{"id":13283,"date":"2020-10-25T00:00:21","date_gmt":"2020-10-24T23:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/turski.blog\/?p=13283"},"modified":"2020-10-25T00:00:21","modified_gmt":"2020-10-24T23:00:21","slug":"30th-sunday-in-ordinary-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/?p=13283","title":{"rendered":"30th Sunday in Ordinary time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year a man in London was convicted of using a mobile phone while driving his car.\u00a0 However, he then successfully appealed against the conviction using a loophole. He argued that filming or taking photos while driving does not match the wording in the current legislation, which says it is illegal to use a device “which performs an interactive communication” while driving. (BBC News website)<\/em> This case has recently been used in the media to illustrate the need for updating the outdated law. The man in question used the legislation to his advantage; technically he had kept the letter of the law, but did he keep the spirit of it? Many people have made successful and highly profitable careers by looking for and using loopholes to their own or their clients\u2019 advantage. That\u2019s why laws and regulations have a natural tendency to grow arms and legs in order to regulate against every possible exploitation or abuse and prevent people from taking advantage. But that makes laws ever more complicated and harder to implement – unless it\u2019s the bread and butter of your successful career as a solicitor.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s gospel clearly shows this isn\u2019t just a modern challenge. In fact, a lot of ancient writings are laws and regulations. Since time immemorial people have tried to codify all aspects of social life. On a small, tribal scale, it was done by conventions, traditions and rituals. Many of them became part of codified laws and rules when those tribes expanded in numbers and territories. A new attitude developed as an unintended consequence of structured laws: legalism. It means \u2018strict adherence, or the principle of strict adherence, to law or prescription, especially to the letter rather than the spirit<\/strong>.\u2019 (dictionary.com)<\/em> Such an attitude creates fair hunting ground for legalistic exploits and abuses. Once I heard a rather sarcastic saying: \u2018The law is like a fence – the viper will always slip through, the tiger will always jump over, but the cattle won’t go where they shouldn’t.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

The question Jesus faced in today\u2019s gospel is asked in the spirit (excuse the pun) of legalism: \u2018which is the greatest commandment of the Law?\u2019<\/em> The Pharisees wanted to entangle him in a complicated but dubious discussion. Jesus\u2019 reply was a combined quotation from the Law of Moses: \u2018You must love the Lord your God […]. You must love your neighbour as yourself.\u2019<\/em> It was, in fact, a reminder of what the underlying principle was: \u2018On these two commandments hang the whole Law, and the Prophets also.\u2019<\/em> Law must serve those for whom it\u2019s established and protect the most defenceless in society. Many times Jesus showed practical applications of such a flexible approach:\u00a0 <\/strong>he healed the sick on a sabbath day and when accused of breaching the Law he replied \u2018The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.\u2019 (Mark 2:27)<\/em><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been struggling with restrictions, limitations and cumbersome guidelines for months now. We keep them religiously not because I like them, or because they are fun, or because they give me a semblance of power, or because I\u2019m scared of the virus. None of these. If I wanted to describe my feelings about them,<\/strong> we would have to leave the church, because any fitting adjectives would be grossly unseemly within this sacred space. We keep these highly inconvenient rules to protect the most vulnerable in our community. This is a practical application of the two commandments; we keep our churches open to worship God and in this way provide spiritual nourishment and support that will help us get through these challenging times. Recently Bishop Hugh made a statement: \u2018You will have seen that from 2 November Scotland is introducing a 5-tier system of handling Covid, numbered from 0 to 4 inclusive. This will allow for responding to the situation in specific areas of the country. The good news is that at all levels, even in the worst scenario – Tier 4 – it is envisaged that places of public worship will remain open. This represents an acknowledgement of the social benefit places of worship bring and the high level of compliance we have shown. It is a great advance on earlier attitudes.\u2019<\/em> I couldn\u2019t say it better, so I won\u2019t, but I totally agree with him.<\/p>\n

\n

Image by pedro_wroclaw<\/a> from Pixabay<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year a man in London was convicted of using a mobile phone while driving his car.\u00a0 However, he then successfully appealed against the conviction using a loophole. He argued that filming or taking photos while driving does not match the wording in the current legislation, which says it is illegal to use a device “which performs an interactive communication” while driving. (BBC News website) This case has recently been used in the media to illustrate the need for updating the outdated law. The man in question used the legislation to his advantage; technically he had kept the letter of the law, but did he keep the spirit of it? Many people have made successful and highly profitable careers by looking for and using loopholes to their own or their clients\u2019 advantage. That\u2019s why laws and regulations have a natural tendency to grow arms and legs in order to regulate against every possible exploitation or abuse and prevent people from taking advantage. But that makes laws ever more complicated and harder to implement – unless it\u2019s the bread and butter of your successful career as a solicitor. Today\u2019s gospel clearly shows this isn\u2019t just a modern challenge. In fact, a lot of ancient writings are laws and regulations. Since time immemorial people have tried to codify all aspects of social life. On a small, tribal scale, it was done by conventions, traditions and rituals. Many of them became part of codified laws and rules when those tribes expanded in numbers and territories. A new attitude developed as an unintended consequence of structured laws: legalism. It means \u2018strict adherence, or the principle of strict adherence, to law or prescription, especially to the letter rather than the spirit.\u2019 (dictionary.com) Such an attitude creates fair hunting ground for legalistic exploits and abuses. Once I heard a rather sarcastic saying: \u2018The law is like a fence – the viper will always slip through, the tiger will always jump over, but the cattle won’t go where they shouldn’t.\u2019 The question Jesus faced in today\u2019s gospel is asked in the spirit (excuse the pun) of legalism: \u2018which is the greatest commandment of the Law?\u2019 The Pharisees wanted to entangle him in a complicated but dubious discussion. Jesus\u2019 reply was a combined quotation from the Law of Moses: \u2018You must love the Lord your God […]. You must love your neighbour as yourself.\u2019 It was, in fact, a reminder of what the underlying principle was: \u2018On these two commandments hang the whole Law, and the Prophets also.\u2019 Law must serve those for whom it\u2019s established and protect the most defenceless in society. Many times Jesus showed practical applications of such a flexible approach:\u00a0 he healed the sick on a sabbath day and when accused of breaching the Law he replied \u2018The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.\u2019 (Mark 2:27) We\u2019ve been struggling with restrictions, limitations and cumbersome guidelines for months now. We keep them religiously not because I like them, or because they are fun, or because they give me a semblance of power, or because I\u2019m scared of the virus. None of these. If I wanted to describe my feelings about them, we would have to leave the church, because any fitting adjectives would be grossly unseemly within this sacred space. We keep these highly inconvenient rules to protect the most vulnerable in our community. This is a practical application of the two commandments; we keep our churches open to worship God and in this way provide spiritual nourishment and support that will help us get through these challenging times. Recently Bishop Hugh made a statement: \u2018You will have seen that from 2 November Scotland is introducing a 5-tier system of handling Covid, numbered from 0 to 4 inclusive. This will allow for responding to the situation in specific areas of the country. The good news is that at all levels, even in the worst scenario – Tier 4 – it is envisaged that places of public worship will remain open. This represents an acknowledgement of the social benefit places of worship bring and the high level of compliance we have shown. It is a great advance on earlier attitudes.\u2019 I couldn\u2019t say it better, so I won\u2019t, but I totally agree with him. Image by pedro_wroclaw from Pixabay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon","category-year-a"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}