Carol Bullard-Bates

June 3, 2018
Texts:  Mark 2:23 - 3:6
           II Corinthians 4:5-12

In reading the Scriptures focusing on the Sabbath in the last few weeks, what struck me in the Deuteronomy passage was three things: that we are to keep the Sabbath holy, that holiness is equated with rest, and that the Sabbath is related to the people’s freedom from bondage in Egypt.  As we celebrate the Sabbath, we are to

Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.  Therefore, the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath Day.

God’s people were not only to rest on the Sabbath, but so were their servants, their animals and the aliens in their land.  The Sabbath Day was a social leveler for all people and even for the animals.  The Sabbath Day was seen as a symbol of the freedom God’s people were given when they left their slavery in Egypt.  No longer did they have to work every day for taskmasters.  They were free to rest, to focus on God’s presence in their lives, and to make sure that even their slaves and servants and animals rest too.  I am sure this concept of Sabbath was a radical departure from the rest of the people around them and their cultures.

I remember when Jonas Nemgne was living with us, and he said to us one day, “You people in the United States are always working very hard.” It was obvious he did not approve of the fast pace of our lives.  Our culture has lost the gift of the Sabbath for everyone that was laid out in Deuteronomy.  Very few of us who call ourselves Christian, including me, have honored this commandment in our lives, even though it was given by God to be a gift to all of us.  We also have not honored the Sabbath for any one else in our culture.  When I was a child, there were no stores that stayed open on Sunday where I lived, which allowed everyone to rest, both from buying and from selling things.  Our consumerist culture has ended that practice and now we have the opportunity to buy or sell or order whatever we want, whenever we want.

I had an experience one summer when I spent four hours each Saturday listening to God.  I sat outside in the beautiful morning and listened.  During that time, I started to hear God’s voice in my dreams and in my spirit and received many messages in powerful ways, including God asking me to speak the truth to the power of the US as it looked like we were about to go to war with Iraq.  Several of us walked in front of the White House each week for an hour, singing, praying and speaking the truth of avoiding war and caring for the world and our poor people instead.  Resting and listening is a radical stance in this fevered culture, and may be the only way we can truly hear what we need to hear from God in our families, in our work, in our church, in our culture, in our world.  If all of us in this church took the same time each Sabbath to rest and listen to God, I expect we would be experiencing many messages from God which would challenge us in uncomfortable ways, and would make us more vibrant, more unified, and more in tune with the Spirit and what God is calling us to do now.  Fred’s decision to get everyone together before church to try to discern what the Spirit is saying to our church is a wonderful first step to this.  If we worked to allow everyone to experience a Sabbath each week—those working in factories in poorer countries, aliens, people of all races and all economic levels, animals—then justice would exist on a deeper level for this country and this world.  The power of the Sabbath Day commandment and its focus on allowing everyone and every animal a sense of freedom from bondage is a radical challenge to all of us.

It is difficult to listen.  It is difficult to not be distracted by what needs to be done.  It is difficult to deal with the restlessness of our age, the speed of information, the need to respond to emails and calls and responsibilities, the needs of our families and friends and those God has given us to love and care for.  However if we don’t recharge, if we don’t listen, if we don’t rest, we become like the Pharisees who missed the glory of Jesus healing a man because they were so focused on what should and shouldn’t be done and how and when healing should be done.  They missed seeing the miracle and rejoicing over it.  Their man-made laws had lost the spirit of the Sabbath, that Sabbath is a time for caring for our bodies and for healing too.

Healing on the Sabbath.

How many of us miss seeing Jesus in our daily lives when we are so focused on what we should or others should or shouldn’t be doing instead?  I can get into planning for everything I need to do in a day, so that I do not keep listening to what Jesus may be wanting me to do.  I can also become so judgmental in my mind toward someone that I close my heart to what love I am supposed to be pouring out to that very person.

My spirit is not far from the Pharisees.  All the Pharisees could see as the disciples were hungry, eating some grain as they passed through the fields, was that they were breaking the laws the Pharisees had created that no one poor could possibly follow.  How could poor people not pick up grain to eat on the Sabbath if they were to eat?  The disciples were depending on what they found in the fields that day from God.  Following Jesus was a path of poverty by the world’s standards, but also they were able to see each day how God cared for them in beautiful ways, such as by being provided the grain in the fields.  Jesus challenges the Pharisees with the words, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” Even more startling, Jesus declares himself as “Lord of even the Sabbath.” Jesus sees what the purpose of the Sabbath is, to provide for all those who are in need that they might survive; not only enough needed rest, but also enough to eat.

