Doing the Right Thing
Matthew 5:13-20
by Dr. David Rogne

During the Second World War there was a movie entitled "Edge of Darkness" that my family saw several times. It was about the Norwegian resistance during the German occupation of Norway. My folks were from Norway, so it had particular interest for us. One scene sticks in my mind because it was the starting point of the earliest conversations I can remember about the moral dilemma faced by Christians. A German soldier had been killed, so the Germans rounded up a number of townspeople to be killed in reprisal. The condemned people were marched to the graveyard, required to dig their own graves, and were about to be shot when the Lutheran pastor of the village emerged from the church tower with a machine gun and proceeded to kill the German soldiers who were guarding the prisoners. This met with great approval from the theater audience. Later, at home, conversation got around to the actions of the pastor, who had committed his life to teaching the Christian faith, including the Commandment "Thou shalt not kill." Had he done the right thing in killing others to save his townspeople?

How are we supposed to make moral choices? If we are Christians, do we simply learn the Commandments and other rules of conduct and apply them in the same way regardless of circumstances, or do we make exceptions? By themselves, do the moral teachings of the Bible tell us automatically what we should do in every situation?

In the passage which was read today, Jesus says that the commandments must not be relaxed; that their validity is fixed and constant. But what about the times when you have done what is right according to the Bible, but something inside of you says that it isn't right? Is there something more to consider than doing what the commandments call for? In the portion of scripture which we read this morning, Jesus addresses this issue.

One of the things Jesus does in this passage is to warn us about the inadequacy of conduct that is focused too much on rules and regulations. This is what Jesus calls the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. The scribes carefully studied the Scriptures of their day, debated their meaning, and developed regulations so that devout people would know how to conduct themselves in ways that would please God. The Pharisees apparently got their name from a word meaning "separated ones." They separated themselves from ordinary people and ordinary activities so that they could concentrate on keeping the regulations the scribes had developed. To them, to keep the rules was to serve God. They sincerely wanted to please God. But, unfortunately, there are certain weaknesses in pursuing a style of life based exclusively on keeping rules and regulations.

For example, there is a temptation to insist on enforcement of the rules without considering the circumstances. For such people, then or now, rules and regulations are not guidelines to be considered when making a moral choice, but directives from which there is no deviation. They are not concerned with the spirit of the law, but with the enforcement of its letter.

I saw a film some years ago, entitled "The Little Kidnappers." Two little boys, probably six and eight, were playing in a field near their home in rural Scotland, when they came upon an infant whose mother had temporarily left it under a tree while she went back to get something out of a vehicle. The little boys assumed that the infant was abandoned and thought she would make a wonderful pet, so they took her and hid her. They took care of her and fed her for a couple of days, completely oblivious to the great commotion in the community over the apparent kidnapping of the infant. When the infant was discovered alive and well, some of the Puritanical townspeople had the little boys arrested and brought to trial for kidnapping, because that was what the law demanded. The boys' wise grandfather came to their defense, acknowledging that what they had done was within the definition of kidnapping, and the law ought not to be abrogated, but it had to take into consideration the ages and motives of the offenders. To do otherwise was to enforce a Pharisaical approach to law. To focus on enforcing the rules can leave out mercy.

Again, when people focus on rules and regulations, the rules invariably proliferate. The Judaism of Jesus' day had become choked in a whole tradition of hairsplitting that killed the spirit of concern for people. For example, one of the Commandments says that no work is to be done on the Sabbath because the Sabbath is holy. The scribes went to work on that to help people answer questions about what was permissible and what was not. They concluded that to carry a burden was work, and was not permissible. But what constituted a burden? A burden was anything you did not have to lift: enough milk for one swallow, enough ink to write two letters of the alphabet, food equal to the weight of a dried fig, water enough to moisten eye salve. They debated whether a woman could wear a hair fall on the Sabbath, or whether a person could wear dentures. Before they were done, their summary of the legal code ran eight hundred pages, and one of their commentaries on the legal code consisted of sixty printed volumes.

No wonder Jesus tried to bring back perspective by saying, "You've got it all backwards: people do not exist to keep the Sabbath, the Sabbath exists to give people a rest." The regulations had caused them to lose sight of the principle.

That tendency to multiply regulations is still with us today. Christian lifestyle called for modesty. Since, in the first century, women demonstrated modesty by covering their heads, women in the Catholic Church were required for nineteen centuries to cover their heads when entering a church. Among Pentecostals, lipstick and make-up were to be avoided; among Nazarenes, a simple lifestyle called for wearing no jewelry, including wedding rings. Among Methodists, piety was expressed by avoiding card playing or dancing. Someone did a tabulation that suggested that the religions of the world had generated thirty-two million religious regulations from their relatively few principles. An abundance of rules makes religion joyless and negative.

Further, when people are focused on rules and regulations, the rules become more important than people. In Idaho, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration leveled a $7875 fine against the construction firm DeBest Inc. The company's troubles began when a dirt wall collapsed on a worker. Two other workers immediately jumped in to help him. But they neglected to put on hard hats and take other precautions to prevent injury to themselves. That was a violation of OSHA rules, and it got the company fined. The local OSHA director said it would be "selective enforcement" not to fine the company. The letter of the law can become more important than the spirit.

