This is the message delivered by Rev. Don Van Antwerpen to the congregation of Unfinished Community, on Sunday, June 2, 2024, drawing from Deuteronomy 5:12-15 and Mark 2:23-3:6
If you’re anything like me, you get really tense when the pastor gets up to the pulpit and starts talking about the law. Throughout our shared Christian history - throughout our shared human history - there are perhaps no two words that have been more certain in heralding cruelty, brutality, and pain.
The Law. Or, if you prefer the Americanized version; Law and order.
For most of us, we tend to think of law as some great dictate from on high, something that binds us strictly and securely to a very narrow path through life, forcing us to surrender whole parts of ourselves - our wants, our needs, our desires, even parts of our very identity - in order to conform, to be part of the group. The law seems to many of us this great, inflexible…thing; an impenetrable, uncrossable boundary beyond which lay punishment, condemnation, even death.
When it comes to “regular” laws - those of governments and such - we know these as the rules that everyone must live by. Break those, and you’ve shown yourself as a person who has no regard for our shared society. Breaking that kind of law places you outside the group, outside of society. We view lawbreakers as “other” - people who have traded their place in society for the fulfillment of some immediate need or fleeting desire. These people are “criminals;” something other than us regular, good, decent, law-abiding citizens.
And when we expand our concept of “the law” to include religious law, that introduces a moral dimension to this iron-hard and inflexible thing. Breaking religious law isn’t just an act of social violation, it’s indicative of a deep, personal failing. We tend to think that people who violate religious law are morally corrupt, spiritually destitute, and ethically bankrupt people.
And when we combine these two ideas…oh boy…that gives us something that we all secretly yearn for in our deepest, most basic, most flawed, human hearts - a clear and well-defined line between good and bad people. A simple, black-and-white criteria that we can use to immediately isolate and identify certain people as just the worst, without ever having to consider the slightest bit of nuance or context.
And we love thinking of law breakers as terrible people, don’t we? I mean, just look at the television commercials come election time - American or Japanese - and you’ll see politician after politician, pundit after pundit, speaking boldly and at length about the need to be tough on crime, tough on criminals. If you’re American, you’ve no doubt heard people make the argument that we all need to be heavily armed at all times, because you never know when one of those criminals might pop up, to threaten you or your loved ones.
Criminals, those who violate the laws of God and humanity, they’re the easiest people to disregard, to cast out, to dehumanize. It is so very easy to think of criminals as something irreparably broken, something that is too far gone to bother with, something beyond saving, something beyond help or salvation; something so irrevocably and unquestionably not at all human that I’m betting most of you didn’t notice that, for the last few moments, I’ve been using the term “something” rather than “someone” to describe them.
It just comes so very naturally to us, doesn’t it?
But…if we believe, as we Christians do, that all people contain within them that spark of the divine, that reflection of God, that untouchable and beautiful imago dei, then how can we ever dismiss someone as being fundamentally wrong, evil, or broken? How can we look upon another beloved child of God and think, “clearly this one’s actions mean that they aren’t truly good, aren’t truly loved by God.”
Disposable. Discardable. Broken. Worthless. Not worthy of our attention.
But the thing about laws is that if we start thinking about them for more than a minute, if we really start thinking about the people these laws are meant to sit upon, then it very quickly stops being such a black-and-white issue.
At its simplest level, if we discount the accidental, someone breaks the law when they have within them a need which cannot be met under the constraints of the rules and laws of the society in which they live. That need may be born of deep-seated psychological issues - as is often the case with the unrepentant and psychotic murderer -, or it might simply be born of environment, a result of social condition, pressure, or poverty.
Victor Hugo, the famous French author, knew this way back in the late 1800s. The main character of his novel, Les Miserables, was a man who stole a loaf of bread to feed a starving child. This unquestionably kind act, born of the kind of love, mercy, and compassion we ought to uplift in a just and merciful society, was also unquestionable criminal. After all, theft is a violation of the law, is it not? But this main character, Jean Valjean, was poor, and starving himself; a peasant living in poverty and despair. He had no means of his own, no land on which to grow, no job with which he could earn fair wage with which to feed himself and his family. He was poor because society needed people to be poor; as much then as today.
If the wages of sin are death, what are the wages due to someone like this, born into generational poverty with no chance, no opportunity, no hope?
Is it in any way kind, or merciful? Is it fair?
Of course, not, but we all know the law does not see things like that.
In the story, young Valjean’s desperation, his need to feed this starving child outweighed his duty to the law, so he stole that loaf of bread. He broke the law. He became a criminal, in the eyes of society.
