Deuteronomy 5:12-15; Mark 2:23-3:6; June 2, 2024; Second Sunday after Pentecost
“Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. For six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.” – Deuteronomy 5:12-15
Do it!
And while its certainly nice that provisions were made for the lowly oxen and donkeys, smelly, yet cute as they are, and while it’s no doubt admirable that slaves at this time were to be given the same opportunity as their owners to rest… this text, like too many others, just doesn’t say enough, does it? Or at least, it doesn’t go to the extent that I would prefer of a Word otherwise called Holy, living, liberating, and authoritative.
I mean, think about how much better our nation and world have been (and would be today) if the Torah would have said something instead like, “The seventh day is a sabbath and you shall not do any work, except… to liberate your slaves, for slavery and oppression have always been abominations to God. Remember how horrible it was for you to be a slave in the land of Egypt? Well, let’s not dare repeat that history for someone else, especially an irreducibly wrong and sinful history at that.”
Wouldn’t it have been infinitely better if scripture and the commandments had just said that? Think of all of the issues that would have solved if God’s Word just outright denounced slavery here at the beginning, in addition to criticizing other wrongs such as ethnocentrism, tribalism, misogyny, and war.
But you see, these authors had other ideas, presumably, because they believed the majority of their customs and assumptions were correct. And that’s not to excuse them. But it’s important to remember that they who were writing these laws, rules, and histories, were doing so in specific cultural contexts. So, let’s not commit the error of assigning their human thoughts and opinions to be infallible and above all contention.
For that would be making the same mistake that the Pharisees made in our text today in Mark. Assuming that their ways were always correct and that their old rules could never be broken, even when they were proven to be archaic and unreasonable, unjust and repressive.
The verse and passage right before ours foreshadows this when Jesus tells those listening “no one puts new wine into old wineskins, otherwise the wine will burst the skins and the wine will be lost…. but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.” – Mark 2:22
New wine into fresh wineskins.
And Jesus, do I love that!
But you see, these teachings of his, and these disciples he picked, well, they were just too fresh and too new for too many in their day; and because they were both, the old guard in power couldn’t stand it and hated both them and him. And boy, did they ever.
Verse 23 in our text today is almost funny. Here we have these new disciples of Jesus following him on a pathway through some fresh fields. And as one Biblical commentary points out: they’re basically just casually plucking the heads off some grain as they go. Not because they are hungry – the text doesn’t say that – nope, they just do it, just because.
They are then like a new generation of teenagers who apparently just do the stuff they do with the rationale of “just because” and they do so as we the old guard watch and shake our heads in disapproval.
Think of, for instance, how this newest era (both young and old) clothes themselves, or sometimes, doesn’t. Think of the color of their hair sometimes, and their tattoos, their piercings, or anything really, and how they don’t seem to mind just bringing themselves the way they are into even our most sacred of spaces. They then are like those disciples mindlessly plucking the head off some grain, walking wherever they please, and doing whatever they want, whenever they want, even on the Sabbath day! And boy, sometimes we just can’t stand it, can we?
But Jesus corrects us, and argues with us, as well as scripture and the “infallible” rules of his day by saying to those who are listening, hey buddy, the Sabbath was made for humankind, not the other way around. So let these people do as they do, when they do, especially if what they do, ain’t doing anyone any harm!
Or put another way… Hey buddy, just let that guy, or gal, or they, just be. For they ain’t doing any harm to anybody identifying as they are, being as they are, plucking whatever grains as they are, as proudly as they are. Just let them be. And why don’t you love a little while you’re at it.
For you see, it’s often these sort of folks anyway who are on the outside, who look “funny” and “different,” and who are deemed to be “icky,” “unnatural,” and “confusing,” that end up understanding and interpreting what Jesus is saying better than any of us who look the part and who have been here on the inside for our entire lives.
I mean look again at these first verses in Mark, here in chapter 3. These new, strange disciples of his are doing such outrageous things like healing and helping people in a synagogue on the sabbath. Can you imagine!?
And specifically, they are assisting a man with a withered hand, who all too likely because of his affliction, would have been rendered unclean and unworthy to enter the inner circle. And as the old guard does nothing at all to help him, this new generation of disciples, have the audacity to actually love and accept him, irrespective of the day, the occasion, and the place.
And man, it just burns the old guard up.
These owners and arbitrators of the law, who believe themselves to be standing on higher and more moral ground, do nothing at all, but instead get so hot and bothered that they condemn the disciples for doing work, good work, on the Sabbath.
But worse and more hypocritical than that, they end up doing their own work, and terrible work at that, and in the Synagogue no less, by not only judging the disciples for it but also plotting (which is working) to kill their leader, Jesus, over it.
In their blindness then, and in the stubbornness and hardness of their hearts, they end up sadly, and ironically, beginning to shatter the sixth commandment while trying to preserve the fourth: do not murder.
My friends, my friends…
Jesus is saying to us today, don’t be like these guys.
Stop letting yourselves get so corrupted by rules that do not matter, rules that shouldn’t be, that you end up doing much worse in the name of a God who is likely not as hateful and judgmental as you think.
Amen.
