Jesus rebukes the sabbatarians
2:23-24 One day he happened to be going through the cornfields on the Sabbath day. And his disciples, as they made their way along, began to pick the ears of corn. The Pharisees said to him, "Look at that! Why should they do what is forbidden on the Sabbath day?"
2:25-28 Then he spoke to them. "Have you never read what David did, when he and his companions were hungry? Haven't you read how he went into the house of God when Abiathar was High Priest, and ate the presentation loaves, which nobody is allowed to eat, except the priests - and gave some of the bread to his companions? The Sabbath," he continued, "was made for man's sake; man was not made for the sake of the Sabbath. That is why the Son of Man is master even of the Sabbath."
CHAPTER 3
3:1-3 On another occasion when he went into the synagogue, there was a man there whose hand was shrivelled, and they were watching Jesus closely to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath day, so that they might bring a charge against him. Jesus said to the man with the shrivelled hand, "Stand up and come out here in front!"
3:4 Then he said to them, "Is it right to do good on the Sabbath day, or to do harm? Is it right to save life or to kill?"
3:5-6 There was a dead silence. Then Jesus, deeply hurt as he sensed their inhumanity, looked round in anger at the faces surrounding him, and said to the man, "Stretch out your hand!" And he stretched it out, and the hand was restored as sound as the other one. The Pharisees walked straight out and discussed with Herod's party how they could have Jesus put out of the way.
5 comments:
"The Sabbath was made for man.."
Mark comes to grips with, and unfolds for us, the gathering storm precipitated by the Lord's alternative life style.
He antagonized the authorities, the establishment, threatening the authority and power which they hold over the people.
He mystified(s) those of us wedded to the rules, still under the hegemony of the pedagogue.
He shook things up all around, something so terribly needed by this fallen world in which we live.
Jesus is as much of a radical and revolutionary today as ever.
Its strange how a religion that ebgan with an iconoclastic prophet ended up with so much baggage.
I wonder about this often. Am I projecting my stuff onto Jesus when I make him out to be an anarchist?
And if not, what processes lead us there? I think Peter and the first Christians probably hit a crisis point where they had to choose between preserving and passing along the teachings of their prophet or passing along the creative spirit that generated those teachings.
And incrementally we chose institution over spirit.
Absolutely, David. With the advent of Constantine they very definitely put institution above God, where it's been (to a tremendous degree) ever since.
I once asked my wife, Ellie how we could possbily see the church as the body of Christ. Her response was very creative, I thought: The church is the vessel from which come the (true) Christians.
So we can see that the body is diseased (to the nth degree), but there have always been creative elements doing God's work. PTL
Maybe Jesus wasn't so much an anarchist as someone redefining what the rules are ... loving God and others?
If loving God and others is the meaning of the rules we already have, then Jesus was a philosopher. If loveing God and others is the only rules we need, then Jesus was an anarchist.
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