First Reading: Deuteronomy 5:12-15
12Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. 13Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 14But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. 15Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.
Psalm: Psalm 81:1-10
Raise a loud shout to the God of Jacob. (Ps. 81:1)
1Sing with joy to God our strength
and raise a loud shout to the God of Jacob.
2Raise a song and sound the timbrel,
the merry harp, and the lyre.
3Blow the ram’s horn at the new moon,
and at the full moon, the day of our feast;
4for this is a statute for Israel,
a law of the God of Jacob.
5God laid it as a solemn charge upon Joseph, going out over the land of Egypt, where I heard a voice I did not know:
6“I eased your shoulder from the burden;
your hands were set free from the grave-digger’s basket.
7You called on me in trouble, and I delivered you;
I answered you from the secret place of thunder and tested you at the waters of Meribah.
8Hear, O my people, and I will admonish you:
O Israel, if you would but listen to me!
9There shall be no strange god among you;
you shall not worship a foreign god.
10I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.
Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.
Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 4:5-12
5We do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. 6For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
7But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. 8We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. 11For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. 12So death is at work in us, but life in you.
Gospel: Mark 2:23—3:6
23One sabbath [Jesus] was going through the grainfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. 24The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” 25And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? 26He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.” 27Then he said to them, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; 28so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”
3:1Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. 2They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. 3And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.” 4Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. 5He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. 6The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
Children’s Sermon Jesus says to the man in the Temple in our text today “Stretch out your hands”. We have a game with the same name. I bet you have all played this game. Stretch out your hands to your friend. One person is palms down and the other is palms up under the hands of the first. The one on the bottom tries to quick slide his hands out, flip them over the top hands and slap them. Or the bottom person can move one hand to cross over to slap the opposite hand of the friend. How many would agree that stretching out your hands to another can be a bit of a scary posture. You might get hit hard and that hurts. Jesus today tells a man to “stretch out his withered hands” in front of everyone and exposes the man’s weakness. Pentecost is about learning how to stretch out our hands to God, not to receive a slap but a healing.
Let us pray: Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, my Rock and my Redeemer.
SERMON
The first Sunday in Pentecost we read about Nicodemus coming to Jesus at night. This triggered a conversation about the rebirth that is needed to understand the Kingdom of Heaven. We cannot see God and we cannot see the wind. Both are real and dynamic. So even as the Israelites turned to the snake on the pole in the wilderness and were saved, we turn to Christ on the cross and are saved. Jesus started changing our thinking from Law to Gospel. Our Pentecost journey starts with putting our hands on top of Christ’s nail pierced hands and learning to sense and anticipate his movements and synchronize our response to his.
Last week we looked at three groups of people who came to Jesus by day: the gawkers, the power aware people like the Scribes, and the groupies who think of Jesus as belonging to their group and don’t want to share. All the people so far are entering the game with Jesus in some way but I suspect they are feeling like their hands are in some way being slapped for falling short. We might say that the object of the game is to not be slapped but to be so synchronized with the other person so that we can anticipate the move and respond correctly.
Today’s text revolves around that dance. Faith is a response to the first three commandments of the big ten that we studied in Luther’s Small Catechism and that are found in Exodus 20. #1: You shall have no other gods before Me. #2: You shall not take the name of the Lord your God, in vain. #3: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. The religious leaders question,
“Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?”
The disciples are walking through a grain field on the Sabbath and plucking heads of grain. They are confronted about their actions. The Sabbath became a “thing” when the Ten Commandments were given to Moses. A whole body of laws had grown up defining what God meant by commanding us to remember the Sabbath and honor it. At creation we are told that God created in six “days” and on the seventh rested. That seventh day of rest became known as the Sabbath and obviously did not mean he stopped interacting with his creation but the belief was that he stopped “work” and that needed to be defined. We don’t want to offend the God who created and sustains us.
The disciples were not confronted for stealing because the Jews were to leave the edges of their fields for the poor and the traveler to get food. The disciples were confronted because plucking heads of grain was considered harvesting which was defined as work. Many of us can remember when stores were closed on Sunday, the day we now celebrate as a kind of Sabbath. In Kenya we often fasted for Sunday dinner, eating a bowl of popcorn and listening to a tape of a service from the States as we listened to the lions roar in the distance. During elections, everyone fasted. Turn to your neighbor and share a special tradition in your family that made Sunday a bit special and restful.
Jesus confronts the criticism of the religious leaders by referring to Scripture, 1 Samuel 21, and King David. David, not yet king, is fleeing from King Saul who wants to kill him. David goes to Nob, a town about two miles north of Jerusalem where the Tabernacle is. The priest gives him bread that has been consecrated for only the priests and gives him the sword of Goliath whom David had killed. Jesus seems to be challenging the leaders with their own history that shows that the laws of God are more than strict, rigid rules to judge us.
