SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST, YEAR B June 3, 2018
Mark 2:23‑3:6, 1 Samuel 3:1-20 Panzer Liturgical Service, Stuttgart, DE
Doing What Needs to Be Done or
Jesus – Troublemaker in Chief
So, one Sabbath day, Jesus and his disciples are walking through a field of wheat. Theirs is a semi-nomadic life, receiving shelter and food offered by followers and friends. Hungry, they pulled a few wheat stalks and placed the head of a stalk between their palms, rolled it back and forth until the casing and chaff fall off, leaving seven or eight wheat berries, which they chewed like gum until they dissolved in their mouths.
The Pharisees who witnessed this blatant disregard of the Law were irate: You must observe the Sabbath – that’s the law. As far as they were concerned, this disregard placed the security of the nation in jeopardy. But Jesus wasn’t finished offending them. Later that same day, he cures the withered hand of a man in the synagogue. When Jesus confronts the Pharisees about whether it is better to do good or harm on the Sabbath, they are silent. After all, a rule is a rule is a rule, and this rule defines them. “We are people who keep the sabbath... we are people who play by the rules.”
The problem comes when the rules take on a life of their own… when following the rules becomes more important than the spirit of the rules, which define what it means to love God and neighbor. The Jewish people have a long history. They have been slaves, they have been wanderers, ruled by wise kings, then conquered, killed and taken into exile, slaves again. And now, during Jesus’ life, they are back in their homeland, but not in control of their own existence.
Living under Roman occupation was like being in exile, but home – a kind of house arrest. The Pharisees knew that they were no match against the Roman army. They tried to straddle a line between the rules of the Roman authorities and the rules of their religion. Surely, their only hope was the power and protection of God. They could not afford to get on God's bad side. Strict adherence to the Law seemed to be the only way. Seeing his actions, this day, it was clear that Jesus represented a real threat to their leadership and to the status quo.
Jesus answered their concern with a question, "Don't you remember when David and his men were fleeing the wrath of King Saul, and coming upon the priests who tended the tent and ark of the covenant, asked them to share the ritual bread, reserved only for the priests, with his tried and hungry men?"
There is more to Jesus' response than, "Rules are meant to be broken." The response tests the Pharisees’ priorities. Jesus reaches back into the history of Israel to set up an important parallel. David and Jesus both represent the ways of a loving, caring, compassionate God, a God of justice and a God of mercy. Their ways are higher than the ways of Law or Temple than the ways of kings and emperors. If people are hungry ‑ they must be fed, Sabbath or not. If people are diseased or disable ‑ they must be healed, Sabbath or not. If people are oppressed ‑ they must be liberated, Caesar or not.
How many times do we look to the rules as the thing that will save us? Have you ever been in a church committee meeting and heard one of these phrases: "We've always done it this way," or "we've never done it that way before." Jesus knew that the most important thing was to take care of people. The Law had provisions for this. It allowed hungry people to pick that grain and eat it as long as they didn't carry any of it with them. It allowed for someone's life to be saved, even on the Sabbath. Jesus just understood the concept of being "saved" in a little different light.
How many times do we hold to a position, not just because we want to follow the letter of the law, but because we are afraid of the unknown? Jesus isn’t asking people to abandon the Law willy-nilly. But he does want us to be present in the moment and meet the needs of people.
Jesus is challenging the values and priorities of the Pharisees. He knows that their eagerness in following the Law was not in the service of God's people, not in compassionate response to the hungry, the sick, the oppressed, or the imprisoned, not for holiness but rather, as a strategy to keep the Jewish people in line, and Caesar and his forces ‑military and economic ‑‑ in check. Jesus favors neither the ways of Caesar, not the ways of the Pharisees. He carefully avoids being drawn into that struggle. Instead, he seeks to demonstrate that the reign of God is near.
