Bring us the law

Reflecting on Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10

Haiku of the return

When separated

through exile, ancient teachings

were lost, forgotten.

The returned people

gathered in the square: Bring

us the law, they said.

Priest Ezra unrolled

the book of the law, and read.

The people listened.

They stood up to hear,

men, women, older children;

eager to receive.

Ezra read the law,

explaining, interpreting;

people understood.

They lifted their hands,

bowed their heads, and worshipped God.

Amen! they answered.

The leaders declared

a holiday: Eat, drink, share;

the Lord is your strength!

© Ken Rookes 2025

Come up the mountain

 Haiku

God, Moses chatting.

Come up the mountain, says God;

I’ll give you some laws.

God’s been hard at work

formulating commandments;

writing them on stone.

Benevolent laws

for harmonious living;

laws that lead to life.

Moses, Joshua,

start their climb, tell the elders:

Wait here, we’ll be back.

The mystery cloud

covers Sinai; God’s glory,

a devouring fire.

On the seventh day

God calls from the cloud. Moses

goes up inside it.

From way down below

the people see the glory;

wonder what it means.

Forty days and nights

Moses is gone. The people

think he must be dead.

© Ken Rookes 2023

Fulfilment

Haiku for followers

Sodium chloride,

commonly known as salt. What

to do without it?

Should salt lose its taste,

(an impossibility!)

it would be thrown out.

We are to be salt

imparting flavour and life

to an eager world.

Jesus came as light;

calling disciples to come

and reflect his life.

You too will be light

shining love into the dark.

Stand tall and shine bright.

He came to fulfil

the law, prophets; to correct

all the shortcomings.

Law has become dead,

none listen to the prophets;

hear what Jesus says.

In this present age

few listen to his teachings;

few there are who love.

They worship mammon

while the planet is burning.

They will not enter.

© Ken Rookes 2020

Not on the Sabbath

Haiku of freedom

Jesus was teaching

in one of the synagogues,

it was the Sabbath.

She came to see him,

the woman; she hadn’t stood

straight for eighteen years.

As we might expect

Jesus spoke words of freedom;

touched and made her whole.

Standing straight, praising,

and giving glory to God,

the woman rejoiced.

The law is broken!

They protest: Six days for work,

don’t use the Sabbath!

You are hypocrites!

he answers. On the Sabbath

we do what we must.

It’s not the Sabbath

that stops you rejoicing, but

your hatred for me.

Get hung up on law,

ignore what God is doing;

how sad you all are!

© Ken Rookes 2019

Keep yourself nice

Haiku for a polite and ordered world

Is righteous living

about keeping yourself nice?

Jesus says there’s more.

The holy people

observe the old tradition:

wash before you eat.

Always wash your hands

before you eat. Good practice,

enshrined in the law.

Other rules as well;

the washing of cups and pots

and kettles of bronze.

Pharisees object

to the careless disciples

and their defiled hands.

Isaiah knew it;

the faithless hypocrisy

behind your worship.

You care about rules

much more than you care about

what God is wanting.

It’s time to get real!

It’s the things you do and say

that make you defiled.

Always there is more

than the narrow, centred fears

of the self-righteous.

© Ken Rookes 2018

The Sabbath cornfields

Haiku for lawbreakers

The Sabbath cornfields

see his disciples breaking

the Sabbath work laws.

Plucking heads of grain:

harvesting, threshing, working!

All against the law.

The Sabbath, he said,

was given for humankind

not the opposite.

Jesus sits loosely

with the letter of the law;

he is ruled by love.

In the synagogue

the man with a withered hand:

will Jesus heal him?

Shall Sabbath prevail

and circumvent the healing?

No. He will choose love.

What does the law say,

on the Sabbath, to do good,

or should we do harm?

They will not answer.

Their hearts are hard, unable

to find compassion.

The mean and heartless

do not like being exposed.

The plotting begins.

