From our Pastor

Jesus speaks a great deal about being free. Freedom is an important aspect of our life as disciples but there is also an understanding that in that freedom there needs to be some responsibility on our we live within it. The freedom Jesus and especially the Apostle Paul talk about is a freedom the Law of Moses. There is a freedom we experience when we recognize that our salvation is far above our ability to attain through our own efforts and we need to rely on God’s grace to achieve through divine action that which we cannot accomplish through our own. The law can limit our life because of the difficulty we find in trying to live up to its moral call in our relationship with God and with each other. We can fall into a trap of using the law to alienate and separate from each other because of how ‘the other’ fails to meet up to that moral canon. Yes, Jesus has told us that not even the smallest stroke of the law will be wiped out through his ministry but we need to remember that we are just as faulty in following the law as are the tax collectors, prostitutes and the outcasts of Jesus’ time. AND then we need to remember how Jesus responded to that fallen life when he met them.

Perhaps we need to stop seeing the Law as instruction on the requirements of our relationship with God and stop using it as a wedge to segregate ourselves from those who we fear will undermine the life God calls us to follow. What if we understood the law as a lens to show us our need for God’s grace in our life to live as we are called to live. Following the Sermon on the Mount would be a great moral code to live by, but just how many times have we failed to live up to that wondrous code? Having the Law in front of us in black and white is a divine gift to help us realize how much we need God in our lives to pick us up with we fall, brush us off and call us to live better into the future.

When I first started out driving the baler, I must have thrown my Dad off the rack at least two or three times during the day. I would hit the brake too hard to stop, or I would release the clutch to fast to start up again and there was little that Dad could do to keep his footing on the rack to stay on. Each time he would come up and talk to calm me down, go over the procedures again and again until I did eventually begin to get the hang of it and was able to do better, even if I wasn’t able to do it quite perfect yet.

In contrast, when one of my brothers was on the rack and I was a little to jerky in the starting and stopping, they were right on the side of the tractor right now yelling at me about how I was NOT doing it right. Of course, you can imagine that the more they yelled, the more tense I got, and the worse the situation became. I think that sometimes we are so quick to attack the faults and failings of each other we forget the need to be compassionate and loving in the way we strive to be in relationship. There are ways to be faithful to our call to perfection that opens doors to others to join and ways that really tends to slam them in their faces.

Having freedom from the law doesn’t mean that the law doesn’t matter any longer nor does it mean we have found a way to circumvent it. It means we have come to understand the role it plays in recognizing our need for God in our life. It helps us to build relationships that are based in a mutual desire to serve and not on the meeting of the moral code we have never been able to live up to. It means living with each other with a full and total understanding that we are all trying to live out that code as best we understand it. The focus needs to be on building relationships with each other and our God, not on keeping score on who has it right and who has it wrong. Let give ourselves a break and let God guide us in that path and leave the judgements to him.
 
 
In Christ’s love,
 
Pastor Paul