Question:  How many of you are law-abiding citizens?  Question #2:  How many of you have ever driven a car?  Question #3:  How many of you have ever – even once – driven faster than the posted speed limit?  Do you need to change your answer to Question #1? 

The Federal Highway Administration has done research to learn how motorists respond to changes in speed limits.  If the posted speed limit for a given stretch of road is raised or lowered, does that affect the speed at which people drive?  The answer is:  Not much.[i]  The overwhelming majority of us will continue to drive at our own chosen speed.  You and I can offer dozens of explanations for that, such as:

“The speed limit is too slow.”

“I am a better driver than most” or “I have very good reflexes.”

“I usually obey the speed limit, just not when I have a good reason not to.”

“I drive with the flow of traffic.  Can I help it if everyone else is speeding?”

And, my personal favorite:

“I am too busy watching the road to notice the speedometer.”

Different set of questions:  How many of you have turned on an appliance today – a coffee maker, the microwave, the stove, or your electric toothbrush?  How many of you prepared breakfast for yourself or for someone else – even if it was just a bowl of cereal?  How many of you had breakfast prepared by someone else today?  That includes eating a Krispy Kreme downstairs.  How many of you have driven a motor vehicle today – started the engine, pressed the pedals, used the steering wheel?  How many of you have ridden in a motor vehicle today?  If your answer to any of these questions was “Yes,” then, according to tradition, you have done work or permitted someone else to do work, and that means you have failed to, “Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.” 

That commandment tells us, “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 immigrant living in your towns.”[ii]  Strict adherence has traditionally meant that if you want to eat cereal on the Sabbath, you need to pour it into the bowl the day before.  Jesus and his disciples ran afoul of this tradition, as we read in our Second Lesson.

One sabbath [Jesus] was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain.  The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?”  And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food?  He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.”  Then he said to them, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”  Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand.  They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him.  And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.”  Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?”  But they were silent.  He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.”  He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.

We are at Week 2 in pondering a series of questions that Jesus posed.  We are moving through the Gospel of Mark, stopping to consider some of the challenging questions we hear Jesus ask along the way.  This past Sunday, we noted that the Gospel of Mark does not tell us anything about Jesus’ birth or childhood, but begins at the start of Jesus’ ministry.  Within the first chapter of Mark, we find Jesus teaching in the synagogue in his hometown, then heading out into the countryside, preaching and healing people everywhere he goes.  Crowds of people surround him, and we hear the remark that Jesus “taught them as one having authority.”[iii]  And, we find that authority being put to the test.  This past Sunday, it was Jesus’ authority to forgive sin that was under question.  Today, it is Jesus’ authority to be “lord even of the Sabbath.”  We begin out in that field of grain.

First of all, under the law of the day, Jesus’ disciples were not stealing a farmer’s crop.  The book of Deuteronomy contains a long list of rules and regulations, of do’s and don’ts, including one that provides, “If you go into your neighbor's standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor's standing grain.”  You also may eat as many grapes as you would like while you are in your neighbor’s vineyard, “but you shall not put any in a container” to eat later.[iv]  The problem on this occasion is not that the disciples are plucking grain, but that they are doing it on the Sabbath.  Plucking grain constitutes work, and on the Sabbath “you shall not do any work.[v] 

The fellows who point this out to Jesus are Pharisees, men who were very knowledgeable and meticulous about obeying the law.  A Pharisee would go to great lengths to avoid violating the law, but Jesus’ disciples were walking along, violating the Sabbath just as bold as you please.  When the Pharisees ask Jesus for an explanation, Jesus reminds them of “what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food.”  The Pharisees would know that story of David, a story that makes clear that sometimes it is proper and appropriate to make an exception to a law.  While the Pharisees are considering that point, Jesus tells them, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.”

Jesus then goes into the synagogue, with the Pharisees continuing to watch him, to see what he will do.  They do not have to wait long to find out.  Inside the synagogue is a man with a withered, useless hand, and Jesus tells the man to come forward.  Then, Jesus poses the second question that he will ask in the Gospel of Mark:  “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?”  As we found this past Sunday, we can easily give a very quick answer to that question.  The quick answer is that of course it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath, to save life and not to kill.  But, in asking the Pharisees, “What is lawful?” Jesus was asking them something more complex, with implications that reach far beyond what people may and may not do on the Sabbath.  Jesus wanted the Pharisees – and us – to ponder the very purpose and meaning of the commandments and laws that scripture imparts.

