It’s Always The Right Time
Mark 2:23-3:6
Any runners here this morning? Anyone here who gets out of bed and decides to go run 5 miles even though no one is chasing you?
Bernard Lagat knows a lot about long-distance running. He’s a Kenyan-born U.S. citizen and a four-time Olympian. He holds seven American distance running records, ranging from the 1,500 to the 5,000 meters. In the 2012 London Olympics he finished fourth in the 5,000 meters. Although long-distance running is a hard on the joints and muscles, 37-year-old Bernard Lagat shows no signs of slowing down.
You see, even though he maintains a rigorous training schedule, every fall he does something that is completely foreign to most elite runners around the globe: he takes a five-week break – and he’s done that every fall since 1999. According to an article in The New York Times, “He will toss his sneakers into a closet and pig out for five weeks. No running. No sit-ups, no heavy-lifting, except for a fork.” He will also coach his son’s soccer team.
Peter Thompson, a longtime running coach and track and field official, admits that this approach is unique. Thompson said, “In the U.S., runners are very obsessive about not letting go of training.” But Lagat stands by his need for sustained rest. He said that every athlete is different, but his schedule has been very effective. “My runs are very hard,” he said. “Everything I do is hard …. [But] the body is tired. You’re not a machine. Rest is a good thing.”
On the flip side, orthopedic surgeons are noticing a dramatic rise in debilitating injuries among teen athletes. Dr. Frank Cordasco, one of those surgeons, calls it “an epidemic.” He said that he and his team are operating on 200 to 300 kids a year, unheard of even a decade ago. Since the year 2000, there has also been a fivefold increase in the number of serious shoulder and elbow injuries among youth baseball and softball players.
The cause? One factor: a lack of rest. “The current emphasis on playing one sport all year long leaves no time for muscles and joints to recover from the microtrauma that occurs during practice and play.”
And this “epidemic” isn’t unique to younger athletes. Between 1974 and 1994, a total of 12 Major League Baseball pitchers had Tommy John surgery. That’s a surgery to reconstruct the ligament in the elbow. 12 surgeries in 20 years. Over the next 20 years, that number skyrocketed to 290 surgeries. And all of that is just among Major League players. And according to the Stanford University study that reported these numbers, the cause is twofold: 1. The increased velocity pitchers are capable of putting on pitches, and 2. overuse and no time off in the formative teen years.
This knowledge has led modern trainers, coaches, and experts to emphasize rest and active recovery as an important part of every workout regimen, whether you’re training for the Ironman Triathlon, the Bayshore Marathon, or you’re just out for a morning jog to get the heart pumping and the blood flowing and to maybe stay in better shape, or at least work off the pint of ice cream you had last night.
Rest and recovery time is critical to human health, even among fitness buffs. Athletes who don’t rest and allow their bodies to recover risk injury, sometimes significant and costly injury. But it isn’t just our bodies that need rest. Our minds need rest. Our emotional centers need rest. Our souls need rest.
As we continue our journey through the Gospel of Mark, we find Jesus in two encounters with the religious leaders: one on the road and the other as he teaches in the synagogue. And these two encounters have a common theme: the sabbath. He corrects a common misunderstanding about the sabbath that was prevalent in his day, and that has at times been prevalent in our culture too. But in reality, he’s just using the concept of the sabbath, something the religious elites were using to try to trip him up, as a timely example to get across a much deeper point about himself, and about life in the kingdom of God. Turn with me to Mark 2:23-28.
This is the first of the two episodes Mark places side by side that we’re looking at today. Jesus and his disciples are walking along the road between some fields of grain, and his disciples stopped to pick a few heads of grain to munch on as they traveled. In Jewish law, this wasn’t considered stealing. The Law of Moses explicitly granted travelers permission to pick a few heads of grain from along the edge of the field. They just couldn’t use a scythe to harvest more than a handful. That would be considered stealing. And his disciples respect the Law, so they only take a handful to refresh themselves while they travel. The problem wasn’t that they took a few handfuls of grain. That was perfectly legal. The problem was that they did this on the Sabbath. And some Pharisees saw this happen.
Back in the earliest of days, after the people of Israel first went into the Promised Land, Friday at sundown became a time of feasting and singing and enjoying family time. The focus wasn’t as much on what you couldn’t do as what you COULD do. Yes, there were rules regarding the sabbath, but the emphasis was on it being ok to take a day to rest and refresh.
When the people went into exile in Babylon, they clung to the Law of Moses as a reminder of their identity and as a source of unity. It was their way of reminding themselves of their identity as the people of God when they were surrounded by pagans in Babylon. Remember Daniel and his friends choosing to follow the Jewish dietary laws, rather than eat what the Babylonians ate? It was their way of staying faithful to God in exile among a people who didn’t know God. In fact, the Pharisees traced their roots to Daniel and his friends willingness to live according to the law in Babylon. But as time went on, they developed more and more rules to define what was and wasn’t ok, and one of their favorite things to make rules for was the proper way to keep the sabbath.