I love today’s reading from 1 Samuel. Children often hear God’s voice calling them, but as adults, we are quick to misunderstand what they are hearing. It took several times for Eli to realize that the voice that Samuel was hearing was God’s voice. And it was a hard word… it caused a hardship to Eli, but even he realized this word was necessary for Israel to get back on the right track… sometimes the word of the Lord makes our ears tingle…
I served as an associate pastor at a Methodist Church in Oklahoma. I wasn’t really looking for work, but the church hired me and the bishop appointed me, all before I could say, “No, thank you.” My first year there, some members realized that kids needed school supplies, so they started a drive to collect for kids and schools and really got a lot of interest generated to help out. Then we started a gift drive for Christmas – DHS funding had been cut and in less than 5 days we raised $15,000, shopped for gifts and provided wrapping for the parents, who were able to choose gifts for their kids, not just take what was given to them. Project Noel was born.
The next February, our church council meeting was infiltrated or inundated (their words, not mine) by members of our church youth group. They told stories of their friends who sometimes did not have a warm meal between when they ate free lunch at school on Friday to when they had free breakfast on Monday morning. The community had a back-pack ministry, where non-perishable foods were sent home on Friday to help kids have something to eat over the weekend, but most of those kids didn’t get a hot meal in between.
The youth had this idea that our congregation could host a monthly meal and invite all of these backpack families to come and share in a free, hot meal together. And they wanted to go all out… table linens, real plates and silverware, decorations, music, and people would sit at the table and talk to them, not for the purpose of recruiting them for church, but just to build friendships and let them know they were important. The Council said, “No.” Liability, return on investment, never done it before… the reasons were legend.
So, the next month they showed up again. And again in April. And then we realized they weren’t going away. So, in conjunction with our school supply drive that August, we planned a spaghetti dinner, and we looked out after a couple of hours and every table was full and people of different races and socioeconomic groups, speaking English and Spanish, were having a great time together. Within a year, other churches had picked up on the idea and eventually there was someplace to get a free, hot meal every Saturday, year-round. And it started with a group of youth who heard the voice of God and would not take no for an answer.
The ultimate affirmation came one day when I was shopping at Walmart in my Project Noel t-shirt and the cashier asked, “Do you go to that church?” “I do, have you heard about us?” She replied, “Oh, yes, we know all about you-you're the church that loves people.”
We have to get past the idea that strong faith journeys are all about doing the big thing. Grand gestures are wonderful and following rules and guidelines make for orderly organized institutions, but underneath it all, individual followers of Jesus, young and old alike, are called to do the small thing in a spirit of love every day. This week alone I saw some of those acts of kindness, videos of an 8-year old boy who got his mom to stop so he could help a lady with a walker safely get up some terraced sidewalk steps and a class of kindergarteners who great each other individually with a handshake or hug and a wish for a good day of learning. It’s this kind of thing that gives me great hope for our church and our world.
There is a lot of hurt around us these days – so much that it is easy to be paralyzed – struck with an inability to figure out what needs we can attend to. Some people don’t want church to be political, but the needs of the world have a political dimension, and sometimes the most effective solutions can be best addressed by speaking in a political forum. Jesus did just that. It makes us uncomfortable, but it’s something we have to deal with.
The Son of Man, a biblical figure often associated with the coming of the reign of God, is Lord, even of the Sabbath. He reminds us that the Sabbath was made for us, to help us focus on what’s important, not to keep us in line or protect the institutions of the world. Our real duty – our challenge – is to love people and meet their needs. Jesus grieves when we allow our hearts to be hardened and when we worry more about protecting the status quo than we do meeting the needs we see around us. We are never too young or too old to be a force for good in the world. What does that look like for you? I don’t know, but I do think you’ll recognize the opportunity when you see it. Train your brain and your heart … do good, not harm.
This is our call: Feed the hungry. Heal the sick. Visit the lonely. Liberate the oppressed. Do it whenever there is a need because you may not get another chance. The reign of God is very near. We are called to do what needs to be done. And we have a great role model… Jesus – Troublemaker in Chief.
Amen.
Peace, Deb
No direct quotes this week, but influenced by listening to Pulpit Fiction Podcast (Robb McCoy and Eric Fistler [https://www.pulpitfiction.com/notes/proper4b]) and reading Preach This Week (Matt Skinner, [http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3667]).
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