The Laws of Life

Dear Friends,

COVID or not, our youth are off to college. Part of the excitement of college or more precisely, the excitement of moving out of their parents’ home, is that they are free. No more parental obligations. I am free to come and go as I want, when I want. I can wash my hands of all those rules and regulations that made life at home so tiresome.

What college freshmen learn – what we all learned when we went out on our own, is that we are never completely, totally free. Housing complexes have rules, income tax needs to be paid by April 15, roads have speed limits. We escape one set of rules and immediately find ourselves under another set of norms.

Generally, our experience of law is negative. “Don’t.” Religion in particular is viewed as laying on its members multiple negative prescriptions.

So, when we turn to today’s first reading, we are skeptical. Moses maintains that observing the law of God will be life-giving for the Israelites. It would enrich them and free them. Indeed, the Israelites did experience God’s law this way, referring to it as “honey on their lips.”

That idea of law as freeing, as life-giving, takes effort for us to comprehend. The closest we come to law as freeing would be the laws that freed slaves, gave women the right to vote, allowed the freedom marches to pass unharmed from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to present their grievances to Governor George Wallace, the laws in South Africa that put an end to apartheid.

In today’s Gospel, the Pharisees and scribes accused Jesus’ disciples of being unclean – not observing the ritual washings, referring to the ritual laws of washing hands, kettles, cups, without meaning. Lip service to God.

We know about lip service. That is the result of being a minimalist. I will do the least amount in order to stay in God’s good graces. I’ll get to Mass by homily time and leave after communion. That will fulfill my obligation. I’ll punch in on time at work and take as many coffee breaks as I wish. Just enough to stay on the right side of God and people in charge at work.

But Moses says that God’s invitation to live by the Law is characterized by a freedom of spirit. James says it will be recognized by a sensitivity to people on the periphery of life. Jesus holds up love of God and love of neighbor as the essence of the Law.

Once we have let God’s Word take root in our hearts, we will more likely allow this Word to change us, make us more whole, as individuals and a community, make us other-centered. We move toward being ready to embrace right order and daily living with God’s ways as our guide. In other words, we put law into perspective and make it the servant of life. It is what is in the heart that matters.

~Sister Joan Sobala