Scripture: Matthew 12:1-14
Given on 06/3/2018
In my mind, there is a place that I go to with great regularity as a means of calming myself and finding that inner peace that dwells in all of us. A mental time-out in an existence that seems like it is in constant motion It is a stretch of coastline that sits on the southern side of Grand Cayman island where my family lived for three years. Now, this stretch of beach was far enough from the cruise ships and hotels that visitors would have to rent a car to get out there and even then, you would have to know that it was there, and so, more often than not, we were able to be there completely alone. There is a small dock there that we used to walk to the end of and my older son and I would alternate between throwing stones into the ocean and watching the fish that would gather around the pilings. In my minds eye, I can see him standing there, his long Caribbean hair flowing in the warm breeze that seemed to be ubiquitous on the island. While to the left and right of the dock were miles of coastline that seemed as if you could walk forever and in my mind, the warm sun beats down on me, the sand curls around my bare toes, the water is a jewel-like azure with little glints of the sun’s rays sparkling in time with the rhythm of the waves. When I am trying to find peace, it is along that coastline that I walk in my mind. My wife holding one hand, my boys on the other and we just walk. The longer I live, I am convinced that it is these moments of calm that give you the lens through which to see the movement of God, the beauty of the world, and the shared love in which we all participate. These moments of serenity first thing in the morning or at the end of a long day that when you reach back into your known past grant you a new vision for the world of the future. These instances of reassurance that even in your deepest despair give you a new hope to face all that weighs you down and helps you to leave it behind at the foot of the cross. When we can do this, we leave behind the voices of doubt that play in a loop in our minds. When we can do this, we abandon those feelings of darkness that too often cloud our ability to see light. When we can do this, we are free to love and be loved in deep and abiding ways and peace becomes the gift that you get when you are willing to let the Holy Spirit overtake your own mind and soul and blow it wherever she will while true compassion can begin the moment you allow all that is built up around your spirit to fall away as the love that is deep inside of you begins to cover the earth and everyone you meet. In our scripture for this morning, Jesus encounters a group of the faithful whose souls have been so bound up by the rules and regulations of their religion that they are no longer able to experience that peace that all of us are so desperate to find and they have lost the ability to tap into the bottomless compassion with which each child of God has been imbued. And here’s their story.
We are told that Jesus and his disciples were in the midst of their travels one day and it was getting near noon and because they didn’t have a whole lot of resources, food and eating was always a bit of a challenge. And as they walked they saw a wheat field ahead in their path and for just a moment their spirits lightened just a bit. It was, in those, days customary for the outer row of a wheat field to be for travelers to partake of as they walked and so it was that the disciples, their stomachs groaning from a lack of sustenance, let their hands pass over the healthy stalks of wheat catching on a handful of the heads of the grain and began to eat. And though the scripture does not indicate that there were others following them, the pharisees who seemingly have little else to do with their time except follow Jesus and his companions around hoping that they might stumble, enter the story and immediately confront Jesus. “Aha,” you can almost hear them saying, “now we have him.” And they begin their interrogation. “Look,” they said, “your disciples are doing something that is forbidden on the Sabbath. They are harvesting crops!” Now, if you aren’t used to finding some degree of humor in scripture, it is possible that you will miss that this scene is supposed to be funny, overblown, and absurd. The pharisees, who follow and enforce the rules of Judaism down to the last jot and tittle, have caught the disciples engaging in the act of "harvesting" grain on the Sabbath. And they are correct, if taken by the letter of the law, the Jewish tradition held that during the Sabbath Jews are not supposed to tend their farms. But one's myopia shouldn't need to be adjusted too greatly to see that this is not really the same thing, to realize that what they are saying is that hungry folks on the road in the midst of a journey and presumably somewhat in the middle of nowhere are not allowed to feed themselves with the food that is readily available. By the telling of the story one can quickly see for the pharisees to expect the disciples to not feed themselves simply because it is the Sabbath is absurd, and Jesus says as much. And because Jesus is Jewish and also knows the stories, the laws, the texts to which the Pharisees are referring, he takes them and uses them to make his own point. And we uses King David, the holy one of God, the founder of the royal Davidic line that the Jews want so desperately to return to the throne of Israel and Judah, and he shows how, in a similar situation, David and his men, go into the temple of God and because they, too, are famished from their travels, they eat the bread that dwells in the presence of God, bread that is reserved strictly for the priests and in the process break like 15 different rules set forth by God for the administration of the temple. Jesus’s point being that if anyone comes into the temple hungry, a wise person can see that it is more important to give a hungry man some food than it is to maintain the rules that govern life in the temple, just as when travelers are hungry from a long day of traveling it is more important that they find sustenance than starve in order to maintain a strict interpretation of the Judaic rules.
