Posts Tagged ‘Sabbath’

Which Jesus? Which God? Controversy stories

June 1, 2024

Pentecost 2 – 2024

Mark 2:23-3:6 (A short comment while on leave)

Marian Free

In the name of God Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. Amen.

Another year and another look at the Gospel of Mark.

As I began a new reading of Mark’s gospel I noticed something that I had not seen before. That is that in the first few chapters one of the things that the writer of Mark appears to be doing is establishing the nature of Jesus.

Jesus’ public ministry begins with his casting out of an unclean spirit who recognizes Jesus as the ‘Holy One of God’ (1:27). A number of healings and exorcisms follow. At this early stage of the gospel, even though Mark is remarkably silent on Jesus’ actual teaching, it is his teaching that stands out: ‘A new teaching, with authority!’

 According to Mark, as a result of Jesus’ work he becomes so well known that he has to seek refuge in the country. When he returns the trouble begins. In Mark’s hurry to get to the cross, he follows his introduction to Jesus five controversy stories – accounts of Jesus’ conflict (differences of opinion) with the lay leaders of the church – the scribes, the Pharisees and the Herodians. Jesus’ controversial behaviour and his justification of the same, so infuriate the leaders that together they plot to put him to death.

 As Mark tells it, within a short period Jesus causes considerable offence to the teachers of the law. He claims to be able to forgive sins – which they believe is God’s prerogative. He eats with tax collectors and sinners and in so doing breaks the purity laws and withholds judgement of those who by choice or accident fail to keep the law. He justifies the actions of his disciples who do not fast in the traditional way and, in the reading that we have this morning, he reinterprets the meaning of the Sabbath (implying that he – not the teachers of the law) – knows the mind of God.

 Jesus defends the actions of his disciples who ‘work’ on the Sabbath and Jesus reminds the teachers that the law – including the law to rest on the Sabbath – is God’s gift to humanity not a burden imposed on them. By healing the man with the withered hand, Jesus makes it clear that the Sabbath rest is no reason to extend a person’s suffering for even one day longer than necessary.

What is different between the teaching and actions of Jesus and those of the scribes and Pharisees is that Jesus presents an expansive, loving and forgiving image of God.

A God who doesn’t bind us up or exclude us because we fail to live according to the narrow limits of the Pharisaic interpretation of the law, a God who doesn’t condemn the sinner to a lifetime of self loathing and regret, a God who gave the law not to confine and weigh down, but to liberate to to give ease, and a God whose capacity to heal and restore is not limited to six days out of seven but is freely available whenever and wherever someone is in need.

In presenting God in this way, or claiming to speak as if he knows God’s mind, Jesus threatens the Pharisees’ sense of order and control. A narrow interpretation of the law and a view of God that upheld that interpretation had helped to give them a sense of security. If black was black and white was white, they knew where they stood, they could teach others a set of simple precepts that would ensure that they remained on the right side of God and they could pass judgement on those who failed to live according to their code. Jesus’ teaching and actions completely undermined what they held to be true. Jesus has shaken the bed rock of their certainty and taken away the criteria against which they have been able to judge themselves and others. No wonder they are terrified. No wonder they wanted to rid themselves of the person who was able to unsettle their sense of security. They were frightened and anxious. They wanted the source of all their uncertainty to disappear (even if that disappearance is their own doing).

 To some extent the tensions between Jesus and the Pharisees continues to beset the church today. There are those among us who seek certainty and who find in Jesus’ teaching clear guidelines for determining how to win salvation and how to decide who is and who is not acceptable to God. There are others, among whom I count myself, who see in Jesus one who makes no demands but that of faith, who offers no certainty except that of the in love of God and who insists that compassion and inclusion trump judgement and exclusion every time.

 When you read Jesus’ controversies with the teachers of the law, who and what do you see?

 

 

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When good is perceived as evil

June 6, 2015

Pentecost 2 -2015

Mark 3:20-35

Marian Free

 In the name of God whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts. Amen.

If you have never read the Gospel of Mark from beginning to end, may I suggest that you take the time to do so. Mark’s account of Jesus is quite short and I think most of us could read it in one or two sittings. This is important, because, it is only by reading the gospel from start to finish that we can gain some idea of the plot development and of the themes that run through the gospel. For example, a prominent theme is Mark’s gospel is that of “conflict”, in particular a conflict regarding who has authority – Jesus or the religious leaders? The question can be narrowed down still further to “who has God’s authority – the authority to represent God before the people?” – Jesus or those who have been given, or who have assumed the authority to interpret scripture and to guard and to pass on the traditions of the faith. When the question is narrowed down still further, we begin to see that the conflict is a contest between good and evil, between the heavenly authorities and earthly authorities, between God and Satan.

