On these hang the Law and
the Prophets
I have
to admit that I’m a sucker for a good legal drama. I missed the first series of
Rake when it came out on the ABC last year but I’ve recently borrowed some
episodes from the library and enjoyed Richard Roxburgh’s portrayal of a
brilliant but self-destructive barrister, not to mention some wonderful cameo
performances of other well known Australian actors. I quite like watching
repeat episodes of The Practice, and I don’t even mind catching Crownies
occasionally – I wonder how Lisa Churcher is going now down in that law firm in
Melbourne when I watch those fresh-out-of-law-school idealistic lawyers. One of
the appeals for me is a fascination with lawyer speak – the wonderfully
convoluted interrogations and arguments used to mount a case in what might
otherwise be considered a hopeless cause, so that
juries are entertained and judges exasperated. These lawyers can be too clever
by half.
When I
read this week’s gospel reading from the lectionary, therefore, I particularly
noticed the line “one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him”. Some
of us might be more familiar with the version of this story that Mark tells,
where a friendly scribe asks the question and in the ensuing conversation is
commended by Jesus for his insight – in fact that encounter ends with Jesus
saying to the scribe, “you are not far from the kingdom of God.” But here in
Matthew it is adversarial. It comes in the gospel as part of a series of
disputes with various groups in the temple – first the Pharisees and Herodians
try to entrap him, next the Sadducees try to pose a tricky question about the
resurrection by setting up an improbable Merry Widow scenario, and in our text
the Pharisees press in again. Each time we have the impression that Jesus is on
trial – these groups of interrogators weren’t necessarily interested in healthy
debate but were trying to test him to find ways to condemn him. So they come,
one after the other. One witness and many prosecutors.
Could they catch him out saying something outrageous? Even the question which
is the greatest commandment is probably a little devious – designed to test out
whether Jesus really knew the Bible? Whether he was really committed to
following the law set down in the Torah? What if he did name only one of the commandments
– wouldn’t that imply that he thought the rest of God’s law was less important?
But this
question was also one that was already alive and much discussed in Judaism –
several rabbis and some written documents before Jesus’ time had come up with
similar answers to the one Jesus gave. The prophet Micah had summarised the law
in 3 small statements: What does the Lord require of you? Do
justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God (Mic 6:8). Some rabbis
thought Habakkuk had summed it up in one statement: The righteous shall live by
faith (Hab 2:4). And other Jewish documents equated love of God with love of
neighbour, bringing together the words we heard read from Leviticus (You shall
love your neighbour as yourself, Lev 19:18) with the central passage of
Deuteronomy recited by observant Jews daily: Hear o Israel, the Lord is our
God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with
all your soul, and with all your might (Deut 6:4).
In my teaching
at St Mark’s I have a class on the Pentateuch, the first five books of the OT,
also known as the Torah; and I’ve also taught a class on the prophets. So I am
often reflecting on the law and the prophets. And I think Jesus is right when
he says the law and the prophets are summed up in these two commandments: love
God with all your heart and soul and mind and love your neighbour as yourself.
It’s fairly obvious when you think about it: if you truly love God and your
neighbour all other laws fall into place – you don’t even have to think about
whether you’re obeying them because you will be.
Leviticus
is not everyone’s favourite book. In fact, I’m not sure if I’ve met anyone who
would say it is their favourite book. But in my lectures on the Pentateuch I
try to defend it. It is the centre of the Pentateuch, the centre of the Torah.
And in the centre of this book that is the centre of the Torah is the passage
we read from today – the Holiness Code. It begins as we heard “you shall be
holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” These words
should remind us of the story of creation, where we are told humans were made in
the image of God. If we are in God’s image, then we should act as God would. In
fact, the authors of Leviticus and Genesis 1 were probably the same, there are so many connections in theme and style.
