THE 11TH COMMANDMENT; ‘THOU SHALT NOT ENJOY THYSELF’

by adam harbinson

‘A Puritan is someone with a haunting fear that somewhere, someone is happy’ (H L Mencken).

I had a dream the other night. In the dream, Jesus, who loves people and is a seriously ‘fun’ person, was playing football with a bunch of lads – they were what religious folk like to diplomatically call ‘unchurched’ – the sort of people he always enjoyed being around. In fact when he walked the streets of Old Palestine, probably taking time to kick football with the kids, the religious folk hated him because he broke all their rules by mixing with just such people; ‘Publicans and sinners!’ Rabbi Ariel would scoff, ‘So common!’ and he’d turn up his nose and breeze past.

Anyway, in my dream, towards the end of the match Jesus heard the sound of singing wafting in the still Sunday afternoon air; ‘Are you washed, in the blood…’ and he thought, ‘O dear God, not them again,’ and so when the game was over, they slapped each other’s backs, congratulated each other for their fine sportsmanship, and headed for home. But as Jesus passed by the little knot of singers he recognised one or two of them.

‘Hey! Rabbi Moshe. Remember me? You’re the guy who gave me a telling off one Sabbath as my friends and I walked through cornfield. We hadn’t had breakfast yet and were pulling ears of corn, rubbing them between our hands and eating the flour. I thought you were joking when you accused us of offending the commandment to not work on the Sabbath.’

And then he spotted someone else he thought he knew. ‘I remember you, Simon isn’t it? I was in your house one day when a man with a deformed hand came in and I healed him. And you were cross, because I had desecrated the Sabbath. I thought you were joking too. Do you remember me saying, “If one of your sheep fell down a well on a Sabbath, surely you wouldn’t leave it there until the next day, would you?”

‘What are you doing here?’ Jesus asked. ‘Is this an open-air meeting? Can I join in?’

And there a nervous shifting of feet and embarrassment all round, ‘Imagine attending an open-air meeting wearing a football kit, on a Sunday!’

‘Actually we’re here to protest,’ stammered a spokesman for the Movement for the Consolidation of the Torah.

‘O good,’ said Jesus. ‘You’re protesting against world poverty aren’t you, and inequality, domestic abuse, the infringement of human rights in places like North Korea, something like that? Great! Please can I join in, please?’

‘Actually, we’re protesting against… am, against you guys playing football on Sunday.’

‘What!!?’

Unfortunately I awoke at that point, I would love to have heard what he said to them, but I can guess…

‘Listen brothers, listen,’ I think he would have said with considerably more grace than I could ever muster, ‘You’re missing something here. I never commissioned you to do this. The example I wanted you to follow was when I stood in the temple and quoted Isaiah 61, that was my mandate, and it’s your mandate; “The Spirit of the Lord has commissioned me to bring good news to the poor, to comfort the brokenhearted, to proclaim that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed, and to tell those who mourn that the time of the Lord’s favour has come.” My brothers,’ I think he would have added, ‘This is not your job’ – and I think he would have wept… again.

And I would add – with considerably less patience – ‘Read what Paul the apostle said to the legalistic church in Colosse; “Don’t let anyone condemn you for what you eat or drink, or for not celebrating certain holy days or new moon ceremonies or Sabbaths. For these rules are only shadows of the reality yet to come. And Christ himself is that reality.”’

Odd, isn’t it? They embraced the rules and crucified the reality.