The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III
St. James Episcopal Church
Greeneville, TN
Year B - Proper 4 - June 3, 2018
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I remember when I was growing up, my sister and I always had a specific bedtime. A bedtime that got later as grew and matured and we became more responsible. This bedtime rule was made for our own good… and when my mother or father said, “it’s time for bed,” we knew they meant business. Many of you probably had a bedtime… and as you grew, this bedtime hopefully became more flexible…
Good parents always set good rules for us… boundaries that are intended to help guide us along the way, until we gain maturity and responsibility. The responsibility to maturely participate in society and set our own rules, but remembering why they are there in the first place.
It’s very easy to look at the lessons today and think to ourselves after we hear the reading from Deuteronomy yeah… I know that one, “remember the sabbath and keep it holy…” it’s one of God’s rules. It’s one of the BIG TEN. And then, after we hear the reading from Mark, go… Wait a minute, didn’t Jesus just break the rules by letting his followers pick grain on the sabbath and didn’t he heal the man’s withered hand?
Couldn’t they have gotten something to eat somewhere else? And the man’s hand was already withered, why couldn’t Jesus have waited until sun-down to do the healing?
Well, it’s easy for us to think that Jesus broke the “rules” if that’s the limit to how we think of them… as rules… The Pharisees sure thought they were rules… they thought they were to live their life by the letter of the law of Moses, precisely keeping every rule and mandate to make sure they would be counted among the righteous of God’s people. They were all caught up as the authorities in the religious establishment of the time and anyone who was seen “breaking” the rules would surely have to answer to them.
And as Jesus always does, he takes the opportunity to teach in the midst of his predicament. At first glance to us, it seems that Jesus is purposely being the bad boy that possibly won’t go to bed on time… he’s called out by the Pharisees because he’s breaking the rules. It looks as if he’s in total disregard for what it says about the Sabbath. He causes so much conflict in this short passage by the end, there are several groups are so upset, they are conspiring to kill him.
Jesus does two things in our reading from Mark’s Gospel that seems to ‘more than irritate’ the Pharisees…
First, Jesus allows his followers to pluck heads of grain on the Sabbath as they were making their way through the grain fields… When confronted, Jesus compares himself to the great King David who ate the bread of the presence in the sanctuary the bread that was reserved for only the high priest.
Second, Jesus heals the withered hand of a man, in the synagogue, of all places, and of all days… on the Sabbath… it was a simple request of having the man extend his arm that was hidden in his robe.
I think in order to understand this passage, we need to look a little deeper at what’s going on. Why is Jesus doing these things? Who or what is he trying to provoke? And Why do the Pharisees think he is so dangerous… Dangerous enough to kill him?
I think there is more going on here than these infractions on the sabbath… The struggle over the Sabbath rule points to a deeper and more dangerous conflict.
First, I think that we need to give the Pharisees a break… Preachers seem to jump to condemn them all the time... We need to realize that all the Pharisees are not these hard-hearted repressive folks that want to condemn everyone to hell. The Pharisees were only enforcing the “rules” as they understood them… but they also knew that Jesus, was offering the world a new vision of life and a new vision of God. And this was a threat to them.
Second, Jesus wasn’t just being a bad boy… stirring the pot. Jesus was proclaiming, by word and example a new way of understanding who God is… and this too was a threat to the religious establishment.
Jesus proclaims, that God is not confined to the “rules,” either our rules about God… or our rules about the ways we perceive God… I said last week, when feebly attempting to describe the indescribable, as it pertains to the Godhead of the Holy Trinity… I explained that God is relationship… Relationship in God’s self… and in relationship with creation.
So, in Jesus’ proclamations about the Sabbath, he is redefining our relationship to God, and reconfiguring our relationships as individuals, and as society… and that reconfiguration is threatening. Threatening so much, that the Pharisees think that their only option is to make him go away… eliminate the threat… to eliminate Jesus by killing Jesus.
They were so fixated on the rules that they thought pointed them to righteousness… that they failed to realize the intent – why the rules where there in the first place… The difficult truth here, is that they would rather kill Jesus than be transformed by his love…
Change and transformation is always difficult… especially if it challenges or reconfigures our relationship to God. it’s one of the continuing struggles that continues to be a reality in the church today… but as we grow and mature, as we learn and participate, and as we experience the love of Jesus in our lives… then we become formed, informed, and transformed by the love of Jesus.
The question boils down to this… Do we prefer a dormant God who makes us follow a bunch of rules or who is subject to OUR rites, rituals, and rules? Or would we prefer an active, loving, forgiving, and life giving God who is present, relevant, and at work in our lives?
It’s not easy… see, when we open ourselves up and let God get close… God starts to work on us challenging us to love deeper. Deeper than we have ever loved before. Making us see things differently, challenging us, like Jesus challenged the Pharisees, going against the status quo, pushing our comfort zones…
It’s then when we often retreat… retreat into the known and comfortable… and there, we start to build crosses of our own – crucifying Jesus all over again. It may be easy and comfortable for us, but it is dark and we end up lashing out and condemning what we see as different or against the rules.
What did Jesus do that was so bad? Did he pluck the heads off of the wrong grain on the wrong day? Did he heal someone who we thought didn’t deserve to be healed? Jesus tries to change the idea of the Sabbath from being an oppressive rule… a rule that denies food to the hungry or healing to the sick… and He teaches us the original idea of the Sabbath… The idea of rest, restoration, rejuvenation, healing and revitalization… originally set as a reminder that we belong to God.
We belong to God, not the other way around… We belong to God… not to our labors, or the money generated by our labors, or the money spent from our labors on consumer products that we think might help us feel better…
We belong to God… And our lives are meant for God…
Jesus reminds us that that the Sabbath was made for us to help us remember that we belong to God… and that we need to be still, rest, and remember that… We were not made for the Sabbath… we were not created in the image of God to be oppressed by a legalistic interpretation of what it means to follow the rules…
Jesus’ love for us is always forming us and transforming us into something new: St. Paul reminds us as he tells the Corinthians that we are: “afflicted in every way, but not crushed;
perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.
As we grow into the likeness of Jesus and mature in spirit and truth we are forever being replaced by the Christ that dwell within us… so that it is no longer we who live, but Christ.
Rules are not bad things… they help us remember. They help bring order and structure to the chaos of our lives… But they are not intended to be oppressive or cause us more chaos…
Brothers and Sisters, Remember the Sabbath and Keep it Holy… Set it apart, and rest…
and remember that you are made by God and remember that you belong to God.
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