In giving his report on General Assembly to us last Sunday, John Elder – our Church Council Clerk – spoke about one of the difficult themes which seemed to run through the meeting of our church national governing body: that of attempting to regulate belief and behaviour. I think the way John put it was: Purity of belief by regulation and purity of behaviour by regulation. This tendency to over-regulate is the reality of institutions struggling to cope in a changing context. As societal behaviour and belief challenge past traditional ways of doing things, we find ourselves naturally asking: so how do we live within this changing context? One way of responding to change is by building a wall, tightening rules, and limiting choice. It brings to my mind an experience within the University of Otago in the 1960s. I can’t remember all the details, but I do remember (even as a very law-abiding person) the outrage I felt when the University Council banned mixed flatting. It all seems laughable today; but less than 50 years ago, in an attempt to protect and ensure the morality of students (and the community at large), flats were regulated to include students of only one sex, all university halls of residence (by constitution) were single sex institutions (with strict curfews and rules about visitors) and, a rule which particularly galled me, no female student was ever to enter the Knox College dining room! Various demonstrations and strategies, including active disobedience and a mass sleep-over in the University Union, led fairly quickly to significant change, which was more appropriate for the growing freedoms of the 60s.
Within any community, any institution, rules and regulations are essential; they enable a society to live well. But over-regulation can be abusive and destructive; for example:
· when risk management strategies require two hours of paper-work to be done before emergency rescue could proceed in the collapsed CTV building[1];
· when regulations suggest narrow norms which prevent the flourishing and fullness of life for all people;
· when rules give privilege to the powerful majority and oppress further those have no voice
Then, questions must be asked and challenges made.
The ancient Israelites, like all communities, formulated rules for a way of living that made sense for their context. The Ten Commandments became a foundational understanding for that community. Over the years and decades and centuries of evolving faith communities, other rules and regulations were added and developed to respond to changing contexts and situations. Some of those regulations can be found in Leviticus where we hear of rules which make absolutely no sense today – but may have been appropriate for a different context. None of us would feel constrained to live within these regulations today where eating meat that contained blood, wearing clothing of mixed fibre, appointing priests with a physical blemish, planting two types of grain in a field, and eating shellfish were all prohibited.
This morning’s Gospel offers a voice within the context of our day and its own day. One of the scribes – one of the church lawyers – impressed with Jesus’ wise and skilful debating asks him, “So which commandment is first of all.” I understand that in Jesus’ time “there were over six hundred prescriptions in the Law. Naturally, questions about priority arose. Which was most important? How would they be ordered and interrelated?[2] And Jesus answered, “The first is that God is One”. This understanding takes us beyond individual beliefs and theories of God-ness into the presence of the Holy Mystery, the Horizon of our Becoming. The One for whom we long and who calls us into relationship. This is not a God that sits alongside, or above, other Gods; this is not a God that can be regulated – it is the Source of all Being – Holy Oneness in whom all of what we call creation (people, animals plants, planets, galaxies and cosmos) dwell. The first commandment, Jesus says, is that God is One and that you shall love that God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength: heart, soul, mind and strength united into loving communion with this Holy Oneness. And when we are drawn into this Holy Oneness, we are propelled into loving others as ourselves.
Love God and love neighbour as ourselves – “although these are two, they are inseparable. Therefore, they form one commandment, ‘the first’ [-the one to which we dedicate ourselves wholly and unconditionally].
