All week long the gospels have been relating to us Jesus' analysis of the Pharisees and the Scribes, and the picture He has drawn is not a pleasant one. There seem to be three problems (though there may be others) that Jesus has dwelt upon: the first is that of hypocrisy, i.e. that the Pharisees and the Scribes follow laws that require outward religious conformity while neglecting to conform their own hearts to the greatest law of divine love; the second is that of rigidity, i.e., that they have overlooked the major laws in order to fulfil the minor laws; and the last problem is that of delinquency (in the sense of neglecting their duty or maladministration) in advising others to carry legal burdens they do not shoulder themselves. Let's be careful though. The one thing Jesus does not seem to say is that, to quote the Pirates of the Caribbean, they are not really laws - they're really more like guidelines! Jesus elsewhere, for example, says: "Do not think that I have come to abolish Law or Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them." (Matt 5: 17).
It is important to see what is going on here with the Pharisees. In a way, the problem is not the laws at all; it is the spirit with which they are kept. The notion that Jesus is somehow encouraging a slapdash approach to the law is deeply flawed. Later in the gospel of Matthew (the very gospel aimed at a Hebrew audience), Jesus says:
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone." (Matt 23: 23).
Whatever Jesus' teaching, he is not simplistically opposed to laws or rules. Some cultures just have more rules than others. It is how they organize things for the common good. In Jerusalem today you can still see taps for washing by the Western Wall, the one remaining part of the Second Temple.
(Photo of taps by the Western Wall by Susanne, COLW Group 1)
Why, then, is the spirit so important if even the minor laws should not be left "undone"? Perhaps it is because laws are in a way a kind of tool or instrument: a tool for order and justice. Yet the problem here is that we human beings are all too prone to being controlled by our tools. If you want proof of that, just look at how novel technologies, which we all lived happily without yesterday, suddenly become tomorrow's necessities. Invention is the mother of necessity as Melvin Kranzberg quipped. And so, laws or rules can have this feedback effect on us, and instead of becoming a path towards the good, they seem to become a sort of exoskeleton or a suit of heavy armour, weighing us down and robbing us even of legitimate freedom. In this sense, the letter of the law can kill by a kind of negative feedback effect. Those who disregard the law do not understand this effect precisely because they do not take the law seriously. It is a flaw of those who take the law seriously that they can sometimes take it as it is not meant to be taken!
Yet we are left then with the problem of what to do when lower laws seem to contradict higher laws. What should the priest and the Levite do on the road to Jericho when they see the man robbed and beaten and left for dead? What they should do precisely is not set the law aside; rather they should let the higher law prevail over the lower law. The Samaritan who saved the man robbed was not lawless; he was living by a higher law This is not merely a rule of divine justice; it is a path of interpreting the law that is recognised in human courts. The famous "Nuremberg defence" - I was only following the orders of my superior officers - is not a valid defence because the lower law of obedience to superiors bows before the higher law of justice and charity to all.
Of course, the devil is in the detail. I cannot say I will leave my spouse to live with my lover because the law of love is higher than the law of fidelity (not that I have a lover either!). That would be nonsense, because infidelity is radically incompatible with divine love.
But the general rule should be clear: do not keep a lower law at the expense of a higher law. If a house is on fire, the fire brigade cannot let the law of trespass stop them from running into it to rescue those in danger. From which principle we must deduce the conclusion that rigidity is not a true characteristic of the law, for the law is meant to be both hierarchical and supple - strong enough to sustain but flexible enough not to break. Rigidity is the victory of whim over substance; it is a victory of nearsightedness over true perspective.
And the true perspective of the law, both in the gospel and in life, is to love God above all things, to love our neighbour as ourself, and - if we listen to Jesus at the Last Supper - to make that love of neighbour akin to His love for each of us.
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