© Ken Rookes 2018

You have heard that it was said (2)

A second haiku sequence

You know it is said

eye for eye and tooth for tooth;

this prolongs the fight!

Jesus says revenge

and payback get you nowhere;

grace is what's needed.

Turn the other cheek.

It's not easy, but opens

the doorway to peace.

Do the things you should.

Let that be your starting point;

then the extra mile.

Love builds empathy,

enhances all of living,

goes beyond duty.

If somebody begs

or asks to borrow money,

do not refuse them.

Life is in giving;

withholding diminishes.

Live generously.

They say, 'love your friends.'

Love your enemies as well,

and pray for them, hat too.

God's loving regard

falls upon all, good and bad.

Try to be like God.

Love those who love you.

Big deal! The ratbags do that.

Jesus calls for more.

Be servants of love,

sons and daughters of heaven.

Here is perfection.

© Ken Rookes 2017

You have heard that it was said (1)

A haiku sequence,

Going beyond law.

You have heard that it was said;

but I say to you.

You shall not murder;

but anger with a brother

also is a sin.

Insult a sister

or call a brother “you fool,”

this will bring judgement.

Don't attend worship

if you have caused an offence;

first be reconciled.

If you are accused

don't wait 'til it gets to court,

sort it out before.

No adultery,

but even looking with lust

damages the heart.

If your hand or eye

leads you astray, discard it.

Live with truth and grace.

Do not swear falsely;

better still, don't swear at all.

Stick with 'yes' and 'no.'

He rewrote the law,

calling forth our better selves;

for the sake of love.

© Ken Rookes 2017

But I say to you

 

Master rhetorician,
Jesus from Nazareth,
knew the primacy of the law
in the minds of the people
who ran religion in his country.
He felt the weight of the
shadow cast across a millennium by Moses,
knowing how his words had sought
to guide the nation
and to inform the lives of its citizens.
It was part of the deal with the Almighty,
constructing limits to bad behaviour,
and establishing righteousness and justice
as the preferred shapes of national life.
“You have heard it said,’
he was wont to say,
cleverly grounding his teachings in the law,
“But I say to you;”
cunningly suggesting that there might be
a worthwhile idea/thought/action
that takes us beyond law.
He was also wont
to name that possible something
as generosity, forgiveness,
and love.

© Ken Rookes 2014

the tension between justice and mercy

A missionary, home on furlough, came to speak to the congregation. Among other things he told how a young man, newly converted to Christianity had taken literally Matthew 5:29. He had looked longingly at the wife of one of his friends and he knew this was wrong according to the Bible. The Good Book says, “It is better for you to lose one member than for your whole body to be thrown into hell” so he tore his eye out. He died painfully a couple of weeks later from the infection created by the damage he had done to himself. Is this what Jesus meant? Is it what Jesus wants from us?

In Deuteronomy 30, and many other places, the Bible urges us to choose life.  Maybe the young man had not chosen death, but it was the consequence of his action. Jesus also said he had come that they might have abundant life [John 10:10].

...As we understand more about the Jewish faith of which Jesus was part, and the Hebrew people, we see that they didn’t see the commandments as absolutes for perfect obedience. They saw them as guidelines for living that gave people the option of considering for themselves the right way to behave in any given situation.

Recently one of the lectionary readings was Micah 6:1-8. Verse 8 reminds us that what God requires of us is to act justly and love mercy. Throughout Scripture there is a tension between justice and mercy. We know they are probably the most important components of God’s love and living God’s Way. But we can never be completely just and completely merciful at the same time. When we are being just to one person we tip the scales away from being merciful and when we are being merciful we are often being less than just to someone else. We are called to hold the two in tension.

...When we look at the Gospels as a whole, we see that Jesus practiced what is called situation ethics where he decided in each situation how to respond to the needs of people to be fed and healed. His words in Matthew 5 seem unnecessarily harsh and incompatible with the compassionate nature of God. We can only guess at the reason for this teaching.

