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“He left that place and entered their synagogue; a man was there with a withered hand, and they asked him, ‘Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath?’ so that they might accuse him. He said to them, ‘Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath.’”
–– Matthew 12:9-12
Growing up, I watched way too much television. The dawn of cable TV coincided with the period when I experienced the maximum number of idle hours I would ever know. I’ll freely admit I should have used that time more constructively, perhaps memorizing the dictionary or reading the Iliad in the original Greek, but alas, my idle hours were spent snacking on Cheez-Its, feasting on reruns like F Troop or Green Acres, and obsessing over all manner of sports, never wanting to miss the highlights broadcast on the evening news or, my favorite, the replays narrated by John Facenda for NFL films. He could make a slow motion highlight reel seem more dramatic than a Shakespearean tragedy. His narration of a touchdown pass elevated an athletic feat into a work of art. To this day, when I see a slow-motion replay of a long forward pass, the technically brilliant sight of a tight spiral, and the balletic grace of a receiver defying gravity and physics to make a catch, I can still superimpose the sound of his voice transforming the action into a Renaissance masterpiece – The weary veteran momentarily escaped the bonds of his tortured muscles to propel himself into flight, willing his fingers to stretch forward, straining each ligament beyond its natural length to grasp the leather spheroid before it touched the sodden earth. Oh, how I wanted to be that receiver.
Of course, today’s completed passes are consistently more spectacular even if the lyric poetry of John Facenda is a relic of the past. However, the beauty of the pass reception fades straight away as the art of the catch is lost in the interminable debate over what constitutes a catch. Ad nauseam replay angles, shifting opinions whether the ball moved or was fully in the receiver’s grasp, and what role the ground played in securing or dislodging the ball. Some would say the referees must all be Presbyterian because we’ve always had the capacity for debating any question to the last semi-colon or hyphen, and not having come to consensus, tabling the question and assigning it to a committee for further study.
Watching the milling around, the twiddling of fingers, the dead space sucking the energy out of the game as the players and fans wait for the debate to be resolved takes on the appearance of doctor’s waiting room, all keyed up and nothing to do but to mark the slowness of time. Then, after all the fussing, conjecturing, video vexing, and debate, the conclusion is most often … inconclusive.
It’s a metaphor for life, isn’t it? As much as we’d like to nail down the details, cover the contingencies, have a definitive answer, account for unforeseen circumstances, consider unintended consequences, and form the flawless rule, we rarely achieve it. While we like the symmetry of either/or, right/wrong, guilty/innocent, complete/incomplete, most often we live in the reality of it depends. As much as we seek to avoid it, we eventually confront the exception to the rule. Jesus understood this fatal flaw of human desire. For Jesus, the one exception-less, unassailable rule was love. What does love require? It is the question that applies to everyone in every situation and eclipses every rule. What does love require? Your lamb falls into a pit, but it’s the Sabbath. What does love require? The direct order is given, but following it will inflict great harm on the innocent. What does love require? The policy forbids giving aid, but disobeying it will preserve life. What does love require?
Rules remain important, imperative even, but they are never fail-safe. Law without love is the opposite of grace. What does love require?
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