Mark
2:23-3:6
3:1 Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was
there who had a withered hand. 2 They watched him to see whether he would cure
him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. 3 And he said to the man who
had the withered hand, “Come forward.” 4 Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to
do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were
silent. 5 He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness
of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and
his hand was restored. 6 The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with
the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
Have you ever played a
board game or a card game with one of those
people? You know the ones I’m talking about. You’re playing Scrabble, and
you lay down the word “xerox” (which, let’s be honest, should win the game
because that word has not one, but two “x’s”). Two of your friends are amazed,
astonished really, by your mastery of the English alphabet, but that one friend
(usually the one who just lost the lead to you) speaks up and says, “Actually,
I hate to burst your bubble, but xerox is a proper noun, and according to the
‘official’ rules of Scrabble, you cannot play a proper noun.” Then this
“friend” reaches out, picks up your tiles one by one—making sure to slowly pick
up the last “x”—and hands them back to you, smirking the entire time. We all
have those friends, and if you don’t, there’s a good chance you are that friend.
I suppose there’s a place
for those strict rule-followers, for those who like to quote the rulebook,
especially in times of confusion, when the outcome is a bit too close, when a
questionable card is played, when (and this seems to be the case most often)
the lead changes to someone else. I suppose there’s a place for rules,
parameters that are set in order to make sure things are fair, that the playing
field is level. My experience, however, has been that once someone starts
constantly quoting the rules, once someone starts calling out every
infringement of proper protocol and procedure, all the joy leaves, and you’re
just left wondering when it’s all going to be over, so you can go back to doing
what games were meant for in the first place—having fun and enjoying time with
friends. After all, what joy is there, really, in pointing out everyone else’s
mistakes?
At first reading, some
might think these Pharisees are up to this very act—pointing out everyone
else’s mistakes, citing the rulebook—especially when someone else seems to be
taking the lead, and that someone else is this rabble-rousing rabbi from
Nazareth named Jesus. We’ve heard it at least a hundred times (those of us
who’ve hung around church long enough): “the Pharisees were concerned about the
Law, but Jesus was all about grace.” Well, that’s partially true, I guess. The
Pharisees were concerned about the Law, which for them included the actual Hebrew
Scriptures and the oral traditions surrounding them. That’s why they confront
Jesus in verse 24: “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?”
Now, lest there be any confusion, the unlawful thing they are doing is not stealing grain as they are traveling
through someone else’s grain fields. No, the law the Pharisees accuse them of
breaking is the fourth (or third if you’re counting with your Catholic or
Lutheran friends[1])
commandment: “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.” By this time, that
commandment had been explained and expanded to include a rather exhaustive list
of activities, actions, movements, and events which were all prohibited on the
Sabbath as they may have been understood as work, and therefore, if one were to
participate in such actions one would be in violation of “remembering the
Sabbath and keeping it holy.” Traveling and gleaning grain were both prohibited
activities, so the Pharisees are accusing Jesus and his disciples of not
honoring the Sabbath, of breaking the fourth commandment.
Of course, Jesus is quick
to point out that sometimes it is necessary to bend the rules a bit, especially
in the service of God. He cites a story from 1 Samuel 21:1-6 (though he, or
Mark, or somebody gets the name of the priest wrong—it’s Ahimelek not Abiathar
who was serving as high priest), a story about how David “ate the bread of the Presence,
which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his
companions.” While this story isn’t explicitly about breaking the
Sabbath, it is an example of how even the most sacrosanct laws must sometimes
be broken in light of a greater purpose, a greater good. Really, though, the
point Jesus is trying to make here is that laws were meant for human beings,
meant to guide us, direct us, keep us inline with God’s greater purpose; they
are not meant to be weaponized, used as a method of measuring ourselves over
against the failures of others. Jesus says, “The sabbath was made for
humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of
the sabbath.” In other words, “stop thinking that the sabbath, the Law
in general, precedes the very existence of humankind, of you, your neighbor,
and everyone else; it doesn’t, and Jesus is lord even of those laws you cling
to in order to find some measure of righteousness.”
This isn’t the last time
Jesus is accused of breaking the Sabbath, though; chapter three picks up with
this scene (perhaps on the same day or a different Sabbath) of Jesus entering a
synagogue when a man with a withered hand approaches him. Mark tells us, “They
watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might
accuse him.” Now, I know this is Jesus, and I know these are the
Pharisees, and I know this is part of Mark’s narrative taking us to Christ’s
crucifixion, but I cannot help but recognize the timeless tendency of so many
self-proclaimed righteous folks in these Mark describes in verse two of chapter three: “They
watched him…so that they might accuse him.” You know, I have found it
to be true that whenever you go looking for something, you generally find it.
