Sermon from May 28, 2000
I once spent eleven days at Fuller Seminary as part of my doctoral program. Carole and Joy had stayed in Portland. I went alone each Sunday to Lake Avenue Congregational Church, a large church and a ten minute walk from my apartment. I went with my eyes open to see how well the church handled newcomers.

On the whole they did a good job. They gave me a range of choices, and I ended up in a married couples' class that was focusing on missions. I was the second person in the room. The other person was the class leader, and he was busy trying to set up the room properly. We introduced ourselves, and I offered to help.

I moved chairs around, other people came in, and the first person whom I had met introduced me to the next two or three people who came in. Each person welcomed me warmly and briefly, and then left me to myself. I helped myself to doughnut and coffee, introduced myself to other people, was greeted warmly and briefly, and then left alone.

When the class, which was very good, started, I sat down by myself. Seats filled in around me, but the chairs on either side of me remained empty. At the end of the class I left alone. No one ever asked me where I was from or what I did for a living or if I was married or how I got to Lake Avenue.

I do not tell this story to disparage that church. It is a good church. I had hit those invisible boundaries that people who know each other well set up to define who they are and screen the people they are going to let in to their circle. Every group has such rules, often unwritten, about who can get into the group and who cannot.

Those rules keep outsiders out and make them feel like, well, outsiders. That does not feel good, but do you know who may feel worse? It is the person inside the group who ignores the boundaries. That person threatens the identiy of the group. Some people may even feel that if this kind of thing is allowed to go on, the group will cease to exist.

So, they will usually let the resident non-conformist know they don't like the way he is ignoring the rules. The higher the stakes, the greater the pressure they will exert on the maverick to conform or else. The Gospel of Mark presents us today with a high-stake version of this drama. Let's look in Mark 2:23-28.

One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, "Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?"

Beginning with the forgiveness of the paralytic in Mark 2:1-12, Mark crafted a sequence of five events in which conflict between Jesus and some of the religious authorities escalates dangerously. Do you remember what Mark told us in Mark 2:6-7: Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, "Why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?" Jesus in His wonderful ability to read people spoke directly to their unexpressed thoughts.

After the dinner at Levi's house, He did not have to read their thoughts. This time, the Pharisees did not keep their thoughts to themselves. Neither did they say them to Jesus' face. They cornered Andrew, Peter, James, and John and (perhaps in an effort to intimidate them) expressed their objections to Jesus' choice of company. They did it in the form of another question. "Why does he eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"

Jesus did not have to read anyone's thoughts or wait to hear the question of verse 18 from His disciples. People came to Him directly about His failure to fast. Fasting was part of an observant Jew's piety. More pointedly, John the Baptist and his disciples practiced fasting. Jesus and His disciples did not. Why not? This conflict over fasting stands right in the middle of these five episodes and ends with two verses that are crucial to the meaning of all five episodes of Jesus' conflict with the Pharisees: verses 21-22.

"No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away fom the old, making the tear worse. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins."

By uttering these words Jesus meant for people to understand that the new thing He came to bring brought with it the danger of destruction to the old; at the very least it implied the usefulness of the old was drawing to an end; and Jesus was saying that the new thing He came to bring was much more desirable than the old.

Maybe, if it was just fasting, they could have let it go, but even there Jesus' refusal to fast seemed to contradict the practice of His greatest advocate, John the Baptist. "How is it that John's disciples ... are fasting, but yours are not?" "Are you too high and mighty to behave like every other truly pious Jew?"

But eating with tax collectors and sinners was another matter. What was at stake there was the identity of Israel and the boundaries that separated Israel from the surrounding Gentile world. When Jesus sat down to dine with tax collectors and sinners, He was defying what pious Jews saw as an indispensable badge of faithful and loyal Jews and also as a protection of the identity of Israel. He was aiding and abetting Israel's greatest enemy. It was unconscionable, and no one who cared about Israel's glorious past and unique relationship with God among all the nations of the world would overlook it.

Further, teachers of the law who throught Jesus was guilty of blasphemy, when he forgave the paralytic, would tell us they were defending God's ordained method of forgiveness. That method centered in the Jerusalem temple. Sins for God to forgive them had to be atoned for, and atonement took place in the temple with the appropriate sacrifices offered by the appropriate people in the prescribed way.

Why should we not be entirely sympathetic with the suspicions, intimidation and blunt questions that surrounded Jesus' highly irregular actions? Jesus ignored the boundaries that kept Israel's national, God-given identity pure by keeping outsiders out. The guardians of the boundaries responded quickly.

Have you noticed how their responses escalate in these five episodes? When Jesus forgave the paralytic, they kept their thoughts to themselves. When He refused to keep a kosher table and ate with sinners and tax collectors, they expressed their thoughts to His disciples, not to Jesus. When He and His disciples did not practice fasting, they told Him about it directly but apparently with a civil tongue. But when His disciples plucked grain on the Sabbath, their civility vanished. The word Look conveys their overt hostility. "Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?"

Jesus' answer in verses 25-26 comes from 1 Samuel 21. He answered, "Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions." If you are angry at Jesus for His blatant disregard of the Sabbath, His answer seems to have left Him open to criticism on at least three counts. First of all, as Jesus' critics would have known, David also did something to reassure the high priest. He told him that he and his men were in a state of ceremonial purity. Jesus offered no such reassurance about Him and His disciples.

