6/3/18 “When Our Laws Betray Us” by Nancy Petty
Text: Mark 2:23-3:6
If you are at a Jewish friend’s home on the Sabbath and a framed picture falls off the wall, is your Jewish friend allowed to rehang it on the Sabbath?
Sabbath is at the heart of Jewish tradition. It is the most important observance ritual in Judaism and the only ritual observance instituted in the Ten Commandments. Exodus 20 reads, “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy.” If you were to ask a practicing Jew about keeping the Sabbath, they would tell you that remembering the sabbath means much more than merely not forgetting to observe the Sabbath day. They would tell you that remembering the Sabbath means to remember the significance of the Sabbath, both as a commemoration of creation and as a commemoration of their freedom from slavery in Egypt. They might point to Deuteronomy 5:15 where Moses notes the second thing that must be remembered on Shabbat: “remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord, your God brought you forth from there with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.” For the Israelites, remembering the Sabbath is all about freedom for in ancient times, leisure was confined to certain classes; slaves did not get days off. By resting on the Sabbath, the Israelites are reminded that by God’s goodness they are a free people. Remembering meant more than not forgetting to go to church.
A discussion of the Sabbath would not be complete without noting the work that was forbidden on the Sabbath. But this is where as non-Jews we often misinterpret or misunderstand what the word “work” means to the Jewish community. We see the word “work” and we think of it in the English sense of the word: physical labor or employment. But the Torah does not prohibit “work” in the 21st century English sense of the word. The Torah prohibits “melachah,” which is usually translated as “work,” but does not mean precisely the same thing as the English word. Melachah generally refers to the kind of work that is creative, or that exercises control or dominion over one’s environment.
The word is rarely used in scripture outside of the context of Shabbat and holiday restrictions. The only other repeated use of the word is in the discussion of the building of the sanctuary and its vessels in the wilderness as described in Exodus chapter 31 and chapters 35-38. From this description, the rabbis concluded that the work prohibited on the Sabbath is the same as the work of creating the sanctuary. They found 39 categories of forbidden acts, all of which are types of work that were needed to build the sanctuary: sowing, plowing, reaping, binding sheaves, threshing, winnowing, selecting, grinding, sifting, kneading, baking, shearing wool, washing wool, beating wool, dyeing wool, spinning, weaving, making two loops, weaving two threads, separating two threads, tying, untying, sewing two stitches, tearing, trapping, slaughtering, flaying, salting meat, curing hide, scraping hide, cutting hide up, writing two letters, erasing two letters, building, tearing a building down, extinguishing a fire, kindling a fire, hitting a hammer, and finally taking an object from the private domain to the public, or transporting an object in the public domain.
I must say that I thought my parents were being a bit rough on me and my sister when they forbid us to do certain things on Sunday like cut the grass (Yes, I loved to cut the grass as a teenager. I know I’m weird.) or have friends over to the house between Sunday morning worship and Sunday evening worship. And in addition to the forbidden things, there were also things we were required to do. Like, have “rest” time on Sunday afternoon when we had to be quiet in our rooms. I imagine many of you still remember the Sabbath laws of your home growing up. And maybe some of you still have them. I also imagine that if you did have them or have them now, at some point there was or has been a family discussion about them—their fairness or unfairness. Better yet, I bet a popsicle that some of those discussions centered on the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law. An argument my sister was well adept at having.
This morning we come upon such a discussion in our gospel reading between the Pharisees and Jesus. You know these characters the Pharisees. They were a group of zealous Jewish leaders who were deeply committed to their faith. They believed that the best way to get on the good side of God was to fastidiously follow a long list of religious rules and regulations and laws. Their foundation was the Mosaic Law—the law that God gave to Moses. And the most familiar part of that law, of course, was the Ten Commandments. But in actuality, there were a total of 613 commandments given to the people.
“While following 613 commandments would be hard enough—[heck, most of us have trouble following 10]—over time Jewish leaders began to slowly add to these laws in the Midrash. This additional teaching is basically an ongoing compilation of sermons and sayings by Jewish Rabbis meant to interpret the original Mosaic Law. The original intent of these additions was to clarify the law, but it ended up adding many layers of complicated regulations. This Midrash was already lengthy in Jesus’ day and continues to grow to this day. So for the Pharisees, they not only tried to follow the 613 commandments of the Mosaic Law but the literally thousands of new commandments that were created to clarify the original 613 commandments. As humans, could we make things any more complicated? Jesus says love your neighbor and we ask, Who is my neighbor?