He was a criminal, to be sure. But was he wrong?
When there is need, when there is suffering, when our humanity, our love, our mercy, and our compassion are at stake, which is it that must be inflexible; the law, or our very souls?
What, I ask you, is the point of laws? Whether they are made by humankind, or haded down from God on high, what is the point of the law?
If we think in this way, the very idea of laws seems cruel and capricious. It seems almost the opposite of what a loving God would impose on people. In short…it just doesn’t make sense.
So I ask again…what is the point of laws? Why do we have them? Why are they here?
I think today’s story, Jesus’ actions here in the book of Mark, gives us a window to one of the great flaws in human thinking: our understanding of the nature and purpose of law.
If we think of laws as these great, boundaries; obligations to God and society that we will be punished for violating, then Jesus’ behavior here is completely insane! He’s just wandering around, wantonly breaking every rule he can get his hands on! He starts off the passage walking through the grain fields - fields that absolutely did not belong to him - and he’s just…taking stuff. Plucking heads of grain, and taking them with him, as though the very concept of theft didn’t even exist.
By the way, for those of you who aren’t well-read on the laws and practices of the ancient middle east, there was a practice in that time known as gleaning. Basically, anyone who grew crops on their land were required to leave the edges of their fields unharvested so that the poor, the immigrant, the refugee, and anyone else who might have need of it, could come through and simply take what they needed. It was a wonderful, merciful practice that I honestly wish we still had today…
…but this wasn’t it. There’s no indication in the text that Jesus is taking carefully from the well-established boundaries of the field. He’s just…straight up breaking the law here. And he’s doing it in full view of his fellow Pharisees too; fellows from the shammai school who were extreme legalists, but colleagues nonetheless. They see him do this, and to their credit they take the most charitable approach they can, assuming that he must have reason or permission to take these grains, but even still…if you assume he has permission, he’s still working on the Sabbath which, in those days, was a crime in and of itself.
No matter which way you look at it, Jesus is boldly, blatantly, and unquestionably breaking the law. And just in case there was any doubt about the grain, he strolls into the synagogue and straight-up heals a guy, right in front of God and everyone. There can be absolutely no doubt, nor did Jesus want anyone witnessing this to have any; Jesus was unquestionably, intentionally breaking the law.
Of course, right away this gives us one terrifyingly huge problem. We can’t keep thinking of breaking the law as some great, sinful, moral failing because…well…here we see Jesus doing it himself; pure, perfect, sinless Jesus just breaking the law like a Kit-Kat bar!
At the same time, Jesus often speaks lovingly and eloquently about the divine law, and the rules which bind us together as communities in righteous service to God…so he can’t think laws are meaningless either.
So…what? Is Jesus a criminal, or a law breaker? Or is he the paragon of virtue, the great and sinless, law-and-order Jesus we’ve all been told about since we were kids? Which is it???
Right here, in this moment, Jesus knows something that everyone around him doesn’t know, something that the rest of us haven’t figured out yet.
He knows what laws are actually for.
Let’s think about the rules that Jesus is breaking, and why, for a moment.
In this passage, there are two laws at issue here: the theft of food, and the violation of the rules governing the observance of the Sabbath.
Theft is…well…pretty straightforward. But he wasn’t walking out of some dude’s house with a 65-inch TV and a PlayStation 5; he was taking heads of grain; food, with which to feed people.
As for the other one, the laws governing the proper observance of the Sabbath, let’s consider for a moment the disconnect between what God had laid down, and what the people of the time took as the unbreakable dictates of “the law.”
Consider the verse we began with, from Deuteronomy:
Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. 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.
Now, in the time since Deuteronomy, Priests, and Scribes, Rabbis and Pharisees for generations upon generations had been hard at work trying to figure out just what it meant to “observe the Sabbath and keep it holy.” By the time of Jesus the legalists - these shammai school folks that Jesus kept getting into conflict with - had built up this extremely detailed, meticulous series of rules derived from centuries of careful exegesis, scholarly interpretation and extrapolation, and deep, heartfelt prayer which they considered the absolutely correct way to not work on the Sabbath. To them, any action that might be construed as “work” - such as harvesting, or healing - was a violation of the commandments God had laid down for the people.
So these Pharisees, according to their long traditions and careful training, had come to understand that the most important part of this commandment from God, was to avoid work at all costs.