It reminds me of the Tales of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. In the first book, The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe, four children from London step through a “thin place” in time and end up in Narnia. The great golden lion Aslan oversees Narnia. The children have adventures with the Wicked White Witch who has made the kingdom always winter but never Christmas. Aslan gives his life to fulfill the code of the land and the children are distraught. The next day, they are met by Aslan resurrected who tells them there is a “deeper magic” written before the dawn of time, “ if an innocent being willingly offered his own life in place of a traitor’s, the deeper magic would reverse death itself and restore them to life.” Jesus is trying to help us see that a deeper magic that we call grace is at work in our world today.
Jesus is asking us to reflect on how we understand the game “Stretch out your hands”. Do we think God gave the Law because he wants to slap our hands and make us red and sore or is he inviting us into a game that grows relationship? That is a tough question. We associate the game with red hands and pain. We associate games with winners and losers, with right and wrong. We associate laws with police, courts, and judges. We want to associate God with love but at the time of Jesus, pleasing God was associated with the Law. Good people were blessed and the man with the withered hand was obviously a sinner as was the man born blind. People came to the Temple or church with sacrifices for their sins. We open our services with confession and absolution – forgiveness. We know we have flubbed up last week and we don’t want to stretch out our hands and have to show it to everyone. Could it be that Jesus pulls the example of King David from history to challenge them and us to see grace in the Old Testament, the deeper magic?
We know that the priest who shared the bread with David and the priest’s whole family were slain by King Saul. Breaking of rules in the kingdom of this world brings punishment and opens us up to accusation but Jesus is stretching not only our hands but also our hearts to understand that sometimes there is “deep magic” that takes the cruel punishments of law and transforms them into resurrection and life. David and his men ate the bread and lived to become King. The speeding man did get his wife to the hospital in time for medical help in birthing. The policeman who shot the intruder did stop an intended rape. The doctor who cut out the tumor delayed the progress of cancer. We do not always see the whole picture and the leaders were focusing on the breaking of the law about working on the Sabbath and missing the bigger point.
“The sabbath was made for humankind,
and not humankind for the sabbath;”
Jesus continues to clarify. We are back to the chicken and egg tension of two weeks ago. Which came first, the creation of people or the creation of Sabbath? There is no need of a Sabbath if there are no people but if God had not created, would there have been a designation of a Sabbath? We cannot grow into relationship with God unless we place our sin stained hands on his nail pierced hands. It is as we confront our sinfulness and humble ourselves that the condemnation of death is transformed into resurrection. The Sabbath is a sign of the covenant between God and his creation. He never gives up on us and never walks away from the game.
Perhaps we think of Sundays as times to sleep in or spend time with the family, or go for a bike ride. We can recharge our spiritual batteries without going to church. But when we come to church we may not hear the best sermon but we go through those traditional disciples of confession, prayer, communion, worship and fellowship. Many times it may be flat but then sometimes a word triggers the truth we need to hear to face the next week. The routine of worship becomes a ritual that grounds our week in the grace of God and away from the slaps of life. We are reminded, “13 You yourself are to speak to the Israelites: ‘You shall keep my sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, given in order that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. 31:13. “
Jesus and the crowd move into the Synagogue. The leaders are not happy and are still wanting to catch Jesus breaking the Sabbath. Mark says that Jesus is angry. We often think that Jesus only gets angry during Passion Week when he visits the Temple in Jerusalem and chases out the money changers. Our text today says that Jesus is angry when he sees the leaders’ hardness of heart. They are standing in the Temple and Jesus is asking if the Sabbath, even if seen as a Law, was meant for good or bad.
“Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath,
to save life or to kill”
It seems to me that Jesus is asking a question that might be like asking who is buried in Grant’s tomb. The answer is obvious but the leaders go silent, refusing to testify that the Sabbath is not a game of slapping but a game of relationship. The Sabbath is about life. Jesus is angry and calls the man with the withered hand forward and tells him, “Stretch out your withered hands.” WOW. I don’t know about you but I am guessing you could cut the tension in the room with a knife.
The man who has been slapped with the label of “sinner” must choose if he is going to put his withered hands in the hands of Jesus. For me, this is a hugely challenging scene. Am I going to put everything that defines me as a sinner, that which I have done and that which I have not done, into God’s hands? It is so easy to be like Nicodemus and be confused. It is so easy to be a gawker and enjoy watching Jesus heal others. It is easy to debate where the power comes from like the Scribes. It is easy to think Jesus is not in my group. But when Jesus calls us to “stretch out our hands,” enter the dance with him, I hear him calling me to faith and not to judgment. The kingdom of heaven works by a deeper magic that was decided before the dawn of time and not by the rules of this world where we may or may not move fast enough. Jesus is calling us into healing that the whole world can see. The man was restored. The Pentecost journey involves us in the “deeper magic,” a journey of restoration as we stretch out our hands and lay them on the nail-pierced hands of our Savior. We can trust that God loves us.
Let the people of God say, “Amen!”
On the Way to Wonder 