Sermon 7th March 2010
Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adrian Parkhouse, preaches based on the reading from Luke 6: 1 – 11:
Disputes over the Sabbath
“Jesus said to them, “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath; to do good or to do evil,
to save life or to destroy it?” Luke 6:9
1. My opening question is probably capable of being answered positively only by those in the congregation who are in their 60s. It is: is there anyone here who would describe themselves as having been either a “Mod” or a “Rocker”? Mods and rockers were a youth phenomenon of the early to mid-60s – eclipsing Teddy-boys, only to themselves eclipsed by hippies. Rockers wore black leather and rode motor bikes; mods dressed in sharp suits, (am I imagining the Parka jackets?) and were clean cut, riding Vespa scooters. Rockers listened to American rock-and- roll; mods to R&B and British “beat”. What they had in common was a tendency to rally at the same seaside resort (eg Margate, Clacton, Brighton or Hastings) and fight. “What is happening to the youth of today?” must have been a phrase commonly used by shocked and appalled Middle-England. Little did it know what was to follow!
My brother was a mod: not, I think, a very professional one (though I was quite small at the time); but he had a Vespa scooter in the garage, his hair was floppy and slicked-back, his suits were quite “sharp” (judged by the standards of a sleepy market town), and if he came back at nights, he came back late and I was left to struggle to switch off Radio Luxembourg in our shared room bedroom
David’s mod-era is as much as I can claim to having a revolutionary in the family.
2. There is a whiff of revolution in the air in our Gospel reading. If you had read on from the passage on which Adjoa preached last Sunday, you will have started to notice the straws in the wind that over the period of Jesus’ teaching ministry would come together to create the whirlwind that was Holy Week. The initial admiration of his home synagogue turning to “furious anger” and a threat to his life; growing wonder among the people at His teaching and his actions; balanced by growing criticism from the religious establishment – how can he purport to forgive sins? What is his authority? What is he doing, eating with tax-collectors and sinners? – a scepticism that leaks even into the crowds as, in the passage immediately before today’s, they query “Why don’t your disciples do what the other holy men do, and fast and pray?” – which draws from Jesus a reply which makes quite clear that he is teaching about something new which is different from the old; something fresh which can not simply be incorporated and folded into the staleness of what is now; any more than you can use a piece from a new coat to patch an old one without ruining both or put new wine into old skins without losing everything.
3. And, for now, this theme of new coming up against old, of revolution, comes to a crescendo in the debates about Sabbath observance. To us – living in a largely secular society when Sundays may, for most, be only slightly, if at all different from Saturdays [see this morning’s Radio 5 phone-in] - this may seem a curiously inconsequential, unimportant issue – less significant perhaps than some of those points which have already arisen for argument: surely that point about Jesus’ authority to forgive sins or the question why he went to outcasts and sinners – surely, they are more critical to have answered than this conflict over what can be done or not done between the hours of sunset on a Friday and Sunset on a Saturday? Why not get into a rage about the important issues?
Understanding the reason why this incident is so significant may help us understand a lot more of the New Testament – since both Jesus and the early-Church had to deal with similar issues – and may, perhaps, bring us a little closer to understanding the revolutionary that is Christ.
4. I have struggled to identify “a rebel” in my family. No surprise then that I have a lot of time for the Pharisees. I like to know where I am. Let me approach it this way: How many of you drive? How many of you drive without due care and attention? Is that a traffic offence? [s.3 RTA] How many of you have driven while using a hand-held mobile phone? Is that a traffic offence? [Road Vehicles (Construction Use) Amendment(no.4) Regs.2003] How many of you have driven while playing with your Satellite Navigation? Is that a traffic offence? [Depends whether it is a hand-held device – or whether you driving without due care]
You see I think it is helpful to know that it is an offence, not just that it may be an offence to use a mobile when driving. I think it is more helpful than being uncertain about whether you may be committing the offence of driving without due care and attention.
And the Pharisees and their predecessors agree with me. They say: OK the 4th commandment seems quite clear (“Observe the Sabbath and keep it holy…the seventh day is a day of rest dedicated to me. On that day no-one is to work…”Ex 20: 8-10) - clear like “driving without due care”: but what does “no work” actually involve? It would help they say, if we clarify matters, so then people know what they can and what they can’t do. And so over the centuries, among some of the Jewish schools of study, other laws were developed which said more specifically what you could and couldn’t do: I read that the Talmud, still influential over orthodox Jews, has 24 chapters concerning the detail of Sabbath observance. At about Jesus’ time the Pharisees taught that “no work” covered 39 specific prohibitions; and some teachers provided yet further guidance, so that the Pharisees watching Jesus’ disciples knew that “rubbing an ear of corn in the hand” was equal to “threshing” equalled “work – banned on the Sabbath; and also that “plucking the ear by hand” equalled “reaping” equalled “work – banned. So tey could say confidently to the disciples’ master: “you’re nicked mate!”
