Nobody ever wrote it down, but everyone in the church knew the rule. A young man should not marry until he has somewhere to carry his wife. A couple who rent past forty have not managed their affairs well. A house is not finished until it has grilles, tiles and a verandah fit for visitors. And a good Christian home is swept, polished and quiet before Sunday.
Some of these ideas began as sensible advice. Over time they hardened into law, and people began measuring one another by them.
Rules added on top of God’s
In Matthew 23 Jesus speaks plainly about the teachers of the law and the Pharisees. They sat in Moses’ seat, He said, and knew the commandments well. The trouble was what they added and what they left out. “For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers” (Matthew 23:4, NKJV).
Their extra regulations were meant to build a fence around God’s law, to keep people well away from sin. But the fence became the point. They tithed mint and cumin down to the last leaf, Jesus said, and neglected “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith” (Matthew 23:23).
It is easy to read that as a story about other people long ago. It is harder to notice the fences we have built around the subject of home.
Where the loads land
Consider a single mother who rents two rooms in Portmore and has done so for twelve years. She pays on time, keeps the place clean and takes her children to service every week. Yet she feels, each time someone asks “So when you going to buy?”, that she has failed a test she never agreed to sit.
Or think of the couple who built modestly, a two-bedroom house with bare block walls on the inside, because that was what they could pay for without a loan. At the family gathering an aunt looks round and says, kindly enough, “You will finish it one day.” They hear the judgement underneath.
Or the young man in Toronto who is sending money home to build a house he may never live in, because in his family a son who does not build for his mother is no son at all. He is exhausted, and he cannot say so.
None of these rules appears in Scripture. The Bible has a great deal to say about houses and land: about honest weights, fair wages, not moving your neighbour’s boundary stone, welcoming the stranger and not charging the poor interest. It does not say that a household is righteous because it owns rather than rents, or that a finished floor is a sign of God’s favour.
Lifting with a finger
The sharpest part of Jesus’ charge is not that the Pharisees had rules. It is that they would not lift a finger to help anyone carry them. That is worth sitting with.
If we believe a young couple ought to own a home, are we willing to help them understand a mortgage, lend a hand on a Saturday, or keep quiet about their plain walls until they can afford paint? If we believe elderly members should not be left in unsafe houses, do we show up with a ladder and a box of screws, or only with an opinion?
A rule that comes with help attached is closer to love. A rule that comes only with a raised eyebrow is a burden tied on someone else’s back.
The weightier matters at home
What would justice, mercy and faith look like if we applied them to the way we talk about houses?
Justice might mean paying the mason on the day you promised, charging a tenant a fair rent, and dividing family land so that the daughter who stayed and nursed Mama is not quietly left out.
Mercy might mean opening the spare room without a list of conditions, forgiving the cousin who broke the water pump, or telling the renting family in the next pew that their home is a real home and their faithfulness is seen.
Faith might mean trusting God with the timing of a house, rather than hurrying into debt because the family calendar says it is time. It might mean believing that a household in a board house on a rented lot can be as full of the presence of God as any mansion on the hill.
Jesus did not throw out the law. He called people back to its heart. The same is true here. There is wisdom in saving, in building carefully, in keeping a home in good order. The problem begins when those good things become a way of ranking people, or a weight we place on others and refuse to help them carry.
For reflection
- What unwritten rules about houses did you grow up with? Which of them came from Scripture, and which came from the district?
- Is there someone you have judged, even silently, for how or where they live? What would it look like to lift a finger for them this month?
Lord Jesus, You came to give rest to the weary and heavy laden. Forgive us for the loads we have tied on other people’s shoulders, and for the ones we still carry that You never gave us. Teach us justice, mercy and faith in the way we buy, build, rent and speak about home. Amen.
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