Get Used to Different
Scripture: Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18; Mark 2:23-3:6
Psalm 139. Isn’t it just beautiful. It is one of my favorites and perhaps one of your favorites. What the psalm tells us then is that God is with us at the core of our very being, deeper than anything we can ever try to measure or understand. The psalm reassures us that no matter what, God knows us, each and every one of us and that we are precious in God’s sight. And I see Jesus living out that reality in our gospel text for today. Jesus-Lord of the Sabbath—cares more about people—on restoring and healing them—than following the right rules.
Our Gospel reading from Mark today describes a confrontational scene between Jesus and the Pharisees. Side note: Our Bible study group is finishing up season 2 of The Chosen (a TV series about Jesus and the disciples). Just a few weeks ago we explored this very scene! I love when what we are doing in Bible study coincided with what we explore in worship.
Back to the scene: In the first part -Jesus and his disciples are walking through a grain field on the Sabbath. When they get hungry, the disciples pluck a few heads of grain to munch on; Jesus doesn’t stop them, and the Pharisees ask Jesus why he’s allowing his followers to break the Sabbath. Jesus answers, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath; so, the son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”
In the second part, Jesus enters the synagogue, and meets a man with a withered hand. Knowing that he’s being watched, Jesus asks the Pharisees whether it’s lawful to “do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill.” But the Pharisees refuse to answer. Angered and grieved by their hardness of heart, Jesus heals the man with the withered hand. The story ends, with the Pharisees leaving the synagogue to plot against Jesus’s life.
One quote we hear throughout The Chosen series come from a simple conversation between Jesus and Simon (not yet called Peter). In reflecting on Jesus’ teaching Simon says:
“This is different”
“Get used to different,” Jesus replied.
And this is what our text highlights for us today. Jesus shows a different way of understanding the Sabbath.
Traditional ---and anti-Semitic interpretations of this text put a rigid, legalistic Judaism up against Jesus. And that is wrong. We do an injustice to the Pharisees if we write them off as bad people. They were good people trying to uphold and protect laws, rituals and traditions that that were instrumental to their faith.
Don’t we do exactly the same thing? Let’s be honest. How about when we hold fast to our favorite worship practices, spiritual disciplines, and daily rituals? Don’t we just as easily decide what is holy in our own lives and then hold onto them when even when those things are no longer life giving? The Pharisees were not wrong to uphold the Sabbath. They were absolutely right. But rightness is not love. Rightness is not compassion. Sometimes the way we interpret rules needs an overhaul.
Who or what have we stopped seeing because our eyes have been blinded by our own best intentions? What are we clinging to that is not God? (Debi Thomas-Lord of the Sabbath Lectionary Essay)
These are some serious questions for our hearts this morning. How do our eyes need to be opened? What do we need to understand more clearly about whom God is and what the love of God means?
Jesus was always revealing a deeper truth about who God is, and what the love of God means. That’s what we see unfold in our reading today and it is just as important for us as it was for the Pharisees to hear. Jesus was revealing that God cares about people’s empty bellies more than rules that were not life giving. To understand the love of God in that way might mean that the Pharisees would have to let go of certain ideas about the Sabbath.
As Jesus healed in the synagogue, he was revealing a deeper truth about what the love of God means. By healing on the Sabbath day, maybe Jesu was showing us that, in God’s mind, every day is a day to heal; every day is a day for us to do what is life-giving and good.
The disciples thought they knew what Love was all about. We think we knew what love means. And just when we think we have it figured out, Jesus takes us deeper, shows us more, asks us to let go of what we thought we knew, to love more deeply.
As we follow Jesus, he always wants to show us more and expand our vision of love of what loving our neighbor looks like. Often times we grow the most when the God asks us to let go of what we thought we knew.
Friends, it is time to get used to different. Different can be ok. Different can be life-giving.
Why would a man risk his own life to heal a stranger's withered hand?
Why?
Compassion. Love.
Sabbath is about God and God is about love. Love that feeds the hungry. Love that heals the sick. Love that sees and attends to the invisible. If we truly want to honor the Lord of the Sabbath, then we have to be willing to let go of the things that we hold so tightly—if they aren’t about love.
It might be different….but Lord, help us to get used to different!
Amen