Sabbath Lesson

 

I remember walking with a friend on my seminary campus back in 2018. We were talking about the elections, and the state of our political climate. Being as close to Washington, D.C. as we were, this was a topic of conversation that would get revisited on a regular basis. 

When the insurrection of January 6th happened, it was right in the middle of our General Ordination Exams. Wonderful back drop to have as my classmates and I prepared for the final months of our seminary experience, a reminder that the world we were about to step into as priests was in desperate need of voices that preached about a God of Love and not vengeance. A God of promise, not nihilism. A God of peace not violence. 

This past Thursday, a 12-member jury returned guilty verdicts on 34 felony counts against former Republican President Donald Trump. Prosecutors successfully showed that Trump committed election fraud, interference, and cooked the business books in attempts to silence a porn star from telling the truth about an affair he had with her. All done to make it possible for his successful 2016 presidential campaign. 

This news stirred up a lot of emotions online...including among some members of my congregation. 

Having been thrown to the wolves once before after the election in 2016 when my rector refused to address the elephant and donkey sitting large and looming in the nave the Sunday after that election...I felt it was important for me to get ahead of this one and appeal to everyone's better angels. 

See what you think.

Text: Mark 2:23-3:6

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Well…hello Gospel of Mark, my dear old friend!

I’m happy for us to be reunited with our evangelist Mark after an Easter season with John.

I know lots of people when they’re asked which of the Gospels they like best…many of them will point to John…

He’s the one who has great stories like Jesus talking with the Samaritan woman at the well.

Or maybe they like Luke because he tells us about Jesus’ birth at Christmas …and lots of parables…Prodigal Son…Good Samaritan.

I love all of those things too…

But I am one of those weirdos who really…really loves the Gospel of Mark.

This is the Jesus who feels like the God of the human experience in a raw and rough and tumble way.

All four of our Gospels have a particular viewpoint on the life and teachings of Jesus.

And scholars believe that Mark is the first…the original… of the Gospels.

This telling of the Jesus story doesn’t give us lots of details.

In fact…Jesus is an adult at the very start of the story…so there is no birth narrative of any kind.

Because Mark’s Gospel is so barebones…and bare knuckles in some cases… we’re invited to spend more time with this Jesus…pay even closer attention to this Jewish teacher,

And—this very good Jewish Jesus—challenges us to think about our faith.

So…as we enter into this long season of Sunday upon Sunday of “After Pentecost”… the thinking word of the day is: Sabbath.

Sabbath…or shabbat…is supposed to be a day of rest from the routine…the work of production.

We think about Genesis…in the first creation story…that God rested on the seventh day after creating all that there is in the universe.

God made that day of rest…of Sabbath… holy.

Later…Moses in Deuteronomy tells the people of Israel that everyone…even the animals…are to observe a day of rest from work…from doing any kind of manual labor.

This was the way to observe the Sabbath for centuries.

And now…here comes Jesus in the Gospel of Mark.

His disciples…walking with him through a field…are picking the heads of grain on the sabbath.

From out of nowhere come some Pharisees to raise legal questions about what Jesus and his friends are doing.

(Now…why the Pharisees are out in the field…and popping up like they’re some kind of Candid Camera crew…is a little odd.

This scene comes after Jesus and his disciples have endured criticism for eating with tax collectors…so this story is part of a larger illustration of Jesus as bringing a new way of interpreting things such as the Sabbath.)

So…we’re going to just going to accept that these Pharisees were hanging out in the wheat field.

Jesus justifies the picking of the heads of grain by noting that King David once took and ate the bread of Presence from the Temple and gave it his soldiers who were starving.

It’s not clear that Jesus’ disciples were starving…..especially since they’d just had a meal with tax collectors.

But that’s not the point.…

This is about remembering that there is joy in keeping the Sabbath; that’s why God wants us to not do all our everyday usual things on that day.

The Sabbath is also about being whole…

That’s at play in the next scene with the man with the withered hand.