And as is often the case in the gospels, the first part of this story serves as a set up for the second one. In the first, Mark shows how absurd it is to call out hungry people for picking heads of grain and feeding themselves. But, in the story that follows this brief encounter, the true cost of this kind of faith is shown as Jesus immediately enters the synagogue and meets a man with a withered hand. Again, the pharisees with little else to do with their time query Jesus, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” It seems these keepers of the Jewish law have both not learned their lesson from a few minutes ago but, also, are seeking to display their faith in a world that demands allegiance not to the movement of the spirit but rather to the rules of the faith, are sure that they can best Jesus with their knowledge this time. But we see again, that the one who lives each moment with the spirit of the Divine leading him into new moment possesses a fair greater and more intimate knowledge of the will of God for God's creation. And with that, Jesus puts the full power of God’s love on display once again. “Stretch out your hand,” he said to the man and the man’s hand was made as good as new as the pharisees, filled with fury, disappear from the foreground once again and begin to plot the killing of Jesus.
Throughout the Gospel telling of the story of Jesus, the Pharisees often appear as the chief challengers to the message of Jesus. They are often shown displaying a callousness and mean-spirit inspired by what is perceived as the demands of the Jewish law and it would be easy to dismiss them as just one of the many collections of persons in first century Palestine that didn’t understand the message of Jesus and you can do that. But the pharisaical tradition is so much more complex than that. They were honored and respected, the leaders within the Jewish world. In that era, to be educated by or have your child educated by the pharisees would be akin to having your child accepted into Harvard or Yale. It was a great honor and they held tremendous power and clout within the culture. And, if you were to witness their day-to-day activities, you would believe that they practiced sound religion and while it was sound, time and time again we see that their religious commitments do not lead to a practice of great compassion and concern. They in their zeal for adherence to the letter of the law leave them blind to the needs of those around them and the opportunity to demonstrate the love of God in real and life-altering ways.
I think back a lot to our time on the island and am increasingly aware of how much just living in a different culture, one that was not so pressured and fast-paced, allowed the whole of the world to slow down for me. When we first got there, this lack of pace or concern for much of anything drove us crazy. We would make service appointments and they would show up 6 hours late or not until the the next day or not at all and when we would call and ask about it, no one would seem care that this had happened. It was just part of living on a Caribbean island where clocks were hard to find and the ocean was constantly calling. Coming from the United States, we could not begin to understand this and so the adjustment period was steep. But I remember writing an email home to a friend when we had been living there for about 6 months and describing how much the whole of creation had seemingly came to a complete stop for me. When I looked out over the water, I could see the ripple of each wave, the flicker of every palm frond moving in the wind, the beauty of children playing in the tidal pools, the brilliant color everywhere, the taste of the salt in the air, heavy and delicious all at the same time. So much of the beauty of creation, of the movement of the spirit becomes lost when we rush from one thing to the next, when we get stuck in our daily routines, when we become singularly focused on the task at hand, until we, with the Pharisees, no longer see and perceive the power of God bursting forth in our worlds. The search for peace and the call to embody compassion moves us to be more vigilant, more aware of the beauty, of tenderness, of grace—both in our midst but also in our sisters and brothers. The search for peace and the call to embody compassion moves us to celebrate beauty through prayer and meditation. To allow each moment of our lives to become a prayer of thanks to God for the world and all that is in it. To be thankful for the beauty of the world through singing and worship. To challenge one another to share that beauty with all that we meet through the giving of our time, our talents, and our resources that all people might one day have the chance to see the beauty of God’s beautiful world and to never, ever allow the dictates of our faith to supersede the love and mercy that is sewn deep within the fabric of our souls. The search for peace and the call to embody compassion moves in all of us to always have eyes that see and ears that hear those in our midst who need help. To see each person as the beloved child of God that they are and to have a place for each within our hearts and within our faith.
In this view of faith, all of life, for each person, becomes the quest to grow, and deepen, and find better and more peaceful ways to be in the world and with one another. Of seeing, maybe for the first time, the inner beauty of your soul and the outer beauty of the world. Discovering the well of love and grace from which we have all arisen and to which we will all one day return. To practice a faith that opens hands instead of clinching fists. To practice a faith that sees each person in the world as my brother or my sister and believing that no one child of God is better than any other. A faith like is exhausting and exhilarating. That thrusts you out into the world seeking new and better ways to be the hands and feet of Christ and to be about the reconciliation of the world and each member in it. It is chaotic and always in motion, it is spinning and spinning and spinning until all that you can grab ahold of, all that you can trust is the calm hand of God resting on your shoulders and saying, yes, you are my beloved, and in you I am well pleased. It is boldly stepping out in faith though you don’t know where you are going or how you will get there. It is believing that deep inside God’s very being is the desire for all God’s children to experience the loving embrace of another. To experience safety and security, sustenance and salvation. Until that moment when all time and space collapse into one with God and we all enter into the joyous celebration of God’s love, a table set before the foundation of the world. Until we know and believe that God has called all the beloved community of children home and we take our rest. Glory be to God in the highest and on earth peace amongst all God’s peoples, alleluia, amen.