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"The Law Should Be Enough?”
Contributed by Amiri Hooker on Jul 12, 2025 (message contributor)
Summary: I want to ask a question that the Spirit has been stirring in my soul: “The Law Should Be Enough… shouldn’t it?”
Sermon Title: “The Law Should Be Enough?”
Scripture: Luke 10:25–28
Preacher: Rev. Amiri B. Hooker
Introduction:
Beloved, today’s message is a hard word wrapped in love, a sermon for a nation and a people standing at the crossroads of obedience and resistance, legality and morality, policy and prophecy.
I want to ask a question that the Spirit has been stirring in my soul: “The Law Should Be Enough… shouldn’t it?”
We live in a world obsessed with legality. What does the law say? What is constitutional? What is allowed by Congress? What’s written in the bill?
But in Luke 10, when the expert in the law asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus doesn’t just give him a legal answer—He gives him a moral one.
“You have answered correctly,” Jesus said. “Do this, and you will live.”
The law alone isn’t enough if you don’t know the Lawgiver. Four Points and I’ll get out of your way
Move I. Knowing the Law Isn’t the Same as Knowing God
Let’s be honest: America has written many laws. Laws that once said Black people were three-fifths human. Laws that allowed children to work in sweatshops. Laws that criminalized disability, queerness, poverty, immigration. And now we’re seeing a Big Ugly Bill again—a law dressed up in the clothing of order, but soaked through with cruelty.
Tradition and Scripture reminds us that just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s moral. Just because it passed through Congress doesn’t mean it passed through God’s heart.
“What is written in the law?” Jesus asks. “What do you read there?”
Can I take an aside for just a minute when did it get ok to stop reading , herd congressmen say the voted for the bill but they didn’t read,
I see folk coming to church and they don’t read there bibles, we got students graduation from collage now saying they have never read and entire book, we have a president that they are trying to come up with a way to make daily videos because he won’t or can’t read the daily security briefings. When was Not reading an answer!
What do you read in the bill? When you read it, do you see justice? Do you see compassion? Do you see love?
If you don’t see the heart of God in it, then it might be the law of man—but it’s not the law of Christ.
Move II. The God Who Wrote the Law Walked with the Poor
Rev. Dr. Bishop William Barber teaches in his Moral Monday movement and his continuation of the National Poor People Campaign started by Martin Luther King Jr. us this: we are not just legal observers—we are moral witnesses.
And we know that God doesn’t write law from behind glassy towers and billion-dollar offices. God wrote the law in covenant, God came down and saw the conditions of humanity, saw what love looked like, saw what oppression looked like, and created covenant out of righteousness and not capitalism. Jesus fulfilled the law not in a boardroom, but on a bloody cross.
Let me remind you:
• Jesus healed on the Sabbath—breaking the law but fulfilling love.
• Jesus flipped tables in the temple—disrupting order but restoring righteousness.
• Jesus touched the untouchable, welcomed the outsider, and confronted the rulers with prophetic fire.
So what must we do?
We must not only know the law… we must know the Jesus who wrote it in blood.
Move III. This Big Ugly Bill: When Law Becomes Violence
Right now in Washington, D.C., a bill has been signed—a bill so devastating that it earned the name “The Big Ugly Bill.” And I need to be honest with you: that law was not written by Jesus.
It was written by those who have mistaken cruelty for order and order for peace. It cuts Medicaid. It slashes food assistance. It strips dignity from our elders, our children, our disabled, our veterans, and the working poor. And while some religious leaders bless this bill in the name of “fiscal responsibility,” prophets must rise up and cry aloud:
This is not God’s law. This is policy murder.
Move IV. Knowing the Lawgiver Means Taking a Stand
Let me end with this story When Rev. Barber walked toward the Capitol—his cane clicking, his body aching—he wasn’t marching alone. He carried the memory of Harriet, of Martin, of Ella Baker, of Fannie Lou, of Jesus.
And right beside him was a young woman with cerebral palsy. She said, with all this trying to do away with DEI “The A is missing in DEI—the A for accessibility.” She said, “We believe this movement sees us.”
And when the police arrested her in her wheelchair, she didn’t cry. She said: “I’m ready.”
She knew the cost.
She knew the law.