Lead us not into temptation.
I quite often go to the Grosvenor Chapel which is close to my office; like many churches of that period, like ours, it has large boards setting out the Ten Commandments, only in the Grosvenor Chapel they are very prominently placed above the altar. Or they would be prominent if they were visible; in fact they are covered by a hanging. I was told the other day that a previous Vicar had had them covered because he didn’t want them to frighten off his congregation.
Taking most of the Ten Commandments at their face value, they are not perhaps too daunting most of the time. Now I’m no longer a church warden, I find I seldom want to commit murder and I am more likely to extend the Sabbath into the rest of the week, than fail to observe it on Saturday and Sunday. But it doesn’t require great sophistication to see that underlying the basic commands and prohibitions are more complications and temptations than first meet the eye and they challenge us as much today, as in 18th century England and 1st century Palestine.
What bothered St Paul, and what he is beating himself up about in this passage, is the force of the 10th Commandment; “You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife”, and so on. Paul is wrestling with the problem of desire; most of us can, most of the time, resist our desires to do what we know is wrong, but what the 10th commandment is saying is that it is sinful to even have the desire in the first place. This is indeed a hard yoke and heavy burden. It is no where more terrifyingly expressed than in Jesus’ own words, in Matthew’s account of the Sermon on the Mount where he equates mere anger with murder and looking lustfully at a woman with adultery.
One reaction to this alarming prospect is to try to regulate every aspect of life and remove the scope for choice. This was the tradition of Deuteronomy and in Jesus’ time associated with the Pharisees; strict observance of these rules was not so much a matter of moral rectitude, as a mark of obedience to the Covenant. It was what identified the chosen people and put them in a right relation to their God. In some ways this minute regulation make a sort of moral life much easier; morality becomes like changing a nappy or doing the ironing; an entirely mechanical activity requiring no mental, still less any emotional, effort. But I do not think that is what Matthew means by the easy yoke and light burden. Morality becomes facile; it doesn’t meet our deeper need to feel we are doing right or wrong. It is mere regulation, not life guiding law. We want more. We want to be aware of our choice, and that entails being aware of and addressing our desires.
Although he had been a Pharisee, well versed in and obedient to the Law, Paul adopts a different strategy, one which has been hugely influential in the development of Christian society. He recognises that covetousness is inextricably linked with the physical body; it is our appetites based in our animal needs that lead us to wrong doing; bodies are sinful and mortal and Paul would do away with them as far as is possible, or realistic. Instead he encourages us to develop and concentrate on our spiritual life, as we endeavour to become like Christ. In his resurrection Christ has broken the restaints of a human body, and given us the ability to do the same. We should tend to our physical bodies just enough for them to house our spiritual selves until the second coming. It is clear from many of Paul’s ideas that he did not expect to have to wait long. But the legacy of these ideas is still with us.
One of their most influential consequences has been in the development of monasticism. Hermits, and then monks, originally retreated to the desert, in part to get away from the carnal attractions of society and the city, literally civilisation. But they also sought the wilderness that lies between our enslavement, in Egypt, or Babylon or our own bodies and the Promised Land and Salvation- this is the theme so eloquently developed by our Preacher at Emma’s ordination last week.
The monastic metaphor is stretched, perhaps beyond breaking point, in the nunneries and convents of 16th and 17th Century Venice about which I have been reading in Mary Laven’s fascinating and sympathetic Virgins of Venice. The book is about the reform of the numerous convents in Venice and the attempt to enforce strict enclosure required by the Council of Trent and the Venetian authorities. Needless to say the attempts were doomed, and achieved much futile misery (as well as some pretty spicy enterprise) along the way.
The underlying problem was the fact that many nuns were only in a convent because their families could not afford a one dowry for more than one daughter. The others were persuaded take the veil. The Venetians too, like St Paul wanted to compartmentalise; a ghetto for the Jews, a virtual Red Light district for vice and, they intended, enclosed oases of holiness where the nuns could do the praying that the busy commercial Venetians did not have time for. However, high walls, vigilant policing by specially dedicated magistrates, and savage penalties for contravention were to little effect.
The extraordinary initiatives in getting young men in and young nuns out, are recounted with delicacy and sympathy, but even so they are not quite suitable for the pulpit. More interesting, and moving, are the attempts by the nuns to emulate, albeit platonically, ordinary married relations. The nuns would take in washing and mending and send cooked dinners over to their favoured priests or prepare elaborate delicacies for their relations, sometimes ruining the convent with their extravagance. Their affectionate correspondence reveals a pathetic longing for ordinary life; ironically real marriage was hardly more liberating than the cloister, but that was not how it seemed from the other side of the parlour grille. We can see now that these human feelings would not be suppressed, and it would have been better in every way to have harnessed these emotions, not least to fulfil the nuns’ spiritual potential.
Instead, the idea, essentially St Paul’s, was that the enthusiasm and dedication to the purely spiritual life would drive out the corrupting desires of the body, but there were high walls and strict rules, just in case. It’s a scheme which may sometimes work; there were and are people so devoted to a spiritual life that their physical existence is almost an irrelevance; but on the whole spiritual life finds expression in the love of those around us. The love of God is expressed in love of one’s neighbour. Realising that love may often entail adapting and controlling our human instincts. For some it may mean physical sacrifice, and martyrdom. But this should be the harnessing of our humanity to spiritual purpose, not its suppression.
A shining example of this, from a contemporary convent, is the story of Dom Christian de Chergé and his companions, monks living in and serving a Muslim village in Algeria, who were murdered by Jihadist rebels in 1996. Their story is now a moving film Of Gods and Men which I strongly recommend, but take a hankie. As the monks live with their decision to remain in their convent despite the danger around them, they attain an inner spiritual peace, the result of dedication to their neighbours.
That peace is, I think what Matthew means by the words “my yoke is easy and my burden light” Jesus is alluding to the burden of authority, the political and spiritual subjugation (which is the same word) of the Jewish nation. The easy yoke is the acceptance of authority in the Kingdom; for Paul it is the adoption of a new life removed from physical and mortal existence. That will be a release from the oppression of worldly concerns, but we shouldn’t forget that the yoke is attached to a plough or a cart, it is functional, for working the earth or transporting goods. Our spiritual life involves engagement with the world, not separation from it. And that means accepting our physical needs and feelings, and using them in the service of God. In this we shall be imitating Christ himself. Amen