Jesus Versus Respectable Religion--February 20, 2024

Jesus Versus Respectable Religion--February 20, 2024

"And Jesus said to the man who had the withered hand, 'Come forward.' Then 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. He 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.  The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him." [Mark 3:4-6]

The problem with us humans isn't just when we are at our worst, most actively villainous behavior. It's our moments of damnable (literally) apathy, too, and it's even when we are at our best and most religious that we reveal our clay feet.  You don't have to go to the maximum-security cell block of your nearest state prison to see the brokenness and bentness of human beings--you can find it on full display at your local religious gathering.  It's even there--or maybe especially there--that we see the impulse in human beings to do terrible things in the name of their piety, and to leave beautiful things undone for the sake of that same piety.  And it's there, too, that we see the impulse to put Jesus on a cross.

This story is one of those powerful moments in the gospels that shows us humans at our worst and simultaneously makes me fall in love with Jesus all over again, honestly.  And it's worth noting that the thing Jesus does in this story, which provokes the Respectable Religious Leaders to conspire with the Politically Powerful People "to destroy him" is to heal a man on the sabbath day.  On the one hand, Jesus' action seems so innocuous, so obviously good and righteous, that you'd think the Pharisees and the Herodians must be mustache-twirling, black-hat-wearing cartoon-caricatures of wickedness.  But the fact that Jesus stirs up this controversy by healing this man, publicly and provocatively in the middle of the weekly gathering for worship and prayer at the synagogue (on the sabbath day of rest!) hits the religious leaders like a slap in the face.  His actions seem to break the commandment (from God!) about the sabbath day's requirement not to work, and therefore the religious leaders can only interpret that action in one of two ways: either Jesus knows he is breaking the sabbath commandment and scandalously breaking it in front of them, or he is claiming that their understanding of this basic commandment is fundamentally wrong, and that they really don't understand God at all.  Jesus' actions are a threat to their religious systems, either way, and Jesus' choice to make this into a public showdown means they will lose face in the wake of this scene.  The scariest thing of all sometimes is to say the sentence "I might be wrong about this."  It is even more frightening if the thing we might be wrong about is the foundation of our whole way of life--like our beliefs about what God is like and what God wants.  

The question, in the end, is what we will do when Jesus comes into our lives and compels us to rethink what we thought we knew for sure about God: will we let him stretch open our understanding and surprise us with mercy beyond the boundaries we thought were immovable, or will we seek to get rid of Jesus so that we can keep our old assumptions?  That's really what provokes the Religious and Political So-and-Sos at the end of this scene: they realize that in the face of the new reality Jesus brings, they will either have to get rid of him and his subversive presence or they'll have to rethink everything they thought they knew for certain about how God and the world worked.  And meanwhile, the silent majority in the room that just stood speechless would rather have had Jesus go away and not call out their apathy and indifference to another person's suffering.  They all want to be rid of Jesus because his mere presence exposes that they were either indifferent to the man's suffering or that they didn't think it was more important than their religious rules, and they didn't want to have to be brought face to face with that reality.  This is what we do, of course, we humans, when someone forces us to see ugly truths about ourselves or confront our complacency.  This is what happens when someone compels us to reconsider what we thought we knew for certain.  And Jesus does precisely that.  

Here in this story Jesus launches an attack on any kind of theology or religion that made human suffering less important than religious rules, and he does it, not with an act of vandalism against the worship space or violence against the religious leaders, but with an act of unauthorized healing.  He combats the cold callousness of the people inside who were all just staring at their feet in the face of a neighbor who was hurting by showing them an alternative to their "hardness of heart" right before their eyes.  And he knows, too, surely that this confrontation will eventually come to a head--and that when the time comes, Jesus will be willing to lay down his life as a protest against that whole approach to faith.  As Barbara Brown Taylor put it once so powerfully, "Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion – which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God’s will – from their own." 

For whatever else is going on at the cross--and indeed there are many facets and dimensions to the cross--it is also what happens when the Guardians of Religion and Power do not want to consider that they do not have all the answers.  The continued presence of Jesus--including his rule-breaking compassion--would force them to rethink everything they believed about the way the world worked, and they would rather silence that voice than have Jesus turn their worldview upside down. So they did their damnedest. And Jesus' response to that kind of hostility was not to kill them before they killed him, nor to surround himself with bodyguards or angel armies to keep himself safe, but rather to offer the same vulnerable love to them that he had offered to the man with the withered hand here in the synagogue scene.  The conflict of ideas and understanding between Jesus and the Big Deals in this scene might push them to think they had to crucify Jesus, but he will not respond to them by threatening to kill them first.  That's one more way Jesus makes us rethink everything.

I wonder--in our day and time, what will we do when Jesus' presence in our lives shakes up our old certainties and compels us to rethink what we thought we knew?  What will we do when Jesus shows us a God whose mercy is wider and deeper than thought possible? Will we let Jesus remake and reshape our understandings, or will we seek again to get rid of Jesus so we can preserve our old assumptions?  Get ready, because Jesus is alive and present in this day, and he will meet us--and surprise us--when we least expect him.

Lord Jesus, keep the clay of our hearts and minds soft enough to be reshaped in the likeness of your own image.