Tag law

Human Values vs. Legal Values

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

Mark 2:23-3:6

How do you deal with people when their obsessive focus on something good leads them to use that good thing in a way that is manipulative or domineering?  How do you get through to people whose attention to the details of something good and beautiful leads them to treat people in a way that is harsh or even cruel?

There was a letter that appeared in Amy Dickinson’s advice column the other day that really brought that question home to me.  The letter writer was concerned because one particular house in their neighborhood had become an eyesore because of deferred maintenance.  

“Dear Amy,” they wrote. “I live in an affluent neighborhood of expensive although older homes. The vast majority of homes are well maintained and manicured. Many have had major remodels. 

However, there are a couple of homes that are in serious need of a facelift! One home in particular is a complete eyesore. 

Although it is worth more than a couple million dollars, the lawn is dead, paint doesn’t match and/or is faded in places, wood facia is rotting, along with other significant cosmetic problems.  There do not seem to be any code violations. I am not aware of the owners’ financial situation, but they’ve been there long enough that there should be significant equity to refinance and get money for repairs — or sell and move to a less expensive home.  Other neighbors have left notes, to no avail.  Any suggestions on how to get this family to fix up their house, or even move?”

The letter was signed, “Frustrated Neighbor,” and Amy’s response to this Frustrated Neighbor was pure gold:

“Dear Frustrated,” she wrote.  “It is so generous of you to provide such a detailed list of repairs to be made to this property! You’ve obviously inspected the house quite closely. 

“What a neighborhood! People leaving notes and developing repair punch lists and investment advice — and not one finding out who these neighbors are and asking if they need a hand. 

“I suggest you approach this by putting human values ahead of property values. Changing your orientation and approach should improve the neighborhood.”

Putting human values ahead of property values.  Or legal values.   Or economic values.  That’s exactly what Jesus was doing when he began his nonviolent campaign to confront the traditions and  institutions and the political and religious authorities and laws that were squeezing the life out of the people of Galilee.

In today’s Gospel reading from Mark, we see two episodes where Jesus is confronted by self-appointed guardians of Sabbath piety, men—and they were all men—whose  strict interpretation of Sabbath codes was impairing the quality of life for the very people whose quality of life they were supposed to be safeguarding.  Their pious concern for every jot and tittle of the very good gift of God’s law in Torah had led them to treat God’s people with harsh inflexibility.

The first confrontation comes when Jesus and his disciples “made their way” through the grain fields on the Sabbath.  As they forged a pathway through the field, the disciples were plucking and eating heads of grain.  This didn’t sit well with the Pharisees who were observing them.  “Look,” they said, “why are your disciples doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath.”  

The Law of Moses permitted poor people in Israel, or travelers, or aliens to glean enough grain for a meal from the crops in a landowner’s fields. Deuteronomy and Leviticus both make it clear that you were allowed to pluck grain by hand in a neighbor’s field or pick some grapes from your neighbor’s vines as long as you didn’t use a tool to cut the stalks or collect your gleanings in a basket.  The open question, though, was can you do this on the Sabbath?  

The Torah did not specifically say one way or the other, so the Pharisees, who were always inclined to err on the side of strictness, had concluded that, while it might be okay to do a little personal harvesting on the other six days of the week, it was definitely not okay on the Sabbath.  This, of course, could leave poor people in a real bind.  If you can’t use a basket to collect enough for tomorrow and you can’t come back to the field on the Sabbath, you’re pretty much stuck with going hungry on the day of rest.

Jesus, of course, took the opposite view.  Hunger doesn’t know or care what day it is.  Hunger doesn’t know or care about Sabbath laws.  Human values override religious legal values.

Jesus tried to get the Pharisees to discuss this issue by referring to an incident from the life of King David.[1]  “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food,” he asked them,  “how he entered the house of God when Abiathar was high priest and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions?”  When the Pharisees responded with stony silence he added, “The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath.”  The point Jesus was trying to make is that some human needs take precedence over other human needs.  The need for food takes priority over the need for rest or Sabbath observance.  

Since Mark’s account immediately moves to the next confrontation, we are left to assume that the Pharisees simply were not open to debating this issue with Jesus.

“Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand.  They were watching him to see whether he would cure him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him.”    

