The One Law of the Spirit

Introduction

(8 and 5 and 12)

In the 6^th century BC (560 B.C.) Buddha gave Buddhists the Eight Paths to follow: <Right Knowledge, Right Aspiration, Right Speech, Right Behavior, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Absorption. >

In the 6^th century AD (570-632 A.D.) Mohammed gave Moslems the Five Pillars of Islam to follow: <"Shahada" (a proclamation of personal faith that "there is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet"; "Salat" (ritual prayer five times daily); "Zakat" (a fixed percentage for almsgiving); "Ramadan" (the great fast); "Hajj" (the once-in-a-life-time pilgrimage to Mecca). Sometimes listed as the Sixth Pillar is the famous (or infamous) "Jihad": the obligation to spread Islam (which easily deteriorates into "holy war").

Two thousand years before Christ (2000 B. C.) Rabbinical tradition, seeking to ritualize God's presence in even the smallest and most insignificant details of human life, gave of the people of Israel a huge accumulation of at least 713 major laws (plus a whole constellation of minor laws) to follow. That confusing maze of rules, regulations, prescriptions, statutes, exhausted the ordinary Jew.

The yoke of religion

One day Jesus looked upon the exhausted crowds, and cried out to them, "Come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you...for my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Mt 11:28-30). He was referring to the exhausting yoke of religion and he promised the weary masses that he would lift that huge burden from their backs, and would refresh them. In Galatians, Paul too is speaking of religion as weight, when he writes "Christ has come to set us free from circumcision and the Law. So don't ever submit to that burden again" (Gal 5:1).

Theologian Paul Tillich also refers to religion as weight when he writes of "Christian people in Christian Churches toiling and laboring away under innumerable laws which they cannot fulfill, from which they flee, to which they return, or which they replace by other laws" (The Yoke Of Religion). That sounds familiar: Catholics falling away and then returning "to make their peace with God." Or Catholics simply leaving the church for good or going in search of a new religious burden (maybe an eastern one) to place about their necks.

Christ’s one Law

The task of lifting religion as weight from the backs of believers is tricky business. Not many religious reformers succeed at it. In the place of the old yoke, they usually impose a new one of their own. It might be a lighter burden but it is still a burden. Jesus is completely successful in this regard. He doesn’t replace his rabbinical tradition, that huge accumulation of 713 major laws, with only 12 laws or only 8 laws, not even with only 2 laws. Jesus has given us but only one Law.

One day a good Pharisee approached him and asked, “Teacher, which (out of all this confusing maze) is the first and most important commandment of all. Jesus answers by reciting his “Schema Yisrael,” his “Hear, Oh Israel” (that prayer every faithful Jew recites three times daily). It comes from Deuteronomy 6:4-5: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God. Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with thy whole heart, whole soul, whole mind and whole strength." Then, without being asked, quoting from Leviticus 19:18, he adds, “and the second is like the first: `Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself'" (Mt 22:34-40). Jesus nails those two great laws together and makes them 1. Buddha gave the people 8 laws; Mohammed gave them 12; the rabbis gave the people 713. Jesus gives us I Law only (Mt 22:34-40).

New but not new

His one great commandment, to love God with whole heart and soul and to love neighbor as we love ourselves, is new in the sense that he nailed the two great commandments together as nobody before him ever did. Then Jesus opened all phylacteries and mezuzahs in Israel, which contained the “lonely” scripture text to “love God with whole heart, soul, and mind,” and side by side with it he placed a companion scripture to “love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Lv. 19:18). That indeed was new.

That commandment which nails together love God and neighbor is new also because Jesus gave it an absolute precedence over every other law, rule, regulation, prescription, statue, and command, as nobody before him every did. “On these two commandments (nailed together),” he said, “depends the whole Law and the Prophets.” Like Moses, the great Law-giver of old, Jesus commands us to write this one great Law upon our hearts, and to repeat it over and over again to our children, and to fasten it to our foreheads and wrists, and to nail it to our doorposts (Dt 6:4-9).

But this new commandment is also “as old as the hills.” For by our very creation into the human family, we are all given one and the same Law or Commandment: "Thou shalt be what thou art created to be: a human being.” In other words, “Thou shalt be compassionate, merciful, generous, self-sacrificing, sensitive, unselfish, thoughtful, non-violent, gentle.” That holds good for all of us: Christians, Moslems, and Jews. (That’s a good thought because it unites us to other religions, and that’s what true religion always does: it never divides or separates; it always unites.)

