Preached at Canadochly and Grace on June 3, 2018
Preaching text: Deuteronomy 5:12-15, Mark 2:23-3:6
Throughout the course of human history, most people have tried to live moral upright ethical lives. Most people strive to be good, to live in harmony with others, to do what is right for themselves, their society, their families, and their nation. Now, over the course of centuries and millennia, many debates have erupted across myriad societies as to precisely how to live out that sense of morality. The devil (or perhaps angel in this case) is in the details, as they say.
In my own observations, I’ve noticed there are generally two schools of thought in regards to morality. One is what I call the self-improvement model. The focus here is inward. It’s on what I do for myself. How can I become a better person. What behaviors can I embrace to make myself better? What sort of behavior should I avoid? This has been a popular position for more conservative branches of religions. I become more morally upright by avoiding sex, strong drink, profanity, obeying the “thou shalt nots” of my faith tradition, etc.
The second school is more of a outward model. The focus is on the other. It’s on what I can do for other people or the wider word. How can I make the world better for someone or for everyone? What should I do about society’s sins? Racism, sexism, the opioid crisis, the refugee situation, LGBT issues, etc. How can I best help feed the hungry, clothe the naked, minister to the poor? This is often the position of more progressive branches of faith traditions such as our own.
It’s probably not hard to guess which side of the debate I fall on, but the truth of the matter is there is more overlap between them than we often give them credit. One may refrain from using profanity in an effort to avoid causing hurt and offense in their neighbor. One can see aiding refugees as a mechanism for self-improvement. Examples of this are more numerous than can be mentioned here, but the line between these two models is often more blurry than we often admit. Each of us, in our own piety and morality, often practice both models.
Where we often get into trouble are the times when we ignore one side to focus exclusively on the other. Those times when we are not a mix, but completely one sided. And that is pretty much precisely what was happening in the times of Jesus.
In Christian circles, we often see the Pharisees as the villains of the story. It was they who conspired to have Jesus “destroyed” (to use the language of our Gospel text today) It was they who challenged Jesus at every turn. But once again, the truth is more blurry than we often make it. The Pharisees were the progressives, the liberals, the change agents of their day. They were the cutting edge of religious thought in the first century. Modern Judaism owes the Pharisees an immense debt.
So what was going on? How did these people who should have been allies (and on occasions were) end up as such bitter rivals? The problem was not that the Pharisees were wrong and Jesus was right. The problem was that the Pharisees were too narrow-minded to understand that there was more to morality than what they practiced. They were stuck on one side of the divide and could not and would not concede that the other side had a valid position.
Thus, when Jesus heals on the Sabbath or his disciples snack on grain they’ve plucked from the fields on the Sabbath, conflicts erupt because the Pharisees cannot imagine that “good” can exist outside their narrow viewpoint.
But lest we pick on the Pharisees unfairly, this narrow minded perspective is often precisely what the Church today often does. We are just as guilty as they are.
One of the most extreme examples of this is a story my late grandfather once told me. During the Depression, he was worshipping when a poor family came into the church. The pastor stopped the service to throw the poor family out because they weren’t “dressed properly.” I heard echoes of that when I was growing up when people would fuss about teenagers wearing sneakers under their acolyte robes.
We also hear echoes of it when we gossip about the LGBT person in our midst, or the divorced, or the addict, or the teenage mother. How dare those “sinners” come among us? I also remember an echo of it when one of the professors at the local college got up to read at worship in my home church and people were astonished that she could read because she was black.
When rules, official or unofficial, matter more than people than we are the new Pharisees and we have become as narrow-minded as those who once conspired to crucify our Lord.
Jesus challenges this perpetually throughout his earthly ministry. Mind you, Jesus was not rejecting a self-improvement morality. He was a person who was fastidious about his behavior, as were his disciples. But he never let that get in the way of helping someone in need.
For Jesus, a rule, whether it be from society, from tradition, or even from the Scriptures, that got in his way of loving someone, caring for someone, helping someone, that rule was discarded for the time being. It was suspended, often only temporarily, so that he could do what was truly right for that person. Jesus did not willy-nilly break the Sabbath, but he did do it when he found someone who needed his help.
Today, Jesus is still calling us to challenge the mindset that rules matter more than people. We have lots of rules in society. We have civil and criminal laws on the books. Our congregations are organized by constitution. We have social expectations based upon our culture, our family, our class, our education. None of those things are bad in and of themselves. But there’s a whole world out there full of people God has called us to help, that God has called us to love. As Jesus, he loved them even when it ran the risk of the ultimate penalty and even as they drove in the nails he continued to love them by declaring “Father, forgive them.” That’s our model, folks. Jesus did what he did not simply to help the immediate needs in his midst, but to inform the future Church how they were to behave towards neighbor.
People matter more than rules. The Church is not doing a very good job of this. For instance, there was a recent survey released that showed which groups most support and more oppose refugee programs in our country. That group that wants to help refugees, who are people in desperate need, fleeing tyranny and terrorism in their home countries, the group that wants to help them the least are Christians. Why? Got me, but there is seriously something wrong here.
That’s hardly the only example. At synod assembly this week, I attended a workshop on doing ministry “beyond our walls.” One of the struggles that all Christians endeavoring in this task have is reaching the “unchurched,” many of whom are believers who have been burned and hurt by the Church. Again, because we’ve made the rules matter more than people.
We like to say “All lives matter,” that saying that got popular as a response to the BLM movement. Do they? Or are the only lives who matter those who fit our standards? Those who follow our rules? Those who conform to what we want? If so, then what really matters to us are the rules and what would Jesus say about that?
I think you know the answer. Amen.
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