The way Mark’s gospel describes it, this looks like a setup for entrapment, but Jesus sees right through the Pharisees’ scheme and decides to put them on the spot. “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath?” he asks them.  “To save a life or to kill?”  Jesus turns the issue into a clear binary decision.  The implication in his question is that there really is no moral middle ground between compassion and legalism.  If you fail to do good when you have the chance then you are doing harm.  If you do not act to save a life in peril when you have the chance, then you are complicit in the killing.  

The Pharisees responded to Jesus once again with silence.  Jesus, we are told, “looked around at them with anger.  He was grieved at their hardness of heart.” 

With all that tension simmering in the air, Jesus healed the man’s withered hand. And the Pharisees?  “The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.”

The Pharisees in these incidents are like a homeowners association who are so concerned about maintaining the curb appeal of the houses in their neighborhood that they completely ignore the lives of the people who live in those houses.  When they see a house that is not in compliance with their standards, rather than seeking to understand the situation or even provide assistance, they add to the burdens and difficulties of their neighbors with their notices of noncompliance and their threats of fees and legal action.

Standards are good.  Laws are necessary.  But people are more important.

In chapter 12 of Mark’s gospel a scribe asks Jesus, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” Jesus replied by combining a quote from Deuteronomy with a quote from Leviticus. “The first is,” he said, “is ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

In reflecting on this Greatest Commandment, Father Richard Rohr said, “Imagine how different the world would be if we just obeyed that one commandment—to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. It would be the most mighty political, social upheaval imaginable. The world would be radically different if human beings really treated other people as they would like to be treated. We can take this as a simple rule of thumb: What would I want from that person right now? What would be helpful for me to receive? Well, there’s our commandment. There’s our obligation to do to others!  

“It’s so simple that we can see why we put all our attention on the Ten Commandments, or the hundreds of other regulations culture and religion place on us. It’s much easier to worry about things that keep us ‘pure,’ so to speak, but are of little consequence.  

“After all is said and done, it comes down to loving God and loving our neighbor—and that implies loving ourselves. If I said this without quoting Jesus, I could be accused of oversimplifying or ignoring some of the important commandments, but thank God Jesus said it first. He taught that it’s all about love, and in the end, that’s all we’re all going to be judged for. Did we love? Did we love life? Did we love ourselves? Did we love God and did we love our neighbor? Concentrating on that takes just about our whole lifetime and we won’t have much time left over to worry about what other people are doing or not doing. Our job is to love God, love ourselves, and love our neighbor.”[2]

The Pharisees love God and they love Torah, God’s law—that’s a good thing—and in their own way they love their neighbor because they believe that their neighbor will benefit if everybody rigorously obeys Torah.

Jesus loves God and also loves Torah, but Jesus interprets the law differently because he understands that, to paraphrase what he said about the Sabbath, the law was intended to serve people; people don’t exist to serve the law.

The way Jesus interprets Torah is consistent with the way the prophets understood the law.  The prophet Micah summed it up very succinctly when he wrote, “God has told you, O Mortal, what is good.  And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

To love kindness.  The Hebrew word that Micah uses here is chesed.  It means kindness.  Or steadfast lovingkindness. Or, sometimes, mercy.

In rabbinic tradition, the world is said to stand on three things:  Torah, divine service, and chesed—acts of kindness.  Chesed, kindness, is considered “boundless” because a person can never do too much of it.  It is behavior that goes above and beyond the letter of the law, a one-sided giving that brings goodness to the neighbor.

Chesed, kindness, strengthens mutual relationships.  It reinforces the bonds of our implied covenant with each other, our social contract.  Chesed, kindness, is one of the attributes of God.  At the end of Psalm 23 the psalmist is speaking of God’s steadfast lovingkindness when he says “Surely goodness and chesed, kindness, will pursue me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Kindness acknowledges that we are of the same kind.  We have the same needs.  We have the same fears.  We face the same pitfalls.  We have the same hopes.  We are of a kind.  Kindness acknowledges that what is good for you is good for me, or to put it another way, I will be kind to you and trust that you will be kind to me because we are all in this together.

