Stretched

Scriptures:     I Samuel 3:1-20                     Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

2 Corinthians 4:5-12                         Mark 2:23-3-6

A song featuring Adam Levine begins with these words:

If I got locked away
And we lost it all today
Tell me honestly, would you still love me the same?
If I showed you my flaws
If I couldn't be strong
Tell me honestly, would you still love me the same?

Or if you’d like a more retro, less emotional take, you might remember the Beatles song that ended with the words, “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64.”  I have a longtime friend who has jokingly sung that line from that song many times over the years.  And now he’s 64, so I guess he knows, one way or the other.

Very different songs, but both carrying a similar burden of a question of what happens to love when youth is gone, when strength is gone, when trouble comes.  Will our loved ones be there for us when the hard times come?  Are our primary relationships strong enough to bear the burden of our human brokenness and limitations?  And the same question applies to church – does the quality of our community enable us to be there for one another when we’re not at our best; indeed, when we’re at our worst?  Can we in the church bear the burdens of one another’s humanity?

Our Scripture readings approach this question from a variety of different angles.  Our reading from Psalm 139 assures us that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, that God knows every detail of our days.  In our reading from 2 Corinthians, Paul describes our life in Christ as a treasure that we carry in the clay jars of our bodies – and of course, we know that clay is fragile.   And so we live in this tension between the sense of our bodies as a wonderful gift from God and the fragility of our bodies as clay jars containing treasure from God. 

Our Gospel reading contains two wonderful back-to-back stories about Jesus responding to human need in the face of opposition from those who had other priorities.   The first tells us about Jesus and the disciples walking through a field of grain.  As they walked, the disciples helped themselves to a few heads of grain as they passed.  The religious authorities chastised Jesus for allowing this.  Now, we’d  think the disciples were stealing grain, but what they did in taking grain was allowed in those days under provisions in Scripture for gleaners, when landowners were commanded not to harvest every last bit of grain in their fields, but to leave some stand in the fields as a provision for the poor – it was part of the very limited social safety net of the day.  So the religious authorities weren’t angry with the disciples for helping themselves to the grain.  Instead, they were upset that the disciples did this on the wrong day, that is, the Sabbath, when no work was to be done.  In response, Jesus reminded them of an account in I Samuel, chapter 21, in which David helped himself to the sacred bread in the Temple for sacrifice, which was supposed to be eaten only by the priests, because his men were hungry.  In that account, David told the high priest that his men had abstained from women during their service to David, so they were holy enough to eat the holy bread, and after eating the holy bread they’d be holier still…it’s actually kind of a funny story.  Jesus said that if what David did was acceptable in providing bread for himself and his men, surely what his disciples did in grabbing a little grub for themselves on the Sabbath was also acceptable.

We’re told that right after this confrontation, Jesus entered the synagogue. We’re also told that a man with a withered hand was at worship that day.  Further, we’re told the authorities were watching Jesus closely, to catch him in some words or behavior they could use against him – and more specifically, whether he would heal the man’s hand.    Jesus knew their attitudes, and got right up in their faces.  He invited the man to come forward, and then he asked the congregation a question:  What is lawful on the Sabbath – to do good, or to do harm, to save life, or to kill?    Nobody said a word; you could have heard a pin drop.  Jesus looked around at the people, angry and grieving that they were so hard hearted.  And then Jesus told the man to stretch out his hand. The man did so, and his hand was healed.  And, showing that no good deed goes unpunished, in response to Jesus’ healing, the Pharisees who were there, who normally were no friends of King Herod, conspired with Herod’s Jewish supporters to destroy Jesus.

These quibbles over apparent trivialities point to much larger differences in understanding the meaning of Sabbath between Jesus and the Pharisees, and the differences over the meaning of Sabbath pointed to still larger questions about priorities.   The Sabbath itself was God’s response to human need, more specifically, the need to rest.  The Sabbath was a recognition that human beings are not machines that can work nonstop, but instead need periods of rest and refreshment.  There are two versions of the Ten Commandments, one in Exodus, and one in Deuteronomy.  The Exodus version refers to God’s doing the work of creation in six days and resting on the seventh, basically saying that if God needed rest, we do too.  But that’s a bit cosmic, and the Deuteronomy version is more down to earth, reminding the reader that their ancestors had been slaves in Egypt and had never been allowed to rest – and so the Sabbath is an affirmation of freedom and release from slavery.  In a way, it almost sounds like something out of a pamphlet from a labor union, a form of advocacy for more humane working conditions, handed down from God.  Simply put, the Sabbath day of rest was intended as a precious gift from God for the benefit of people.  But, as often happens in religious communities, a whole framework of interpretation was erected around this commandment that turned this gift into a burden, into a new form of Sabbatarian slavery.  And it is this man-made framework of interpretation, not the Sabbath itself, that Jesus opposed.  For the man with the withered hand, his disability was a heavy burden he was forced by circumstance to carry, day after day, for years on end.  In the true spirit of Sabbath, Jesus healed the man, enabling him at last to lay down the burden imposed by his disability.

