A Better Hope--June 30, 2021

A Better Hope--June 30, 2021

"There is, on the one hand, the abrogation of an earlier commandment because it was weak and ineffectual (for the law made nothing perfect); there is, on the other hand, the introduction of a better hope, through which we approach God." [Hebrews 7:18-19]

Look, here's the thing that a lot of us Respectable Religious folks just don't want to admit:  merely having a lot of rules doesn't actually make anybody a better human being.  Having rules can't fix a broken relationship--not between two people, and not between us and God. Having more rules can't make you more lovely or more worthy of love or capable of love, either, for that matter.

Rules, commandments, and laws can only measure and scold.  They can show if I have lived up to expectations or not.  They can make me feel bad or guilty for failing or crossing the lines that they draw.  But they can't actually change me. The speed limit sign along the side of the road can only threaten that there are consequences for getting caught going faster than the number on the sign, but actually caring about the safety of the people in my car and in other cars on the road enough to keep within the speed limit has to come from somewhere else.  Love is necessary to actually enable me to change my actions and take the foot off the accelerator; rules can only make me afraid of getting pulled over.

When it comes to us and God, the same is true.  Rules can't make me love God if my heart if hardened, and rules can't help me start over if I've already broken relationship with God and need a new start.  Rules can show me where I have missed the mark (like if the commandment says, "Don't steal," and I have stolen something, the rule forces me to face the truth that I broke it).  But rules by themselves cannot make me into the kind of person who doesn't sin again my neighbor by taking what is theirs.

Along the same lines, rules can't earn love from God, because love is not a reward given in exchange for services rendered or for acceptable behavior.  Rule-following never brought anybody to God, because God doesn't make rule-following a pre-requisite for God's choice to love us.  But on the other hand, sometimes rule-following can become an obstacle between me and God, when I fool myself into thinking that God loves me because of my good behavior rather than out of sheer grace.

Our older brother in the faith Martin Luther had a powerful insight about the ineffectiveness of rules and commandments compared with the power of God's grace.  In his list of talking points that we call the Theses for the Heidelberg Disputation, Luther writes this:  "The law says, 'Do this,' and it is never done. Grace says, 'Believe in this one,' and everything is already done'."  That's just it.  Rules and commandments at best can only shout and bellow and warn, but they can't, on their own, get through to my heart.  What it takes is a Love that meets me and embraces me where I am, even in all my failures and willful rottenness as well, and embraces me, and from there, such Love is able to transform me in its own likeness.

For the writer of Hebrews, all of this is to say that Jesus' coming makes it clear that God doesn't intend to simply yell the old rules (which we were never very good at keeping anyhow) even louder than before, to intimidate us into obedience.  Rather, Jesus shows us that God would rather find a way to get through to these hearts of ours that are so often curved in on themselves, than to just leave us with commandments we will never be able to keep. God has decided to love us apart from our ability to keep rules or stay inside the lines--that's what makes the Good News of Jesus actually "good" and genuinely "new" rather than some stale old recycled and repackaged religious self-help. Jesus gives us "a better hope" than that, as the writer of Hebrews puts it.

It's not that rules like "Don't be envious of what your neighbor has" or "Love your neighbor" are bad policy; it's rather than just saying those are the rules won't automatically make me live by them.  The law isn't bad, but rather, as the writer of Hebrews says, it is weak and ineffectual.  It keeps barking, "Do this!" and "Don't do that!" and some rebellious and ornery part of me wants to do the exact opposite just for spite sometimes.  But love--the kind we find has already embraced us in Jesus--disarms that stubbornness in my heart and helps me to see I am already in the arms of the living God.  I don't have to keep the rules as a way of getting God to let me in closer, because I have already been brought to the very heart of God.

And when it dawns on me that this is how I am loved already, things begin to change in my stony heart.  Maybe yours too today.

Lord Jesus, thank you for the better hope you give me, the one grounded in your love and promise rather than in my capacity to keep rules.