Background: This past weekend was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton and the lectionary Gospel reading was Mark 2:23-3:6, where Jesus and his disciples eat pick and eat grain from the grainfields on the Sabbath and Jesus heals a man with a withered hand against protests from the Pharisees. It was also a commissioning weekend for our newest Stephen Ministers and a new leader for the program. Following is the text of my sermon.
“Putting Love First; Keeping Soft Hearts”
Thirty years ago or so I remember having a discussion about integrity, and a definition that was put out there was “doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons.”
I don’t remember anything else about the conversation, but I’ve thought about that definition a number of times since. And Jesus as we meet him in the Gospel stories seems to me a perfect example of what that kind of integrity looks like in action. We see it beautifully in today’s reading.
Jesus and his disciples are walking through grainfields. They are hungry, so they pluck the heads off grain and eat. The Pharisees call them out for working on the sabbath, doing something that is against their law. It’s unthinkable to the Pharisees that someone would do this.
Jesus tries to speak to them in their own language, with historical precedent. “Hey, we all agree that David is someone we revere right—you guys are on Team David. Remember when David and his friends were hungry and needed food? He went into the Temple and got the bread of the Presence and they ate it. That’s a way bigger deal than this.”
You can almost hear the Pharisees grumbling—who does this guy think he is, David?
Then Jesus makes a statement that they just aren’t ready for: “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath.”
When I look at the world today, the idea of sabbath rest might be one of the things the world needs most to help get us back on track. We are in full production mode—work, produce, more, faster, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As a society, we’ve almost totally discounted the idea of the sabbath, a day to rest, to recharge, and enjoy the day.
Jesus was all about that. And he frames it beautifully—the sabbath was instituted, for the benefit of humanity, to make sure we rest, we take a break—not to be just another law that has to be followed and adhered to at all costs.
Something that Jesus understood and tried to make clear in his teaching and his actions was to look at the SPIRIT of the law, not the LETTER of the law.
The disciples were hungry, they weren’t harvesting. They needed something to eat, not to take grain to the marketplace. The spirit of what they were doing was sustenance, not work.
Now the Pharisees have their guard up. This Jesus character is shifty. He’s given them a what-for. Keep an eye on him. Now, they go into the synagogue and there is a man with a withered hand. The Pharisees have it in their mind, no healing on the sabbath.
Jesus calls the man with the withered hand forward. He looks at the Pharisees and says, “Is it lawful to good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?”
Crickets. Not a word. Silence.
The power and condemnation of this line strikes me: “He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart…”
Mark is a Gospel writer of few details, but his words here and crushing and heartbreaking at the same time.
Jesus was “grieved at their hardness of heart.” Here is a human being at the synagogue who is suffering. How can he rest as the people of Israel were instructed to do if he has a condition that keeps him from living his life every day of the week?
The spirit of the law, not the letter of the law. Doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons.
I wonder, in your lives can you think of times when what seemed to be the right thing to do was in conflict with the law or customs as they were practiced or commonly understood?
There is a great line that the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 15:4 that says, “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide, we might have hope.”
Scripture was written to teach us, for our learning, for our instruction, to improve us, to make us better people, to make us a community, to help us understand God’s love and how to take care of each other—to help us come into an understanding of God’s will and God’s ways. To give us hope.
If Jesus took a literal approach, a letter-of-the-law approach to Scripture, almost every story recorded in the Gospels wouldn’t be there.
- If Jesus had said to the centurion, sorry, you’re not Jewish.
- If he had seen the woman at the well coming and gotten up and walked away from the well, as social custom told him to do.
- Demon-possessed? Well, is he active at the synagogue?
If Jesus had the same understanding of Scripture as Nicodemus that Kelsey preached about last weekend, would we be talking about Jesus today? He wouldn’t have angered the Pharisees or the religious leaders and he probably wouldn’t have been killed.
Jesus put the love of God and the love of humanity, all of humanity, first. He lived by and for God’s love, in the spirit of the law, not as a literalist following the letter of the law.
If you want to go out on a limb like Jesus did, consider this statement, replacing “the Sabbath” with “Scripture”—
“Scripture was made for humankind, not humankind for Scripture.”
Now, Jesus did NOT say that these laws are dumb, that they should get rid of them; he didn’t say it’s time to write a whole new set of laws; he didn’t say riot in the streets, do whatever you want.
He tried to redirect people, where he could see they had gone—or were going—off course. The sabbath isn’t wrong, the sabbath is a good thing, but it was made for people, not people for the sabbath.
How was Jesus to enjoy rest on the sabbath, when there was a man suffering, right in their midst, when he could do something about it?
“Sorry about your hand. Too bad we didn’t run into each other on a different day, I would love to have helped you.”
Does that sound like a Jesus we would want to follow?
Jesus understood the spirit of the laws. He knew where love was in each of them, and he could see where laws and customs had lost their salt and were being used in ways and for purposes they were never intended for. They were to be for our learning, for our instruction, for our improvement—to give us hope.
And when it came to a choice between following the letter of the law, or following a love of God and humanity, Jesus chose love.
I wonder if there are places in our lives where we might do the same.
This weekend, we are commissioning 12 new Stephen Ministers and a new leader for the Stephen Ministry program. This is a program that trains people to walk beside someone going through a difficult time in their lives. It’s a program that has been a part of the DNA of Christ Church since 2005. This class will make the number of Stephen Ministers trained here top 100 people. More than 100 people who have responded to a call in their hearts to learn to be more loving, more empathetic, more compassionate, to be better listeners, and to make themselves available for people who are hurting.
My fiancé Holly is one of those in the class. And I have had the great perspective of listening to and watching her go through the 50 hours of training and reading they complete; of hearing her talk about what they were learning. So much of it is life skills that don’t get taught from K-12 or in college, or trade school, or anywhere else.
One of the parts of training that Holly talked about and stepped right into is assertiveness. And that sounds like an odd thing to have as a part of training to be a care giver, doesn’t it?
Let’s think about assertiveness in today’s story of the man with the withered hand at the synagogue. What if Jesus sees the man, looks at the Pharisees who are telling him that healing the man is against the rules, then drops his shoulders, and says, “Well, I guess not. I can come back again tomorrow and heal him.” We have a whole different story and a whole different Jesus.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus is assertive in his love, in his teaching, and with his healing. He doesn’t back down when many of us probably would. He does the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons.
Learning to be more assertive helps push us out of our comfort zones and into the mission field. And the mission field is everywhere people are hurting, need love, or want to know God in their lives. The mission field is where we work, it’s in our homes, it’s where go out to eat; it’s in doctor’s waiting rooms; and it’s in grocery stores.
Jack Anthony is a Stephen Leader and was one of the earliest Stephen Ministers at Christ Church. Many of you have heard him tell his story about why he became one and the part of his story that is so easy to relate to is where Jack said if he was in the grocery store and he saw someone at the other end of the aisle who he knew was going through a difficult time, he would avoid them because he didn’t know what to say. Jack didn’t like that about himself, so he did something about it.
It takes being assertive to walk up to that person who you know is going through something big. It takes getting out of our comfort zone to pick up the phone and call, text, or to stop by to see someone.
I come back to Jesus’s line on seeing the Pharisees standing by and doing nothing for the man with the withered hand, “He was grieved at their hardness of heart…”
Jesus lived his life with a soft heart. He wants us to do the same. In a hard-hearted world, it takes being assertive to keep a soft heart.
I give thanks this weekend for the Stephen Ministry program and for the 12 new Stephen Ministers and new Stephen Leader, who are going forth with soft hearts to love and serve the Lord.
