Finding Faith ... in healing the man with the withered hand

EDITOR'S NOTE: In October 2017 I began a new venture as a synodically authorized minister at Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. The ride over the past 2.5 years has been an amazing journey of learning, growing and a deepening of my theological mind. This sermon took place on June 3, 2018.

An interesting phenomena has happened to me as I started down this journey toward ordination.

I think many of you have experienced something similar as professed Christians, but in my new role I’ve encountered it more often … and often with more intensity.

It seems now that when many people find out I am pursuing ordination, they try to play a game that is annoying at the least, and a little dangerous at its worst. …

I’m not sure what it is but I run into many who want to play the “But Pastor Doesn’t the Bible Say This Game …” … Sound familiar? I think many Christians who openly profess their faith hear the same thing.

The game generally opens in a social setting, I’ll be in a group and a controversial topic will come up. You name it: politics, social issues, religion. … Inevitably, someone who knows just enough about their Bible to be dangerous will turn to me and say, “But Pastor, doesn’t the Bible say this …”

… Doesn’t the Bible say this about drinking? Doesn’t the Bible say this about divorce? … Doesn’t the Bible say this about sex? … Doesn’t the Bible say this about … you fill in the blank with your controversial topic of the hour.

You’d be surprised how often this happens. … And by people who are even close to me.

It seems that when it comes to being right, there is no shortage of people -- Christians and non-Christians alike -- who would like to take this sacred book we love so much and use it to bludgeon people over the head, sometimes to prove their righteousness and at other times for some to prove how hypocritical the Bible is.

I know that I draw this target thanks to my position as a minister, but I also know the target isn’t reserved exclusively for me as a faith leader. …. I know that you as everyday Christians are targets in this game on an all-too-often basis too. … And it makes being openly Christian challenging sometimes, doesn’t it?

In my experience, many times people who pose these questions to us once upon a time were told by someone they respected that the Bible said something contradictory on a topic that is near and dear to them. … And so without ever looking it up, they carry this scintilla of knowledge into their political or social or religious debates. And that’s when the game of “But Pastor Doesn’t The Bible Say …” is annoying.

… But, it’s when those who profess our faith try to use this game as a political club to keep others in line, to force others to belong in the same ideological tent, that I find that this game is the most dangerous. Because it’s this very act that has put our church in a precarious position nowadays.

In a time that we need to be reaching out and embracing more people and helping them to find God’s grace, his unending love, there are still some who cannot stand the thought of opening our doors and opening their hearts to those “others” whom may not possess their same theological values.

I was reminded of this dangerous game this week as I studied this week’s gospel: Mark 2:23-3:6 … the two parables about the Sabbath. … I don’t have to recount them for you, but in each case, it seems to me that the Pharisees were playing a 1st century version of the “But Jesus Doesn’t the Bible Say This Game …”

… Doesn’t the Bible say this about keeping the Sabbath holy? … Doesn’t the Sabbath say that you and your followers shouldn’t be travelling about on a Sunday to reach the masses to teach them about the Scriptures? … Doesn’t the Bible say David shouldn’t have been stealing bread reserved for the high priests alone? … Doesn’t the Sabbath command you not perform acts of healing on the Sabbath?

“But Jesus, doesn’t the Bible say …”

I must admit that reading today’s text warms my heart, as I can appreciate Jesus’ ire in the second story.

Because in this parable, it seems that the Pharisees are so focused on the letter of the Old Testament law regarding the Sabbath, that they would forgo Jesus performing the healing of a man with a withered hand.

… And let’s get a couple of things straight right here. In the 1st century, a man with a withered hand was most assuredly almost given a death sentence, unless somehow his family was already wealthy, which was the rare case. … Because without being able-bodied, a man didn’t have much worth in an economy that was based on how much physical labor you could perform. And so when Jesus reached out to heal the man, he wasn’t just fixing a physical deformity, he was saving a life.

… And regardless of knowing that, as the Pharisees certainly would have, they still cared less about the man’s life then they did about Jesus’s upholding the Old Testament texts forbidding work on the Sabbath.

But what warms my heart, as I mentioned earlier, is that Jesus turns from the Pharisees’ “hardness of heart,” as our text calls it, and heals the man anyway. In fact, he even shoots the Pharisees a look of “anger,” according to our text. … Now that I can appreciate!

More often than I care for these days, I am being drawn into discussions that start with, ‘But Pastor, doesn’t the Bible say …” … It seems that there is no end to the proclivity of humans to use the Bible to proof text our beliefs or to shame someone or to slam shut the door on our little click to outsiders. … And I want to do exactly what it is that Jesus did: I want to stare at them in anger, and then reach out to those in need and heal them. … But, alas, I am not Jesus, and I can only do my best to try to walk in his footsteps.

