Jesus, the Rebel With a Cause
Throughout the Gospel of Mark, we see a growing opposition to Jesus from the Pharisees and the other religious leaders of the day. To understand that, we need to look at the religious landscape Jesus ministered in. In Jesus’ time, there were three sects of Jews and then the rest of the population. Through the Gospel account, we find that Jesus is in conversation with these three groups. Most of what Jesus taught was not new but were elements taken from each of these three groups. So while Jesus started in conversation with these groups, each of them felt threatened by Him and moved the conversations to confrontations. But who were these groups?
The Essenes are not directly mentioned in the Gospels but certainly referred to. They were a very small monastic group which emphasized separating from the evil in society, either in monastic communities or communities of faith in towns across Israel. They also separated themselves from Temple worship because they believed the priests of the Temple were corrupted and thus their leadership in worship was illegitimate. Some scholars believe that Nazareth may well have been an Essene community meaning Jesus either had close contact with them or direct participation. Jesus’ conflict with them was that they removed themselves from the unclean rather than help them to be clean.
The Sadducees were a group of priests from the tribe of Levi and were the wealthy upper class and educated elite who were the priests and scribes. They comprised approximately 10% of the population of Israel, about 50,000 people. They oversaw Temple worship which was the center of Judaism. They believed when you came to God, you came to the Temple and brought your sacrifices. They were the most conservative of the Jews meaning the kept to the oldest of traditions. They looked at the Law of Moses, the first five books of the Old Testament as the only inspired Word of God. They had great respect for the rest of the Scriptures but the laws they followed were only in the first five books. They did not believe in the resurrection of the dead or the afterlife because it was not mentioned in the Law of Moses. And so everything they believed and every practice of their faith was grounded in the first 5 books. The Sadducees had the most to lose because of Jesus. Jesus’ growing influence and following among the general population jeopardized not only their influence on the religious life of Israel, but also the support of the Romans who ruled through the Sadducees to keep peace among the people.
On the other end of the spectrum were the Pharisees whose name means the “called out ones” or “set apart ones.” There were approximately 6000 Pharisees in Israel in Jesus’ time, roughly 1% of the population, and many of them resided in Jerusalem and in and around the Sea of Galilee. They were the most prominent of the religious sect of Jesus’ day in terms of their influence over the general population, in part because they too came from the lower class.
While the Sadducees ruled over the temple, the Pharisees were the leaders of the synagogue, the place where the majority of Jews went for worship, study of the Hebrew Scriptures and discussion of how to apply them to life. They were lay teachers of the law and their made emphasis was on holiness which meant strict fulfillment of the law. They accepted the entire Old Testament as the word of God and believed in a number of things like angels and demons and even life after death. The remnants of the Pharisees remain today in Orthodox Judaism. They are the only sect to survive because when the Temple was destroyed so were the Sadducees and the Essenes’ monastic communities were destroyed in Rome’s suppression of the rebellion of Israel in 68 AD. Though Jews today would not consider themselves Pharisees, they are greatly impacted by them and their heritage.
Now the Pharisees emphasized strict adherence to the 613 laws of Moses. To be righteous before God, you have to make sure that people don’t unintentionally violate any of the laws. So they created a set of rules around the Law, called the oral law or mishnah, which acted as a hedge of protection so people wouldn’t violate the Law. When commentary was added to the rules and written down, it become known as the Talmud. For example, take the fourth commandment to keep the Sabbath holy which said you shall not do any work on the Sabbath. But what really qualifies as work? The oral law clarified what work was. They came up with 39 different categories which could be construed as work and in each of those categories, there were dozens of rules which defined what work was which violated the Sabbath. So now instead of there being 613 laws, there are 1000’s of rules on top of it. One example was that a tailor was not to carry a needle with them on the Sabbath because that was a tool of their trade and thus considered work to carry it. Another rule was not to walk more than 2000 cubits or 3000 feet on the Sabbath. Food cannot be prepared on the Sabbath. Today Orthodox Jews have their own Sabbath rules which include not driving a car, riding a motorcycle or a bike or even turning a light switch on or off. So the oral law acted as a fence to protect you from breaking the law.
More than anything the Pharisees wanted to be holy and they called the people of Israel to lead holy lives. But somewhere along the way, Jesus thought they had gone astray. They had so emphasized the law that they failed to follow the Spirit or purpose of the Law and thus God’s will. It is around over the oral and written law where conflict arises between Jesus and the Pharisees. Beginning in Mark Chapter 2 there are a series of events showing an escalating conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees. All of these take place in and around Capernaum. The historical context of this region is very important to understanding the growing conflict with Jesus. This area had an influx of settlers some 200 years before Jesus. They were Jews who had decided to stay in Babylon after the exile but when they heard there was a revolt in 200 BC and the government was under a Jewish control, they decided to return and begin preparations for the coming of the Messiah. These settlers were Orthodox Jews whose main concern was holiness by following the laws to the letter. So the region in which Jesus decides to do the majority of his ministry is very conservative and strict in its adherence to the Law.
The town of Capernaum is the home base of Jesus’ ministry. He spends the vast majority of his public ministry in and around this town and the Sea of Galilee. In our Scripture today is the first scene of the clash between the Pharisees and Jesus. Some people bring their paralytic friend to Jesus and ask him to be healed. Jesus seeing the Pharisees there turns to this man and says, “Your sins are forgiven.” The Pharisees are unnerved by this and ask, “Who has the right to forgive sins except God?” That actually was a very good question because it gets to the very heart of Jesus identity. Christians believe that Jesus is God who walked in the flesh here on earth. But Jesus says, “That you may know the son in God in heaven has the ability to forgiven sins, young man take up your mat and walk.” This man who was paralyzed gets up and walks. But the Pharisees are unnerved by this. That’s scene one.