By Jesus day they had 39 categories of “work” that were forbidden on the sabbath: carrying, burning, extinguishing, finishing, writing, erasing, cooking, washing, sewing, tearing, knotting, untying, shaping, plowing, planting, reaping, harvesting, threshing, winnowing, selecting, sifting, grinding, kneading, combing, spinning, dyeing, chain stitching, warping, weaving, unraveling, building, demolishing, trapping, shearing, slaughtering, skinning, tanning, smoothing, and marking.
Reminds me of the way the rules for a game kids are playing grow over time. What starts out as fun soon becomes a burden as time outs are called to make new rules, rules usually designed to hamper the skill with which the best ones at the game are playing it. The simple command to rest had become 39 categories of things you couldn’t do in the act of resting.
But the disciples didn’t do any of those things, right? Well, not according to the Pharisees. Their custom defined exactly what they did as “work.” Some leader somewhere had said, “Plucking wheat from its stem is reaping, rubbing the wheat heads between one’s palms is threshing, and blowing away the chaff is winnowing” and it stuck. Oh, you won’t find that in the Bible anywhere, but it had been added as extra explanation for a few of the 39 categories. What God had intended as a blessing humanity turned into a burden.
Now, this isn’t the first run-in Jesus has had with the Pharisees. He’s had a few now, so maybe the Pharisees were tracking him, following along at a safe distance to keep an eye on him. Or maybe they had some of their own in Jesus’ entourage. Remember, at this point it wasn’t just his disciples and a few others with him. There were many people following him. Or maybe there were some Pharisees who really wanted to follow Jesus, and they were really disturbed. Regardless, some Pharisees noticed what they considered work being done on the sabbath by Jesus’ disciples, and because the actions of a disciple reflect on the leader, they call Jesus out on it.
So he launches into a seemingly unconnected retelling of the story of David and his men entering the temple and eating the bread of the Presence. Only it really isn’t unconnected. David and those faithful to him were fleeing from Saul and his men. David had been anointed king, replacing Saul, who had disobeyed God. It was God’s desire to move on to David and his lineage, and not allow Saul’s son Jonathan to take the throne. In fact, Saul was supposed to step aside right away. But is it really any surprise that he refuses, and starts going after David, trying to kill him? Human beings don’t set aside power very willingly. David had been anointed king, but Saul refused to relinquish his crown, and so he goes after David.
And at one point David and his men go to the priest begging for sustenance to continue their flight, but the priest tells him he doesn’t have any bread. Only the bread of the Presence, which was the most holy part of the sacrificed offering and was to be eaten only by the priests, and then only in a holy place. But David receives the bread and gives it to his men to eat. Something more important than who can eat the bread was happening, and took precedence. The story is told in 1 Samuel 16.
And just as David had been anointed king and Saul refused to give up his crown, so the true king was in their midst, and the Pharisees refused to acknowledge his authority. And he makes his authority abundantly clear: “The Son of Man (that’s a messianic title here) is lord even of the Sabbath.” And Jesus, the Son of Man, was correcting something that had gone horribly wrong: “Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” The blessing had become a burden, as people chafed under a list of things they couldn’t do on the Sabbath.
Sabbath isn’t something we HAVE to do, it is something we GET to do! God’s law is a blessing, designed to elevate the quality of our lives and to restore our relationships with God and with one another when we fall short and fall into sin. It is a gift, not a burden.
Legalists love to word things in negatives (what you can’t do) instead of positives (what you CAN do), and they love long lists of rules. They also love to be in charge of what is and isn’t on the list of rules. So things they’re good at not doing tend to be on the list and things they’re not good at avoiding tend not to be on the list. Instead of, “Yay, we get to rest!,” Sabbath had become a long list of 39 categories of things you couldn’t do. And we all know what happens to lists of rules, right? Do they grow or shrink? They never shrink!
I mean, it wasn’t even permissible to render medical aid on the Sabbath unless the person’s life was in danger! There was actually a rule telling parents that if their child had a dislocated joint or broken bone, they had to leave it until sundown unless life was in danger. Sheesh! Grace and mercy have been replaced by a list of do’s and don’ts, as we’re about to see. Look now at the next set of verses, Matthew 3:1-6.
Following on the heels of the encounter out by the fields of grain, Jesus is now teaching in the synagogue. And there is a man there who has a withered hand. We don’t know anything more about the man than that. And he never speaks. We don’t even know why he is really there. We just know that the Pharisees in the synagogue are watching Jesus specifically to see if he will heal this man on the Sabbath. The word used for “watched” indicates close, intense observation. Like a watchman on the wall or a suspicious customer carefully watching the store keeper weigh something out to make sure he isn’t cheated.
