We’ve
been doing a sermon series that tries to go through Jesus’ life in
chronological order. We took a break from that for Palm Sunday and Easter
Sunday, but now we’re going to come back to it.
If you remember the last time we
addressed this subject, we said that at this point of Jesus’ life, the exact
time line gets somewhat confused. We don’t know in exactly what order
some of these events took place. Even the gospels are not always
consistent about them. And that’s okay, for a couple of reasons.
One is that as far as we can tell, the gospels were written about twenty
to forty years after Jesus was crucified. It’s understandable that the
exact sequence of events might be a little unclear after all that time. A
more important reason is that, really, the exact sequence of events is not the
point. The point is that Jesus did these things and said these things.
The precise order in which he did them and said them is not all that
important.
But we know that, at this time,
Jesus had gathered disciples. And we also know that Jesus had already
worked some miracles and had healed some people. And we also know that
the Pharisees were starting to get pretty upset with Jesus at this point.
The two passages in Mark before this
tell us a couple of things Jesus did that got the Pharisees upset. One of
them was that he was eating a meal at the house of a man named Levi, who was a
tax collector. And also eating with him were other “tax collectors and
sinners”. And the other reason is that Jesus’ disciples were not fasting,
as the law required.
And in our passage for today, Jesus
gave the Pharisees another reason for being upset with him. He and his
disciples broke the Sabbath law. They did what the law considered “work”
on the Sabbath day.
Now, understand the Sabbath law was
considered hugely important in the Jewish faith. There were all kinds of
rules and regulations about it. Most of those rules concerned the
definition of what was considered “work”. You could not go more than a
certain distance from your house--otherwise it was considered work. You
could take care of your animals--the law recognized that animals need to be fed
and watered--but you could only do so much with them. And on and on and
on.
And the Pharisees took those rules
very seriously. So when they see Jesus and the disciples not just
breaking those rules, but doing so deliberately, they got upset. And not
only that, he claimed to be justified in doing it. And not only that,
he compared himself to King David, probably the greatest king Israel had ever
had. He said he was justified in breaking the rules because King David
had broken the rules.
The Pharisees were outraged.
Who does this guy think he is, anyway? How can he compare himself
to the great King David? How dare he do that?
And then, Jesus breaks the Sabbath
law again! He heals a man on the Sabbath day! And this time Jesus
does not even cite any sort of precedent for it. He just says that
healing this man is the right thing to do, and he’s going to do it.
Period.
And with that, the Pharisees had had
enough. This guy is just rubbing our faces in it now! He’s not even
trying to justify what he’s done. He’s claiming to be above the law!
And they start plotting about how they can get rid of Jesus.
Permanently.
Now, Jesus knew the law. He
knew it very well. When we read the gospels, one of the things we can see
is that Jesus can quote scripture with the best of them. And this was not
just because he was the divine Son of God. He also had grown up in a
Jewish home. He had been taught the law by his parents. Jesus knew
perfectly well what the law said about doing work on the Sabbath.
And Jesus did not say that the law
was unimportant. In fact, listen to what Jesus says about the law in the
fifth chapter of Matthew:
Do not
think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to
abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth
disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any
means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone
who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others
accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever
practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of
heaven.
Jesus warns against setting aside anything in the law.
And yet, he felt free to disobey the
law.
How does that work? If the law is so important, why does Jesus feel
free to ignore it?
Jesus
explains it, I think, with two statements. He says this specifically
about the Sabbath law, but I think it applies to his approach to all of the
religious law. Jesus says, “The Sabbath was made for people, not people
for the Sabbath.” And later, he says, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath:
to do good or to do evil?”
Jesus is not
saying the law is bad. Jesus believed in the law. He knew there
were good reasons for it. But he also knew that the law is not an end in
itself. God intended the law to help people, not to hurt them. What
Jesus was saying, I think, is that God did not give people the law to stop them
from doing good. God did not give people the law to keep them from
enjoying their lives.
The thing is, God created life. God created
all life, but God specifically created human life. And because God
created human life, God knows more about it than we do. God knows what’s
best for us. God knows what the best way for us to live our lives is.
And so, God created laws and rules. But God
did not create them to make our lives harder. God did not create these
laws and rules so that God would have an excuse to punish us. God is not
sitting in heaven with a big red pen, waiting for us to break a rule so that God
can send us to hell. That’s not the way any of this works.
Remember what Jesus said about the two greatest
commandments. This is in Matthew Chapter Twenty-two. Some of you
could probably say them with me. Love the Lord your God with all your
heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and love your
neighbor as yourself. And Jesus went on to say that all the law
hangs on those two commandments.
What that means is that every law is intended, in
some way, help us love God and love other people. That’s what the Sabbath
law was intended to do. And that’s what it did, at first. Remember
what the commandment actually says: “Remember the Sabbath day and keep
it holy.” The Sabbath law was intended to help people worship God and
love God. And that would help people focus on serving God by loving
others.
But people had forgotten that. The
Pharisees--probably with the best of intentions--had focused so much on the
letter of the law that they forgot the intent of it. They had created all
these detailed rules and regulations, and by doing that, they had made people’s
lives harder. Everyone was so focused on the letter of the law that they
forgot about love. They were so focused on the letter of the law that
they actually thought that healing someone, taking away someone’s pain, would
be a bad thing to do if you did it on the Sabbath.
That’s not how it’s supposed to work.
That’s not what the rules are for. God gave people the law to show
people how they should live their lives. God knows that we’ll live better
lives, that we’ll be happier, we’ll be healthier, if we live our lives God’s
way. God knows that things will go a lot better for us if we live our
lives the way God tells us to live them. And God knows that we’ll be a
lot better able to love others, and to love God, if we live our lives the way
God wants us to.
We don’t get to heaven by following rules.
We get to heaven by faith in Jesus Christ. We get to heaven by
showing that faith by doing what Jesus told us to do--loving God and loving
others. God gave us rules to help us do that. God did not give us
rules to make our lives more complicated. God gave us rules to make our
lives easier. God did not give us rules to make our lives harder.
God gave us rules to make our lives better.
Jesus had respect for the law. He had
respect for the rules. We should, too. They’re there to help us,
and they will help us. But the main laws we should follow are the ones on
which all the others are based. Love God. Love other people.
Live our lives in ways that show we love God. Live our lives in
ways that show we love other people. Do things that show we love God and
we love other people. If we do that, the rules will take care of
themselves.
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