Hi All,

Man do I suck at keeping a blog or what?

I'm gearing up to start the NCD Cycle (more on that in future blogs) and thought that the best way to develop my blogging habit would be to finish my blogs on the individual Articles of Faith.

As is the pattern with previous blogs I'll take my turn wrestling with the Article of Faith and then attempt to respond to any queries from readers with respect to the Article.

Essentially the two Great Commands.  1)  Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul and all your strength and 2)  Love your neighbour as yourself.  This is the moral God in the horizontal (me and how I relate to my neighbour) and the veritcal (me and how I relate to my God.)

In whole or, as necessity dictated, in parts.  Often the Prophets rise up to remind the people of God to direct their attention to matters that have been allowed to slip.  Either in terms of how God is honoured or how neighbour is to be treated.  Focus in the Prophets often moves beyond external adherence to ritual or practice and moves to an examination of the motives of the heart of the believer.

This recognizes that there is also an evolution to the moral law and that Jesus will often move beyond the literal law as written to expose the moral law as intended.  Jesus does not come to strike the law down but Jesus does alternately pull the fangs of the law or give them a decidedly more powerful bite.

Man is not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath is made for man is Jesus telling us, essentially that God does not give us a day of rest so that we have time to worship him and contemplate the law so much as we are given the Sabbath so that we do not exhaust ourselves.  St. Augustine claims that our hearts are restless and ever shall be until they find their rest in God.  The Sabbath facilitates finding that resting place and our comfort within that resting place.

You have heard it said . . . but I tell you . . . shows Jesus moving beyond the superficial of the command to the actual core of the command.  Eye for an eye is not a command to do violence it is a command to limit violence and Jesus' emendment to turn the other cheek takes this command out of an anything goes free-for-all to the cessation of hostility.

Do not commit murder speaks only to an extreme act of violence.  Calling our brother 'Raca' is Jesus' emendment which illustrates long before our hands turn to physical violence our hearts have plotted it.  How much better that those plans never come to pass or are stopped before they become something which can be acted on.  The sooner we turn our hearts to love the easier it will be to use our hands to heal rather than hurt.

Note that it is not, "stands forever as the truth."  The Moral Law which we have received is incomplete, the trajectory that we are given through scripture helps us to focus on how much further we need to go in order to make the heart of any commandment resonate within our heart.

We will rest, for time to time, in an understanding which is appropriate for us in our spiritual development.  It is not intended that we simply stay there and resist growing in our faith and understanding.  Maturity is part of growth.  Stagnation is part of death.

Early iterations of this moral law make distinctions and draw divisions between who is elect and who is not or who is clean and who is unclean.  It is our belief that such distinctions were necessary for the vine to take root and as the root matures the distinctions and divisions become increasingly irrelevant to the moral law.

Issues of race no longer separate believer from believer.  Issues of gender no longer separate believe from the various offices in the governance of the Church.  Ultimately issues of sexuality will not be seen as reason to impede fellowship and privilege in Christ's Church.  Beyond that?  Who knows.

Having faith in Jesus Christ does not exempt us from the law.  Being found as new creations in Christ does mean that the law no longer has power to condemn us.  So, what use is the law in the life of faith.

Since we note above that the law directs our horizontal and vertical relationships it stands to reason that the commandments actually speak in such a way as to direct the believer how best to honour those with whom we are in  horizontal and vertical relationships.  As such every commandment functions as a helpful guide setting the direction of moral development between the commandments in all of their iterations and the people we are growing to become.

This is actually really, really huge and really, really subtle.

It isn't the words on the page which strengthen our faith.  It is our faith which strengthens the words on the page.  Without our faith the words, the moral commandments, are just words.

It is our faith which gives them life and it is our integration of the words into our life which gives the moral commandments flesh and bone to accomplish something.  As we live and grow and mature in our faith the moral law of God lives and grows and matures.

The words are like the dry bones in Ezekiel's valley and the Spirit of God in us and through us along with our faith in the God who reveals God's self through nature, revelation and the person of Jesus, fleshes out those dry bones and makes them live.

While requires can be defined as a command it can also be defined as "has need of."  We are called to be caretakers of Creation and that could get into our being commanded to do something about it or it could be understood that God has need of us helping Creation to be what it will be. 

Each is rendered their due.  Be it rights, privileges, duties, obligations, costly or a pittance.

Every opportunity for reconcilliation is a treasure and forgiveness has the power to transform hearts that justice, or an inexact justice would harden.

Regrettably this virtue is not lifted up first otherwise our efforts at justice and mercy might  be more successful.  Still, even if it is something of an afterthought it should still be able to modify our doing justice and loving mercy.

Ever see a three legged stool stand on two legs?  No?  Small wonder.   Ever see a three legged stool stand on one leg?  Same results right?  Without harmony we cannot stand.  Without mercy, justice becomes vengeance.  Without justice, mercy becomes license.  Without humility we serve only ourselves and chaos reigns.

That harmony, God and us doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly together is the Kingdom of God.  A respectful mutuality where each, relying on the other finds certain needs met in the other and none lacks what is needed.  Embraced by God we in turn embrace our neighbours and all three heats and minds are drawn nearer to one another.

We do not need a geographic capitol, nor do we need an identifiable ensign waving from the ramparts we need one another working in harmony and there, where two or three are gathered together God is in the centre and the Kingdom is realized.

Grace and peace to you.

John