Good Morning Friends,
A friend of mine once told me that he believed that God designed things to work for those who decide to follow the design. There are rules all around us if we belong to any religious institution or community. Sometimes we agree with the rules and other times we do not. Sometimes the rules make sense to us, and at times we think they are absurd. Sometimes the rules change culturally. Some of them are God’s rules and some have been made by men. Not fighting for your life on the Sabbath is an example of a manmade rule. In the Bible there are 613 Jewish laws. If you were a keeper of the law like the Pharisees, you would have studied these laws and known them very well and probably figured out ways around some of them. Many of the laws applied to the Temple as a Holy place but the intent of the Messiah was and is to apply the law of love to our hearts and minds as a consciousness of Christ. The Pharisees believed that God gave Moses the knowledge of what the Jewish laws meant and how they should be applied. But the Pharisees had substituted an expanded tradition for the real intent of the law which Jesus would seal on the Cross. Jesus reminds us that we are made in the image of God and when we have a consciousness in Christ the laws of ritual become a bit pointless. Still with a look in the mirror I ask, What Rules Measure Our Lives?
Scripture: Then Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the assembly of Israel, and spread out his hands to heaven. He said, “O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and steadfast love for your servants who walk before you with all their heart, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! Regard your servant’s prayer and his plea, O Lord my God, heeding the cry and the prayer that your servant prays to you today; that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house, the place of which you said, ‘My name shall be there,’ that you may heed the prayer that your servant prays toward this place. Hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place; O hear in heaven your dwelling place; heed and forgive.
1 Kings 8:22-23, 27-30 (NRSV)
Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God)— then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.”
Mark 7:1-13 (NRSV)
Message: Now tradition can be good but if taken too far for the wrong reasons can end up drawing us into sin. Of course, the answer to today’s question is probably yes from time to time for it is not such an easy thing to live in the light of Christ. Still I think we all have experienced what happens in our minds when confronted with laws that control our behavior as opposed to relationships that motivate our actions through love. The mystery is how this experience of thinking both draws the community together through common interest and beliefs and creates a collective consciousness and shared relationship that brings order and an observable sense of belonging and meaning to life. On one level when we remember the law in our mind, we are encouraged to carry out moral behavior but when the law is embedded in a loving relationship the worship becomes something much more. You see being a Christian is not about keeping up with man’s traditions, being religious, or ritualistic, but being a devoted, disciple for Jesus Christ. Our minds, spirits and souls are transformed by spending time with God, praying, fasting, reading scripture, and letting the Holy Spirit lead and guide us. Friends, our relationship with Jesus grows when we spend quality time with God.
And So, the purpose of the law is summed up in our love of God and love of each other manifested in the power of a Christ relationship that includes us loving ourselves, so we might confront evil one person at a time beginning with the person in the mirror. If Christ is not the cornerstone of this journey, we end up worshipping idols and spiritually dead. Still, it is a bit of a mystery how a belief in Christ draws us together in community with a purpose and order and an observable sense of belonging and meaning to life. The challenge is to place it in our collective hearts without it being limited to a physical place as an idol. We need to be cautious, for on one level when we remember the law in our mind, we are encouraged to carry out moral behavior but when the law is embedded in a loving relationship the worship becomes something much more. The purpose of the law is summed up in our love of God and love of each other manifested in the power of a Christ relationship remembered. So, be all in for Christ. Without that love all else is trash.
Pray we do not ignore God’s scripture but embrace it as a way of revealing our heart. Pray we are not controlled by obsessive rituals but freed to honor traditions that bring abundance to life. Pray we are not critiquing, criticizing, and condemning as a way of justifying our existence. Pray instead we attain a consciousness that gives us a glimpse of heaven through a relationship with Jesus. Pray we set aside time to develop a relationship with God so the sacred might spill over in our lives and the places we live. Pray we develop a Christ consciousness as a spiritual force with a sacred purpose in a movement that responds to the flow of holy history. Pray for a time when the Lion lays down with the Lamb. Pray for forgiveness, grace, and mercy but especially for love. Pray Christ rules in our hearts.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 