The earthly authorities (whether the Pharisees, the scribes, the Sadducees, the priests or the Herodians) try over and over again to discredit Jesus, to demonstrate that he not only disregards the law and the traditions of the elders, but that he willfully breaks the law and ignores the traditions. The “authorities” are determined to assert their own authority to represent God, and to expose Jesus as a madman, a fraud, a blasphemer or worse, an agent of Satan. Instead of which they themselves are exposed as self-serving, misrepresenting God, misinterpreting scripture, enforcing a tradition that has reached its use-by date and worse, as blasphemers. Despite the best effort of “the authorities”, in every confrontation Jesus is able to turn the tables on his accusers and to reveal them to be guilty of the very things of which they accuse him.

Jesus is accused of breaking the Sabbath, but whereas his actions (of healing) lead to wholeness and life, the action of the authorities on that same day is to plot Jesus’ death. The authorities try to entrap him with questions about divorce and about the resurrection, but Jesus knows the scriptures so well that he is able to point out that they simply do not understand. They accuse Jesus of breaking the law only to have Jesus point out their hypocrisy and their propensity to twist the law to suit themselves. All their attempts to entangle Jesus or to cause him to lose face before the people have the opposite effect. A result of the conflict – which they have instigated – is that the so-called “authorities” are revealed as loveless, legalistic hypocrites.

Nowhere is the battle between good and evil so clear as in today’s gospel. This is the last of the first series of confrontations between Jesus and the authorities. So far Jesus has been accused of blasphemy, of breaking the laws of ritual purity, of failing to observe fast days and of breaking the Sabbath. At the same time the crowds have identified Jesus as “one having authority” and the evil spirits have recognised Jesus as the Holy One of God. The end result is a conspiracy to destroy him.

In today’s gospel, the scene is set when Jesus’ family, made anxious by reports that he is “out of his mind”, come to restrain him. The idea that Jesus himself might be possessed by an evil spirit is taken up by the scribes (who apparently have come all the way from Jerusalem to Galilee to attack him). The scribes accuse Jesus of having Beelzebul (Satan) claiming that only Beelzebul would have the power that Jesus has to cast out demons.

Such a claim is so ridiculous that it is easy for Jesus to demonstrate that it is utterly baseless. No one would possibly try to defeat an opponent by destroying members of their own team. Jesus points out that is only because he has already defeated Satan that he can now so easily dispense with Satan’s minions. Having dealt with the attack on him, Jesus turns the tables on his accusers. He suggests that by identifying him with Satan, the scribes have revealed their true nature and committed the most serious sin of all – that of the sin against the Holy Spirit which is the only sin for which there is no forgiveness. In Jesus, the scribes have seen evil and not good and in so doing they have confused God with Satan. Their attack on Jesus has exposed just how completely they have come to depend on themselves and on earthly authority and how, as a consequence, they have effectively shut God out of their lives. They cannot recognise in Jesus God’s beauty, love, wisdom and compassion. Instead they see in him only evil and threat.

Worse, what is good has become to them so threatening and so disturbing, that they believe that they have to destroy it. The scribes are so intent on preserving their position and their traditions that anything that shakes the status quo is, by their definition, evil. The goodness and life that Jesus represents is to them the source of evil and death.

This then, is the unforgivable sin, to mistake what is good for evil. The scribes have become so blind to goodness that they have closed their hearts to all that is good and true. Believing themselves to be arbiters of good and evil, the scribes simply cannot see that they are in need of forgiveness. They have so effectively locked God out of their hearts and lives that they have put themselves out of reach of God’s loving compassion. It is not so much that God won’t forgive, but that they will not allow God to forgive because instead of seeing in Jesus an example of God’s goodness, they can only see the destruction of everything that they have come to hold dear.

Seeing evil in what is good is not limited to Jesus’ first century opponents. A willingness to rely on human authority and a desire to maintain the status quo has led to acts of oppression and injustice and that have seen the imprisonment and torture of good and prophetic men and women. It is fear of change and distrust of the other that has allowed humanity to turn a blind eye to the abuse of power and the destruction of innocents discrimination against those who are different and rejection of those whom we imagine would threaten our lifestyles.

My our lives be so focused on God that we are not so afraid of change or so determined to hold on to what we have known and believed to be true that we fail to see goodness when it is right in front of us. May our lives be so driven by God’s love and wisdom and compassion that we do not hear the voice of change as the voice of evil when the change is for the greater good.

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