The Gospel this morning, has Jesus facing controversy based on something that is significant to us as we seek to live faithfully.
Jesus is walking with his disciples on the Sabbath and they’re hungry so they do what any of us would do, especially if you live in Kansas and find yourself in a wheat field. You just take a couple of stocks in your hand and pull upward. Voila. You have a handful of wheat kernels you can eat… or better chew on. If you’ve ever done that, it’s not like a great feast but if you’re hungry it helps. But for those around him, doing anything close to working on the Sabbath was strictly forbidden. It was the law. And Jesus just let it happen. It was just too much for those who watched it unfold.
This isn’t the only time he got in trouble with religious folks; many saw him as a sinner, and the way they saw sin, Jesus sure looked like one. Sin was seen as a violation of God’s law and those watching Jesus on that Sabbath knew that keeping the Sabbath day holy meant no work. Not even if it meant that you had to go hungry. Even grabbing a couple of wheat kernels and popping it in your mouth was considered work, and thus it was forbidden.
There were no loopholes here. If you broke the Law, it was understood that you were disobeying God. It’s not that they thought it was even possible to live in such a way where the rules weren’t broken, so most people in the first century (and it’s the same with us) walked around in existential dread that God was angry at them. Just like the people in the story this morning, this motivates our actions but in a weird way. We try to do all these things hoping that somehow, God will grade us on the curve. We know we aren’t perfect, so we drown ourselves in guilt and regret but never live up to our own standards, let alone what we tend to think is God’s.
It’s clear to bystanders that allowing his disciples to do any kind of work on the Sabbath, Jesus is violating the law. What happens when we do the same? Is God mad at us? When we fail to live in such a way where the commandments aren’t violated, is God more pleased with us? Is our future on shaky ground because, no matter what our attempts are, we always seem to fail? Brian McLaren articulates the effect this struggle has on us. He writes that most of us walk worrying about the future, our own and the future of those we love. He writes that we feel anxiety “and a sweet, piercing sadness, not just for ourselves, but also for everyone and everything everywhere, all at once.” We do all we can to mask the sense of doom but “we can’t shake this sense that were in trouble… our civilization’s Jenga tower is about to crumble, our inner sanctum of normalcy is about to be breached, our global status quo is about to blow, our scariest worst-case scenarios are about to stop being imaginary.”(Brian McLaren).
Part of our anxiety comes from thinking that God is mad at us. Most of us in this room believe there is a God but too many of us misunderstand who God is, how God both requires from us and relates to us. It’s no wonder we walk around confused, full of sadness, absurdity, and despair.
That’s why the Gospel is central to us as we seek a way to be faithful. Our future seems so tenuous and who could blame us for the despair we often feel. Yet Thomas Merton helps here because he reminds us how futile our worry is: “it doesn’t matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things; or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it or not… We are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.” This draws into question the despair we might feel.
Sin isn’t make believe. Its power destroys lives and threatens us. But why did Jesus seem to ignore the law? We say all the time that Jesus was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. Let’s take a quick deep dive into what sin is.
“Sin is when we fail to live in loving relationships with one another as God intended, and instead allow desire to take us down the path toward envy, rivalry, accusation, violence, and murder. Sin is violence against others, and especially the violence against them that we commit in God’s name.”
Sin exists but it is “primarily violence and the things that lead to violence. Sin is the primary human problem because sin is damaging and destructive to humans and all human relationships. Those who sin are both hurt by sin and hurt others with sin.” Notice I didn’t say sin was violating a set of rules. It’s deeper than that and more insidious.
Sin is “living inhuman lives; lives that do not treat others as human beings made in the image of God, and lives that do not live up to our full potential as human beings in God’s image. Sin causes us to live as less than human.”
Here’s the key: “God is not angry at us for our sin. While sin is a serious thing, God is not concerned about sin simply because it is sin. That is, God doesn’t tell us to stay away from sin because sin offends, hurts or angers God. Purely from God’s perspective, sin just isn’t that big a deal. The reason God is concerned about sin and wants all humans to stop sinning, is not because God is offended or angered by sin, but because we humans are hurt and damaged by it.
Jesus tells us that the reason they believe the actions he allowed the disciples to take are sinful is that they misunderstood the reason for the Sabbath and the context in which the Sabbath laws were in place. What was given to humanity was a gift of rest and reclaiming the goodness of creation. Don’t work, rest. Don’t push, enjoy. It was not supposed to be a restrictive commandment but a way to find happiness and health so that we can be faithful stewards. Law was given so that we can have wholeness in our lives and relationships. They weren’t supposed to be understood to keep God happy by obeying God’s rules. In a weird twist, we have taken something that was to give us freedom and health and right relationships into something burdensome and crushing. Jesus will have none of that.
Ultimately when we sin, we become alienated from God, from creation and from one another. It’s not about disobeying God, but, rather, it is us failing to live up to our God-given joy of being truly human. The goal is to not just live into a bunch of rules but rather, to become and live as fully human, like God desires. Things like lust, greed, theft and lying are sinful but not because they make God mad. They are sins because they deceive us to see others as a means to an end, and always lead to the very sin that crucified Jesus: violence against other human beings.
When we sin, it dehumanizes ourselves and other people in our lives, keeping us from living fully into the task God has given us: caring for others, creation and ourselves. God doesn’t want us to jump through hoops but rather to experience the goodness and promise of this life. Jesus calls us to a depth of living that has nothing to do with keeping a series of do’s and don’ts but rather to a life where we love others as God loves us. That’s a life well lived. In Jesus name.