June 2, 2024. Texts: Deuteronomy 5:12-15; 2 Corinthians 4:5-12; Mark 2:23 – 3:6.
Sometimes you can just tell that Jesus has had enough, right? Like any teacher, or parent supervising energetic children, Jesus knows how fast the interplay can change direction. How quickly God’s children shift from happy play into bitter conflict!
So with the firmness of his elder status, Jesus just says, enough. The wise among us will know that he really means it. And pay attention.
Two scenarios are presented to us by Mark in his gospel. First, it was the disciples, making their way through the fields, filling their hunger with the words of Jesus and their bodies with heads of fresh, chewy grain. It happened to be the sabbath.
Some of Israel’s top legal eagles spotted this indiscretion and confronted Jesus. What’s going on here! God commanded a day of rest, and who are you, Jesus, to lead your followers into the very gates of Gehenna? They were on fire with indignation.
You could make a case that walking through the fields was the terrible breach of law. Or, that it was plucking the heads of grain. Either way, some sort of sabbath-averse work was suspected.
Aha! Said the Pharisees. Aha! We caught you in the very act of breaking God’s holy law. These masters of jurisprudence were quick to pounce on Jesus. But Jesus fought back. He cited a tradition. Tradition! Or, if you prefer, a precedent.
A youthful David was hungry and on the run from King Saul (who was quietly going off the rails.) David pleaded for bread from the priest Ahimelech at God’s house. There was no regular bread, only loaves dedicated to God, called the bread of the Presence. David and his men were deemed ritually clean enough to have the holy bread.
There’s no evidence that this happened on the sabbath. But it did challenge a tradition about the bread in God’s house. The precedent set here is need. David and his men were hungry and fleeing danger. They received hospitality, bread for their very lives. And perhaps we can also reasonably say that in the moment they also were filled with God’s loving and sustaining presence.
The next incident of Jesus, Pharisees, and sabbath was about whether or not the work of healing was lawful on that day. For the record, Jesus did not work to heal the man. He didn’t even touch the man. He only asked to see the man’s withered arm. When the man showed his arm, it was healed.
This time the Pharisees said nothing. But their expressions must have said it all. Because Jesus himself posed the question: what is lawful here? What does God command? Is it to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath? A good left undone on the sabbath can amount to harm. Which is certainly a failure to honor God’s commandments.
Jesus was a master of jurisprudence himself. The greatest one to yet have lived. Even to this day.
Jesus understood that he was not setting a precedent that day. He was observing the commandments.
God saw in the beginning that the people had a very great need. It was to be set free from the tyranny of work. So God called forth the last and greatest of all creation’s gifts. Rest and restoration for the sake of body and soul.
Who could mess that up? Who can take a gift given out of the purest good and make it into at the very least a mean-spirited requirement, and at the worst a terrible burden? Well, us. Right?
Remember Blue laws? Here in Washington they were in place from 1909 until 1966. Some of you may recall seeing the meat section of a grocery story sealed off on Sundays. Butchers loved the law, but people who forgot to buy something for the Sunday barbeque didn’t so much.
At the time many violations of the law were tolerated, but in 1965 a car dealer in Mount Vernon was prosecuted for selling cars on Sunday. He was turned in by other local car dealers. Not because they thought he and his workers should rest, but because it gave him a day of sales with no competition. They exercised the law rightly, but in a mean-spirited way.
Blue law restrictions still persist in unexpected ways. You still can’t buy a car on Sunday in some places. Can’t buy liquor on Sunday in some places. In most places the sentiment is that this is for your own good. Which may be true in some ways, but perhaps not in the same way as God intended.
But at the heart of it all is a question. When it comes to God’s commandments, Sabbath being the representative one here today, how do we observe them? And in observing them how is God honored?
Jurisprudence is a Latin word. It invokes two things – juris, the law. And prudence – thoughtful foresightedness, aka wisdom. How will the law affect those on whom is it imposed? All too often the prudence part gets disconnected from the law part with harmful results.
Jesus knew that Roman law was quick to promote the good of the elite over the poor and voiceless. As also Egyptian rule had done with enslaved Israel. He saw the spiritual leaders of Israel invoking God’s commandments in the service of power rather than to seek the good. These things all pointed to hardened hearts. Jesus was angry, and very sad.
And so he said, enough! The Pharisees left to consult with the Herodians about the problem of Jesus. Their aim was to destroy him. The discerning among us will see that their conspiring was, in fact, work. And it was the sabbath day.
What more is there to say, except this: how easy it is to be mean-spirited. How wonderful it is that God gives a new spirit to all who desire it. A good spirit, tender with love toward the needs of neighbors and observant of God’s law to love. A spirit embodied in people glad to rest and let God be the judge of all things in the end. Amen.