Jesus’ disciples are caught eating grain from a field on the Sabbath. The Jews considered the Sabbath, one of their oldest traditions, not to be tampered with. However, not only do Jesus’ disciples not tip-toe carefully through the tulips, they trample all over everything. This field is not filled with tulips but with grain. They eat the grain because they are in need.
The Pharisees, like children watching other children do something wrong, tattle on the law breakers. It is the Sabbath. To break it in this way is an ultimate no-no. In the story, Jesus drops a few lines of Scripture about how the hero of the faith, David himself, had him some fast food one Sabbath.
Most commentators say that Jesus stretches the point here. The example that Jesus uses does not exactly fit. The disciples are eating grain from a field, while King David takes some of the specially consecrated bread from the temple. By doing this, Jesus helps all preachers out who reach deep to make an example fit the theme.
Jesus defends this use of an old story by stating that his general point is that something new has arrived, and the old way of seeing and doing will not fit.
Jesus finally just goes ahead and says what he means, “I am Lord of the Sabbath!” You can bet that got some people’s attention. Some of the Pharisees can be heard in the back of the crowd saying something like, “Did he say he was bored with the Sabbath? What’s the matter with him?”
When the correction is made, the crowd gets real quiet, and someone hears the sound of a garment being torn or wine being spilled all over the ground. The old is not going to handle the new. The religious establishment does not need or want a “Lord.” There is but one Lord and they already have him boxed in the Temple. The religious leaders want no one, especially some upstart from Nazareth or Capernaum, or wherever he is from, messing with the old traditions.
“Lord of the Sabbath, really! Somebody needs to take him down a notch or two.” Plans are heard in the background even in these early chapters of Mark. Mark wants to make it crystal clear just why Jesus is hung up to dry like some piece of cloth.
Jesus is more interested in human need than he is in religious practice. This was and is good news for humankind, but not such good news for the establishment. Institutional religion easily gains a self-preserving quality. Jesus was and is a constant challenge to those who think they have finally got the recipe for the best wine or who finish sewing the garment and want no new additions.
Jesus wants people fed no matter what day it is. He wants power to be present no matter how uncomfortable it makes those who like it the way it has always been. And yes, he will tear things up if need be to make sure that people stay alive to the constantly changing spirit which “blows where it wills.” I know that is from another Gospel but it applies to the same Lord.
Chapter Three
Mark 3:1–6 Healing the Man with a Withered Hand
“What makes Jesus mad?” would be a good title for this section. Those who want to make Jesus some kind of moral policeman who stands by with a set of the Ten Commandments and keeps score are disappointed with the findings in these verses. In these verses the very ones who anger Jesus are the ones who want him to be that moral policeman.
A good deal of religious practice is based on a God who is like Santa Claus—“making a list and checking it twice, gonna find out who’s naughty or nice.” Jesus is more concerned with the source of a person’s actions. He keeps talking about matters of the heart, the heart being the seat of emotions and thought for the Jewish people.
Keeping the rules for the sake of keeping the rules is not enough, and it can lead to empty ritual and self-righteous merit badge collecting. Jesus has a way of seeing through actions and looking for attitudes. If it is a question of giving someone a cup of water, Jesus would be interested in where the water is drawn from. For Jesus, the reasons for actions reveal more than the actions themselves.
The people who make Jesus mad are the ones who forget the reason that God made guidelines in the first place. God is not concerned with list-keeping nor is God impressed by the quantity of rules that one keeps. God loves. God wants wholeness for God’s people. God knows best, and God knows what hurts people. God knows that we are less than God, and we were supposed to be less than God. God set up parameters within which to operate. God does not box us in but allows us to be free.
Many of the Pharisees and other religious leaders of Jesus’ day are box sellers. They get so busy making sure everyone has the right box that they forget what the box is supposed to hold. Goodness of life is for everyone. When Jesus asks, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath?” he is met with silence.
Jesus is aware that his listeners already know the answer. Jesus understands that those being asked to respond to his question have been boxed in. This boxing-in makes Jesus mad. Those who are uncomfortable with Jesus being mad will just have to get over it. The word that Mark used to describe Jesus’ anger means “to be really disgusted.” He is so disgusted that he grieves for those with whom he is angry.
If you have ever looked at someone who has made you angry and they are angry back at you and you say, “You know, I feel really sorry for you,” then you get the picture. Jesus is saying to the religious leaders, “You don’t get it, do you? You have forgotten the reason for the Sabbath. You have closed down your hearts. Your hearts are fossilized. They have grown old, hard, and without feeling. They represent death and not life.”
If you have trouble believing that Jesus meant all this with the use of one phrase, then look it up in a good commentary. Mark’s use of the Greek language, based on the idiom of Jesus’ day, reveals a multi-layered meaning in many phrases. In other words they had some better ways of saying what something means than we do. One phrase could say many things.
Jesus is sick to his heart over the religious leadership of his father’s house. Before he ever goes to Jerusalem, Jesus, by means of his words and deeds, symbolically turns over the tables in the synagogue. On the tables are all those boxes full of regulations that the religious leaders have used to hem in the people. Jesus wants the contents of those boxes out on the floor for all to see. The new has arrived. The old is going to have to be broken open in order to contain the new. The boxes are too small.
But boxes are an important product of the religious establishment. No wonder it is in this section that Mark reveals for the first time in explicit language that they start plotting how to get rid of him.
Lest we forget that there is a healing story in all this, let us remember the man with a withered hand. Mark seems more interested in the Pharisees’ contempt for Jesus’ perceived disrespect towards the Sabbath. The healing of the man with a withered hand seems secondary. To Mark, it is secondary. Mark assumes the healing ministry of Jesus and usually gives little detail about the healing itself.
The assumptions made by the writer of Mark’s Gospel would make a book unto themselves. We might like to know more about the background assumptions of this first and oldest gospel, but Mark keeps us guessing. His writing almost assumes that the reader already buys into certain things about Jesus. Jesus is a healer. That is assumed.
Mark has no way of knowing the questions that would arise years later about some of his assumptions. How does Jesus heal? Why does he not heal everybody? Why does healing not happen more today like it did when Jesus touched people?
All of these are pretty good questions which Mark leaves unanswered. Jesus’ healings are, in my book, pretty spectacular. But is this some kind of tease? I have personally not seen withered hands made whole with one touch of a human hand. Yes, I know there are miracles of modern surgery and medicine, but I am talking about those things that look like they happen on TV when some screaming voice beckons a person in a wheelchair to walk.
We have all seen the scenes on TV and anyone who wants to take the time to investigate will discover the emptiness of many of those “healings.” Mind control, hysteria,