And so one discussion, one debate, one conversation at a time, I try to tamp down that anger, and do my best to remind the person playing the “But Pastor Doesn’t The Bible Say Game…” that yes, while the Bible might say something along those lines, the Bible also says many other applicable things in this situation. … Just as Jesus does in the first of our stories today when he reaches back to the Old Testament to tell the story of the future King David entering a synagogue and using the bread reserved for the high priests to feed himself and his followers. …

And by doing so, Jesus very effectively reminds the Pharisees that yes, there are many laws that God handed down to the Israelites in the Old testament, and for very good reason.

But there was also a reason that God knew that he had to become flesh for both his people to understand how much he loved them, and so that he could understand their unique circumstances in this very troubling and challenging world.

… And so, yes, while the laws themselves certainly served a purpose and do still serve purposes today, Jesus reminds us in these two stories -- and many, many more of his parables -- that it was His love, God’s endless love, that was so important that He became flesh to prove to us that living the ways of Christ is more than just following a moral code that was laid down some thousands of years ago. ... Because if that were the case, Christ would never have had to come to earth, and God could have just smited anyone who didn’t follow the rules.

But that’s not what God did … is it?

These texts today remind me of something that a former Luther Seminary professor and New Testament scholar by the name of Donald Juel once wrote: “For us -- as for Mark -- the cross ought to be a sober reminder how easily the most noble motives can be perverted. It points out how quickly an institution can become an end in itself, stifling legitimate concerns of those outside that may seem to threaten stability.

It illustrates how frequently insidious forces we scarcely notice can transform the best-educated, best-intentioned among us into insensitive leaders, desperately out of touch with what’s real.”

Most sobering to me is that in this new journey of mine, I cannot believe the number of times those who profess our own faith use the game of “But Pastor Doesn’t The Bible Say …” to further such insidious intentions. … I cannot believe it is so important to some to keep this click small and exclusive, that they would employee the Scriptures to do their dirty work. .... It stuns me that at such a precarious time in our world, with divisiveness exploding, but with wealth at a all-time high, rather than embrace the mission to spread God’s love around the world, some would use our most sacred book to instead keep others out.

Being a student of history, and of our Bible, one would think that our very broken human nature would no longer surprise me.

… But I admit that I am a little naive in this realm, and so it shames me that I do. … Reading the news every day, I am still surprised at the venom that we hold for anyone who we perceive as the other. … Who do you see as other? … Is it a refugee fleeing a war- and poverty-stricken nation? Is it someone who might be a different gender? Someone of a different sexuality? … Someone of a different skin color?

… In conversations I find myself in at work, or in social situations, or even on social media, I am struck by the Pharisee-like “hardness of heart” exhibited by some. … Sometimes I am just utterly shocked at how important the law -- well, the law that they want to apply to that particular issue -- is to them. And, conversely, how little the other’s humanity means to them. … It’s enough some days to crush my soul.

But on those days, it’s passages such as today’s Scripture that I return to. …. Passages that remind us that while Jesus certainly held a healthy respect for the laws that God handed down to us over the centuries prior to Christ’s arrival here on earth, He also knew that those laws were given to us to sustain life, to liberate us from all the sin that would otherwise bring us death and oppression and inequality. Jesus reminds us that despite the fact that we set aside some bread for the high priests, that when the future king of Israel is on the run and facing sure death if he goes outside, it is OK for him to sneak a bellyful and for him to share it to sustain the life of his followers. … And while the Sabbath laws were instituted to give former slaves a right to a day off, that Jesus wouldn’t use that as an opportunity to excuse himself from healing a man on the Sabbath so as to help sustain his life. … In other words, the laws for made for humankind, not humankind for the laws.

I know that at times I can profess a bit of a “Pollyannaish” view of the world. … So it’s with great sadness that I admit that as long as human brokenness and weakness exist, there will be those --- even those in our faith --- who will wield those Old Testament laws as a club to keep others in line. … To make those “others” feel less than worthy, and frankly to make themselves feel more worthy.

But I do vow, that while my first instinct in these encounters will be to look at our modern day Pharisees in anger, as our Lord Jesus does here in today’s text, my second instinct will be to reach out and heal the man with the withered hand as best as I can. … To the fullest extent of my powers as a Christian, as a pastor … as a person.

And that is exactly what Jesus does for all of us in today’s texts: Invites us to always extend our hand to the those with withered hands. ... Always.

And that is this week’s Good News. … Amen.