"the Letter Of The Law Vs The Spirit"

“The Letter of the Law VS the Spirit”

Mark 2:23-3:6

Not too terribly long ago in this country there used to be what were termed as the “blue laws” which were meant to enforce the Sabbath.

Back in the early to middle years of the 20th Century, in the average American town, there were no shops open on Sundays; there were no professional sporting events.

People were not allowed to work or play cards or dance.

Blue laws originally came to America with the first colonists.

They outlawed everything from hunting on Sunday to selling any type of goods, even to displays of affection.

For example, in 1656 a Captain Kemble of Boston, Massachusetts, was locked in the public stocks for two hours for kissing his wife on a Sunday after he had spent three years out at sea.

Some colonies made it illegal to laugh too loud and attending church was mandatory.

If you missed 3 Sundays in a row you could be put to death!

In Texas it was illegal to sell pots and pans on a Sunday until 1985.

And in several states it is still illegal for car dealerships to do business on a Sunday.

The most ironic thing about all this is that Christians break the original Sabbath law just by worshipping on Sunday!

Biblically, the Sabbath day of rest is Saturday—just ask someone from the Jewish community or a member of a Seventh Day Adventist Church.

As far as why most Christians set aside Sunday for worship…

…well, the first would be that the early followers of Jesus met together on the first day of the week to remember and celebrate Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

And the second reason is to send a clear message that we are no longer under the law but under grace.

And as a people whose relationship with God and whose eternal futures are not based on whether or not we keep the law, we are free to meet together and worship and keep the Sabbath whenever it is good for the community of faith to do so.

(pause)

But, in our Scripture passage for this morning, the Pharisees are kind of acting like the early colonists policing people according to what they could and couldn’t do on the Sabbath—except in this case it was Saturday.

In our first example, Jesus and His disciples are traveling through grain fields and as the disciples walked along, they were picking off the heads of grain and eating them.

This was considered to be work, which it was unlawful to do on the Sabbath and the religious leaders call them out on it.

In answering them, Jesus offers a legal opinion, one He gets from Scripture itself although the particular story He uses has nothing to do with the Sabbath.

He says, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need?

In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecration bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat.

And he also gave some to his companions.”

Jesus is referring to an incident from 1 Samuel 21:1-6 where David asked the priest Ahimelech for bread…when the only bread available was against the law for him to eat.

…Mark’s Gospel mistakenly uses the name Abiathar instead of Ahimelech.

A Scribe probably made a copying error somewhere along the way…it’s not unusual…

But the key is that God didn’t condemn Ahimelech for giving David the bread because it satisfied his hunger.

Jesus is arguing that if it was alright for David to eat the holy bread when he was hungry, then it is fine for Jesus’ disciples to pluck grain and eat it on the Sabbath when they are hungry because the rules are not God--only God is God.

And sometimes following God’s call means breaking the rules because people matter more than rules.

For Jesus, the Sabbath was made for humans…

…it wasn’t made to rule over humans and make their lives miserable or oppressed.

Whenever blind authoritarianism confronts common sense, Jesus seems to hold to common sense.

Which is a relief and a bit of sanity in this often insane and unbending world.

Again, what seems to matter most to Jesus, not just in this story but all the way through the gospels, is people.

And if the rules get in the way of people finding grace or healing, love or forgiveness, then Jesus breaks the rules to give them what they need.

“Go learn what this means,” Jesus tells the religious leaders more than once in the Gospels, “I desire mercy not sacrifice.”

Now, all this emphasis on mercy over sacrifice got Jesus into a lot of religious hot water.

His intimacy with tax collectors and every other kind of sinner, as the Pharisees liked to call them, His indifference to fasting, and here to rules about the Sabbath enrage the religious people so much that they start building political alliances in order to have Him killed.