The Royal Law

9 September 2018 – 16^th Sunday of Pentecost

James 2:8-17; Mark 7:24-37

“You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’.” James 2:8

'No Man is an Island'

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, [that continent] is the less … any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.  And therefore never [ask] for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.  John Donne

Common among the world’s great religions is the concept and necessity of “community”.  That is, we are made to live not only with but for one another.  The Creation Story in which woman was created for man, which we rightly hold as the ideal for marriage, may also be said to express and convey the abiding principle that we are not complete, we are not whole without others.  As it is written, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18).

Though not all the world’s religions lift up the “royal law” (“Love your neighbor as yourself”), there is nevertheless a common understanding that no community can be greater than the least among them, no stronger than the weakest, no richer than the poorest. 

It must also be understood that no community can stand if there are not laws to regulate life in that community; standards of conduct for individuals for the sake of that community.  These laws must not be used to any individual’s advantage or disadvantage – rich or poor.  These laws are for the well-being of the entire community.

Thus it is an incomplete thing to point to the many persons who were healed by Jesus on an individual basis as the Christian standard of salvation.  If we were to look more closely, as expressed by St. James, St. Paul, the other epistle writers as well as the Church fathers and ancient rabbis, we would find another undeniable reality: when the “royal law” is fulfilled, when we do for our neighbors as zealously as we would do for ourselves, communities are strengthened by the healing of each individual person.  This is the say, one is not saved only for one’s own sake but also for the sake of the community as a whole.  It is as true today as it was in the time of Jesus.  Yet it is largely overlooked or outright denied.

I never knew what it meant to “ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee”.  Poetry was never my thing.  I just didn’t get it, but it may also be said I didn’t want to get it, poetry being for girls and hippies … until an episode of “Longmire” had the Wyoming, ‘Marlboro Man’ sheriff quoting the passage, “Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind”.  The sheriff was struggling with having had to shoot a man in the line of duty.  He felt badly that he did not feel guilty – and that feeling of guilt (or lack of guilt) was attributed to his understanding of this poem, the connection we all share one to another.

But here is where I personally get hung up – and if you are honest, you probably share this guilt with me – we all “show partiality” to one degree or another, but we deny – or we are not mindful - that we are “committing sin” (James 2:9).  We just don’t think of it as “sinful”.  Yet by denying the sacred worth of a person we deem “lesser”, we diminish the humanity of one who was also created in the Divine Image, one for whom Christ also died. 

We diminish as well our own being as members of the “royal” community regulated by “royal law”; and by “committing sin”, we violate the “royal law”, we diminish our standing before our God and within the community as a whole.  And yet strangely enough, we excuse ourselves from this “sin” in Jesus’ Name by declaring our having been “saved” – all without realizing the community as a whole is weakened when we convince ourselves we are better than we really are. 

How do we do that?  How is it we can knowingly and willfully commit sin and still refer to salvation as “assured”?  Especially as it is written, “Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil” (1 John 3:8); as it is also written, “We will reap what we sow” (Galatians 6:7).  So if we sow sin, without earnest repentance, without the resolve to move in a whole new direction, we will reap sin.  That is, if we normalize sin within the community, we make sin a staple of a community condemned to destruction – by our own hands or by the Hand of the Almighty Himself.  We must always remember the entire nation of Israel was sent into exile – not just the “bad’ persons; the nation as a whole.

We can blame many things for the decline of the American church, but any one thing we point to will ultimately lead us to this reality: we don’t take sin seriously.  And we don’t take sin seriously because we take salvation for granted.  We have lost sight of the fact that salvation is not an “event” and grace without genuine repentance is not a given.  Each must be sought as zealously as that one sheep out of a hundred (Luke 15:3-7).  Each must be embraced as THE Royal Standard.  Each must be engaged day by day and hour by hour; for each is a commitment to a higher level of living and loving.  And each involves others.  Always.

I will grant you it is a hard thing to give up our time for those with whom we are simply not compatible, but I also submit to you there are untold treasures awaiting those who will strive to look more carefully at those whom we would prefer to keep at a safe distance.  Are “they” (whomever “they” may be) really the problem? 

The disconnect between righteousness and religion is deep and wide because we don’t typically connect religion to practical living.  As has been expressed by so many who have become not only disenfranchised but outright hostile to religion in general – and the Church specifically – is that we seem trying to sell “pie-in-the-sky” idealism while overlooking what John Wesley referred to as “practical Christianity”; real-life living.  In a nutshell, it is “The Royal Law”.

 

I submit to you, dear friends, that living and loving as Christ Himself lived and loved is “The Royal Law”, the royal standard.  Anything less makes us all paupers.  Anything less will one day make us beggars; for we will beg for mercy we never showed.  The Royal Law is mercy; the mercy shown us when we were justified, the mercy bestowed on us as we bestow mercy ourselves.

This mercy is not found on Facebook or other social media; it is found only in fellowship, in genuine friendship, in hand shakes and hugs, in giving our time to those who are lonely, to those who are hurting.  It is being a friend to those who have no friends – for these are The Word made flesh in Christ Jesus, love in the flesh by our devotion.  It is Life for them, and it is Life for us for all eternity.  To the glory of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.  Amen.