Jesus often got into trouble for law-breaking. No, he wasn’t caught breaking into someone’s house, he didn’t ‘innocently’ (ahem) avoid paying his income tax, he wasn’t pulled over for driving a chariot at 60 mph in a 30 mph zone, he didn’t get into a drunken brawl outside the Nazareth pub at closing time … in fact we might suppose that he was a model citizen. But he was still a law-breaker because he made a point of mingling and eating with folk who society thought were beyond the pale, unashamedly touching sick people who were deemed to be unclean, and repeatedly doing (and, even worse, encouraging his disciples) to do acts which were classified as “work” on the Sabbath day of rest. He even tried to rewrite the legal traditions that had evolved over the centuries, with his words, “You have heard it said … but I say to you”. Clearly Jesus was a dangerous radical hellbent on ditching the rules and regulations which governed everyday life. As far as the lawyers were concerned, his teaching would leave ordinary people confused or even rebellious and simply couldn’t be tolerated.

We, taking our lead from Jesus – and also from St Paul, who spends several chapters of his letter to the Galatian Christians on the subject – we gaily say, “As Christians we no longer have to obey all those long, boring, complicated, restrictive and even repulsive Old Testament regulations; we are New Testament people and can ignore them”. As Mr Humphries probably wouldn’t have said in “Are you being served?” (but Paul did say): we’re free! So today’s Bible passage, which we dare not ignore as it’s part of Jesus’ famous ‘Sermon on the Mount’, brings us back to earth with a bump and a head-scratching question.  For, as we’ve heard, Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. Truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished”. Can Jesus really be serious? And isn’t there a huge contradiction there between what he says here, what he said elsewhere, and the ways he actually behaved? It’s all very puzzling, and has left the Church with questions that have rumbled through the centuries.

At this point I could highlight the fact that many Christians think that some sections of Old Testament law, the Ten Commandments in particular, are still binding on us today while some of the detailed rules that we wade through in Leviticus or Numbers can be ignored – the problem being that we can’t agree on which sections to keep or to what extent! (For instance Seventh-Day Adventists believe that the Sabbath rule is still in force so worship on Saturdays, while some Christians in Muslim countries feel that each day is equal and meet on Fridays as it’s the most convenient option). We know too that churches have often imposed patterns of behaviour – a list of “things that real Christians don’t do” – on their members: that not only takes us back to Jesus criticising the Jewish leaders’ hypocrisy but also, I think. prioritises rule-keeping over life with God’s Spirit.

As I say, I could highlight that aspect of this passage. But I’d prefer to take us in a slightly different direction and ask, “How on earth do we deal with Bible passages which seem to be inconsistent or even contradictory?” For we believe that the Bible gives us the foundations for our faith, we go to it looking for answers to our questions -yet it sometimes seems to say one thing in one place and the exact opposite elsewhere! We can pretend that things aren’t like that, and there are writers and preachers who have come up with ingenious explanations for these discrepancies. They mean well; but I’m rarely convinced by their answers which seem to say that a square and a circle are really identical shapes, or that black and white are really the same colour – which they’re not. The Bible is inconsistent: so how do we live with that fact without diminishing our respect for its authority as God’s Word?

One of the most distinguished theologians of our time is Walter Brueggemann. In case you’ve not heard of hm, let me tell you that he is an American, that he’s an ordained Minister in the United Church of Christ (rather like our URC), that he’s written over 60 books and Bible commentaries as well as countless academic papers and articles, mostly on Old Testament subjects, and that he is still going strong although he’ll be 90 next month! Brueggemann is particularly keen on people understanding the background to the Bible and recognising that different parts have different formats; like speeches and essays today they often follow rules which would have been second nature to their original readers but aren’t at all obvious to us! When this man says something about interpreting the Bible, we ought to listen.

And this is what he says: “We start with the awareness that the Bible does not speak with a single voice on any topic” – in other words, we just have to accept the apparent inconsistencies. And he continues: “Inspired by God as it is, all sorts of persons have had a say in the complexity of Scripture” – yes, it’s God’s book, but it’s a human one as well, written by many people in different settings over many centuries. And our theologian friend sums up: “We are under mandate to listen, as best we can, to all of its voices  … The work of reading the Bible responsibly is the process of adjudicating these texts that will not be fit together” – we lay all the texts which relate to our topic beside each other, we ensure we ignore none of them, we come to our balanced conclusion. That’s not easy (and part of my job is to help you do it).

