Following the Rules
I still remember my first-grade classroom at Short Pump Elementary. The desks were arranged in clusters of four. The room smelled of crayons and glue and chalk. A large easel that displayed word charts stood over in the corner, where we would sit in a circle for story-time. I still remember the day that my teacher, Ms. Markwood, approached me at my desk and told me that I was being moved into another desk cluster. I was mortified. The only reason for a desk change was bad behavior. But I didn’t think that I had done anything wrong. Ms. Markwood must have seen a worried look on my face because she hurried to explain that I was not in trouble. In fact—and here she leaned in close, so no-one around me would hear—I was being moved because of my good behavior. She confided to me her plan. She hoped that I would be a good influence on Erica, our class clown who probably could have given the Energizer Bunny a run for his money. As terrified as I was to be moving to within a three-foot radius of Erica, I was even more relieved to know that I had not broken any rules.
That was just first grade, but it set the course for the rest of my education. I was a good student. I followed the teacher’s directions. I kept my head down and got good grades. I was careful never to step out of line. I remember in middle school how some teachers would check to see if we completed our homework at the beginning of class. I could not bear the thought of ever being called out for not doing my homework. So, every night, before I went to bed, I reviewed my assignments for each class and confirmed that I had completed them and secured them in my binder. It almost became an obsession. I remember on several occasions, I would lie in bed at night and start to doubt that I had completed one assignment or another, and I would tiptoe through the house to my backpack just to check one more time.
I was a good student in school. But I wouldn’t say that I was always genuinely interested and learning. Much of the time I was memorizing, reciting, and presenting the teacher with the desire result. I may have done all the assignments, completed all my homework, and got an A, but the subject did not always touch my heart. For me, school was about following the rules and making a good impression.
The Dark Side of Following All the Rules
Maybe this explains my first impressions of the word “righteousness.” I remember being in church youth group and thinking that righteousness was about following the rules and making a good impression before God and others. In my mind, righteousness was reading my Bible every day, going to church on Sundays and Wednesdays, tithing, and praying before I went to bed. Righteousness was obeying my parents, being polite to my elders, and not getting into fights with my friends. Righteousness was working hard at school and achieving good things. I had learned, of course, that salvation cannot be earned through righteousness. But I also learned that my salvation should somehow be reflected in righteous living. So, I still strove to follow the rules and make a good impression. Righteousness made me feel good about myself.
But if I’m being honest, there was a dark underbelly to living this way. The flipside of following all the rules and making a good impression, was that I was actually putting on a mask. I was posturing and pretending, as though to say, “I’m a good person. Right? Can’t you see?” I thought that church would only accept a certain kind of me, a righteous me. I didn’t feel like I could be honest about some of my feelings, like shame or doubt. I didn’t feel like I could be honest about some of my experiences, like failure and disappointment. If I were “saved,” I wouldn’t be having feelings or experiences like this, would I?
“You Serve Your Own Interest”
Apparently I am not the only one who has struggled with the dark side of following the rules, with what could otherwise be called legalism or moralism. In today’s Old Testament reading in the lectionary (the church calendar for scripture), we find the people Israel struggling with a similar problem. “Day after day they seek [God and] delight to draw near to God,” the prophet Isaiah says (Isa 58:2). But actually their religious practice has more to do with following the rules and making a good impression. Beneath all their pious deeds, they feel empty and forsaken. “Why do we fast, but you do not see?” they cry to God. “Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” (Isa 58:3).
God’s response is blunt: “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day” (Isa 58:3). The fasting isn’t really about drawing near to God and others. It’s about satisfying a religious requirement and making themselves feel good. The people are still living for themselves. Following the rules to be a good person is not really righteousness; it is self-righteousness. And it can make a person very lonely and bitter. Just as I could follow all the rules as a student and make a good impression on the teacher, and yet leave the class with my heart untouched by the subject, so a person can do all the right things and yet end up feeling very alone and empty.
But God doesn’t leave the self-righteous people in Israel to languish in their isolation. Through Isaiah, God reminds them of what matters even more than rules: relationships. “Is not this the fast that I choose:…Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly” (Isa 58:6-8).
Who Shone the Brightest?
I want to invite you to participate in a small thought experiment. Think back across your life and ask yourself, “Who among the people I have known shone the brightest? Who infused life with real flavor and zest, making life tasty and irresistible for the people around them?” Think about this for a minute. And let me encourage you to think freely and openly. Maybe someone who comes to mind wasn’t a Christian. That’s okay.
I’m going to pause for one minute to allow some time for reminiscing.
[Pause.]
Now what I want to ask is this: what about these people or this person made them so bright? What gave them such compelling personalities?
My hypothesis is simple. I predict that the brightest, zestiest people in your life were not that way because they followed all the rules. In fact, they may have broken one or two or twenty along the way. I predict instead that their brightness and flavor came from the joy they got from relationship. I don’t mean that they were extroverts or even necessarily sociable people. I mean that when they were with you, they were with you. They weren’t scanning the room for someone else. They weren’t looking at their watch to get away. They cared about you and wanted to share life with you, for that was what gave them life.
Being Ourselves—For “One Another”
In our gospel text today, Jesus declares to his followers, “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world” (Matt 5:13-14). Salt and light are both phenomena that are not for themselves but for what is around them. We don’t sit down to eat salt. We sit down to eat something flavored with salt. We don’t stare at the sun. We gaze with wonder upon all that the sun illuminates.
We are salt and light. We are here not to live for ourselves, but to live in relationship. The word “righteousness” that Jesus uses, has its root in a Hebrew word, tzedakah, which refers primarily to people’s conduct toward one another. In other words, righteousness has less to do with our interior thought-life or our pious behavior, and much more to do with being in right relationship (that is, good, faithful relationship). Righteousness does not ask how much money my hand gives to the beggar, but whether my hand actually touches his. Righteousness does not ask if my faith is doctrinally correct, but whether it opens my heart to others, to seek their company and to care for them. Biblical commentators have noted that the majority of instruction that we find in the gospels and Paul’s letters have to do with relationship. Some have called these instructions the “one another” passages. “Love one another,” “forgive one another,” “do not pass judgment on one another,” “build up one another,” “pray for one another,” “confess your sins to one another,” and so on.
Jesus is not against rules. He insists that he’s not here to abolish the law or the prophets. He just realizes that rules can become a lonely game of self-righteousness rather than a gateway to relationship. And that is where the light of God really shines. That is where the zest of life can be found. Real righteousness has much less to do with rules and much more to do with right relationship.
Think again about the people or person who shone so brightly in your life, who gave life such an irresistible flavor. Jesus does not command us to try to be that way, as though it were something that took extra effort. He affirms that we already are that way. “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world.” May that affirmation sink deeper into our hearts today. We need not make a certain impression or get an A on the test. We need only be ourselves—for “one another.”
Prayer
God of light and flavor,Whose love enriches life—
Lead us beyond the letter of the law
To the righteousness of healthy relationship.
May we know that we are salt and light—
Not as we wish we could be,
But as we are right now
…
May we and others might share together
The joy of abundant life.
In Christ, the light and flavor of the world: Amen.
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