People were created according to God’s purpose and the Holiness Code tells them
they are to live according to God’s purpose. As you probably know, there are
all sorts of laws in the book. In chapter 17 alone are laws that cover rituals,
moral questions, the way to collect the harvest, treatment of foreigners,
Sabbath laws, respect for parents and elders, labour laws, even instructions
for making clothing. But right throughout these laws is a repeated refrain, “I
am the Lord your God”. God’s law is grounded in God’s being. The motivation for
obeying the law is that God is worthy. In Leviticus, God’s name is written more
than 350 times. And the phrase “before the Lord” is used more than 60 times. It
is the relationship between God and the people that dominates this book, not
legalistic demands.
Jesus was
interested in the law. In Matthew especially, the teaching of Jesus is a key
feature of the gospel. Some commentators think the whole gospel is modelled on
the Pentateuch, with five major sections and a sermon on the
mount that presents the core of Jesus’ teaching that is similar to Moses
giving the ten commandments at Mount Sinai. At the beginning of this teaching
ministry of Jesus in Matt 5 he says “do not think I have come to abolish the
law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfil.” (Matt 5:17) As
Jesus goes on in the Sermon on the Mount we are shown how Jesus fulfilled the
law in the spirit of the prophets. Fulfilling the law is not arbitrary
obedience to the letter of the law, but a matter of understanding the
principles behind it and living by those principles. So anger against your
neighbour is as bad as murder. Lusting after someone else’s partner is as bad
as adultery. Laws of talion (an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth) might
be seen as a fair way to prevent escalating violence, but in fulfilling the
spirit of that law Jesus’ followers are expected to go beyond fairness to
forgiveness. For Jesus, fulfilling the law in the spirit of the prophets means
loving even your enemies.
So what
is this commandment to love? And is it
even correct to think of it as a commandment? In strict legal terms, a
commandment is a behaviour that can be required or prohibited. Can love then be
commanded?
I read
an interview with Richard Roxburgh where he talked about the character he plays
in the series Rake that I mentioned earlier. Loosely based on a real barrister,
the character is both very charismatic and quite self-destructive. Roxburgh
describes him as “a perpetual champion of the irredeemable … he’s not saintly
but he thinks, 'There but for the grace of God, go I.' He's a great lover of
humanity. He loves people." So the show, while using clever courtroom
arguments as part of its appeal, is much more focussed on the people and the way
their lives are affected both in and outside of the courtroom.
In a way
this is how Jesus responds to the legalistic questions that others throw at him.
He avoids the combat of words and clever argument and gets straight to the
point – it is the love of God and love of neighbour that are at the heart of
the law and the prophets. Relationships always matter more than rules. Remember
what Jesus said when challenged about Sabbath laws? He quoted the prophet Hosea
“I desire mercy not sacrifice” (Mt 12:7). On another occasion he claimed “The
Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath.” (Mk2:27) And
even more pointedly, when he is being watched to see if he would heal on the
Sabbath, and thus potentially violate another commandment, he asks those
watching him “is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath or to do harm? To save life or to kill?” The Sabbath became important when
the Israelite people were in exile because it showed their love and respect for
God. It set them apart in a foreign land, it gave them
a chance to remember who they were and why they were different. But for Jesus,
love for God is learned primarily through love for our neighbour. Responding to
someone who is in need on the Sabbath was HOW to show love for God. The law was
grounded in God’s character, so that is the way they should be interpreted and
followed.
All this
talk of love gets a bit muddied in our age where love songs, love stories and
sentimentality have taken hold of the word. The love that Jesus talks about is
not just warm feelings, attraction or a sometimes irrational desire to be with
another person all the time. It demands stubborn commitment and total loyalty.
All your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. And
to love our neighbour and even our enemy doesn’t mean to have warm feelings
towards them, it means to act towards them as God would: to take their needs
seriously and respond to them.