And healing too – unless necessitated by imminent death (not the case here – cf the account in Matt 13) – equalled “work”.
5. Useful? Because of the clarity? Actually, no. Two prime dangers: the first is that laws beget laws. You have a law and then you need an exception. Eg “no mobile phones – except 999 calls” and here “no work – except to save a life”. And the exceptions grew: so you could do some work within the “home”: so extend the definition of home to include your street – or now (as in parts of London) create an “eruv”, within which certain work may be done. So the laws lead to casuistry and the helpful guide is lost. In fact, the problem is that the law which was intended to guide you and help you, becomes something that can only trip you up. You can only get it wrong. That’s what Paul was saying at in his letter to the church in Rome when he endorses the holy nature of the Law but compares how it reveals our sin, whereas faith in Jesus makes us new.
And the second danger is that our response to God becomes dominated by adherence to rules and the reason for the rules is lost on us: the Law was given to point us to God, to help lead lives which were pleasing to Him; but if our religion is reduced to the observance of rules in the fear of losing our chance of holiness, then we have lost our way.
6. That was the revolutionary’s message on these two Sabbaths: human need is more important than religious ritual and regulation (that was the lesson of David and that of the healing of the shrivelled hand); and that the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath – ie his authority is beyond that of the Sabbath laws – concentrate on Him. Discomfortingly revolutionary if you rely on observance as a measure of fulfilment; discomforting if you judge others by the yardstick of conformity; discomforting if you seek the comfort of legalism as an alternative to a relationship with the Lord of the Sabbath.
Compare this teaching with Jesus response to the query as to the most important command: love the Lord you God (the Lord of the Sabbath); love your neighbour (human needs).
7. There is an irony that during Lent when many of us are undertaking special observances, particular small disciplines, that the CofE Lectionary takes us to a story apparently critical of observance. Perhaps it is important to close by making the point that both Jesus and the other NT writers are clear that the Commandments and the Law are inherently good and observance is encouraged: but they are equally clear that what God desires is a faithful heart living according to the promptings of his Holy Spirit. So happy Lent observance, may the Holy Spirit be party to your disciplines and may they bring you close to God.
Disputes over the Sabbath
“Jesus said to them, “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath; to do good or to do evil,
to save life or to destroy it?” Luke 6:9
1. My opening question is probably capable of being answered positively only by those in the congregation who are in their 60s. It is: is there anyone here who would describe themselves as having been either a “Mod” or a “Rocker”? Mods and rockers were a youth phenomenon of the early to mid-60s – eclipsing Teddy-boys, only to themselves eclipsed by hippies. Rockers wore black leather and rode motor bikes; mods dressed in sharp suits, (am I imagining the Parka jackets?) and were clean cut, riding Vespa scooters. Rockers listened to American rock-and- roll; mods to R&B and British “beat”. What they had in common was a tendency to rally at the same seaside resort (eg Margate, Clacton, Brighton or Hastings) and fight. “What is happening to the youth of today?” must have been a phrase commonly used by shocked and appalled Middle-England. Little did it know what was to follow!
My brother was a mod: not, I think, a very professional one (though I was quite small at the time); but he had a Vespa scooter in the garage, his hair was floppy and slicked-back, his suits were quite “sharp” (judged by the standards of a sleepy market town), and if he came back at nights, he came back late and I was left to struggle to switch off Radio Luxembourg in our shared room bedroom
David’s mod-era is as much as I can claim to having a revolutionary in the family.
2. There is a whiff of revolution in the air in our Gospel reading. If you had read on from the passage on which Adjoa preached last Sunday, you will have started to notice the straws in the wind that over the period of Jesus’ teaching ministry would come together to create the whirlwind that was Holy Week. The initial admiration of his home synagogue turning to “furious anger” and a threat to his life; growing wonder among the people at His teaching and his actions; balanced by growing criticism from the religious establishment – how can he purport to forgive sins? What is his authority? What is he doing, eating with tax-collectors and sinners? – a scepticism that leaks even into the crowds as, in the passage immediately before today’s, they query “Why don’t your disciples do what the other holy men do, and fast and pray?” – which draws from Jesus a reply which makes quite clear that he is teaching about something new which is different from the old; something fresh which can not simply be incorporated and folded into the staleness of what is now; any more than you can use a piece from a new coat to patch an old one without ruining both or put new wine into old skins without losing everything.
