Proper 4 (2nd Sunday after Pentecost)
St. Paul’s (Mount Vernon, WA)
Track 2: Deuteronomy 5:12-15; Psalm 81:1-10; 2 Corinthians 4:5-12; Mark 2:23-3:6
Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak; let the earth hear the words of my mouth.
For I will proclaim the Name of the Lord, and ascribe greatness to our God.
My mother would not have approved.
In the Gospel this morning, Jesus is brought up short by some Pharisees (people who were quite nit-picky about Torah – the “Law and Order” crowd, we might call them). Jesus and his friends were walking along one day – it was the Sabbath – and they were strolling through some fields plucking heads of grain off some oats, wheat, or barley as they were passing through.
The Pharisees saw this and said, “Whoa, wait a minute. You can’t do that; it’s the Sabbath!”
Now, it was bad enough for the disciples to be violating the Sabbath, but what’s worse is that Jesus, the Rabbi, the Teacher, the Chaperone on this little class outing let them do it!
“You should know better,” they said.
And Jesus does. Jesus knows the Law. Jesus knows the Torah. Jesus knows the rules. Jesus knows what it means to be a good, faithful Jew. Or if he didn’t know, he SHOULD have known. Otherwise he should turn in his teaching credentials.
Then Jesus answers them with that classic fourth grade deflection: “Yes, but they did it. They got away with it!”
He’s pointing back to a time when David (before he was King David) was staying one step ahead of King Saul (who was out to kill him). David was a renegade in those days, and he and his men were hot, tired, thirsty, and hungry, so they dipped into the House of Worship (this was before there was a proper temple) and ate what we used to call the Shew Bread. It was reserved for the priests, the clergy, the Upper Crust of society, if you will.
“They did it,” says Jesus, and we expect him to answer, “so why can’t we?”
My mother would not have accepted that answer. She would not have approved.
Mothers across America (and maybe Dads, too) have had to deal with the argument put forth by kids since time immemorial: “Yeah, but what about them?”
“Yeah, they get to stay up late on a school night; they get to go to the concert; they get to do this; they get to do that …”
On and on it goes. And what do mothers say? How do parents respond?
“If Suzy’s mother let her jump off the cliff, that’s fine; I’m not Suzy’s mother. I’m your mother and I have my reasons.”
The only argument left at that point is, “Well, that’s just not fair,” at which point we parents collectively roll our eyes and tell them: (prompt): Life’s not fair!
But did you notice, Jesus did not take that route. He used that little bit of rationalization to draw in his opponents, to get to the point he really wanted to make: his teaching point. He didn’t say, “Well, David broke the Law then, so I can break the Law now.”
He didn’t do that. He said (in essence), “The overarching purpose of Law (of Torah) is Life. Torah does not shackle us with rules, but frees us to live. God did not give us Sabbath to nail us down, but to free us up.”
Jesus is revealing to them something we might call today a Paradigm Shift.
A paradigm shift is that Ah Ha you get when you not only see things differently, but shift your underlying assumptions about it.
For example, a man invents a process for putting an image onto paper using heat and some special stuff he’s cooked up. He took it to Kodak to show them a new way to make pictures and they laughed him out of the office. “That’s not how photography works,” they said. The man found other investors and invented the thing that makes our bulletins possible: XEROX!
The underlying assumption of Kodak was that photography required film, silver nitrates, special paper, chemical solutions, fixers, and all that nonsense. The Paradigm train came to them, and they missed it by a mile.
A second example: A man goes to Switzerland to show them they could make time pieces using quartz crystals. The Swiss clock industry laughed him out of the room. “That’s not how you make watches and clocks, “ they said. “You need gears und springs und little hands that go ticky tocky.”
They laughed him out of the room, so he went to Japan. Has anyone heard of Seiko? There is another way to keep time, using … rocks? Quartz? Another group that missed the Paradigm train.
One last example: I was graduating from the Spokane Police Academy and needed to contact one of my friends in Pullman to tell him where the ceremony would be and what time, but when I dialed his number, I got a message the call couldn’t go through because the lines between Spokane and Pullman were down.
I dialed the operator and told her my problem. She said she was sorry, but the lines were down and she couldn’t make the connection. Then I said, “Well, can’t you go through the back door?”
She said, “What do you mean?”
I said, “Can’t you route the call from Spokane to Coeur d-Alene, down to Moscow, and then over to Pullman?”
She paused for a moment and said, “Yeah, that would work.” And we were able to make the connection.
That, by the way, is how the internet works, routing traffic by finding the best route it can. So I stand here today to let you in on a little secret; it wasn’t Al Gore who invented the Internet; that was me.
Anyway, a Paradigm Shift is all about finding new ways to see the world by being willing to set aside assumptions that may no longer be working well for us, and finding there may be a better way to do things, to approach things …
… a better way to live, and that’s what Jesus is doing.
Sabbath isn’t about NOT WORKING. It’s not even really about RESTING. It’s finding a way to live in the presence of God and with one’s neighbor.
This is Pride Month, and we are in the midst of another major Paradigm Shift where we’ve been busy breaking the chains that defined who we’re supposed to love and how we’re supposed to love, and what we’re supposed to look like and dress like, and behave, and all that sort of stuff.
These changes can be very unsettling. I’d like you to take your hands and clasp them together, like this (demonstrate).
Now, when I clasp my hands, my left thumb is always on top. Always. I don’t have to think about it. Now I want you to switch, so your other thumb is on top. Switch. (pause)
First, notice you had to think about it. Tell me, does that feel natural? To me, it feels kind of weird and icky. That’s because I’m not used to it.
There is no law that tells us which thumb should be on top. Thumbs aren’t the boss of us. God gave us thumbs to help us do the things we need to do.
“Loving God, neighbor, and self … that’s the thumbery of the Law.”
The point Jesus is making is underscored by the second scene in today’s Gospel reading where a man comes to Jesus with a hand that is useless. The paradigm of the day would have said, first of all, this man is a sinner, otherwise God would not have afflicted him this way. Secondly, it is the Sabbath, so a healer (especially) should not heal. If you break this norm, Jesus, all heck will break loose!
Jesus asks, “Is this OK (to heal on the Sabbath)?”
The Pharisees stood there, their hearts shackled to the stone tablets of Torah. Their hearts were as cold, dark, and immoveable as Mount Sinai. Their eyes said, “We double-dog dare you; we TRIPLE-DOG dare you.”
What they said did not matter. What they thought did not matter. Jesus ignored the Torah-ble people staring him down. Turning to the man with the withered hand, Jesus simply said, “Stretch out your hand.” He did as Jesus said, and he was made whole; he was made holy, by Golly.
We have the opportunity today to choose whether to live like those Pharisees, bound and shackled by rules and traditions (which isn’t to say that rules and traditions aren’t important), but if those rules keep us from living and sharing the light and life God has for us and for the world around us, then what good are they? What good are we?
Just because it isn’t Lent, that doesn’t mean we don’t need to engage in self-reflection and ask God to transform our withered hands and clenched fists and open them to release God’s grace and love in good and kindly service here in this, our grain picking community of saints and sinners.
Amen.
The Rev. Keith Axberg, Retired
No comments:
Post a Comment