doing willingly.
• We can carry its standards in tension with the forgiveness of the loving and merciful God we’ve been taught to worship, and invite the transforming power of the Holy Spirit to help us live into it. 

Gee, which one do you think I favor?

• Lawlessness leads to highly subjective ethics, and often to licentiousness and heartache.
• Legalism distorts God’s gift and focuses us on penalties, and then we lose sight of the Spirit and often find ourselves trying to control other people’s behavior more than our own.
• Living in the light of God’s amazing grace leads us to freedom, fostering an environment of love and forgiveness in which people can find themselves, find God, and move toward wholeness. It is only in relationship with God that we are enabled to live the Law as God intended. 

If the Law of the Lord is to revive the soul, as the Psalmist wrote, it must be leavened with Grace, described here by a modern-day writer of psalms. Where will you pitch your tent?

© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.

5-28-24 - Showdown On the Sabbath

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

They thought this time they could catch him red-handed. Jesus would never be able to resist healing this poor man, even if they were in the synagogue on the Sabbath. And if he did, they’d have a case against him: 

Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so they might accuse him.

Jesus, who can read their hearts, knows what they’re up to: Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart…

I wonder how it must have been for this man with the withered hand, to be the battleground on which Jesus and the Pharisees set to. These doctors of the Law seem uninterested in him or his fate; the Mosaic Law deemed people with defects to be ritually impure. Maybe it never occurred to these lovers of literal interpretations of the Law that he might have value just as a child of God.

Jesus engages them before healing the man; he never gives up trying to open their hard hearts. He poses them a lawyerly question –is it lawful to do good or harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill? In another altercation with these leaders, he brings it closer to home – if one of their sheep were to fall into a well on the Sabbath, would they not rescue it? Why should he not exercise the power of God in love to restore a person to wholeness? But he does not seem to have moved them, since we’re told: The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

They were so obsessed with bringing Jesus down they see this man only as a means to their ends. This is where rule-bound legalism leads – to objectifying other people and created things, rendering them of lower value than the rules meant to assure their well-being. When we see others as less than human we make ourselves less than human. For we were created in the image of the God who is Love, whose nature is to love at all costs. Any time we fall short of love, we tarnish our selves, and God’s Life becomes less discernible in us.

Can you think of a time when your adherence to a rule or principle caused you to overlook, even degrade the humanity of another? How does a story like this, and Jesus’ words and actions in it, play out in some of our national issues, such as how we treat immigrants, or those at risk of violence, or those mired in poverty due not to their own choices but to national policies that privilege the well-off?

In prayer today, we might place ourselves in that synagogue, watching this story unfold before us. How do you react? Where do your sympathies lie? What is God inviting you into?

The mission of God is about life, saving life, restoring life, upholding life. Life and love must govern how we wield the power of law.

© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.

6-29-23 - God's Free Gift

You can listen to this reflection here.

For the rest of the week we turn to Sunday’s passage from Roman, which is such a deep and complex work of theology, it’s a hard to just take a quick dip in it. But let’s jump in anyway, because it contains a beautiful invitation to freedom in Christ – freedom both from sin, and from the effort to claw our way into God’s good graces.

Thus far, Paul has been unfolding an argument to support his contention that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, not through our own efforts. It is Christ’s sacrifice that sets us free, not our own will-power or ability to modify our behaviors… indeed, behavior change comes as we accept with relief the free gift of forgiveness and grace: But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In order to truly receive the free gift of God’s eternal life – which begins now, not just when we die – we need to allow God to free us from sin. Paul is concerned lest his listeners think this extravagant grace invites us to more sin. “Should we sin the more, that grace may abound?” he asks rhetorically, offering a resounding “No!” to the question. Rather, we should allow the gift of God’s grace to loosen sin’s grip on us.

“Sin” can be defined in many ways, but one way Paul uses the term is to name the purely human, self-oriented nature that exists in us. All those things we label as “sins” grow out of that basic orientation toward self that can cause us to see other people as objects for our gratification, and God’s creation as something to be exploited. When Paul says we have been freed from sin, that is an “already” gift, given at baptism, secured by Christ’s sacrifice, made real in his resurrection. As we let that reality seep into our bones we are freed to choose the Spirit-led life Jesus won for us. The fancy word for that is “sanctification," becoming holy.

Paul adds, provocatively, that we exchange one bondage for another, as we now “become enslaved to God.” Yet such a voluntary relinquishing of our self-will and prerogatives invites us into a freedom unlike any other. It is a freedom that allows us to love beyond our capacity, to forgive more than we think possible, to walk into God’s dreams for mission, to offer healing and ministry in Jesus’ name that enriches our lives beyond measure and transforms others. That’s the free gift of eternal life we have already received in Christ Jesus. Let's not leave it on the closet shelf.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here.  Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.

2-2-23 - The Spirit of the Law

You can listen to this reflection here.

This Sunday’s gospel puts us front row at one of Jesus’ training sessions for his new disciples. After the "salt and light" chat, he switches gears: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”

Since Jesus often argued with the standard bearers of the religious Law, we might conclude that he superseded the old revelation or “testament.” But I doubt Jesus would divide the scriptures into “new” and “old” the way we have. He articulates a continuity that frustrates our neat categories. Jesus seems to critique the way the Law is interpreted, not the Law itself. He accuses the Pharisees and other leaders of being heavy-handed and hypocritical in their expectations of people, emphasizing the “letter” of nitpicking rules while ignoring the spirit of love behind the whole of Torah.

Mostly, he pulls back the camera for a big picture view. When religious leaders want to stone an adulterous woman, he doesn’t talk about the law that permits her execution. He shows it is wrongly administered, indicting the accusers for ignoring their own sinfulness. When attacked for healing on the Sabbath, he reminds his detractors how they act when their families or possessions are at risk. He suggests that it is in interpretation that the leaders get it wrong.

The Law of the Lord was intended as gift, and instead became distorted and wielded as an instrument of condemnation – often by people who weren’t nearly as compliant as they expected everyone else to be. None of us immune to this – we hope for wiggle room in some areas, while in others we expect people to toe the line.

In what areas do you have high expectations of behavior from others – and from yourself? These may be the same areas in which high standards were expected of you by someone else, a parent or teacher or friend. One way of identifying those areas is by noticing what causes you to become indignant or self- righteous. Are you being invited to be more merciful?

And what are the issues about which you feel more lenient? What do you think God is saying to you about those areas – has God lowered standards, or do you just more fully understand God’s grace in those places?

We always have to hold in tension God’s righteousness and God’s mercy – we can never fully grasp how those two irreconcilables go together. But, happily for us, they do. Jesus did not seek to abolish the Law – only to show that no one is righteous enough to keep it, let alone hold it against others. Until he came along.

Jesus’ gift was to fulfill the demands of the Law in such a way that we are set free from its condemnation – and thus free to live fully into the Love at its heart. Let's try that on.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are here. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.