So, for instance, we must recognise that the Bible isn’t like a textbook which has one chapter on this topic and another on something else. It’s in fact a fairly random collection of books including official history and law, collected wisdom, poetry, prophecy and the promotion of Christianity. It was written by people who each had to make sense of God and life in their immediate circumstances, whether they were in Israel before the nation was fully-formed, when it was later in decline and threatened by its neighbours, or after Jerusalem had fallen with the Jewish elite whisked off to Babylon and the ordinary folk who’d stayed behind trying as best they could to scratch out a living.

When we come to Jesus we realise that he was living in a nation which yearned to be free of Roman rule and where the religious leaders were trying to keep Jewish distinctiveness alive by keeping its laws. Moving on, Peter and Paul were trying to nurture an infant Church living in an Empire which didn’t tolerate what it saw as a threat to its power; they also had to address specific questions raised by congregations, some made up largely of pagan converts and others with a majority of Jewish members. To sum up, the Bible isn’t all cut from one piece of cloth and – dare I say – isn’t necessarily all relevant to every person in every situation. It’s not an easy read and Christians may need to do some serious work if they’re going to make proper sense of it.

And – I must add – that’s without thinking about where we ourselves our coming from. For a Christian in Wales will, without knowing it, read the Bible differently to one in Africa or South America – or to one in, say, medieval Spain – because our own life experiences and concerns are so very different. For we all read the Bible, in fact we read every book, through our own personal lenses; that means that something which powerfully strikes me may be something that you don’t even notice, or that something which I think is trivial may be very important to you. We all have our vested interests, fears and hurts whose power, says Brueggemann: “makes our reading lens seem to us sure and reliable. We pretend that we do not read in this way, so it’s useful for us to have as much self-critical awareness as possible”.

At this point you may be saying, “What I want is to know how to live as a Christian in today’s world. I truly want to know what the Bible has to say on the big issues we are facing. But I’m no scholar, I don’t know anything about the language styles and social backgrounds and political contexts and contemporary controversies that you’ve been talking about. So there’s no point in me reading the Bible for myself as I’m bound to end up with wrong conclusions. I don’t even have a way of knowing whether the preacher I’m listening to is right, either”.

I understand your despair, and I certainly don’t want you to think that you must hold a Doctorate in Theology (which I don’t have!) if you’re going to read the Bible with understanding. For much of it is actually pretty clear. But I do think we must beware of being very dogmatic in areas where there genuinely seems to be more than one way of reading it: a prime bone of Biblical contention today, which the Church of England will be chewing over at this week’s Synod meeting,  is sexuality, gender and marriage. But there are (or have been) other issues such as warfare and pacifism, capitalism and socialism, the environment and how we use the world’s resources, even (although it seems hard to credit) apartheid and slavery. We may profoundly disagree with other folk and ask, “How can they possibly believe that the Bible says that?” But we should at least be prepared to hear their reasons for reading it as they do, as it’s just possible that they have sensed the Holy Spirit’s guidance more than we have, and that we are the ones who need to discard or revise what we once thought was the right interpretation. That requires a lot of humility, it’s not easy.

So let’s get back to Jesus and what he said about Jewish law: “Until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished”. Was he saying that all his followers in every age have to keep every line and sentence of that law? His own words and actions say, “No”; and what I think he was trying to do was show people how heavily that law – even though it had been devised by God and passed down the generations – was pressing down upon them and how impossibly high God’s standards were. Yes, that law was to be taken seriously – but perhaps, as Jesus explained elsewhere, there was a better way of understanding it. That way wasn’t about rules but about principles, not a list of “don’ts” but set of “dos”, not regulations but guidance, not rigidity but flexibility, not mindless tick-boxing but thoughtful appraisal of every situation, not condemnation and death but freedom and abundant life.

So Jesus doesn’t abandon the Jewish law – how could he, if he believed it had been given to Israel by his own heavenly Father? That is inconceivable! But he certainly reinterprets it and brings it to life – for isn’t he God’s own Living Word? Our task, our responsibility in fact, is to take Scripture and seek to discover what principles and priorities, rather than rules and regulations, it lays down for us today. That isn’t an easy task – but, if do it well, the Bible ceases to dominate and restrict us. Instead, it gives us God’s true freedom.