The second challenge to the Pharisees’ way of seeing the Sabbath was Jesus coming into the synagogue another day and seeing a man with a shriveled hand.  The Scripture reads, “Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath.” This is a very sad way of being in the world, looking for reasons to accuse people.  They were not in the synagogue to hear the Scripture and be challenged by it.  They were there to accuse Jesus.  They were not there to learn from Jesus or to marvel at his miraculous healing power.  They were there to accuse Jesus.

I too and many of us can get in to an accusatory spirit and miss God’s work in our lives and in the lives of others.  When we start to blame and judge others, our ability to see what can be happening in that person’s life with God is blocked.  Our ability to see God’s work or call in our own life is blocked.  We get stuck in anger and blame and can no longer see how God can use the most surprising things in our own or someone else’s life to heal.  Then our healing and loving power is also unable to flow.

Jesus saw the Pharisees’ stubborn and judgmental hearts in the synagogue and gave them another chance to open to the miracle he was going to perform.  He asked them about the law on the Sabbath, recognizing that would be the only way they might hear his point.  “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” The Pharisees were so caught up in their judgment of Jesus, they remained silent.  They refused to say the obvious because they could not move out of their fear because of the threat Jesus posed to them.  They were so focused on the minute details of what people were not supposed to do on the Sabbath, they missed the beauty of the Sabbath holiness and rest for everyone, the holiness of healing and giving new life.  What is holding us back in claiming our Sabbath holiness and rest?  What is holding us back in claiming the healing power we have been given to listen and give love to all we meet?  Listening and loving and healing is what we are called to do in this world.  Can it be we are not doing what Jesus did because we are not honoring the Sabbath listening so that we might be empowered by God? 

So Jesus “looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man ‘Stretch out your hand.’” We don’t see Jesus angry very often, but he does not let the Pharisees off without looking at each one of them in anger.  For them to purposely not respond to his question about doing good or evil on the Sabbath made it clear to him they did not care about the Sabbath and its holiness and rest.  He saw they just cared about getting him out of their way by killing him.

The man with the withered hand is asked to stretch out his hand.  He is asked to use muscles he has never had in his life, to try to use muscles he has never known, never experienced, to be healed.  As he attempted this new movement, his hand “was completely restored.” The miracle demonstrated once more the glory of Jesus’ power, love and determination to show everyone, even the Pharisees, that God’s love was far greater than their narrow ways of defining the holiness of the Sabbath.  Jesus wanted their hearts to be open to others, but saw only hard hearts and closed minds.

The other aspect of the Sabbath for us to remember is how God created the entire world in six days, the darkness and the light, the waters and the sky, the dry land, the plants and the trees, the stars, the moon and the sun, the birds and the sea creatures, the land animals, and then man and woman in God’s image.  He saw that all of it was good and then rested on the seventh day after his remarkable creation.  “And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested because of all the creating he had done.” I love the definition of God as Sacred Unity in the Aramaic.  We are all in sacred unity with all of God’s creation and we all are to rest to honor that Sacred Unity.  If we truly grasp this sacred unity, and rest and listen to God, we will begin to be creative in our interactions with everything created and each other so that we all might flourish together.

Glory balanced by Suffering

The II Corinthians passage is a humbling, inspiring and difficult passage for us to process.  Paul is speaking to the Corinthians about how he and they have seen “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” He and they have seen God’s glory shining through Jesus’ face.  Paul saw Jesus’s face when “A light from heaven flashed around him,” he was knocked down and Jesus asked him “Why do you persecute me?” In this letter to the Corinthians, he calls himself a servant for Jesus’ sake, humbling himself to serve Jesus by letting others know who Jesus is, what Jesus said and what he did.  He calls his body and our bodies “jars of clay,” which are honored to carry the treasure of Jesus in us.  He points out that when this treasure is seen by others, it demonstrates the “all-surpassing power is from God, and not from us.” This ultimate humility is so awe inspiring, because he gives every bit of credit to God for all the gifts he demonstrated in telling the world about Jesus.  The Pharisees, on the other hand, held themselves over even Jesus in their self-defined hierarchy of who and what was holy.

We are in danger of this too when we put ourselves and our views of who Jesus is higher than those of others.  Paul knows the truth comes from God and God only and that it does not come from us and our knowledge.  Paul strips everything away and realizes the truth is that all we do for God is given to us by God through these earthen vessels.