What kind of world might we see if we made chesed, kindness, the central pillar our politics our economics and our laws?  That’s the question Jesus wants us to consider as he moves through our world announcing that the Kingdom of God, the Commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness, is within reach.  It can be our reality on earth as it is in heaven.

Standards are good.  Laws are necessary.  But people are more important.  

[1] 1 Samuel 21

[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr,“613 Commandments Reduced to Two,” homily, November 3, 2012. 

Jesus Builds a Fence

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Matthew 5:21-37

One of the things we love to do when we go to Kauai is to take the long drive from Princeville down to the south side of the island and then up into the mountains.  We usually make a stop at Spouting Horn to stretch our legs and enjoy the plumes of water that geyser into the air as the waves surge against the rocks.  Sometimes you can also see sea turtles bobbing in the surf there, which is always kind of exciting.  

When we get to the town of Waimea, we turn mauka and take the road that goes up to the Waimea Canyon lookout.  We like to take our time at the lookout because Waimea Canyon, which is also called “the Grand Canyon of the Pacific” is truly beautiful and thought-provoking, and inspires a sense of wonder and awe.  Also, on a clear day you can see Niihau, the small island reserved for Hawaiian natives that sits forty-three offshore from Kauai and seems to float on the surface of the ocean like a great big stone raft. 

After leaving the lookout, we drive a few miles uphill to Koke’e State Park and the Kalalau Valley lookout where we can gaze down the slopes of the Na Pali cliffs into the Kalalau Valley and think about what life was like for the ancient Hawaiians who lived there.  

So why am I telling you all this?  Well, the Spouting Horn, the Waimea Lookout and the Kalalau Valley Lookout have one important thing in common aside from spectacular views.  They are potentially very dangerous places.  And so at each of these very beautiful but dangerous places the State of Hawaii has put up very sturdy steel-rail fences to keep people from accidentally injuring or killing themselves.  They have also mounted signs on the fences that say, “Danger!  Do not go beyond this point!”  And, of course, there is always someone who thinks they can get a better view or a better picture or maybe just add a little extra excitement to their vacation by going beyond that clearly marked margin of safety, by exploring or fooling around on the other side of the fence.

If you want to keep people from falling off a cliff one of the first things you do is to put up a fence and warning signs a little way back from the edge of the cliff.  Since ancient times the rabbis have described Torah as a fence that protects us from hurting ourselves and others.  They have also noticed that some people tend to ignore the fence, so in their teachings they would extend the fence, moving the margin of safety a little farther back from the edge they were trying to protect.  They actually called this practice extending the fence of Torah.  

For example, the law says you shall not commit adultery.  Committing adultery is falling off the cliff.  The law is the fence that is designed to keep everyone’s relationships from slipping over the edge and falling into pain.  In addition to the Torah law, the rabbis established the cultural custom that frowned on a man and woman being alone with each other or even talking to each other if they were not married to each other.  That’s the extension of the fence that they thought would keep people from getting so close to the edge that they would be tempted to climb over the fence onto unstable ground where they might slip and fall off the cliff. 

Earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that he had not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.  What Jesus is doing in this section of the Sermon is fulfilling the law by extending a different kind of fence on some of the more important laws of Torah.  In each instance, he is improving the safety of the fence by making it more visible and raising the top bar.

With adultery, for instance, Jesus realizes that the real problem isn’t proximity, it’s perception.  “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.  If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into the trash heap.  And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into the dumpster.” (5:27-29)  

Adultery starts with lust and lust starts with how you perceive the other person.  If you can only see another person as a sex object or as the object of your longing and affection, or as someone who might fill some emptiness in you and make you whole, that’s the real problem.  That’s the eye you need to pluck out so you can replace it with an eye that sees that other person as a whole person, a person who stands apart from you, a person whose wholeness includes relationships and commitments that have nothing to do with you other than your own obligation not to infringe on them.  

If your hand starts reaching for things that don’t belong to you or if it keeps rising up in an angry fist, tie it behind your back until you can retrain it and restrain it.  All this is a metaphor, of course, because it’s not the hand or the eye that has a problem, it’s the mind.  It’s a matter of developing self-control over our impulses, appetites, and feelings.  Over and over again, living the values of the kingdom of God is a matter of metanoia—a transformation of the mind.

