4-14-19 “Give It a Rest”

4-14-19   “Give It a Rest”

   In preparing this message this week I asked Lynn for her thoughts on the question, “when is it okay to break the law?” And as we first considered it, many of the examples that we came up with were examples of traffic law violations:

• Is it okay to exceed the speed limit in an emergency while trying to get someone to the hospital?  Most would say yes.
• Is it okay to make a “rolling stop” at a stop sign if there are no other cars there? One would think so, but the Reynoldsburg police informed me a few years ago that the answer is NO.
• Is it okay to run that traffic light in the middle of the night when it just won’t change and there’s nobody else in sight? Well….
• How about parking in a no parking zone, at a yellow-painted curb, or in a handicap spot without the appropriate sticker if you’re “just going to be a minute?” Hmmm…

   Besides traffic laws, we considered, other questions, such as:

• Is it okay to steal food to feed your family? Or medicine for a sick child when you don’t have the money?
• Is it okay to share a prescription medication with another person who was not prescribed that medication by their doctor?
• Is it okay to share passwords for Netflix, or Hulu, or some other subscription service with someone who isn’t paying for it, or to steal cable TV by hooking into someone else’s service without paying for it?

   What if we put this in the context of the Ten Commandments, what we understand as God’s law. When is it okay to kill?  That debate that has gone on in the church since the very beginning. 

• Is war okay? Capital punishment? Or if it’s self-defense?

   What about having other gods - when is that okay? If we’re honest with ourselves, we all do have other gods who compete for our love, affection, and devotion with God. If we want to know who our other gods are, we need look no further than our checkbooks, credit card statements, or sports loyalties. 

   Is it okay to covet our neighbor’s stuff if we’re just being aspirational, just hoping and dreaming for the future? 

   And then there’s the law that presents itself in our scripture today, about observing the Sabbath and keeping it holy. We had a member in a previous church, a developmentally disabled woman, who worried to the point of being frantic and in tears, nearly every week, that she was going to hell because her job required her to work on Sundays. 

   All of these questions pose ethical dilemmas for us - or they should - because regardless of their severity or perceived importance, they’re all illegal in some way, shape, or form. They all violate, to one degree or another, a cultural norm or more that has evolved into and been codified as a law in our society or in the church. And violating the law comes with consequences, right?  At least it does for some laws, and some people, in some instances, in some places…

   Jesus and his disciples are “busted” in our passage today for eating grain from the field as they were traveling on the Sabbath, both of which the Pharisees considered a violation of Sabbath law. In their minds, and according to their interpretation of the law, the disciples should have prepared their food before the Sabbath, and they were not to travel more than a defined, minimal distance during the Sabbath time. Now, before we vilify the Pharisees, which is easy for us to do and is our tendency when we read the Gospels, we should remember that they meant well. These were the folk who cared about the church and the law, who gave their time and energy and talents to their faith. They were entrusted with great responsibility. 

In many ways, they are us, because after all, we are people who care about the church, and our faith, and give our time and energies to the work of the church, to reading daily devotionals, studying scripture and all of those things. So, as we think about this passage, it’s good to remember that it’s partly about the Sabbath, and partly about the Law, and also about us.

   But it’s also good to be reminded that the Torah, the instructions from God - what we know as Law - was given for our good, for “our own well-being,” God tells Moses. They were not given on a whim. God didn’t simply make up a set of rules to see if we would follow them. This is loving guidance from a caring God, about how to be in a healthy relationship with God and with one another. This is a loving parent sharing with beloved children the wisdom they need to live full and joyful lives; seeking to do just what we would do with our children and grandchildren. This is not a set of regulations that God has established in order to have an excuse for either exiling us from God’s presence or rewarding us with eternal bliss, and it certainly is not a means of excluding others from the love and grace of God, which is what was happening in Jesus’ day…and perhaps in ours as well.

   One commentator (ministrymatters.com), helps us understand the historical context in which this story takes place, saying, “We do not have to assign terrible motives to the religious folks who Jesus was dealing with at the time. For the most part we can assume they were doing the best they could to try to follow the way God had laid out for them. They were occupied by Rome and their religious freedom, although not completely taken away, was very restricted. Although they did not offer allegiance to Caesar as a god, they were forced to pay him tribute in the form of money or crops. Many of their customs and ways of life were put on hold during the occupation. The laws that could be followed, therefore, became more important to them. This would not have been so much a problem if they had not taken the next step. It began to be a situation of those who had the means and were able to follow the laws of the temple and the laws of Rome seeing those who could not do so, as being unfaithful. Those who could afford to pay the tithe to the temple along with the Roman taxes thought themselves more holy than those who were forced to pay the Roman tax under pain of death only to find they had not even enough left to feed themselves and their families. Instead of looking on these people as oppressed and abused, they were seen as sinners.”

   So it’s into this context that Jesus begins his ministry with the message that God is best understood, not as being a demanding judge as in being a compassionate and loving Parent. It’s not obedience to the law that’s at the heart of the matter, but living as faithful reflections of the God who created us in the divine image. God is not best understood as a stern taskmaster who demands obedience above all, but as a wise teacher who lovingly shows us the best way to live.

   David Lose points out that, 

   “Across the Old Testament, the purpose of law is to help us get more out of life by directing us to help our neighbor. It’s important to pay attention to both halves of that sentence. Each one of us gets more out of life by looking out for each other. How does that work,” he asks? Two ways.

