In business grad school I had this professor who also happened to be an orthodox Jew.  By orthodox I don’t mean Haredi, who are often like urban Amish, completely separate from society. He kept the Sabbath, he followed the kosher laws, he wore the yarmulke.  It is that yarmulke that I am thinking about.  Because one day in class he takes it off. Something that an Orthodox Jew should not do. He takes a minute to say exactly that, but also that it was the perfect example for the concept he was teaching. The concept happened to be a parabolic shape like an upside down yarmulke and that the operational point we were looking for was that local minimum, the bottom of the upside down hat. And he concluded that he supposed the Lord would forgive the trespass of going hatless because it was done for the mitzvah, the good work of teaching.

Now almost 30 years later I don’t remember much about that class, but I remember that episode. And I also suppose that entire lesson might have been planned around that.  That a business operations professor also wanted to teach something about God to a group of students much more interested in money. Christian Mark tied it immediately to Jesus walking through the wheat fields plucking some grain, and Jesus being met at the Pharisee’s door with the man with dropsy. My Orthodox Jewish professor’s understand of God and the law seemed to mirror Jesus in that laws can conflict. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.  Hence if the choice was Sabbath or hunger – and we are not talking about fat Americans here who could almost all skip a meal or two – take care of the hunger.  And the second one maybe even closer.  If you have the ability to do the good work – like healing the man of dropsy – even if it breaks the sabbath, do it.

There is an old-fashioned word – scrupulosity – that catches what I’m thinking about.  It is old fashioned because we are all antinomians now.  We are very used to dismissing the law or saying it doesn’t apply for many and sundry reasons. But like my professor, that is a bad habit.  He really considered the law before taking his yarmulke off. The law of God is good and wise and we should not be quick to dismiss it. But there is a ditch on the other side.  Scrupulosity is something that has often been hurled at Martin Luther himself.  The Table Talk has Luther being thrown out of the confessional by von Staupitz and told not to come back until he had committed an actual sin. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but we can carry that fear too long.  Fear is the beginning.  Love and trust are the completion. The person afflicted with scrupulosity is always worried about the little things.  Like tithing the mint and cumin (Matthew 23:23).  And they might come to see God as the galactic accountant scrupulously counting each penny.

But that is not God’s self-revelation. God is rather unscrupulous. David, that horn-dog, is called a man after God’s own heart.  God seems to have no problem calling prophetesses – like Deborah we studied on Wednesday – even through that would seem to cross a law or two. Or Jesus himself defending the work of picking grain on the Sabbath or healing the diseased man. The God who has revealed himself is one full of mercy and abounding in steadfast love. He is a God who is going to do His good work.  A God of whom it is said it is his glory to overlook offense (Proverbs 19:11).  A God who removes sin and remembers it no more.  We have an unscrupulous God.  One who forgives the sin while we are still sinners. One who quickly holds that love covers a multitude of sins. And whose great command is to love one another.