Jesus asks the question: “is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?”

Jews…both back then and now…know the answer to that question.

If someone’s life is at stake…yes, of course, do whatever it takes to save them…even on the Sabbath.

They aren’t gonna say, “Oh, sorry, you’re having a heart attack on the Sabbath? Please wait until sundown and we’ll save your life then.”

But when Jesus asks this question…do good or harm…save a life or kill…the silence that follows is deafening.

And it’s unsettling, too, if we fast-forward from our Gospel and place this question in our own laps here in the 21^st Century.

Here we are…on our Sabbath Day.

As we sit here…Jesus is still asking us…on this day…will we do good or harm to one another?

Will we save life or kill?

We’re living in a time when there are so many harms that have been done and keep being done.

Social media has both brought us closer together in some ways…and is driving us further apart in others.

Strangers…and worse…friends and family members… take swipes at each other over politics and religion…and--during this month—they also don’t like rainbows.

There is so much rage…being stoked by those who know how to push our buttons over and over.

Even driving on city streets is becoming a harrowing experience.

I have a massage client…a lawyer… who not only hires me to help relieve her aching back… I have become her de facto priest and confessor…as she works through the pains in her spirit as well.

 I was loading my massage table back in my car as the big news of Thursday broke.

She rushed out of her house to tell me.

And then she asked:

“Do you think we’re headed for a civil war?”

The little D deaths of common decency she has been witnessing and experiencing from watching the news and scrolling on her computer has her that worried about her neighbors.

What lurks in the hearts of everyone around her?

Do they want a world of love and peace…or a world of fear and violence?

Her question about civil war made me think of another story we have in Scripture…one that we don’t read very often but is an important one…I think…and fits with Jesus’s difficult question of today.

The story of Cain and Abel.

We know that Cain kills Abel…the first murder that happens in the Bible.

Cain resented that God showed favor to Abel’s sheep offering and rejected what Cain had brought to give God from the ground that he had worked.

One of the critical moments in that story is the words that God speaks to Cain as he sat with his bitter disappointment.

God warns Cain to not let this momentary let down get the better of him and his heart.

“Sin is lurking at the door,” God warns, “but you must master it.”

It’s the one of the difficulties about the human heart.  

On the one hand…it is the most magnificent organ…sending blood to our lungs for oxygen before pumping it out into our bodies.

It is a source of life…and the symbol of love.

But…it also holds toxins.

A malfunction of a valve on the right side of the heart…could send poison into the left side.

 And…as we heard in our Gospel…the heart can become dimmed by jealousy…and anger…becoming hard when it feels threatened.

We must guard against the temptation to let our hearts grow hard and cold toward others.

Because it is so easy to become invested in feeding our hurts and slights that the sweetness of our spirit becomes sour and bitter.

And bitterness leads to indifference.

And indifference kills community.

The question Jesus puts to the crowd in the synagogue…and to us in our church this morning…is whether our hearts have become so hard to each other that we are no longer are seeing one another as beloved children of God.

The guy who has a bum hand was sitting there among them in the synagogue.

Did anyone think to ask how this man was able to work and feed himself and his family with such a deformity?

Did they care?

Jesus didn’t touch this man with a withered hand…so technically…Jesus didn’t violate the sabbath rule of resting from work on a holy day.

Instead… he invited him to stretch out his hand…reach out toward Jesus.

By making that reach in a Godward direction…this man’s deformed extremity became whole.

That metaphor of reaching out stands for us as well today.

With all that is going on around us…now is the time for us… all of us…in our various diversities of ourselves and opinions… to reach out to one another in love. 

Remember that we are all made in the image of our beloved Creator…and to let that be our focus…the place from which we live and move and have our being.

On this…our Sabbath Day…this is the day that we need to take a rest from those little D deaths that threaten to split us apart and divide up the Body of Christ.

Come to this table…gather around this rail…and be the one body.... in one faith… adopted through the one baptism in Christ.

This is the day that the Lord has made.

Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.