Keeping the Law

      My sister in law was once married to a Jewish man who kept the law as perfectly as anyone I have ever known.  I once sat with him in his kitchen and he explained to me the way that their plates and glasses were all arranged in separate cupboards so that they could adhere to the laws regulating milk and meat dishes, how they tried as hard as they could to do what the law required;  how it was a solemn duty that they had and how it helped their relationship with God.

While he was explaining all of this to me, there was a knock at the door and he left me to answer it.  I sat in the kitchen waiting for him to return and contemplated all of the things that he had said to me.  I thought about how humble he was and how devout he was in his faith.  He had really impressed me with what he had told me.

After a long time, I got worried about him.  I left the kitchen to see what was keeping him.  I found him on the front porch being confronted by a loud evangelical Christian who was telling him that being Jewish was certainly not an option as far as God was concerned.  When he saw me, he curtly asked me, “Well, are you also Jewish?”  I said  “yes, essentially”, which prompted a round of condemnation for me also.  With my seminary education, I began asking him about the New Testament, about what Jesus said about keeping the law rather than about being examples of the law.  I cited the passage from Mark where the Pharisees were confronted by Jesus about keeping the letter of the law but losing its real meaning.

We concluded that conversation with the missionary leaving the porch and rejoining his compatriots on the sidewalk.  I always have kept in my mind the probability that they put a chalk mark on the sidewalk to keep others of their team from confronting us.

Through it all, my brother in law was the picture of propriety.  He accepted that awful man on his porch with great hospitality and listened to what he had to say intently.  He wouldn’t have violated his welcome of that man for any reason whatsoever.   I think that he was even taken aback a bit by my arguing with him.

Jesus was always clear about what the law meant.  His disciples were chastised for gathering wheat on the Sabbath.  In Mark’s gospel, they are charged with not washing their hands before they ate.  All of these things were required by the law, which the religious establishment kept diligently.  What Jesus had a problem with was that the keeping of the law wasn’t the doing of the law.  He quotes Isaiah to them:

                                              This people honors me with their lips,
                                          but their hearts are far from me; in vain 
                                          do they worship me, teaching human
                                         precepts as doctrines.

He tells them:  You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.

And there you have it.  James is eloquent on this subject when he says simply: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. 

That for me has always been the essence of religion.  My brother in law certainly practiced it.  I hope that I do also.