A familiar tension

In my reflection today, I’m presented a familiar tension between the spirit and the letter of the law.  In the Gospel (Matthew 12:1-8), the disciples were undoubtedly breaking the letter of the law by picking and eating the grain on the Sabbath.  For this, Jesus was scolded by the Pharisees, though Jesus is able to point to the famous Old Testament story of David allowing his soldiers to eat the bread of the offering even though it was reserved for priests (1 Samuel 21:2-7).   And in Exodus 11:10-12:14, the Pharaoh shows a view of the world similarly obtuse to that of the Pharisees by ignoring the signs performed before him by Moses and Aaron.

Deep down, I suspect it depends on how one views God.  If one views God as a sort of “score keeper in the sky” waiting to put down a check mark against us each time we transgress a written rule, then the Pharisees were probably right.  The disciples should have just gone hungry.  But that’s not my view of God or the view held by Jesus.  True enough, the rules are important.  The Commandment not to kill is an important one and it would be only in the direst of emergencies that one could imagine having to kill another.  It would be justifiable, for instance, to kill another if he were about to plunge a knife into an innocent child and there were no other way to stop him, but such cases are few and far between.  But our God is a loving and forgiving God who cares about what’s in our hearts.  We all make mistakes, sometimes serious ones.  But God forgives if we let Him into our hearts.