Laws are for…good?
A funny thing happened on the way to the pulpit…
This last week I had the joy of preaching from Mark 2:23-28. I had looked ahead at the scripture and concepts, prayed and thought about Sabbath, laughed at the irony of me, a work-a-holic, teaching others to respect the command to rest. When I met with Drew to talk over my ideas, he gave me a blank stare…he checked the schedule…turned back towards me and said, “Yes. This is definitely what YOU are supposed to preach on.”
I checked the schedule after that meeting and saw that I had actually skipped a week! God is funny that way. I should have been preparing Mark 2:18, which talks about fasting. But God, knowing the thickness of my head and the dullness of my ears, caused me to jump ahead to the message that I most needed to hear. God is good. I think He’s pretty funny, too.
This week, Erik will pick up my slack and finish up Mark chapter 2 and start us into Mark 3. Here we see more questions about the laws and practices and Jesus’ authority over them, as well as just what God expects from us.
In Mark 2:18 we read that many religious leaders were in a time of fasting, but Jesus and his disciples were not. So people asked Jesus why he wasn’t doing what the other religious people were doing. Jesus gives three odd answers:
“The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is still with them, can they?…The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.
No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.” (2:19-22)
Fasting is about sacrifice and anticipation. You deprive yourself of something so that you can focus on something else. The pain or longing in your body is way of disciplining yourself into obedience to an ideal. Jesus says, in essence, “There’s nothing to be anticipating right now: I’m right here!” But here he hints at the fact that this will not always be the case. A time for discipline and obedience will come; right then was a time for joy. No one comes to Thanksgiving dinner and doesn’t eat anything! Even if they’re on a diet or a health plan of some kind, they still eat something! Because it’s a time for feasting and joy. But come New Year’s…
Here again is also a verse that was often used by those trying to persuade me that the Old Testament and its laws had no purpose any longer. But Jesus doesn’t say anything about dumping out all the previous wine. He does say something new is happening. He is making a new way for us to find forgiveness and reconciliation with God. A time would soon come, and Paul would be in the thick of the fight and John Mark as well (the author of this book) where a great many people would be insisting that to be Christian, you first become Jewish. But that would be pouring new wine into an old skin.
When we jump ahead to Chapter 3, we get clarity on the whole controversy of Chapter 2. Jesus is constantly “breaking the law” and the religious leaders have come to expect him to do it again. At synagogue Jesus calls up a man with a withered hand, a cripple. Jesus asks ” ‘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…” (3:4-5)
The ENTIRE POINT of the law was not to heap on punishment to an already difficult life. It wasn’t to make life harder to live. It was created to correct wrong thinking and protect one another. The law was so that we would all know how to do good. So should we not raise a finger to help someone in need if we have the power to do something about it?? Jesus shows there is never a time or place or law or religious rite that should prevent us from being loving or helpful or kind.
Amen.