Price and Worth--June 12, 2024

Price and Worth--June 12, 2024

"Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." [2 Corinthians 3:4-6]

There is a world of difference--maybe a whole universe--between the "price" of something and the "worth" of something.  Even though we often use those two as synonyms, both meaning the cash value of an object or a service, there is an important difference between the two when it comes to things that really matter.

Sometimes, of course, we use "price" and "worth" interchangeably. If I want to find out if you'd be willing to sell that used car in your driveway, I might ask you, "What's it worth to you?" and you'd give me a dollar amount--a price--and we might haggle until we can arrive at an agreed amount I'll pay in order to drive home in the card.  In that case, sure, the "worth" of the car is reducible to "the amount of money you would take in exchange for this object."

But what about your closest friendship?  How much money did you acquire that for?  What's the cash value of a friend?  I would expect that there's no money at all there--there are no receipts to track, and no currency exchanged.  A friendship, by definition, isn't something to be bought or sold.  But does that mean it is worthless?  Hardly!  A friendship may be one of the most valuable things you have in life, but it doesn't have a price-tag.  It's free, in that sense, even if at the same time having a friend brings with it the cost of your time (when you promise to go pick them up at the airport) or energy (when you help them move into a new place and fill your car up with their boxes) or emotion (when your heart breaks for them if they get a difficult diagnosis or go through a divorce).  The worth of things like friendship is immense, but that doesn't translate to a cash value.  That's why the word "priceless" doesn't mean something has no worth, but rather that its worth is so large that it cannot be put into a dollar figure.

And while we're on the subject, your local utility provider might have a price they charge per gallon of water that is low enough for you to use water to wash dishes and clothes, cook dinner, water your lawn, and take a shower with... but if you were dying of the thirst in the desert, the worth of a few swallows of water would be much higher.  So, it would seem that even though "price" is the one you would print in black and white on a receipt or a price-tag, the "worth" might be the more meaningful category.  You might even say that the measurement we call "price" could be actively harmful if you confuse it with "worth," since there are times that things with high worth are deemed to have no price, and there are times when things with a high price turn out not to be worth very much in the big scheme of things.

If you can wrap your mind around that important distinction, then maybe it will help us to see the important difference Paul sees between "the letter" of the law and the Spirit who enlivens us.  It's possible to see "the letter" and "the Spirit" as sometimes aligning in their trajectory (like sometimes "worth" and "price" will overlap), but also that many times, the "letter" of the law can be misleading, even though it's written in black and white on paper or chiseled on stone tablets.  That might seem counter-intuitive, since we expect the explicitly-written, spelled-out terms of a rule or a law or a commandment to be clear, and the stirrings of the Spirit to be more mysterious and ambiguous.  But so often, Jesus' own encounters with the Respectable Religious Leaders shows how easily the supposedly "clear" directives of "the letter of the law" were turned into stifling and oppressive structures that harmed people rather than healed them.  Jesus criticizes the silent congregation for ignoring the needs of the hurting in the name of "keeping the sabbath," and he calls out the hypocrisy of people who tithe even the herbs in their garden but have missed out on "the weightier matters" like justice and mercy and faithfulness.  In other words, it is possible to be so focused on tediously observing the letter of the law that you choke the life out of its words and leave no room for the Spirit of God to move.

By contrast, the New Testament storytelling in the book of Acts and in Paul's letters shows us a vibrant community where the Spirit of God is at work.  Across the lines drawn by the old rules, the Spirit welcomed in outsiders and outcasts.  Beyond the boundaries of food rules and ritual purity, the early church reached out to Gentiles (non-Jewish people) and those with burdensome baggage.  And beyond the impulse to look for loopholes and ways to get out of the law's requirements, the Spirit-led church dared to go above and beyond in their love of neighbor, stranger, and enemy.  The Spirit's movement among those first generations of disciples was lively and enlivening, in part because they followed the Spirit's lead in no longer being bound to the death-dealing "letter" of the law.  At best "The Law" can only show us what to do and condemn us for failing to do it, but the Law itself doesn't have power to enable us to do good.  The Spirit, on the other hand, gives us the capacity to do good beyond what the black-and-white text of a lawbook or list of rules can do.  But it means recognizing that there can be a stark difference between a decree on paper (even a good one) and the power of the divine.

We Christians, then, are not merely people who publish and distribute endless copies of rules as our message for the world.  We are not interested in just posting up bigger billboards or even stone monuments of the Ten Commandments, as though just having more copies of rules will make us behave.  We are people who know the life-giving power of the Spirit, who can do what the letter of the law cannot, just as we know the difference between the price of something printed on a receipt and its actual worth.

What could it look like today to dare to listen for the guidance of the Spirit?  How might that lead us beyond printed rules, to something more vibrant... more Christ-like... and more utterly priceless?

O God, let your Spirit lead us, not merely within the bounds of printed rules but in the trajectory of your living and loving presence.