Jesus Pokes at Bears

Jesus Pokes at Bears--November 2, 2017

"On another Sabbath [Jesus] entered the synagogue and taught, and there was a man there whose right had was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would cure on the Sabbath, so that they might find an accusation against him.  Even though he knew what they were thinking, he said to the man who had the withered hand, 'Come and stand here.' He got up and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, 'I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?' After looking around at all of them, he said to him, 'Stretch out your hand.' He did so, and his hand was restored. But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might to do Jesus." [Luke 6:6-11]

Mercy moves us, all right.  Mercy moves us right into the mess.

Mercy moves us right into the mess... because that is where Jesus goes.

I think I have spent a great deal of my life underestimating Jesus--in particular, I think, I have missed or failed to recognize how much Jesus is a provocateur.  Jesus pokes at things that need poking at.  Jesus disrupts the things that need some serious shaking.  As that beautiful line of Andrew Greeley's puts it, "Jesus and his troublemaking go merrily on."  What I don't think I have paid much attention to--at least not enough attention in my years yet--is that Jesus deliberately would put himself in situations of messiness, directly in the cage with the sleeping bear, in order to poke it and bring the presence of God's Reign.  Jesus poked at bears called Pharisees... some called Sadducees... some called Roman governors... and he even pokes at the bears I have set at the door of my heart to keep troublemakers from getting inside and rearranging my loves.  Jesus pokes at every one of them, not because he does not know what he is doing, or by some cluelessness on his part, but rather because he knows precisely what he is doing.  He is bringing God's movement of mercy right into the mess.

This story from Luke is one of those quintessential Jesus moments.  It is a healing story, but it is also a story with an edge to it.  There is a moment of decision for those religious folks standing by as eyewitnesses, and the question is whether they will be caught up in the presence of Mercy, or whether they will try and control, capture, and cage it.  That is part of Jesus' plan, too.

See, I think for a lot of my life, I heard stories like this one and assumed that Jesus just randomly sauntered into situations without really knowing where he was going, and without any thought of what time it was.  That may be a consequence of Sunday-School episode-of-the-week kind of Christianity that only experiences individual stories of Jesus plucked out of sequence in random order, told as little morality plays on flannel-board.  But, consider with me for a moment what must have been obvious for Luke the gospel writer: Jesus was well aware of what day of the week it was when he walked into the synagogue... and Jesus, as the teacher in the room that day, surely was already known to the community in that town, and he knew them.   Does that seem a fair assumption so far?

That means, then, that Jesus had in all likelihood seen this man with the withered hand before... had heard the religious so-and-sos take a hard-line position against healing people on the Sabbath day... and that Jesus chose to enter this confrontation intentionally.  He could have been much quieter about it.  He could have simply whispered to the man, "Hey, pal, after the service is done, meet me out by the side entrance and I'll fix that hand."  He could have just as easily said to the man, "Hey, it will cause a ruckus if I heal you today, and your condition isn't life-threatening.  How about you come back tomorrow, and I'll be glad to heal you then.  In fact, they'll throw a party for me if I do it tomorrow!"  There were a million other ways this could have played out that ended with this man still being healed, but with Jesus not getting cast as a troublemaker.  Let us grant that the rabbi from Nazareth was intelligent enough to have known that, to have seen his options, and still to have chosen the path he chose, down to the moment and the place.

At first, the religious so-and-sos think that Jesus has fallen into their trap, and they think that if Jesus were smart, he would balk at the situation and just twiddle his thumbs.  You know, bide his time, wait until an officially sanctioned time when everyone would have smiled at Jesus' healing and patted him on the back for picking a moment that the powerful people approved of.  A Monday morning miracle would not have threatened the rule-makers and the gate-keepers.  Only a Sabbath display of mercy would ruffle their feathers... if only Jesus would have waited...

You know, I can't help anymore but hear the words of Dr. King's well-known "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" when I read this story from Luke these days.  King writes--to other (white) clergy, who were wishing he just would have slowed things down and not upset people with the boycott he was leading--these words:

"Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was 'well timed' in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word 'Wait!' It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never.' We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that 'justice too long delayed is justice denied'." 

Jesus chooses this moment to heal the man because he knows, too, that the people who run things will only ever say, "Wait..." and that they really mean, "Never."  Waiting another day--even another minute--there in the synagogue is letting the rules about religious rites and days become more important than giving life.  And Jesus is convinced that the glorious gift called "Sabbath" was never meant to be reduced to a rule, but always was meant to be a celebration of God's gracious gift of life.  And that has to be a part of what comes from this moment--this was about bringing life right into the mess of this situation, not only for the man whose hand was withered, but for everybody else there in the room, who had seriously had the gift of Sabbath turned into a burdensome regulation.  Jesus enters the mess of this man's world--his pain, his sickness, his immediate trouble--and offers healing now, both for his sake, and for everybody else there in the room that day, so that the religious so-and-sos' motto, "Wait!" can never again mean "Never." 