And then Paul goes into the suffering he and his Jesus’ followers have gone through, very little of which many of us have suffered for our faith, except for Eve, who has suffered jail time for her witness against war.  “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” Paul says when we have Jesus’ glory in us, we can never be crushed, in despair, abandoned or destroyed.  Most of us might disagree with Paul on this.  Humanly we feel these feelings of being crushed, in despair, feeling abandoned or destroyed.  I feel crushed whenever I hear another tweet from our President, and when I see the Israelis killing peaceful demonstrators in Gaza.  At these times we have to hold on to the reality of Jesus being in us, whether we feel His presence or not.  It is an affirmation of faith, not feeling at these times. 

When we see all the protections for poor people, for the environment, for health care being dismantled by President Trump and the government, we can feel these feelings of despair and wonder how God’s presence can break through our hopeless feelings.  We are experiencing these feelings because we have Jesus’ glory in us.  We see what Jesus wants in this world and we see He is shaking his head at our country’s inattention to what is important to love, protect and honor.  Paul says

for we who are alive are always being given over to death, for Jesus’ sake so that His life may be revealed in our mortal body.  So then death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

 We suffer when we are in the world and we represent Jesus because the world ignores what God longs for.  We see the wrong directions, the wrong decisions, the lies and the wrong actions of our leaders and our country.  Just as Jesus died because of His remarkable love and longing for justice in this world, so we suffer internally because of what we know Jesus wants, and sometimes from the world’s systems of oppression.  We also suffer because we see how far we are from what Jesus wants us to be.  It is an odd ending to this passage, when Paul says, “For we who are alive are always being given over to death, for Jesus’ sake, so that His life may be revealed in our mortal body.  So then death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.” When we are truly following Jesus, we may suffer death for his sake, and if we do, we are following in his footsteps of facing death because we share the truth and what is important in life, to follow him.  In this process, however, the world sees Jesus in us, Jesus’ glory and power and life, because we face what is necessary to tell the world that love and justice is the key to being stewards of this life and world. 

Many of you know that I was planning to go to Palestine when there was a lot of violence from the Israeli government in 2013.  I had a lot of people who were worried about me going, but I was clear that I needed to be witness to what was going on.  I thought to myself, if I die, I am following what God is calling me to do.  I was in the middle of a lot of tear gas during that visit and experienced how much tear gas people in the refugee camps go through every day.  Even at a wedding I attended in the Al Arroub refugee camp just south of Bethlehem, we had to shut the doors to the recreation building where the wedding was being celebrated because of the tear gas.  I was experiencing the daily life of the Palestinians and their resilience in the face of daily oppression.

I recall the Job class and what Job went through to stay faithful to God.  The pain was unbearable to lose all of his children, wealth and health, with even his wife telling him to curse God and die.  But in the end he sees God, who speaks to him and shows him the creation of the world.  I want to share part of the story I wrote for the class.  It demonstrates to me the powerful life experience we can have when we have suffered.

Then it happened.  God came to me in a huge storm and I saw God in all the glory I could never have imagined in my mind before it happened.  I felt God’s power and strength and I saw all the creation of God before me, as though I was there when this earth and sky and heaven were made.  God asked questions about what I knew of how God had created everything and it was all so beyond my understanding, I was speechless with fear and awe.  None of my anger seemed important anymore.  I also had a sense of my children watching with me from God’s throne and seeing the majesty and light and power of God’s presence with them there and with all of us, drawing us all in to the beauty and glory of God’s creation.  Love was the center of it all which I had known all along, but never had fully sensed, the unity of us all with all of God’s creatures and creation, until that moment.  We were this beautiful unity that required us all to be loving and joyful together, and stop thinking any one or any part of creation was less than any other.  It was all shining with God’s light and love and glorious beauty, and I was so filled with God’s presence and questions, I was healed and I was thankful and I was scared all at the same time. 

It would not have mattered if we had never had another child or any cattle or anything else in our lives.  I was carried with God’s presence and words and majesty for the rest of my life.  We had another ten wonderful children, my wife was amazed at my healing, and it seemed that my healing helped her to heal and return to a deeper faith based on what God had given me.  We told our younger children all about their older brothers and sisters and I knew that in eternity they would understand and know each other.  My children and grandchildren loved to hear me tell them of when God visited me and I saw the unity of all and the love and creativity that is the heart of God.  It is hard to imagine how such suffering could bring such an understanding of God and who God created us to be.  It will always be a blessed mystery to me and I hope my story will bring you more deeply in to the mystery.