Scene two. Jesus is calling disciples to himself and he calls a tax collector named Levi. Now tax collectors are considered sinners and thieves and some rabbis believed they could never be forgiven because there was no way for them to make amends for all the people they hurt by overcharging them for taxes which was how tax collectors collected their wages. Levi who for the first time feels hope for forgiveness in his life and the chance to get right with God then invites all of his tax collector buddies to dinner to meet Jesus. And the Scripture tells us that Jesus ate with “sinners and tax collectors.” Now Pharisees believed that if you ate with a sinner, you are unclean so the Pharisees go to Jesus’ disciples and ask, “Why is Jesus eating with people like that?” The Pharisees thought Jesus might be one of them because he was teaching among the common people, just like the Pharisees, and was teaching in their synagogues and you had to be a Pharisaic rabbi to teach in the synagogue. But the problem was Jesus was breaking the oral and written law.
Scene Three. The people thought Jesus was a Pharisee for they come to Jesus and the disciples asking why they were not fasting like the Pharisees.
Scene four has Jesus and the disciples walking on the Sabbath and they pluck the grain from the stalks and they rub it together. Now this is considered to be work on the Sabbath. They eat the grain and the Pharisees ask Jesus why he is having his disciples do work on the Sabbath. Do you see the growing conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees? Jesus is breaking their rules and thus the law of Moses. These rules dictated who’s holy and who’s in and who’s out and all of this is being challenged by Jesus.
Our Scripture today happens in a synagogue. The excavations of Capernaum reveal the streets and building foundations of the time of Jesus and so when you walk in Capernaum today, you are literally walking where Jesus walked. Located there are the remains of a white columned synagogue which was rebuilt using that material in the second century. In Jesus’ day, it would have been black basalt from the volcanic rock in the area. It was here at this synagogue that Jesus would have seen the man with the withered hand and healed him with the Pharisees looking on. When the Pharisees had seen what Jesus did, they went out to conspire against him.
By this time, the Pharisees were done with Jesus and so they set a trap to discredit him. They know that Jesus can’t resist healing people yet the rules say a doctor can’t heal someone on the Sabbath, unless it’s a life or death situation. So they bring a man into the synagogue with a withered hand, hardly life threatening. This man wants to be healed and so the Pharisees sit back and wait to see if Jesus will violate the Sabbath law in their synagogue. Jesus doesn’t discreetly go over and heal the man and tell him “Shhh, this one is between us.” Jesus instead intentionally heals the man in front of the Pharisees. Before he does, he asks them, “Which is more lawful on the Sabbath, to do good or to do evil, to save a life or to kill?” Jesus asks this to contrast what he wants to do and what he knows the Pharisees want to do in their heart which is kill him. The Pharisees are silent and won’t answer him. And then Mark tells us something which is only mentioned a few times in the Gospel, Jesus got angry because he saw their hardness of heart.
So Jesus heals him and restores this man to wholeness. This is what Jesus is about, restoring people to wholeness. It’s not about the rules and the hoops you have to jump through. The Pharisees have failed to understand that the Sabbath was made for the restoration of people. Of course Jesus is going to heal this man on the Sabbath because that’s in keeping with God’s purpose for the Sabbath, not all of the Pharisees’ details of the law which eventually keep you from living out God’s will. The oral law didn’t lead people to God but instead actually shut the door for most people to God because they weren’t holy in the Pharisee’s eyes. This has created in them pride, arrogance and critical spirit which blinds them from really seeing God’s will.
Jesus taught in the Gospel of Luke: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people-robbers, evildoers, adulterers-or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
In Matthew 23, we read the harshest criticism Jesus has for the Pharisees. It’s called the 7 Woes. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces….Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” The Pharisees think they are holy and righteous when in fact they have missed the will of God and thus cannot participate in the Kingdom of God.
Here’s what we need to learn today. First, Jesus has a very different picture than the Pharisees of what life in the kingdom is about. It’s not about pulling away from the world but rather engaging the world and loving unclean people until they become clean. Jesus isn’t about the religious, he’s about the least, the last and the lost. This is what it’s about. We not only learn something about Jesus in this story but we also learn something about ourselves. Second, any time you seek to follow the will of God or make a new initiative for the sake of the Kingdom, expect opposition, whether that be from the world or more sadly, from within the body of Christ. Third, Here’s one of the more unsettling aspects of the Gospel of Mark: those who appear to be insiders, the disciples and the religious faithful like the Pharisees are often on the outside of the kingdom, looking in. And those who appear to be outside the kingdom are the insiders. Today’s Pharisees are not Jewish, they are Christian. Christians far too often find it easy to be judgmental and critical of others and while looking at ourselves as righteous. We are good at being holy and acting to impress others but what’s inside here is altogether different. We are the Pharisees who get caught up in the minutia and details and we fail to see or grasp the spirit of God’s will.
Here’s what I wonder: If Jesus came to WestBank, would we recognize him? Would we receive him or would we reject him? Who would he hang out with? Where would he hang out? Would it be at church or perhaps in the bars of the WestBank or the French Quarter, telling people, I know what my followers have said against you but let me tell you about my Father in heaven and his love and grace. Would he be the Messiah preaching the message we expect? If Jesus stood in this pulpit, what would he preach and what would he challenge in the life of our church and in each of our lives? Is what you understand of Jesus, how you live your life how you treat the least, the last and the loss a part of the kingdom of God Jesus is building? Or are you an outsider looking in?