Bearing in mind that today we are recipients of a
church based eco-award, I think it is important to recognise that care for our
world is tied up in this two fold demand that Jesus has for us to be fully
committed to God and neighbour. In Leviticus there are laws about giving the land itself
a Sabbath – the opportunity to be renewed and revitalised. There as well as
other law codes in the Old Testament the law is linked to
creation. Disobedience to God’s law has repercussions in the natural realm as
well as in human social and political relationships. Listen to this from
Leviticus: “If you will not obey me I will punish you for your sins. I will
make your sky like iron and your earth like copper. You strength shall be spent
to no purpose. Your hand shall not yield its produce, and the trees of the
field shall not yield their fruit” (Lev 26.18-20). In the same way, obedience
to God’s law means that the divine order for creation can be actualised: “if
you follow my commandments and observe them faithfully, I will give you your
rains in their season, and the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of
the field shall yield their fruit” (26.4-10).
The prophets pick up this theme when
they preach that the fate of the earth is intimately tied to the fate of
humanity. Human sin results in devastated land, so Jeremiah preaches:
I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void;
and to the heavens, and they had
no light.
I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were
quaking,
and all the hills moved to
and fro.
I looked, and lo, there was no one at all,
and all the birds of the air
had fled.
I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert,
and all its cities were
laid in ruins
before the Lord, before his fierce
anger. (Jer 4:23-26)
But Jeremiah has a message of hope too, that
the created world will be restored and will participate in the transformation
of the human community in the new future for God’s people:
they shall be radiant over
the goodness of the Lord,
over the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and over the young of the flock
and the herd;
their life shall become like a watered garden,
and they shall never languish
again (Jer 33:12)
So both
the law and the prophets recognise that we share responsibility for the fate of
the world. But I want to draw attention to one small word in the gospel passage
that reminds us that it is not just our efforts that will make the difference.
It is ultimately Jesus who can empower us to live in the way that will bring
hope and restoration rather than ruin.
It is
the word “hang”. On these two commandments hang all the law and all the
prophets. It’s a pretty common word. We hang our clothes in our wardrobe. We
hang our hat on a peg in the hallway. We hang out a birdfeeder to attract birds
into our garden. We get the hang of a new task. We can even hang out with our
friends – a very casual use of the word. But it does have a more solid meaning
too – we hang our doors on hinges and depend on them to be stable.
In the
New Testament this same word is used twice in Acts, and both times Peter is
preaching about Jesus. He speaks of him as the one who was killed by being hanged
him on a tree. When we see Jesus hanging on the cross we realise he was fulfilling
the law and the prophets. His life that was the fusion of divine and human
natures was stretched vertically between heaven and earth, an expression of
stubborn commitment and total loyalty to his vision of God that had led him
there. And when we see him hanging on the cross we recognise that his arms were
stretched out horizontally in a gesture of openness and love for his neighbour,
taking his commitment to us all so seriously that he was willing to give his
life.
This
makes the great commandment a bit more serious doesn’t it? To love God with all
our hearts and souls and minds, and to love our neighbour as ourself, means to
die to ourselves.
I work
more frequently with Hebrew words than Greek words these days but I found out
something about this text in Matthew that is really interesting – the Greek
word “love” is written in the future tense, not the imperative. So when Jesus
says “love God with all your heart and love your neighbour too” there is a
promise tied up in that rather than a command. So each little step towards
expressing that love is bringing us closer to the time when our love will be
perfect. You shall be holy. You shall love the Lord your God. You shall love
your neighbour as yourself.
Which is the greatest commandment? According
to Jesus it’s impossible to speak just of one. The commandment to love God and
to love our neighbour are so intricately linked that one cannot exist without
the other. But these two sum up the whole of the law and the prophets: two
great libraries of biblical literature that teach us how to live as God’s
people in God’s world. We are made in the image of God. We are both commanded
and promised to be holy as God is holy – a seemingly impossible task until we
look to Jesus hanging on the cross, by his death empowering us to prepare for a
time when we shall live in love as God’s children.