In this second half of the Church’s year, the Sundays after Trinity or Sundays in Ordinary Time as we now reckon them, the readings at Sunday Mass and sermons based on them turn from the specific events of Our Lord’s life to consider in more detail his words and teaching. Each year, on a three year cycle, the gospel readings come from the first three gospels in turn; this year mostly from Saint Luke. By his divine example, his miracles and teaching the Word of God Made Flesh opens to us the ways of living and relating to God which take us into the realms of grace and the life of God’s Kingdom which Jesus proclaimed. Human beings are offered a life of holiness and lasting significance: “life more abundant” or “life to the full” as Jesus in Saint John’s Gospel puts it. The Church’s mission is to continue to offer to the world in each generation this Gospel Good News brought uniquely to us by Jesus.
In the Old Testament we hear the inspired words of the great prophets and a very great deal about God’s Law. This is not only the Ten Commandments but for the Jewish people to whom the “Law of Moses” was addressed this includes over six hundred laws by which to regulate personal and social behaviour in a God-pleasing way. In the New Testament Jesus teaches us that we must go beyond the rule book: “unless your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven”. This is explicitly not to abolish the Law but to fulfil and complete it. “You have heard it said of old time…….but I say unto you……”. Jesus demands much more than mere rule-keeping.
Tynwald Day on 5th July brings us to our Island’s National Day. Part of the ceremony, indeed the reason for it all, is not the short church service, the Tynwald Fair, the visiting soldiers, Garden Party or even the Tynwald Banquet but the public announcement of the Laws from Tynwald Hill. For many years the lesson read at the service has reminded us of the Gospel’s Great Commandments, the summary of the whole of the law: “Love God with all your heart and mind………..and love your neighbour as yourself.” Doing that we shall not be far from the Kingdom.
All societies must have some rules. The Ten Commandments in one shape or another appear in the laws of all societies since all must try to avoid chaos and disorder. Where the Rule of Law breaks down, in dictatorship and tyrannies or just in feeble or corrupt muddling along, then soon fear and misery follow for most of the people, while some, (usually rather a few), might live the high life. Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, China under Mao and present-day regimes where revolution in the name of the People reduce the population to helpless cogs in the machinery of the state all have brought death and misery to millions. There has to be something else, something different in kind from simple obedience to the State’s Laws because as we sadly so often see, the laws themselves can be corrupted to become tools of oppression. There has to be a rendering to God the things of God as well as to Caesar the things of Caesar.
In the Book of Daniel the tyrant Nebuchadnezzar orders people to worship his statue when the band plays. Lots of statues have been worshipped all over the world in our living memories and the bands have played and fearful people have marched and danced and saluted the grey men on the podium. If God, the very ground of all existence and source of moral and spiritual life is replaced by any human being or ideology, then Beware! The so-called Nuremberg Defence of “I was only obeying orders” will not do. Like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the story, even the prospect of the “Burning, fiery furnace” should not deter those who refuse to worship the state’s naked demands of obedience in all things. Only a few heroic souls seem to rise completely to the challenge. Genuine freedom fighters and prisoners of conscience point the way and in the Church the holy martyrs not only of the first few centuries but down the ages to our own times in death camps or by the assassin’s bullet like the young priest in Poland and Archbishop Romero shot while saying Mass, are honoured and celebrated at the Altar as true sharers (as Saint Paul describes it) in the sufferings of Christ. Supremely Christians see in the Cross of Jesus the confrontation of God and the worldly world’s powers which can be so deeply lawless and morally and spiritually corrupted in high places. The Resurrection shows us who wins in the end in the process of making the Kingdoms of this world into the Kingdoms of God’s Son.
We all, individually and collectively in our human societies and organisations, must remember that the demands of God for Worship of Him alone is the first Great Commandment. Decent human behaviour, the Golden Rule of love for neighbour, flows from that for all those who aspire to be citizens of God’s Kingdom of Justice, Peace and Love.