The Legal and the Moral
A sermon preached by the Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce on 17th May 2009
(The Sixth Sunday of Easter)
It was with some trepidation the other day that I submitted my quarterly expenses claim to our Church Treasurer. Fortunately I had resisted the temptation to include within it a claim for chandeliers in my second home, the installation of a heated underground swimming pool at the vicarage, and a diamond-studded trouser press. So even though Joe Jordan did email me back asking if it was OK if he sent a copy of my expenses claim to Gordon Brown, I think I can still sleep soundly at night, for the time being at least.
Tales of the alleged extravagance and inappropriateness of the expenses claimed by some of our Members of Parliament have, of course, been dominating the news in recent days. And such accusations have come hot on the heels of a previous round of stories about bankers being rewarded for failure and mismanagement with vast personal bonuses and outrageously generous pensions. And interestingly, a theme common to both of these clusters of news reports has been the claim by some of those defending themselves against such accusations, that they have ‘done nothing wrong’; they were, they assure us, ‘acting within the rules’.
So, that’s all right then. But is it? Certainly members of the public who have been interviewed by the media on the subject seem unimpressed, to say the least, by this line of defence. Because, even if it is the case that the actions of those MPs and bankers who are under scrutiny could be said to have fallen within the rules, strictly applied, nevertheless it still looks profoundly wrong.
Perhaps the single most important reason why otherwise entirely respectable individuals can end up making inappropriate financial claims, whilst firmly convinced that their actions are perfectly legitimate, is this: I strongly suspect that it is due to a deep-seated confusion within our society as a whole, between what is legal and what is moral.
There is, of course, a significant degree of overlap between the legal and the moral, and rightly so. But they are not actually the same thing. To risk a gross oversimplification (perilous indeed, in the presence of so many professional lawyers here this morning), I would say that there is a sense in which law concerns itself primarily with minimum standards of behaviour. In other words, it draws a line and says, ‘your behaviour must not drop below this line, or you are liable to face a penalty of some kind.’ Morality, on the other hand, works the other way round: properly understood, morality is about what makes us fully human, because we are created as moral beings: morality, therefore, is about our aspirations; it is about human flourishing, our own and other people’s. Seen in this light, morality is about maximum rather than minimum standards of behaviour.
So, for example, I may not be legally bound to help a little old lady cross the road; but I may nevertheless feel that I have a moral duty to do so. I can, of course, refuse to help her, on the basis that there is no law that requires me to do so; but I can also choose to help her, even though I don’t have to, because I can see she is struggling and feel compassion for her. What is most interesting of all, however, is the fact that the way that I choose to react in that particular situation will reveal a very important truth about who and what I am; it will reveal something about me as a human being.
The same applies, of course, when you put the situation the other way round: the fact that something is legal, does not necessarily make it morally right. Given time, I’m sure that I could come up with a reason to justify filling my second home with chandeliers as a necessary expense of my priestly office here; but that would not make it morally right for me to do so, knowing as I would do, where that money would have to come from, and what it might otherwise be spent on. What is legally permissable and what is morally right in a given situation are not one and the same; what a rule permits me to do, is not necessarily the same thing as what it is morally right for me to do. And that is what some of those MPs currently under the spotlight, who fail to see that there is a problem with what they have done, have not yet understood.
But what view did Jesus take of such matters; how did he regard the relationship between law and morality? Jesus was, of course, a Jew, bound by the Jewish law, and he never hesitated to recognise and uphold its importance: indeed, he stated expressly that he had not come to abolish the law, but to fulfil it. But interestingly, whenever he observed the human beings around him using law inappropriately: as a means of justifying their own minimum standards of behaviour; or misguidedly pursuing a slavish and hard-hearted obedience to the letter of the law in a way that did violence to its spirit and intention, then Jesus was the first to point this out: hence his declaration that ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath’, to quote one very obvious example of this.
But, interestingly, when pressed to declare which of the commandments was the most important of all, Jesus replied simply: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength’; and ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself’. An answer that is about maximum rather than minimum standards of behaviour. An answer that is about morality rather than law. Because love can never be defined in terms of what we can hope to get away with (which would be a response geared to self-interest); on the contrary, love is about self-giving, and openness to the needs of others, and to the needs of the world. Love is about maximum, rather than minimum ways of being.
Today’s gospel reading picks up the same basic theme. Jesus, taking leave of his disciples at the Last Supper, leaves them with one final commandment: ‘Love one another, as I have loved you… I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.’
So, that is what we are commanded to do. But, hang on a minute, what does it mean to live out such a commandment, in the concrete detail of one’s daily life, which is, after all, the place where such things find their true meaning, or not at all? William Blake was absolutely right when he remarked: ‘He who would do good must do so in minute particulars: general good is the plea of the scoundrel, the hypocrite, and the flatterer.’ In other words, it is far, far easier, to love the world in general than to love the bloke next door.
What, then, does it mean to love in that kind of way, amidst the concrete detail of one’s daily life? Well, the answer is, try it. Try asking yourself the question, in any situation that you find yourself: ‘What does it mean to love God, and to love my neighbour as myself here, at this moment, in relation to this particular task, or event, or person?’ Imagine, for example, you were putting together an expenses claim, and trying to decide whether it was legitimate to include a particular item. To be reminded as you did so that you are charged to love God in all that you do, would help to ensure that pure self-interest could never become the overriding factor determining your decision, because it requires us always to look beyond ourselves to our relationship with God whenever we make decisions. The commandment to love our neighbour, also requires us to look beyond our own interests, to take account of those of our fellow human beings; in other words, we are no longer free to profit at their expense.
But, finally, it is highly significant that we are charged, not simply to love our neighbours, but to love our neighbours as ourselves. The ‘as ourselves’ bit is immensely important: because it reminds us that we are not called to be ‘doormats for Jesus’. It reminds us that it is not only just but essential, that, in normal circumstances, we claim for what we are legitimately owed. If we fail to do so, we can end up with a very distorted and dysfunctional relationship with the body from whom those expenses are due, because we risk concealing the true nature of the costs that have been incurred, subsidising the institution inappropriately, and actually failing to take our own human worth and dignity seriously.
Now, of course, there may be specific occasions when we decide, for good reason, that we may wish to decline accepting a fee that we are rightly owed. And that is fine, so long as we do not do so out of a misguided sense that it is contrary to our Christian calling to accept what we are owed. As Jesus famously says to the disciples in Luke’s Gospel, ‘the labourer is worthy of his hire.’
Rules matter. They are essential for the proper functioning of human society. But they also have their limitations, and can be open to abuse. Rules can make us feel secure, because they can relieve us of the necessity to think; rules are things we can choose to hide behind. But to attain our full humanity, we need to be aspiring to maximum rather than minimum standards of behaviour; and that is a calling that demands rather more of us than that. The Christian life is not like ‘painting by numbers’: all you have to do is stick by the rules and be good, and you can sit back with the smug satisfaction of knowing that you are OK. On the contrary, the Christian life is a call to learn how to love: to love God, to love our neighbour; to love our enemy; to love one another.
And that is a far, far more demanding, and dangerous, and exciting, and glorious adventure to pursue.
Amen.