The fact that the Pharisees are watching Jesus this carefully specifically to see whether or not he’ll heal the man on the Sabbath leads me to think that this man is a plant. Not that he’s in on their little plan. Just that maybe they found a way to make sure that he was there where Jesus would see him. “Hey pal. Man, that hand is a bummer. Hey, that powerful new rabbi Jesus, you know – the one who has healed all those people, is going to be in town at synagogue this Sabbath. You should really try to be there. Never know what he’ll do. (Wink Wink, nudge nudge).” You know, that kind of thing.
Think about that for a minute. They want Jesus to show mercy on the man and heal him SO THAT THEY CAN POUNCE and prove he’s some godless, false teacher. What kind of God do they think God is, anyway? A God who wants people to suffer? A God who is waiting for people to mess up so he can pounce? What narrative about who God is are they living under?
And what does Jesus, God in the flesh, reveal about who God is, what God is like? He beats them to the punch. He sees the man. He’s probably sitting somewhere easy for Jesus to see, like the front row. And Jesus invites him to join him. And then he asks a question – “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or harm, to save life or to kill?” They refuse to say anything. And he heals the man.
Do you realize that no one asked Jesus to heal this man? The man himself didn’t ask. None of his friends or family members asked. The Pharisees who are using the man as a tool, an object to be manipulated for their own means, don’t ask. No one asked Jesus to heal this man. And yet he finds himself healed. This is the only time Jesus heals someone without being asked first. He healed and delivered many. But he was typically asked to do so, and filled with grace and mercy, he healed. Here, he heals, even though no one asks. What does Jesus reveal about who God is? A God of grace and mercy and compassion. And maybe, possible, even more grace and mercy for those who are oppressed – pawns in the schemes of others.
Now, notice the two emotions Jesus experiences here – anger and grief. The word for anger is typically used of God’s anger in response to sin. Anger at rules and regulations and people who want to keep someone from grace and forgiveness and healing. Anger as God’s fixed response to sin, not explosive and unpredictable like human anger. And the word for grief indicates both sorrow and sympathy. Sorrow at the condition of a soul that would seek to use the Sabbath and mercy as a trap, and sympathy at the condition of the man’s hand and his being used as a pawn, viewed as an object, not a real person who matters greatly to God.
But the Pharisees hearts are hardened. We tend to think of hard-heartedness as unfeeling, cold, and calculating. But that isn’t what it meant to them. For the Jews, the heart was where decisions were made. Today we might use the term “hard-headed” to get at the concept Mark is communicating here. They’re too stubborn and willful and stuck in their own ideas of what Jesus should and shouldn’t be doing to see what God is doing right in front of them. The law of God didn’t prohibit healing on the Sabbath, but their customs did, and that was more important to them than anything else. Once again, humanity tries to stuff Jesus into their box, and once again, Jesus refuses to play the game.
He could have appeased them, telling the man to wait until sundown, and then he would heal them. The Pharisees would have had absolutely no problem with that. He could have compromised, doing it in secret, letting the Pharisees think he met their expectations but really not. But he took neither of those paths. He chose to take a stand, and he healed their pawn right in their faces, on the Sabbath.
Funny thing though, in reality, Jesus didn’t do any work! He still didn’t break their Sabbath rules. Yes, he healed the man, but he didn’t DO anything. He only spoke, and that wasn’t forbidden. But their so hard-headed that they don’t care. They go off and join the Herodians and start plotting to destroy him. The Herodians were the mirror opposite of the Pharisees. The Pharisees hated their Roman oppressors and everything Rome stood for, the loved the Law of God, and they wanted everyone in Israel to follow God’s Law.
The Herodians were supporters of the line of Herod, Caesar’s puppet king in Israel (although Caesar really ruled through his governors). He gave Israel a king to deal with specifically Jewish issues that didn’t matter to Rome. The current king was the son of Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, who had arrested and beheaded Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist. Herodians were barely Jewish by this point, and wanted nothing to do with the Jewish religion. They loved Rome and all things Roman and wanted to join in on everything Rome was doing.
What did these two groups have in common? They wanted to be rid of Jesus. The Herodians because they didn’t want any Jewish religious ripples to cause a rift with Rome. The Pharisees because Jesus refused to fit into their box. And so together they plotted to kill him. And look carefully at V. 6. There’s that word again – immediately. It’s still the Sabbath, and they’re plotting to destroy Jesus. It wasn’t ok to do no work to heal a man on the Sabbath, but it was ok to plot the destruction of someone on the Sabbath. Takes us back to Jesus’ question to them in the synagogue, doesn’t it? “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?”
Truth is, Christians have often had to work on the Sabbath, working before and after worship in cultures in which there is no legalized day of rest. And at the same time, the concept of a work week and a weekend is based in the Jewish and Christian Sabbath day of rest. Sabbath rest is a gift from God, and was never intended to be a burden. And more importantly, God is a God of grace and mercy and forgiveness. Grace, grace, grace. We cannot, and must not, let our expectations, customs, and desires keep others from finding hope and healing in time of need. The Pharisees had one view of God. Jesus revealed a different one – the truth. Which one is yours? Let us pray.