Whether you’re looking for something to complain about at work, at school, or
at church, whether you’re looking for that fault in a friend so you can justify
your jealousy, or whether you’re looking for someone to let you down, you’ll
always find what you’re looking for, and these folks found what they were
looking for with Jesus, something to pin on him, healing on the Sabbath.
Now, it might sound
strange that healing was forbidden on the Sabbath, but keep in mind that this
particular healing wasn’t an emergency—this man had likely suffered with his
withered hand for some time, and keep in mind that the Sabbath is over at
sundown, so Jesus could have likely waited until sunset and restored this man’s
hand, but he didn’t. Jesus healed him (though perhaps in a passive sort of way)
on the spot, right then and there, on the Sabbath! Jesus knew what they were
looking for, and he gave it to them. But why? Why not stay within the law and
wait for the sun to go down; it could wait, right? Why purposely provoke the
anger of the Pharisees? Sure, some might say this is all part of the plan, part
of setting the wheels in motion. After all, Mark says, that after all this “The
Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him,
how to destroy him.” If Jesus had just followed the rules, remembered
his Bible verses, recited the Ten Commandments, if he had just waited a little
while longer, he still would have been able to miraculously restore the man’s
hand, and he would have been well within the limits of the law. But he didn’t!
In fact, it’s almost like Jesus is trying to show them something, trying to
teach us something bigger, something deeper with his actions in that synagogue
on that Sabbath. It’s almost as if there’s some great lesson in the silence of
the Pharisees after Jesus asks, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on
the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” Could it be that Jesus is trying
to teach them—trying to teach us—that there is something greater, something far
beyond a righteousness found in following all the rules?
I think it’s too simple
an answer to say that Jesus is throwing out all the old ways, all the old laws,
in favor of unconditional grace. I think it’s too simple, and I think it’s wrong—not
because I think that Jesus didn’t preach, teach, and show us what unconditional
grace looks like, but because I don’t think that’s what all those laws
were—conditions. No, I think, like so many of the good gifts we receive from
God, they were initially acts of mercy and love, ways to show God’s people a
path to living as God’s people in relation to one another and the rest of the
world, but as we so often do, we can twist those good gifts and morph them into
something they were never meant to be. The commandment concerning the Sabbath
was a commandment meant to call the hearts and minds of God’s people back to
their bondage in Egypt, to remember that they had once been foreigners, slaves,
outsiders forced into a system of oppression and dehumanizing existence. It was
a commandment meant to remind God’s people that everyone created in God’s image
deserves to be recognized as such and in doing so, rest from their labor at
least one day a week. But these Pharisees had warped the commandment into some
sort of sin accounting measure, a way of heaping guilt on those who have to
travel and glean grain to eat on the Sabbath, a way of looking down their nose
that those folks who punch the clock on Sundays or cut their grass after church
or eat lunch out after the service. “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy” was
never about does and don’ts for Saturdays or Sundays; it was about God and
God’s love and grace for people.
You see, I’m growing more
and more convinced that what Jesus was doing—what Jesus is still doing—is
calling us to see that there is so much more to God than what we’ve come up
with in our religions. I’m becoming more and more convinced that what Jesus was
up to was showing us that our feeble attempts at keeping score are futile,
little more than thinly disguised fears. Because that’s really what’s at the
heart of all legalistic attempts at controlling God and God’s people: fear.
Misinterpretations of Sabbath, the Law, the Bible, doctrine, traditions—all
these things are simply tethers that keep us linked to our own fear, fear that
forgiveness isn’t enough, that grace isn’t enough, that compassion isn’t
enough, that love isn’t enough. But Jesus is calling us—showing us—that
forgiveness is enough, that grace is enough, that compassion is enough, and
above all else, love is enough, and it’s enough to save us—ALL of us. It’s
enough to bring God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. It’s enough to
warrant an apparent breaking of the Sabbath to heal a man’s withered hand,
because the inbreaking of God’s kingdom of love won’t wait for the sun to
set—it can’t wait until things are right and proper on our timetable. The Lord
of the Sabbath sets the pace, and his pace is one of relentless, limitless,
unconditional love, and you can’t hold that back on the Sabbath. You can’t hold
that back from anyone, no matter who they are, what they are, what they do, or
what they don’t do. The Lord of the Sabbath isn’t waiting on the time to be
right, the conditions to be right, for our hearts to be right: he loves us
anyway. Jesus loves us—each and every one of us—even if it looks like it goes
against the law, against tradition, against our self-satisfying interpretations
of scripture. Jesus loves us anyway, whether we keep to all the rules or break
every, single one of them. Jesus loves us anyway, and that love is more than
enough. Amen.
[1]
The Catholic Catechism and Luther’s Large Catechism combine the abstention from
other gods and the making of graven images as one, single commandments,
therefore making the keeping of Sabbath the third commandment.
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