Second, the question in the Galilean grainfield had to do with Sabbath behavior. The episode in 1 Samuel 21 had nothing to do with the Sabbath. David's behavior had to do with the temple. Third and most telling, David and his men could at least plead great personal need to justify eating the consecrated bread. Jesus and His disciples had no such need. They plucked the grain as casually as you might have an afternoon snack.

You can see how Jesus made people angry, and the cavalier way in which they thought He behaved toward the temple, a kosher table, fasting, and now the Sabbath fueled their anger. How would Jesus respond to such criticism? Verses 27-28: Then he said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." That answer is enough to make an eagle in full strength lose its feathers.

First, Jesus said nothing about a state of purity for reasons explained later in Mark. Second, it was true that David's behavior had to do with the temple, and Jesus' behavior had to do with the Sabbath. But anyone who can say He is Lord even of the Sabbath would very likely treat temple rules in the same way He treats Sabbath rules.

Third and most to the point, plucking grain on the Sabbath was an unnecessary act, prompted by no urgent need and done by the disciples in open defiance of what made Israel unique and with no effort on Jesus' part to restrain them. In fact, He chose not to restrain them on principle. "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." What shall we make of this statement?

The first five books of the Old Testament teach us five things about the Sabbath. First, the human Sabbath is rooted in the life of God. Genesis 2:2 says, By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.

Second, God commands observance of the Sabbath. The Fourth Commandment says, "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy," (Ex. 20:8). Third, it was to be a day of rest. Exodus 16:23 says, "This is what the LORD commanded: 'Tomorrow is to be a day of rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD.'" Fourth, a day of rest means a day when people do not work. Exodus 20:9-10 says, Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work.

Fifth, Exodus 31:16 says, The Israelites are to observe the Sabbath, celebrating it for the generations to come as a lasting covenant. The Sabbath marked Israel as having a unique relationship to the God who created all things; it was a mark of their unique identity. In a world where pagan Romans were constantly chipping away at the distinctiveness of God's chosen people, how could a Jew show himself faithful and loyal to Israel's unique calling? One of the answers to that question was to keep a kosher table. Another was to keep a strict Sabbath observance. The rules multiplied to keep it strict and so to mark the boundaries that separated Israel from the rest of the world.

Sixth, Sabbath is to be a day of sacred assembly. Leviticus 23:3 says, The seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, a day of sacred assembly. The people of God come together to worship. Where is anything there about plucking ears of grain or healing on the Sabbath? Rest from work? That sounds like something our overworked society might be glad to hear. That is truly a day made for Man's good. A hundred rules to govern human behavior on that day of rest makes it otherwise.

Seventh, along comes Jesus, and not only does He ignore the rules, He calls Himself Lord even of the Sabbath. Was He saying He was equal to the Lord of Israel, who had commanded Sabbath observance? Was He saying there should be a new and lasting covenant made between Him and a new people of God? Mark in typical fashion raises questions that he does not answer until later, if then.

In the meantime what do we make of Jesus' words and actions in this tense episode? One principle comes through that helps us. Jesus' maverick behavior led to freedom on the Sabbath; it does not lead to freedom from the Sabbath. The church has to regain sight of that principle over and over.

For example, there are people in this congregation today, who remember growing up in a Christian environment that forbade them to read the comics in the Sunday paper. A recovery of Jesus' principle removed that arbitrary rule from their lives. All of us now live in an increasingly pagan environment that treats Sunday worship as one option on the Sunday menu. A recovery of Jesus' principle encourages us not to give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but to encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching (Heb. 10:25).

For another example, until a few years ago, every state had Blue Laws, which mandated that businesses should close on Sunday. Greed and the unremitting demands of capitalism rendered the law obsolete, but a recovery of Jesus' principle has helped the Church to adapt to this new state of affairs with a clear conscience. All of us now live in an increasingly pagan environment that overworks people, including many of you.

When my mom was in the hospital last winter, I noticed that the day nurses that looked after my mother were still working after the 3:00-11:30 shift came on. I said to one of them, "Are you doing a double shift today?" She said, "No, I got off at 3:30, but I often work until 5:30." I said to her, "Doing paper work, right?" She said, "Right."

A recovery of Jesus' principle creates an oasis for us each week to which we come to find spiritual and physical refreshment and perspective on our lives. "The Sabbath was made for man." God gave us this day of rest for our good.

To meet together in unhurried sacred assembly does something else. We "embody an alternative order (of human life) that stands as a sign of God's redemptive purpose in the world," (Hays, 196). We function as the new wineskins into which the new wine of Christ's love and authority is poured and aged and decanted to the masses of earth for their everlasting joy. If each Sunday we serve up vinegar instead of the new wine of the kingdom, it can only be because we have forgotten "the soaring flight above the dullness of a humdrum existence" that took off in that Galilean grainfield so many Sabbaths ago.

You know, I am not preaching through the Gospel of Mark as I am doing because it is Sunday, and I have to find something to talk about. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ mark the decisive moment in the history of the planet. The incomparable gospels of the New Testament convey that decisive moment into the present moment. Each episode invites us to embody again the joy that strode across the earth in the finest moment of the old creation. I preach because Mark has seized me in its everlasting grip.

Read Mark for yourself. Listen to my sermons on Mark. Take off your shoes; you are on holy ground. Allow the little story of your journey through life to merge with the larger story of the Church's journey through the world, which is itself part of the story of Christ and His journey among us, which only ends with His coming again to judge the living and the dead. May His name be praised.