3. And, for now, this theme of new coming up against old, of revolution, comes to a crescendo in the debates about Sabbath observance. To us – living in a largely secular society when Sundays may, for most, be only slightly, if at all different from Saturdays [see this morning’s Radio 5 phone-in] - this may seem a curiously inconsequential, unimportant issue – less significant perhaps than some of those points which have already arisen for argument: surely that point about Jesus’ authority to forgive sins or the question why he went to outcasts and sinners – surely, they are more critical to have answered than this conflict over what can be done or not done between the hours of sunset on a Friday and Sunset on a Saturday? Why not get into a rage about the important issues?
Understanding the reason why this incident is so significant may help us understand a lot more of the New Testament – since both Jesus and the early-Church had to deal with similar issues – and may, perhaps, bring us a little closer to understanding the revolutionary that is Christ.
4. I have struggled to identify “a rebel” in my family. No surprise then that I have a lot of time for the Pharisees. I like to know where I am. Let me approach it this way: How many of you drive? How many of you drive without due care and attention? Is that a traffic offence? [s.3 RTA] How many of you have driven while using a hand-held mobile phone? Is that a traffic offence? [Road Vehicles (Construction Use) Amendment(no.4) Regs.2003] How many of you have driven while playing with your Satellite Navigation? Is that a traffic offence? [Depends whether it is a hand-held device – or whether you driving without due care]
You see I think it is helpful to know that it is an offence, not just that it may be an offence to use a mobile when driving. I think it is more helpful than being uncertain about whether you may be committing the offence of driving without due care and attention.
And the Pharisees and their predecessors agree with me. They say: OK the 4th commandment seems quite clear (“Observe the Sabbath and keep it holy…the seventh day is a day of rest dedicated to me. On that day no-one is to work…”Ex 20: 8-10) - clear like “driving without due care”: but what does “no work” actually involve? It would help they say, if we clarify matters, so then people know what they can and what they can’t do. And so over the centuries, among some of the Jewish schools of study, other laws were developed which said more specifically what you could and couldn’t do: I read that the Talmud, still influential over orthodox Jews, has 24 chapters concerning the detail of Sabbath observance. At about Jesus’ time the Pharisees taught that “no work” covered 39 specific prohibitions; and some teachers provided yet further guidance, so that the Pharisees watching Jesus’ disciples knew that “rubbing an ear of corn in the hand” was equal to “threshing” equalled “work – banned on the Sabbath; and also that “plucking the ear by hand” equalled “reaping” equalled “work – banned. So tey could say confidently to the disciples’ master: “you’re nicked mate!”
And healing too – unless necessitated by imminent death (not the case here – cf the account in Matt 13) – equalled “work”.
5. Useful? Because of the clarity? Actually, no. Two prime dangers: the first is that laws beget laws. You have a law and then you need an exception. Eg “no mobile phones – except 999 calls” and here “no work – except to save a life”. And the exceptions grew: so you could do some work within the “home”: so extend the definition of home to include your street – or now (as in parts of London) create an “eruv”, within which certain work may be done. So the laws lead to casuistry and the helpful guide is lost. In fact, the problem is that the law which was intended to guide you and help you, becomes something that can only trip you up. You can only get it wrong. That’s what Paul was saying at in his letter to the church in Rome when he endorses the holy nature of the Law but compares how it reveals our sin, whereas faith in Jesus makes us new.
And the second danger is that our response to God becomes dominated by adherence to rules and the reason for the rules is lost on us: the Law was given to point us to God, to help lead lives which were pleasing to Him; but if our religion is reduced to the observance of rules in the fear of losing our chance of holiness, then we have lost our way.
6. That was the revolutionary’s message on these two Sabbaths: human need is more important than religious ritual and regulation (that was the lesson of David and that of the healing of the shrivelled hand); and that the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath – ie his authority is beyond that of the Sabbath laws – concentrate on Him. Discomfortingly revolutionary if you rely on observance as a measure of fulfilment; discomforting if you judge others by the yardstick of conformity; discomforting if you seek the comfort of legalism as an alternative to a relationship with the Lord of the Sabbath.
Compare this teaching with Jesus response to the query as to the most important command: love the Lord you God (the Lord of the Sabbath); love your neighbour (human needs).
7. There is an irony that during Lent when many of us are undertaking special observances, particular small disciplines, that the CofE Lectionary takes us to a story apparently critical of observance. Perhaps it is important to close by making the point that both Jesus and the other NT writers are clear that the Commandments and the Law are inherently good and observance is encouraged: but they are equally clear that what God desires is a faithful heart living according to the promptings of his Holy Spirit. So happy Lent observance, may the Holy Spirit be party to your disciplines and may they bring you close to God.
posted by Parish Administrator at 2:23 pm
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