A Law
THE FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Psalm 145:8-15 • Romans 7:15-25a • Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
I’ve found it to be a law that whenever I judge someone else—usually slightly and barely consciously!—I eventually find myself in circumstances that lead me to do the very thing that I’d judged someone else for doing.
When my seven-year-old son was a toddler, I asked another mom about good places for children’s swimming lessons. She recommended a place called Swim Ranch. She said, “It’s a little ways out of town, and if you want to take lessons there, you have to show up by at least 6am on open registration day, and you have to stand there for at least an hour until they open.” She warned me that I’d probably wait in line longer than that, because the line would already have parents who’d been there since 5. She said it was best to get kids signed up with Swim Ranch as babies, because lessons for older children are full before open registration day. You could only register in person, and you had to pay by cash or check.
When I heard all this, my first thought was, “I am never doing that.” I’m sure that buried in that thought were judgments about how extreme I thought other parents could be over something that was just supposed to be a fun summertime activity.
A couple of years passed, and after one scary moment with my son on a lake, even though he had a flotation device, I decided that Swim Ranch was something I should reconsider. Long story short, on an early April morning two years after the conversation with my friend, I found myself standing in the Swim Ranch line at 6am. And there I was, every year after that, on every single day during the magic window between Spring Break and Easter, watching my mailbox for the Swim Ranch registration form. And here I am now, grieving more than I ever thought possible about something like swimming lessons, because Swim Ranch has permanently closed.
That’s what I get for one fleeting judgment about someone else’s form of devotion to her kids.
I can’t tell you how many times this cycle has repeated in my own life. I believe it’s the law of how God works on my own heart and mind. It’s the pattern for how God slowly purgues the overt and subliminal habits of judgment from my regard for others.
In today’s passage from Romans, Paul also recognizes the deeper laws of how God works in his own life. Paul does something very clever in this passage as he slightly shifts the meaning of “law” in his letter.
When Paul refers to “the law” in his letters, he usually means the Torah, or the body of Scriptures and their guidelines for life in the Jewish community. The law establishes the just treatment of others and the distinct ways that the community expresses its belonging to God.
For Paul, the law is good in itself, as a source of connection to God and of justice among neighbors. Human attraction to the law is a sign of human goodness. In the first part of today’s reading, Paul confirms that “the law is good.” The law is something that Paul delights in.
But Paul also finds that there are other more powerful laws governing his life. In the second part of today’s reading, he tells us, “I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.” There’s a gap between what Paul desires and believes, and what Paul actually does. This gap is as predictable as the law of gravity.
Then Paul uses “law” in other ways. There’s a “law” that governs his mind, and that draws him to what is just and holy. But there’s another “law” that acts almost like puppet strings, controling or automating his thoughts and actions to act against what he knows to be good and just.
But let’s return to that overarching law in Paul’s life: that whenever he wants to do what is good, the desire to do the opposite will never be far off. A law like this could overwhelm us, and keep us from the fullness of life that God intends. But along with this law, Paul also recognizes that God is with him in his struggle, and that God’s work in Paul’s life follows certain patterns. Paul may never resolve his inner conflicts, but he will be able to rely on God to rescue him time and time again.
So, in this brief passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans, he describes the good gift of the law in the Torah. One of its gifts is to expose to us the laws that we actually follow—habits that form despite our best intentions. The law also invites us to discover the pattern of how God shows up in our lives—God’s repetitive work against sin and for goodness deep within us. It reveals to us a God we can trust with our lives, and with our truest selves.
In Chicago in 2010, one of my favorite colleagues in seminary graduated the year before I did. I asked what his plans were after graduation, and he said he’d be moving back to Arkansas to work for a church there. I thought to myself, “What a waste. This guy, at some church in Arkansas?”
Just two years later, my husband had accepted a job at the University of . . . Arkansas. And now, “some church in Arkansas” is my own spiritual home.
I find it to be a fairly predictable law that the moment that I make an unbidden judgment, it seems like God orchestrates my own life circumstances so that I find myself acting, choosing, or feeling in ways I never thought I would. Just to be clear: I don’t think of these turns of events as punishments. I find myself incredibly grateful for God’s work, and more than a little amused.
And I hope we all can find ourselves oh so willing to say with Paul, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” for saving us from ourselves over and over again.
© 2020 The Rev. Dr. Lora Walsh
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas