Experiencing God - 202 Beyond the Rules

"Is is against the law on the Sabbath day to do good, to save life?"
Gospel of Mark

One of my favorite bicycle rides is going across the Angus L. MacDonald Bridge on the bike lane.  It's great when you have the whole lane to yourself; no worry about cars, and the view of the Halifax Harbor is the best.  Some may say: "Are you not worried about the height, maybe driving over the side of the bridge?"  I would say to that: "It's impossible.  The lane has two huge steel railings on either side, and its almost impossible to get over them.  So I can ride across quite freely, without fear of falling off."  

I like to think of our rules in this way.  Rules are there to provide safety, to provide order.  They are the railings which enable us to move about freely and spontaneously.  We need rules in our society, and we have a lot of them.  We also need them in our churches.  But the one thing we have to be aware of is that following the rules for their own sake does not lead to meaningful worship of God. Worship and faith have to do with relationship.   

It follows and is similar too that ancient expression from Plato or Socrates: ""Justice without mercy is not really justice at all." Justice without mercy can turn into the worst type of cruelty.

In the above Gospel from Mark, Jesus is asking a question to the Pharisees:  "Is it against the law (or rules) on the Sabbath day to do good, or to save life?"  He received no answer because they were so obstinate.  To further His teaching, Jesus, on the Sabbath, asked the man with the withered hand to stretch it out, and He healed it, breaking what the Pharisees saw as one of their sacred rules.  What the Pharisees failed to realize was that the Sabbath rule was there to assist them to enter into meaningful worship of God, and not as a test to justify themselves before others. 

Following the rules, for them, became more important than the mercy, compassion and love towards which the rules pointed.  And that's why they failed to stop to help the man on the edge of the road who was beat up and robbed in the Good Samaritan story.  

Our rules take us only so far. They provide the order we need, the railings that keep us from falling offside. They permit us to move freely and spontaneously without fear.  But they all point to something greater.  We are in relationship with God.  We are in relationship with one another. And these relationships create a connection and bind us together with a responsibility towards one another and with God that goes beyond the mere practice of rules.