“Act as if ye had faith . . . and faith will be given to you.”
For the last few weeks we have been reading each Sunday passages from St. Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. Jesus’ basic theme is that the Law (specifically Jewish law) is good and should be observed – but that one can do better than that: one can be bountifully gracious, caring beyond the legal limits of society; that one can rise to share in the very merciful nature of God himself. For instance he says, “You have heard it was said (in the Law), ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’” In other words, balanced retribution is all the Law requires. “But I say to you,” says Jesus, “when someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one to him as well.” In other words, show him the very opposite of retaliation; undermine his belligerence by taking him to lunch.
The Law while necessary has its limitations. Indeed Jesus advises his followers to avoid the courts – because once you enter a complaint you will be caught up in its labyrinth of legalities for months. Read Dickens’ novel Bleak House someday.
Which reminds me of a film I watched the other night called The Verdict (1982 starring Paul Newman). In brief, it’s about malpractice at a Boston hospital (fictional) by which a woman, prior to her operation, is given an anesthetic only one hour after her last meal instead of the required nine hours. The result: she ends up comatose, unable thereafter to see, hear, speak . . . a living corpse. The family selects an affordable lawyer named Frank Galvin (Newman) who is pitted against a high class, high priced lawyer (James Mason) and his stable of assistants. Galvin is no match for Mason who knows all the tricks of the trade that made him rich. He even plants a spy in Galvin’s office, a pretty one. Even the judge is hostile to Galvin, contradicts Frank while he is questioning witnesses, even takes over questioning Frank’s witnesses himself.
Frank finally gets a break when he discovers the admissions nurse, whose actual intake form showed the victim had last eaten only one hour, not the required nine, before anesthesia was administered. She reveals on the stand that the anesthetist, after the operation, threatened her to falsify the intake form, to change the one she had written to a nine – criminal indeed! But Mason and the judge present arguments to strike the nurse’s evidence from the record. Frank Galvin just can’t win. The manipulative behavior of his opponents leaves him hopeless.
Until he has to make his summation before the jury. And here our Sermon on the Mount infiltrates the discourse. A weary Frank rises, speaks haltingly to the jurors; says (from the script of David Mamet): You know, so much of the time we’re just lost. We say, “Please, God, tell us what is right; tell us what is true.” And there is no justice: the rich win, the poor are powerless. We become tired of hearing people lie. And after a time, we become dead… a little dead. We think of ourselves as victims… and we become victims . . . We doubt ourselves, we doubt our beliefs. We doubt our institutions. And we doubt the law. – – – But today you are the law. You ARE the law. Not some book… not the lawyers… not a marble statue… or the trappings of the court. See those are just symbols of our desire to be just. They are… they are, in fact, a prayer: a fervent and a frightened prayer. In my religion, they say, “Act as if ye had faith… and faith will be given to you.” IF… if we are to have faith in justice, we need only to believe in ourselves. And ACT with justice. See, I believe there is justice in our hearts. – – – The Jury finds for the plaintiff. Sure an appeal of the verdict may follow in real life – but the play has made its point!