Rules, commandments, and laws.  They can give you and me a way of keeping score.  The person who does the best job of “playing by the rules” gets to claim a type of bragging rights, especially when it comes to the rules and commandments and laws found in scripture – or that we believe are based upon scripture.  Many of us agree with the Pharisees that playing by God’s rules is the way to find favor with God, to get on God's “good side.”  It also is a way that we can show ourselves and the people around us that we are good, worthy human beings.  We also might consider playing by God’s rules to be a way that we can find a sense of security, a way of believing that we are in control of our own destiny.  Good things come to good people – right? – so if you and I can strictly observe each and every law, then we can rest easy.  After a while, being strictly obedient to the law becomes an end in itself.  We find ourselves putting our faith and energy into playing by the rules, instead of directing our faith and energy toward God.

You and I cannot understand what God wants our conduct to be – what God wants our lives to be – until we begin to understand the nature of God, himself.  That is what Jesus came to reveal.  Jesus lived among us for the declared purpose of demonstrating the love God has for us and letting us know that God wants us to have that same love for each other.  Christ does not ask you and me to confine ourselves in rules, commandments, and laws.  As the apostle Paul told the Galatians, “For freedom Christ has set us free.”  Paul went on to explain that when you and I start putting our faith and energy into obeying a set of rules and laws, we cut ourselves off from Christ, we fall away from grace.  In Christ, Paul wrote, no amount of playing by the rules will move us closer to God:  “the only thing that counts is faith working through love.”[vi]  Jesus said the same thing one day to a man who asked, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?”  Jesus answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it:  ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”[vii]  Jesus really drove this point home when he gave his disciples their final instruction before his crucifixion.  Jesus told his disciples that if they obeyed his commandments, they would abide in his love.  Then Jesus told them, “This is my commandment:  that you love one another as I have loved you.”[viii]

I have had a couple of conversations this past week that highlighted for me the contrast between being bound by the law – which the apostle Paul described as slavery – and Jesus’ commandment to love God and love each other – which brings freedom and life.  The first conversation was with a young man who said that the only message the church ever gave him was the frightening assurance that he would go to Hell if he failed to obey God’s law – followed by a very long list of what that law entailed.  He knows he is not perfect, he said, and he does want to be to be called into new life and new purpose in Christ.  But in his church he heard no message of new life, only a message of punishment and death.  The second conversation was with another young man, who shared with me the freedom and joy that he has found as he and his wife have sought to fulfill the vows they took at their wedding.  Here is a part of those vows:

[Y]ou have told each other it is your firm understanding [that] you are not entering into this marriage as a means of in any way limiting, controlling, hindering, or restricting each other from any true expression and honest celebration of that which is the highest and best within you – including your love of God, your love of life, your love of people, your love of creativity, your love of work, or any aspect of your being which genuinely represents you and brings you joy.  Is that still your firm understanding?

Finally, you have said to each other that you do not see marriage as producing obligations, but rather as providing opportunities – opportunities for growth, for full self-expression, for lifting your lives to their highest potential, for healing every false thought or small idea you ever had about yourself, and for ultimate reunion with God through the communion of your two souls.  That this is truly a Holy Communion – a journey through life with one you love as an equal partner, sharing equally both the authority and responsibilities inherent in any partnership, bearing equally what burdens there be, basking equally in the glories.  Is that the vision you wish to enter into now?

A relationship that provides opportunities – opportunities for growth, for full self-expression, for lifting our lives to their highest potential, for healing every false thought or small idea we ever had about ourselves, and for ultimate reunion with God – that is the relationship that God in Christ offers to us.  We enter into that relationship, Jesus said, by loving the Lord our God with all our heart, and with our soul, and with all our mind, and by loving all of the people we encounter just as much and as well as we love ourselves.  “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”  That is what Jesus was demonstrating for the Pharisees back there in the synagogue, with the man with the withered, useless hand.  It made Jesus grieve, the author of Mark tells us, to see how the Pharisees had perverted a commandment that was all about life into a law that could stand in the way of life.  Jesus was grieved, we read, “at their hardness of heart.”  And so he showed the Pharisees that there is a work that not only is permitted on the Sabbath, but that is the true purpose of Sabbath:  proclaiming good news to the poor, providing forgiveness from sin and release from whatever holds us back, and healing anything that might keep a fellow child of God from knowing fulfillment and joy.[ix]

What is lawful?  Please grab a hymnal and turn to hymn #525.  I will read verse 2, then ask you to join me in reading the refrain.

I the lord of snow and rain, I have borne my people’s pain.  I have wept for love of them; they turn away.  I will break their hearts of stone, give them hearts for love alone.  I will speak my word to them.  Whom shall I send?

Here I am, Lord.  Is it I, Lord?  I have heard you calling in the night.  I will go, Lord, if you lead me.  I will hold your people in my heart.

Amen.

Copyright 2008 © Leslie R. Stacks. All rights reserved.