“This twofold ... commandment of [top priority] is engaged by an interior act of love. This establishes the proper flow, from the inside to the outside, from unitive consciousness to unitive acts.” This flow from inner love to outer love ‘is what is threatened when believers are faced with many laws.”[3] When church (or state) over-regulates, prescribes and proscribes, we find ourselves turned inside out – away from that first commandment to place ourselves first and foremost within the context of Holy Unity and Love. There are two serious problems when we do not make the One God that is Love our beginning point. First, we find ourselves, with the Scribe, asking the wrong question – what is the Law, and what does it entail, and how can it be kept. With our consciousness firmly fixed on the exterior, the emphasis is on obedient behaviour (as set, often by fearful boundary-keepers). So that dying people, hurting people, overlooked people are denied justice, hope and love. Secondly, when the inner world that accompanies the behaviour is overlooked, the law can be kept with a hard heart, a dark mind, a sick soul, and only a minimum of strength. So that highly respected people behave in anything but loving ways (as evidenced recently by the appalling sexual abuse perpetrated by Jimmy Savile[4] and the Kaitaia prominent businessman, church pastor and school principal.[5])
Many who follow Jesus fail to catch the transformational enormity of his message; they miss his beginning point focussing on an interior commitment to Loving Oneness. We can see this lack of understanding in some of the early church documents – especially in some of the later Epistles found in the New Testament – this desire to start with the outside – to regulate and control. But the Gospel is not rule-focussed – Jesus’ way of life and teaching was never about creating purity of belief and behaviour by regulation. Rather, we are called to the much more challenging and transformative action of tuning and training our hearts and minds, our souls and our strengths to Universal Love – so that we might be that Love in the world.
When we have turned our inner selves towards that focus, then questions of mixed flatting, same-sex marriage, leadership and sexuality, the substance of our faith – all these questions take on a different context – for they are seen first and foremost through the lens of love.
It is within that context that a group calling themselves “Christians for Marriage Equality” have made a submission to the Government – a very different submission from that of church bodies which have ruled that marriage can only be between different sexes.
In their submission, Christians for Marriage Equality, write:
“As members of Christian churches, we have an understanding of Christian sexual ethics that values the quality of the relationship. We believe that sexual relationships should be loving, committed, faithful, mutual and respectful. Same sex and different-sex relationships both have the potential to be ethical and therefore acceptable in the sight of God. Our experience as people in faith communities leads us to conclude that different-sex and same-sex relationships have more similarities than differences. Both have the capacity for love and both have the capacity for destructiveness. Both involve two people who share emotional interdependence and a sexual relationship. Both have the possibility of parenting responsibilities. Both require trust and commitment to flourish. Both entail social obligations. The similarities make it obvious that both need equivalent legal protection, social respect and encouragement.[6]
And the scribe said to Jesus, You are right Teacher; you have truly said that God is one and besides God there is no other – and to love God with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbour as oneself – this is much more important than rules about burnt offerings and sacrifices.
And seeing that he answered wisely, Jesus said “You are not far from the kin-dom of God” And after that, no one dared to ask him any question. May it be so.
[1] “a rescuer with vital listening equipment spent two hours filling out forms delaying their arrival at the building collapse. Jane Parfitt from Civil Defence admitted two hours was too long..” Coroner’s inquest into the collapse of CTV building during Christchurch Earthquake http://www.3news.co.nz/Machines-needed-in-CTV-rescue---demolition-expert/tabid/423/articleID/275071/Default.aspx 1 November 2012
[2] John Shea Eating with the Bridegroom: The Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and Teachers 2005, p.260
[3] John Shea p.260-261.
[4]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9620223/Jimmy-Savile-He-was-the-tip-of-the-iceberg.html 19 October 2012. Sir James Wilson Vincent "Jimmy" Savile, OBE, KCSG was an English disc jockey, television presenter, media personality and charity fundraiser en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Savile
[5] Parents in Kaitaia have every right to feel apprehensive following the arrest last week of a businessman on 17 charges involving the sexual abuse of boys, according to ECPAT Child ALERT director Allan Bell, although its recent experiences were not unique. He made his comments after the "prominent businessman" appeared before Kaitaia District Court last week. The accused entered no plea and was remanded in custody, for a second appearance today. His arrest by police in Kaitaia was the third in quick succession. Former school teacher James Parker, who had been the deputy principal at Pamapuria School until his arrest, is due to appear in Kaitaia District Court on Thursday next week for sentence on 49 convictions of sexually abusing boys, while 63-year-old church pastor Eric Reid was in the District Court at Kaikohe yesterday for call-over on sex-related offences involving two women, one of them a teenager. http://www.northlandage.co.nz/news/kaitaias-child-abuse-problem-not-unique/1605271/ November 1 2012
[6] Margaret Mayman representing Christians for Marriage Equality submission on the Marriage Amendment Bill. http://www.scribd.com/doc/111356591/Christians-for-Marriage-Equality
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