The New Law
1992 (Year C), 12 July / Pentecost 5
Two games for you. The first is played by Catholics. It’s a kind of religious snakes and ladders. The board is the universe and up there is heaven, down there is hell. The name of game is salvation, the object of the game is to end up there and avoid down there. Sin is the snake and sends you plummeting towards the pit. The sacraments, together with good deeds and acts of self mortification are the ladders. Everything you do will be totted up at the end when there will be a spiritual accounting exercise rather than simply a roll of the dice. That will determine where you go.
Protestants have their own games. The object is the same – to arrive at the upper house whilst avoiding the lower one. But this time the game is called Justification by Faith. The introduction to it is particularly beautiful. It says that we are all in the hands of God who made us and loves us without end. There is nothing that we can do. Nothing that we are required to do. It is a free gift. Yet Protestants have played themselves into a spiritual paralysis by making faith itself a work, something to earn. If things don’t go well for you it’s because of lack of faith and so in this game you are to work as hard as you can to acquire more and more.
Cruel caricatures you might say, of perfectly well-intentioned views and doctrines. Well you might be right, but they bear more than a passing resemblance to reality. What is even more frightening is that we don’t have to dig too deeply into ourselves before we find the echoes of them. The meeting I really didn’t want to go to but forced myself to must be worth some brownie points – if only I had a little more faith I would be able to deal with the crisis that’s just hit me. We all play these games.
Well you might say, ‘That’s all well and good poking fun at cherished Christian doctrines. Anybody can do that.’ How are we to achieve salvation?
The Israelites thought they had the answer. They had the law, symbolised supremely in the ten commandments. All they had to do was follow that. But the laws are made for a people who were like children, dependent on God, the patriarch of his people. With the coming of Christ there is a dramatic transformation. Paul saw it and felt it. Yet half of him was still stuck in the land of ‘Thou shalt not!’, so in one breath he can talk about Christians being God’s dear children living in love as Christ loved you and in the next breath he’s back again saying what you shouldn’t do.
The rich young man knew all this. He knew the law and kept it. Yet, he knew in his heart of hearts that it wasn’t enough. So he went to Jesus to ask the question which St Paul encourages us all to ask, ‘What is it that would please the Lord – what must I do to please him?’ The trouble was he didn’t get the answer he expected or wanted, ‘Go sell all your possessions, and give to the poor, and then you will have riches in heaven; and come follow me.’
The New Law – for that is the theme of today’s readings, the New Law, is not a game to play or a rule to follow. We can’t just look an answer up in a book which will tell us how to act in each situation. It would be much easier of course if we could do that. Nor can we manipulate our way into the kingdom by clever use of sacraments, doctrines or faith. All we’ve got is a command to love. And that brings the most amazing problems. Not only because it’s hard to do but it means we have to look again and again at each relationship, each event and think again how God would have us live our lives.
The lesson that the rich young man was called on to learn so quickly and dramatically is this. The things of the Spirit operate in a different way to the things of the material world. Material goods diminish in sharing. If I have three apples and share them equally with two friends, I’m left with only one. The young man knew that, it’s one of the reasons he went away. Spiritual things – love, joy and peace – are not like that. They increase, when they are shared.
The challenge for the young man was to see these things. To see that the things which matter so much in this world – the things he wanted most are actually the gifts of the Spirit. These are the things which might be placed at God’s disposal and used for the benefit of more than simply himself.
The same challenge is laid before us - it might be money, it might be possessions, it might be our security, it might be anything. God asks that we be prepared to share it rather that horde it and clog up our relationship with him. The New Law requires us above all to love God and our neighbours as ourselves and that nothing else be allowed to get in the way. If we live our lives unbound by other idols we worship we will find that we are never so much ourselves, as in the act of love which God inspires, never so alive as when we are clay under his fingers and never so free as when in his service. AMEN