Jesus applies this same principle to murder.  Rage clouds your mind and damages your vision.  “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’  But I say to you that if you are furious with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment.”

When you are enraged, the person who is the object of your fury becomes something less than human in your eyes.  It might sound like hyperbole, but for that moment in the ferocious heat of your anger, you have killed them.  Jesus extends the fence of “You shall not murder” to “you shall not let yourself get so angry that your anger blinds you to the other person’s humanity.”  Take a breath.  Count to ten.  Walk away.  Relax your hands.  Don’t even get close to the fence of “You shall not murder.”

But anger isn’t the only way we dehumanize each other.  Jesus went on to say, “If you call a brother or sister an idiot, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the trash heap of fire.” (5:21-22)  I don’t know about you, but I violate this one all the time, especially when I’m driving.

Jesus is basically telling us, “Don’t dehumanize people by calling them names.”  He wants us to understand that that is, in fact, what name calling does: it makes them into something less than human in our eyes, in our thoughts, in our minds and in our hearts.  Dehumanizing someone is the first step toward eliminating them.  History has taught us that dehumanizing the “other” is always the first step toward genocide.

In the kingdom of heaven our relationships with each other are part and parcel of our relationship with God, so Jesus expands the fence of shalom around worship. “When you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” Don’t carry a grudge, and don’t let anyone carry a grudge against you if you can so something to make amends!  A grudge is a festering wound in God’s shalom, so before you come before God with your prayers or your offerings, do what you can to heal that wound so both of you can come to God in peace.

Jesus also raises the fence around divorce.  “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’  But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” (5:31-32)

Divorce was a hotly debated issue in Jesus’ time.  The Torah law in question, Deuteronomy 24:1-4, said that a man could divorce his wife if “she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her.”  The argument was over what legally constituted “something objectionable.”  The House of Shammai said that only adultery or some other form of unchastity constituted legitimate grounds for divorce.  The House of Hillel had a much lower bar, saying that something as simple as the wife burning dinner could be grounds for divorce.  

Jewish marriage in the first century was a contractual agreement, and women were protected by marriage contracts called ketubah that acted something like a prenuptial agreement and provided them compensation in the event of divorce, so Jesus isn’t necessarily thinking of protecting women here so much as protecting the institution of marriage.

Marriage is a covenant relationship and as a covenant relationship, it is supposed to be a living emblem of the covenant between God and Israel.  A good marriage creates shalom in the home which is essential if there’s going to be shalom in the world.

In Matthew 19 when the Pharisees bring up the topic of divorce again, Jesus cites Genesis where “the two become one” to reemphasize the ideal unity of marriage, but when the Pharisees then ask why Deuteronomy includes instructions on how to divorce, Jesus tells them, “It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning, it was not so.” (19:1-8)

It has to be said here that the sad fact is that marriages do break down.  People do become hard-hearted.  A marriage that has turned to all heated words and cold shoulders is no longer really a marriage at all, and certainly not a relationship that mirrors the love of God.  It’s obvious that Jesus didn’t want marriage or any other covenant relationship to be treated as disposable.  But not all marriages are made in heaven.  Sometimes the only way to keep it from becoming a living hell is to dissolve the covenant and go your separate ways.

It’s logical, I suppose, that right after reinforcing the sanctity of marriage, Jesus turns to the matter of vows and oaths.  “Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’  But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God,  or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.  And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.” (5:33-36)

It might look like Jesus is dismantling part of the fence here but in fact he is once again raising the bar.  The ethic in the kingdom of heaven is simple straightforward honesty.  Those who mean what they say and say what they mean don’t need any rituals or special language to verify their promises or certify their honesty.  “Let your yes be yes and your no be no,” says Jesus.  It’s that simple.

Honesty and integrity.  Faithfulness in relationships.  Seeing and respecting the humanity of others and honoring their lives, commitments, and relationships. Preserving and restoring peace.  Changing the way you see and think so that you see the world with compassion and think beyond your immediate desires or convenience.  Love.  These are the extensions Jesus builds around the fence of Torah.  These are the ethics of the Beloved Community.  This is the Way of righteousness in the kingdom of heaven.  This is what St. Paul had in mind when he wrote in Romans, “Love can do no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”