Even beyond the specific issue of Sabbath observance, the confrontations between Jesus and the Pharisees demonstrated larger differences between their priorities.  At least as presented in the New Testament – and of course the New Testament accounts were written in part to make the Pharisees look bad and the followers of Jesus look good by comparison – but anyway, in the New Testament, the Pharisees were obsessed with what are called purity codes.  For them, the important thing was to be as pure as possible, at least by their definition, by observing not only the letter of the written law, but also the framework of interpretation that had evolved to interpret the law.  And so they were scrupulous about fasting, fastidious about what they ate, rigorous in observing the Sabbath day of rest.  Their rigorous observance sometimes led them to look down on those who were less observant.  By contrast, the priority of Jesus was the reign of God, as demonstrated by love of God and neighbor.  And love of neighbor meant caring for neighbor.   And so, motivated by their purity codes, the Pharisees said that healing on the Sabbath was a bad thing.  Motivated by love, Jesus healed the man’s hand, Sabbath or not.

I don’t think any of us here would object to someone being healed on the Sabbath here at Emanuel; in fact, we’d probably call the newspapers to publicize the miracle.  One way to get folks in the door:  tell them ‘Come to Emanuel and you’ll be healed of all your diseases and infirmities.’  This place would be packed every Sunday.  In my dreams.  But present-day societies have their own modern-day purity codes.  We might think harshly of groups like the Taliban or ISIS for whipping people whose behavior didn’t meet their expectations, considering them to be primitive in their extreme fundamentalism.  But we have our own framework of expectations, and if we aren’t careful, we can become prideful and look down on who don’t measure up to our standards.  Different faith communities have different purity codes, different sets of expectations of their members.   For example, conservative faith communities may look down on LGBT persons, divorced persons, and so forth, but more progressive faith communities may also look down on persons with more conservative beliefs.  There are even secular purity codes.   Of course, in the church we often think of faith communities condemning the use of alcohol and tobacco.  But outside the church, we can think of vegans giving the side-eye to those who eat meat, or proponents of organic fruits and vegetables looking down on those who just eat whatever is put in front of them – after all, eating organic can be expensive and most of our folks here probably can’t afford to shop at Whole Foods aka Whole Paycheck on a regular basis – nor can I for that matter - or advocates for mass transit and bicycles looking down on car drivers.    Not that going vegan, eating organic, or using mass transit are bad – indeed, these behaviors may be healthy and beneficial to oneself and to the planet.  But they can be accompanied by unhealthy and unhelpful attitudes of superiority, and secular folks who have never set foot in a church in their lives can be every bit as self-righteous about their beliefs as hard-core religious fundamentalists are about theirs.  Ultimately, it is these purity codes and the self-righteousness they generate that Jesus spoke out against.

Before healing the man’s hand, Jesus called the man to the front of the assembly, and then asked him to stretch out his hand.  It’s likely that the man was embarrassed by his disabled hand and tried to keep it out of sight as much as possible.    But in order to be healed, the man had to make his disability visible to everyone. 

We know that, if we want healing, we need to tell the doctor what’s wrong with us, as best we understand it.  If we drag ourselves in for our annual checkup feeling like death warmed over but tell the doctor “everything’s fine”, the doctor may quickly move on to the next patient; after all, doctors aren’t mind-readers and telepathy isn’t taught in medical school.

The church is supposed to be a place of healing, physical, mental, and spiritual – after all, it’s been said that the church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.  Yet in the church, there are aspects of our lives that we may try to hide from others, hiding behind a pious, smiley-face mask of “Everything’s fine.”  Can Emanuel Church be a place where people can get real with one another, where people can lay aside their masks to say, “Actually, everything’s not fine.  Actually, I feel like crap, and here’s why” – and get a loving response, perhaps prayer, laying on of hands, perhaps material assistance?  We may sing hymn, “Just As I Am,” but can people come here just as they are?  From where I sit, I think we’ve come a long way in that regard, and the journey continues.

Some forms of unhealthy behavior, such as addictions, thrive on secrecy, and great effort is made to hide alcoholism, addiction, other forms of compulsion.  There is a saying in the recovery community, “You’re only as sick as your secrets.”  Recovery from addiction begins with bringing one’s addiction into the light, by being honest with others, by saying such things as “I’m an alcoholic and my life has become unmanageable.”  Recovery begins by bringing our brokenness out of the darkness and into the light of God’s love.

“Stretch out your hand,” Jesus told the man with the withered hand.  In doing so, Jesus challenged the congregation to make space for the man to receive healing. May Emanuel Church, as small as we are, have space for those whose abilities and disabilities, whose beliefs and priorities may differ from our own.   May Emanuel Church be a place where people can come with all their limitations, their withered hands and their withered hopes and dreams, their hungry bellies and their hungry spirits, and be fed and healed, and sent on their way rejoicing.  Amen.