We can respect our maturity and chew things over before deciding in any situation if the commandment about this is one to honour.  We can seek to balance justice and mercy in decisions. In my ministry I have met a number of older women whose lives have been hell in abusive marriages and I am pleased that we now encourage people to escape abusive relationships.

In the reading from Deuteronomy 30, Moses was pleading to the people to choose life. Immediately before the part we heard is the verse, “The word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.” These words are encouraging the people to trust that they can tell and will know what to obey and when not to.

When we look at Jesus’ actions as well as listening to his words we are guided in how to behave. It is good if we can put more emphasis on the trust part of trust and obey; trust Jesus’ leading, trust others and trust yourself as Moses urged and you will find there are many ways to be happy in Jesus as well as trusting and obeying.

(excerpts from Rev Julianne Parker's sermon for the week, see here for complete sermon)

With the coming of Word

With the coming of Word

at the beginning of the second act,

Grace and Truth

stride purposefully to centre stage

to take up their allotted positions.

Law, having featured so strongly in act one,

is, according to the script,

directed to move upstage

and to quietly exit to the right.

Law moves with deliberate steps,

then pauses,

relishing the lingering spotlight,

which, for loyalty or fear, perhaps both,

seems reluctant to trust

the new leads to carry the show.

Law’s assured and comfortable lines

seduce and enthral,

delivered with the much-practised ease

of one who has held the proscenium for centuries.

The spectators are less than convinced

by the unfamiliar and surprising utterances

of Grace and Truth.

The play pauses awkwardly,

perplexing the audience;

some begin to leave.

© Ken Rookes

Put them to shame

Put them to shame, Jesus:
those pompous guardians of Sabbath law
whose self-enforced enslavement
causes them to overlook things of wonder,
grace and beauty.

Put them to shame, Jesus:
the offence-takers who kill hope
and close their eyes to love’s possibilities.
The law has not saved the woman,
bent and broken for eighteen years;
she is also a child of God.

Teach them, Jesus,
that liberation and truth will not be denied,
and that grace abounds and extends,
unconfined by our fears
or the hardness of our hearts.

Put them to shame,
Jesus; put them to shame.

© Ken Rookes

losing ourselves in the dance

"Essentially, Matthew is saying, the law was always meant to be about the heart. But, it’s easier to make it about the rules. It’s easier to get it into the head, to check the rules off on a list, and to keep it all clean and simple. It’s easy to make the law about technicalities. But, Jesus, is calling for people to allow the law to become what it was meant to be – a song to sing and improvise around, a rhythm to dance to, and see where it leads, an indication of the notes that lead us into the magic of the music. This is what it means for Jesus to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17). He moves it beyond technicalities, beyond the head alone, beyond checklists and turns it into a doorway to life, an invitation to encounter God, and a completely alternative way of being that liberates and celebrates and welcomes. The law, for Jesus, is not so much about punishing wrong as it is about strengthening our innate capacity to bring life – to do what is right. It’s about going beyond the steps and losing ourselves in the dance.
http://sacredise.com/blog/?p=980

But I say to you

Yahweh-God had plenty of

opportunities to observe

and comment upon the

apparently inherent,

motivation of self-interest

dominating the social behaviour

of earth’s ascendant inhabitants..

Perhaps I made a few mistakes,

the almighty might have sighed

in divine cogitation

upon the propensity

of most human creatures

to push their freedom to the limits;

disregarding the needs of their fellows.

So it is that the lawmaker was sent

to establish some boundaries

and to remind the wandering

wilderness people

of their responsibilities.

A millennium or so later

the laughing man from the north came

with his message of outrageous love.

He had little interest

in rules and restrictions;

being more concerned with the infinite

and glorious possibilities

of human living,

with its reckless generosity,

foolish open-handedness

and unexpected grace. A few listened.

Most preferred the boundaries.

©2011 Ken Rookes