The one Law of the Spirit

That one-nailed-together Law, written by Christ, is always written with a capital "L." All other laws, written by humans, are written with a small “l”. These small “l” laws are written on paper and sometimes on stone. That is to say, they are legislated by humans. They can be legion, as numerous as the sands by the sea: 5, 8, 713, and many more. The capital “L” Law, written by Christ, is not written on paper because love cannot be legislated. It is written on the human heart or spirit. It is sometimes called the Law of the Spirit (or simply the Law of Love or the Law of Christ). When that capital “L” Law of the Spirit is in good working condition within us, when it is alive and well within us, it is so sufficient in itself that it has absolutely no need of any other small “l” laws, for the Law of the Spirit compels us to do absolutely everything and much more than what all the small “l” laws could possibly ask or demand of us.

The Law of the Spirit: that’s the Law that was alive and well in the heart of Mother Mary on Christmas Eve, as she gazed “with love beyond all telling” upon her newborn babe. The Law of the Spirit: that’s the Law that was alive and well in the heart of Mother Theresa of Calcutta who, with her sisters, picked up discarded human beings from the streets of Calcutta. The Law of the Spirit: that’s the Law that is alive and well in the hearts of all the great mothers we celebrate today. That Law of Love within them compels them to do far more than any written human law could ever compel them to do.

Source of the one Law

What makes the Law of the Spirit, rooted in our creation as human beings, come alive in us? I suppose we could say that it is God who makes it come alive in us, though I seldom find such an answer satisfying. That’s the answer we seem togive when we don’t have the answer, or when we are not quite sure of the answer. Perhaps we can say that God makes the Law of the Spirit come to life in us very often through family, through friends, through many wonderful people who incarnate the one Law of the Spirit in their lives, who give it flesh and blood, and who thereby call us, inspire us to do the same.

Last Sunday was good shepherd Sunday. Last Sunday we said we were talking not about some of us but about all of us: pastors and parents. Parenting is shepherding par excellence. Parents, call your children to the Law of the Spirit that’s in them. Parents, take the one-nailed-together Law of Love, written by Christ, and write it on your children’s hearts, and repeat it over and over again to them, and attach it to their wrists, place it on their foreheads, and nail it to their doorposts. Parents, call and inspire your children to be the human beings they were created to be: compassionate, merciful, generous, self-sacrificing, sensitive, unselfish, thoughtful, non-violent, gentle. That is a huge order in a society whose flow is directly in the opposite direction.

(small “l” laws kicking in)

There’s much at stake here. When human beings don’t become the human beings they were created to be, what you get is monsters. When the Law of the Spirit does not come alive in them but is dead, then the 713 small “l” laws have to kick in and take over for the time being, until that time when human beings will begin being human. The job of the small “l” laws, with their threats of penalties and punishments (some of them include lethal injection), their job is to stop human beings from being inhuman. Their job is to stop human beings from being monsters.

When the Law of the Spirit is not alive but is dead in us, then we need 713 laws to kick in and to stop our inhumanity. We need a law to stop us from graffiting the walls of the city. And we need another law to stop our garbbaging up the neighborhood. And we need another law to stop us from shattering the night silence with our boom boxes blasting away two in the morning. And we need another law to stop us from abusing our children and from neglecting our elderly. And we need another law to stop us from mistreating our animals and to stop us from defacing our Mother Earth. And moving into the big league, we need another law to stop angry boys from staging their school massacres, and to stop skinheads from beating gays to pulp, and to stop angry militiamen from blasting away at federalism and human life.

And after so much law, after so many laws, nothing really changes. The small “l” laws don’t make anyone human. They only make people act as though they are not inhuman. They only make people act as though they are human. But given the right moment, when the laws are not looking, they will unleash their inhumanity, which the arm of human laws never touches. In a society where people are acting only as though they are not inhuman, where people are acting only as though they are human -- in such a society you never never know when another Timothy McVeigh will appear on the scene again, this time to demolish the Federal Building here in Milwaukee, and with it, countless human lives. You never never know when another Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold will appear on the scene again to do an even better job in Milwaukee, than was done at Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado. In a society where people are acting only as though they are human, the potential for another Nazi Holocaust is always all around us.

Conclusion

(settling for nothing less)

Treat yourself to the Law of the Spirit. Treat your children to the Law of the Spirit. That’s the Law which is not satisfied with “as though.” That’s the Law which is not satisfied with yourself or your children “acting as though” you are human. That’s the law which settles for nothing less than this: a human being being truly human. That’s the law which redounds to the glory of God, for as one of the early church fathers has written, “The glory of God is a human being that has become fully human.”