Mind Meld of A Different Kind

MARK 2:23-28
One Sabbath day as Jesus was walking through some grain fields, his disciples began breaking off heads of grain to eat. But the Pharisees said to Jesus, “Look, why are they breaking the law by harvesting grain on the Sabbath?”

Jesus said to them, “Haven’t you ever read in the Scriptures what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He went into the house of God (during the days when Abiathar was high priest) and broke the law by eating the sacred loaves of bread that only the priests are allowed to eat. He also gave some to his companions.”

Then Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord, even over the Sabbath!”

A Risk Worth Taking
Here we go with this authority thing again. But, I’m glad. I’ll give authority to Jesus any day, every day. Just deliver me from the hairsplitting, or is that grain splitting (?), of deeply pious religious people like, - well, like myself!

The human propensity toward institutionalizing, codifying, and then adjudicating etches itself on every human society whether ancient Babylon, with Hammurabi’s Code in the 18th Century BC, or the volumes of case law filling American lawyer’s shelves today; and every society in between. So also religious groups of virtually every size. We see the early Church begin to institutionalize within weeks of its Pentecostal beginning when the Apostles organized Deacons and gave them a job description. No human social group would long survive without these three elements.

But, alas, our race is fallen from a state of pure goodness to a mixed state of good and evil. Everything good we do, or organize, comes with an evil back side. It’s as if sin moons us (and more) every time we do something good!

The Sabbath was and is good. It’s the best labor law in history! Employers, you have to give your people a rest, at least one day in seven! Before the dancing ends, however, a whiff of those adjudicating rotten eggs fills the air.

Someone is bound to ask, “Well, now, exactly what is work?” “What can I and can’t I require of my workers on the seventh day?” Someone has to rule (adjudicate) on the question. We accuse the Pharisees of all these bad-boy, man-made rules, but what were they to do when people started asking questions!? And the good becomes bad as the law books proliferate to answer the questions, “But, can I do this and what about that?”

I love Jesus! He’s risky. He delivers us from the lawyers’ musty library. “Just ask,” he insists, “is my action helping the person it immediately affects?” The boys and I were hungry, so we picked some grain. Might this start a ripple effect that one day leads to all out harvesting in the Sabbath? Yes, some people will always misuse the need-meeting freedom Jesus gives them. But that’s the risk Jesus took, so central was human need to his thinking.

Deeply pious types, like myself, and not a few church members, must repeat this day in Jesus’ life over and over again, as if it were the movie “Ground Hog Day,” until we get it right. Protecting people from abusing God’s Law by adding more, even “helpful” rules isn’t worth the risk such rigidity poses to human needs.

Father, help me take religious risks! Help me break free of the fear that others will see in my actions an excuse to misuse your truth. Deliver me from the penchant to make more rules in order to protect those I care about from abusing your Law. Keep in front of me one question, “Am I helping people meet the needs of those around them?” I will trust your Son to give me, and others, wisdom to meet those needs the way you would have us. I give you complete authority.