Finally, focus on rules robs life of spontaneity. A couple and their eight-year-old daughter were visiting another couple one day. The little girl was a thoughtful and obedient child. While the adults were visiting on the backyard patio, the little girl played in the yard, and it was noted by the host couple that she was an especially graceful girl. Later, the girl came onto the patio and sat down, one leg hanging down, the other one on the wicker settee. The mother said, "Helen! Is that how you sit? Take your leg off the seat. A girl should never sit like that!" The little girl took her leg down, at which her skirt flew high above her knees. The mother said, "Helen! Pull your skirt down. A person can see everything!" The child blushed, looked down at herself and pulled her skirt down, but asked, "Why? What's wrong?" The mother looked at her quite shocked and said, "A lady doesn't do that!" By this time the atmosphere was completely uncomfortable. The little girl not only had her legs down but had them pressed against each other. Her shoulders had gone up, and she held her arms tight against her little body. This went on until she couldn't stand it any longer; suddenly she stretched herself and yawned heartily. Again a storm of indignation from her mother. By now--this all lasted about 10 minutes--the child had changed completely. Her gracefulness had turned into awkwardness; all her motions were stilted, her little body was tense; she hardly seemed to be alive any more. The mother had repressed her naturalness under a barrage of rules and laws of social acceptability.

Religious rules can have the same deadening, joy-sapping, shame-induced effect. It happened in Bible times. Pious Jews in Jesus' day were expected to obey some 613 religious commandments. People were ordered when to pray, what to eat, where to travel, how to farm, when to fish, and when to obey. With so many impersonal rules, people gradually lost touch with their personal God. Law crowded out love. What was done became more important than why it was done. There is something beyond simple adherence to rules and regulations that must be taken into account when making ethical choices. We need the guidance that is offered by commandments and principles, but we need something more.

It is that something more that Jesus refers to when he calls us to a righteousness that goes beyond rules and regulations--beyond the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. For one thing, it recognizes that conduct that is drawn out of a person is better than conduct that is imposed from outside. Verna Smith, writing in The Reader's Digest, described a situation that she noted on a trip to Southern California. She stopped at a small gas station on the outskirts of El Centro. While the tank was being filled, she went to the ladies' room. "The first thing I saw when I opened the door," she writes, "was an old-fashioned wicker table with a bowl of fresh flowers on it. The room was neat and spotless. When I returned to our car, I told the owner how much I appreciated the flowers. 'I've been doing that for nearly twenty-two years,' replied the owner. 'You'd be surprised how little cleaning up I have to do.'" People's conduct is more often changed by showing consideration than by posting a rule.

Again, if we are to get beyond a religion of rules and regulations, we must take the Commandments and Biblical statements seriously, but see them as guides and illustrations, rather than as a basis for judgment. Jesus said, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." (John 10:10) The rules and Commandments, as I see it, are the guidelines offered to help us find that abundant life. The rules are quick generalizations, as though to say, "All things being equal, this is the kind of conduct that leads to the abundant life." But in actual practice we are almost never in a situation where all things are equal, so we have to make adjustments in how we apply the teachings.

Take Jesus' teaching about divorce. His words against it are very strong because divorce can destroy the abundant life. All things being equal, people who marry should stay together. That is the way God intended marriage to be. But, unfortunately, sinful people marry. Abusive people. Faithless people. Flawed people. All things are not equal. We know God's intention. It was our intention too. But the marriage died. Love died. Nobody is going to find the abundant life in that relationship. And so divorce is chosen.

But it is not the church's job to pronounce sentence. What people need when their lives are in disarray is not a reminder that they have broken God's law, but some assurance that they can be loved and accepted in spite of what has happened.

It isn't that the commandments are set aside or made unimportant--Jesus said the law and the teachings of the prophets would endure. He didn't come to abolish them or to diminish their importance as a pattern for us to follow. In fact, he said he came to fulfill them. That fulfillment comes about by reducing all the commandments and rules and regulations to their most basic expression--the expression of love.

When Jesus was asked which is the greatest commandment, he responded, "Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind,... and your neighbor as yourself." Matthew 22:36-39) The righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees is not based on keeping rules, but on acting in love.

Eugene Smith, in his book, Mandate for Mission, tells of a prominent church official, who was a successful businessman and community leader in a small mid-western town, who was arrested and found guilty of certain crimes. There was much bitterness against the man, and at the next meeting of the church board, one person moved that the family name be taken off the church rolls. Someone else reminded them that the man's wife and children had done no harm. Another person stood and read Jesus' parable about someone who had been forgiven a large debt by his master, but who refused to forgive another a much smaller debt. After this, there was a long silence. When discussion began again, it was on a different note. A plan was developed in which, every week, the man in prison would receive a letter of encouragement from some member of the church board and a personal visit from another member. The day the man was released from prison, he was met at the prison door by all the officers of the church. They drove back to the church together, and in the sanctuary they shared communion, the sacrament that celebrates the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. Following that, they sat down and ate together. The people of that church discovered what it means to exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees.

Jesus calls us to an ethic in which love takes precedence over rules. But he did not give us a code which can be applied to every situation without considering all the factors of life. We still have to weigh all the considerations and then try to respond in love. Since there is no way of reducing the claims of love to words, it is not possible for us to say in advance the way a Christian must respond in every situation. Moral acts have to be improvised on the spot and justified, not by their accuracy in conforming to a specific law, but by their faithfulness to the claims of love.

Someone has likened this view of morality to a jazz concert. Those who focus on the rules of music like to have their music written out note for note and measure for measure, with nothing left to chance. Jazz musicians must also learn the rules, but they have an intuitive understanding that makes it possible to improvise widely and individually. And somehow, it makes sense and comes out right. There doesn't seem to be a discipline, and yet there is. What gives meaning to the improvisations is the unwritten understanding among the musicians, which is the beat.

For Christians, the beat is love, and each of us is called to respond to that with our individual improvisations.