But Jesus, being a part of that divine essence himself, new that the law, whether God’s law or human laws, meant absolutely nothing if it wasn’t being used as a tool to love and care for everyone. The law was always meant to be so, so much more than a rope to bind us in bondage and servitude.
The law was meant to be a tool to liberate us from the bondage of our own sinful natures.
Rather than focusing on the first part of the law - the “you shall not do any work” part - he focused on the second part, the part that tells us how to understand what God is saying.
“…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.”
How can any of us rest, when others in our community aren’t able to rest too? How can any of us lay down our burdens while our siblings are buried under burdens of their own? How can any of us put our feet up with a sigh of relief, while others heave with sighs of desperation?
If we hold so carefully to the letter of the law that we turn away from the suffering of others who cannot find fulfillment of their needs under that same law, if our Sabbath requires other people - people who have just as much a right to rest as we do - to work, struggle, suffer and die so that we might have prosperous ease, then they’re not the ones sinning when the law is broken.
We are.
I remember when I was a kid, we had a bunch of church folks over on Sunday. Everyone was hanging out in the living room, playing games in the yard, just having a good time. There was plenty of food, and everyone was relaxed and at ease. At one point, I remember an elder of the church saying with a great smile “Ahh, this is what the Sabbath is meant to be.”
And I knew how I was meant to feel in that situation. I was meant to agree, with a smile on my face and a mouth full of food, that this is what true, biblical, rest meant.
But I was a kid then, and while I was standing there in the living room between my father and a few church elders, I had come there by way of the kitchen. Where I had just seen my mother hard at work, elbow-deep in dishes, scrubbing and cooking in equal measure, fighting the kitchen like her life depended on it.
And that wasn’t rest at all.
She was exhausted.
And I remember thinking…yeah, I guess this is the Sabbath, but it’s not the Sabbath for everyone.
Imagine what might have happened if these Shammai-school Pharisees heard what Jesus was teaching that day. Imagine if they saw, with open eyes and hearts of love and mercy, what great things could be possible if instead of using their power and privilege and authority to mandate a narrow image of faithful observance to the law, they told the whole world that we could not rest until everyone could rest? What if they turned to the people of Israel, to the people of the entire world and with one voice preached the law of the Sabbath as a God-given responsibility to each other rather than a God-mandated responsibility to ourselves? What could have happened if they told the world that the whole point of having a Sabbath in the first place was to make sure that everyone had enough food during the week so that they could rest at least once, that everyone had their needs so well and truly met that a full day of rest every week was a foregone conclusion, that everyone whose bodies hurt and whose hearts struggle should be healed because by the time Sunday comes ‘round nobody should have to do anything but put up their feet with a smile on their face and praise God?
The law was given to us as a tool, a guiding star that points us in the direction of grace, mercy, and love. It was never meant to be iron-hard and inflexible. Rules, both divine and human, can never be inflexible because the world so very often is, and when people beset by the inflexible realities of life come into contact with iron-hard and inflexible rules, it isn’t the rules that get broken.
It’s the people. Beautiful, wonderful, beloved of Christ people, bearers of the image of our one true and holy God.
Rules are meant to bend and flex. They’re tools that are supposed to move with us, grow with us, and adjust to the changing intricacies of reality. The law must bend and change as our understanding of people grows and changes too. Because when we allow our laws to be unchanging and firm, we eventually find that we cannot be lawful and loving at the same time.
Either steal the loaf of bread, or let the young girl starve.
In Christ, we know the answer; break the law. Reshape the world. Allow your understanding to blossom and grow. Instead of abandoning love and compassion so that you might remain in compliance with the law you know, abandon the law and embrace love and compassion instead.
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.
Not because it’s the rules, or because God will punish you if you don’t. But because we once were slaves, and we know what it means to suffer so that others can rest instead. And our God commanded us that this should never happen again. Not on our watch.
Even if it causes others to conspire against us, even if it brings together our enemies in plots to destroy us, even if like Christ it walks us down that long and lonely road to Goliath, we cannot allow ourselves to lay down our burdens in peace while others stand and suffer.
So observe the Sabbath. Keep it holy. Feed the hungry, heal the sick, free the prisoner, bring justice to the oppressed, snatch that head of grain from the rich man’s field and stand boldly in the sight of God knowing that no law can hold back the love of God, no rule can prevent the mercy of Christ, and there is nothing that priests, politicians, police, or pastors can ever do to separate us from the grace, mercy, and love that is mandated by our unendingly merciful God.
Observe the Sabbath. Keep it holy. And remember; it’s not the Sabbath until everyone may rest, as well as you.
Amen.
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