Well, while most average Jews in Jesus day, and still today, didn’t even attempt to follow all of these additions to the original Law, the Pharisees certainly did. They prided themselves on following not just the letter of the Mosaic Law, but even the letter of the human-made rules designed to clarify the Law…laws about what to eat, what to wear, circumcision, how to pray out loud…Jesus’ critique of the Pharisees was that they were legalistic—only concerned with the external appearance of keeping the Law rather than the inward spirit of the Law.” (The Rules of the Pharisees, pursueGod.org)
So with all that background information, let’s get down to the relevance of this story in Mark for our times. While many sermons will be preached from this text on keeping the sabbath, and how important it is to have sabbath time, I think the more significant issue that this text raises for our times is the dilemma of how our laws and our rules often betray us. Think about the story for a moment.
Jesus and his disciples were walking to yet another place to, I imagine, bring some good news to folks feeling beat up by the system in SouthEast Raleigh, to heal those who were sick standing at the Open Door clinic, to visit those who were depressed and lonely and emotionally ill bedded down under Cox Avenue, to listen to and show compassion to one who had been beaten over off Capital Blvd by those charged with protecting and serving him. I imagine they had been walking some distance to get to these folks. Their feet were tired and dusty. The sun had been beating down on them. They hadn’t had a good night’s rest for several days. And they were hungry. And so, as they made their way through the field of grain, they each picked an ear of corn and after shucking it they began eating it.
Just as they were eating their corn, the Pharisees enter the drama stage right. “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” they piously shouted out to Jesus. “Have you never read about what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food?” Jesus retorts back. They entered the church and ate the holy communion bread and it wasn’t even the first Sunday of the month. Don’t you get it church people, Jesus says. “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath…” In other words, the law was given to guide you in loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and your neighbor as yourself. The law was not given so that you could ignore the needs of your brothers and sisters by some distorted religious practice or belief and debate who your neighbor is.
Hearing their pious whispers, Jesus goes into the synagogue and sees a man there with a withered hand. Knowing that the Pharisees are watching him to see whether or not he would cure the man on the Sabbath so that they could accuse him of breaking the Sabbath laws, Jesus calls the man to come to him. He turns to the very religious people and says, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save a life or to kill?” With this question, the room fell silent, nobody said a word. And feeling angry, Jesus looks around at them and then the story says, “he was grieved at their hardness of heart” and he said to the man, “stretch out your hand.” The man stretched out his hand and his hand was restored.
This story is a story about when our laws betray us. This is a story about those moments and times when we put our laws and traditions and rules ahead of what we know our faith commands us to do: to love God and to love our neighbor. Our laws betray us when they give some people the right to marry and not others. Our laws betray us when healthcare is given to some and not to all. Our laws betray us when they protect gun rights over the rights of our children to learn without fearing being shot while sitting in their school classrooms or lunchrooms. Our laws betray us when they protect the abuser rather than the victim. Our laws betray us when a woman’s right to make choices for her own body is taken away by men who want to control women’s bodies. Our laws betray us when one person can work an honest day labor and get paid $8.25 an hour and another get paid $365.00 an hour. Our laws betray us when they deport hard-working immigrants in this country who put food on our tables and care for our children and our elders, who build our houses and operate our farms, who make our economy strong.
Yes, keeping the sabbath is important, but its remembrance and its significance must be about our freedom as God’s people. Free from the unjust laws that oppress those who are the “other.” Free from the religious systems that seek to control and abuse. Jesus reminds us that religious rituals and righteous laws must never take the place of one’s compassion for one’s brother or sister. And furthermore, Jesus reminds us of the danger of allowing our laws to betray us lest we become a people with a hardness of heart.
There is good news this morning The good news this morning is this: as followers of Jesus we are bound by a set of laws that will never betray us and need no further clarification: the law of a radical love—“This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.”; the law of a courageous compassion—“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”; the law of far-reaching forgiveness—“be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another…”; the law of an amazing grace—“From Christ’s fullness we have all received grace upon grace.”; and the law of a gracious God whose love knows no bounds—“For I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, you are mine—my beloved.” These are laws that never betray us!