Jesus knew the situation from having observed it before in that place... he chose to enter into it, even knowing that it was messy to do so and opened him up to trouble... and he poked the bear anyway.  Or maybe, the messiness was precisely why he poked the bear.

Think about how mad this must have made the religious experts and the Guardians of Dignified Society that day.  Luke says they were "filled with fury" at Jesus, because he had dared to question their official position, and because Jesus wouldn't accept their terms for protesting the official position. There was, after all, a proper time and place for a fellow rabbi like Jesus to debate an issue of the day.  He could have been respectable and kept this all in the abstract--why not respectfully, deferentially, and unthreateningly asked the scribes and the Pharisees to have a little discussion?  Why not just have an abstract thought experiment on The Sabbath and Special Cases, and make a symposium out of it?  Why make this a public spectacle where others could see--and be forced to come face to face with the way the Sabbath had become distorted into a system that kept this guy hurting rather than helping him--rather than Jesus just lodging a formal suggestion in the scribes' suggestion box off when no one was around?  

See--that has to be part of what makes the religious so-and-sos so mad--by making this a public moment, they now have to go on the record taking a side.  They now have to do something with Jesus' protest of their abusive interpretation of the Sabbath, and they didn't want to have to do that.  They don't want to let Jesus disrupt the proper order they have created, an order and a system which they work very hard to maintain.  

But when Jesus calls the man into the center of the moment, Jesus knows that he is making himself into the lightning rod.  He knows that he is now right in the middle of the mess... and he does it anyway.  That's what I love about Jesus.  Jesus pokes at bears like this, not out of resentfulness or anger... not because he is out-of-touch or unaware... but because love calls him to speak up and to act out for this man who had been pushed to the margins.

You can almost hear the Pharisees looking for a way to put a bad spin on what Jesus does in this healing, too, can't you?  You can almost hear them gearing up their official Scribal Press Secretary saying, "This Jesus is being disrespectful of our most hallowed institution--the Sabbath!  Anybody who heals on the Sabbath is being disloyal... to our people, to our nation... to our God! It just gets my goat the way these out-of-touch celebrity rabbis won't show the proper decorum by observing the Sabbath!"  You can almost just hear the Pharisees and scribes, barnstorming from town to town in plaintive tones, "Wouldn't you love to see someone who heals on the Sabbath just run out of the synagogue?  Shouldn't they just kick him out altogether, for disrespecting our beautiful Sabbath?"  

But of course, Jesus knows that he is really the one who knows what Sabbath is all about--he is no more disrespecting the Sabbath by healing someone on it than old king David had been when they ate the bread of the Presence (another story Jesus references in an earlier Sabbath controversy).  Jesus claims that he is the one who really "gets" what Sabbath was supposed to be about anyway, and because of that, he jumps right into the mess of this situation, while it is the Sabbath, because to turn the other direction in the face of suffering on the Sabbath would be the greatest blasphemy against the Sabbath of all.  Nevertheless, this moment, this choice of Jesus, to heal a man on the Sabbath, which also meant calling attention to his suffering rather than pretending it wasn't there, this deliberate act of Jesus got him labeled Public Enemy Number One by the people who didn't like his way of addressing the suffering they had all gotten comfortable with.

And yet--amazingly!--Jesus went through with it anyway.  Jesus poked the bear, knowing it was going to wake up and be upset.  Jesus knew that he would be made to look like the bad guy, the disrespectful troublemaker who should have just kept quiet... and he heals the man anyway.  

Because that is what mercy does.

Look, we need to be clear about something today.  It takes a great many things to go where Mercy leads us.  It requires courage--and that in spades.  It requires strength, to be sure.  It requires open eyes and the insight to see a place where suffering reigns that needs to have a light shined on it.  It requires, too, the willingness to do good and yet to be labeled as a troublemaker, a disrespectful or disloyal rabble-rouser, and an attacker of cherished symbols and customs.  It requires the ability, not just to feel bad when someone else is suffering, but to be willing to be labeled the bad guy in the pursuit of addressing that suffering.  And none of that is easy.

But if we are followers of Jesus, that is our calling.  That is what we have been on this journey, all this year long, that we have called "Mercy Moves us," and it is what the whole Christian life is all about.  It ain't easy to poke at bears with Jesus--but sometimes they require poking.  Today the question is whether we will dare to recognize the suffering around us--in your community, in your country, and in this whole hurting world--and whether we will dare, with Jesus, to head right into the mess... even when we know that sometimes the act of entering into the mess means getting accused of causing the mess you call attention to. 

Jesus does it anyway. That is why I love him.

But beyond that, that is why I am trying to be like him.

Here is your blessing for the day: may you be given the love, the courage, and the perception to poke at bears with Jesus.