   “First, law establishes order, and order makes it easier to flourish in life. Think of the Ten Commandments – it’s really hard to flourish if it’s okay to lie, steal, and murder. But, second, law works best – it achieves its intended purpose – only when it’s directed to the need of our neighbor.

   “There’s something a little counter-intuitive about that for those of us who live in a highly individualistic culture. Law, we think, is something that protects my rights. But the Israelites saw it differently. If I am looking out for my neighbors, then my neighbors are also all looking out for me. So instead of having one person look after my interests – namely, me – I’ve got a whole community looking out for my welfare, just as I am looking out for theirs.

   “But we tend to privilege “order” over “neighbor.” That is, order makes us feel comfortable, safe, and secure, and before long we forget that the law was intended to direct us to help our neighbor and we fall into thinking it’s all about us. And that’s what’s happening here. The appeal of “law-as-order” trumps concern for neighbor. That’s what Jesus gets at with his example of King David and in his summary statement, ‘The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.’ That sounds good, of course, but it’s is easy to forget.” And he concludes “Yes, order is good, but if it’s not helping the neighbor, it’s neither lawful nor holy, at least not according to Jesus.”

   In all of this, however, Jesus didn’t abandon the law. In fact, he directly denied that in how he lived and what he taught. Rather, he observed the law when it brought glory to God and didn’t interfere with his sharing of the good news of God’s grace. He went to temple and to synagogue, observed the holy days, studied scripture, and spent time in prayer. He said that he didn’t come to destroy the law but to bring it to its full completion. That is, to be an example of how one lives fully into the law in a loving and non-tyrannical way. He understood that the law was given for our well-being, to be good for us, and that we weren’t created to give glory to the law. He understood that the law was created to help point us to God, but that sometimes it could actually get in the way. When he healed people on the sabbath, which occurs several times in scriptures, it was because he understood that the true nature of God was to have compassion on them in their afflictions, not to honor the sabbath. He wasn’t advocating for people to ignore the sabbath, but rather to receive it as the gift it was intended to be rather than as a burden. Sabbath is part of God’s compassionate gift of inviting us to rest in the trust that God will take care of us rather than being a cold, unbending law about what we can or cannot do.

   So in the Gospels we should be aware of the way in which disagreement about living within the law quickly escalates into hostility, a hostility that will eventually lead some -- but certainly not all -- of the most powerful religious authorities to seek Jesus’ death. Even as the passage emphasizes a commitment to life and vitality abiding at the heart of God’s reign, it also illustrates how religious commitments and values -- any religious commitments and values -- can become hardened and turn oppressive in the hands of careless stewards. None are immune - then or now.

   So the idea behind our message to “Give it a Rest,” is to help us see, as Steve Harper points out, that  “Sabbath-keeping is a sign we are living a here-and-now life. But to see this, we must not view the Sabbath as one day in seven, separated and isolated from the other six. Jesus pointed to the right view of sabbath when he said, ‘The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath’ (Mark 2:27). He was talking about the flow — the sabbath into us, not us into a particular day. Sabbath is a rhythm, not a day – a pattern, not a 24-hour period.”

    So, how should sabbath-keeping influence how we live in the present moment? More than anything else, it’s a reminder that every moment is a gift, and is lived by grace. There is sabbath to be found in every day if we are mindful of it. Kimberly Richter notes that when we lose the sabbath, “we become enslaved to our economy and efforts. We come to believe everything depends on what we can provide for ourselves. To keep a rhythm of Sabbath rest is to remember that God is the maker and giver of all good things.”

   This is just one piece of what Jesus meant when he said that we don’t pour new wine into old wineskins. Old wineskins, like old ways of thinking about the sabbath, the Law, or even our faith, become brittle when they’re simply put on a shelf to be worshiped. The message Jesus was giving was new wine - a new way of thinking and being - that would destroy the old thought and belief containers. “You have heard it said,” he often reminded, before concluding, “But I tell you this…”  The Way of Jesus is not what they were used to, and is not what we always expect either. Jesus’ words speak as much to the Pharisees then as to the Pharisee in us today. Christ is doing a new thing, and if the law proves hurtful rather than helpful, pushing people away rather than drawing us closer to God, then, Jesus would caution, we’re looking at it incorrectly.

   Out of this realization we live humbly in every moment, giving thanks to God who is the Source of the here-and-now, and offering ourselves in each moment as living sacrifices, as Paul says, (Romans 12:1) to be instruments of God’s peace. We take on the attitude of Paul, realizing we are the servants of others for Christ’s sake (2 Cor. 4:5).

   This is precisely why the idea of rest is associated with sabbath. In a literal sense, it is the renewal which occurs as we adopt the work/rest pattern in each day. And in the figurative sense, it is the relaxation which comes (as Richter noted above) as we realize we are not the creators of moments, but only the beneficiaries of and servants within them. To be fully present in a moment, to be fully present to our neighbor, to be fully present to God, is to live the sabbath.

   This is not a call to go back to slavishly refraining from all activity one day a week or to bringing back blue laws. Nor is it a call to abandon the law as old-fashioned and irrelevant. And it is certainly not a call to invite the government to impose their interpretation of God’s instructions as legal prohibitions. Rather, it’s a call to hear, with Jesus, the loving voice of a caring parent instructing us in the wisdom of life. It’s a call to hear, with Jesus, the invitation not to use God’s gracious instructions as a tool to bar others from the presence of God. It’s an invitation to receive joyously the instruction of God as it was meant to be received, for our well-being. So may you receive it as such and live in the sabbath presence of the loving God. Amen.