The Lord of the Sabbath

by Sharon Marr

(Based on Mark 2:23-3:6)

The gospel reading today could suggest laws and rules that to our ears sound petty and unreasonable, so before we proceed I thought I would remind you of some laws in the world that are still enforceable  today!
In England the 1854  Metropolitan Police Act states anyone knocking on doors and scarpering for fun could land themselves with £500 fine. Wow!  Hands up those who, along with me, have been guilty of this heinous crime in their childhood.
Meanwhile, in California: Nobody is allowed to ride a bicycle in a swimming pool and … it is also illegal to set a mouse trap without a hunting license. Enough said!

Today we are recognizing Te Pouhere Sunday. “Pou” is a post and “here” means to tie. The imagery is that of an anchor. A place where we could anchor our “waka”, “va’a”, or boat. Te Pouhere is a Sunday put aside to celebrate the Anglican Church constitution – the “post” of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia, in which there is provision for three equal partners. Today we celebrate our identity of working alongside each other, praying with and for each other, and listening to one another.

The three equal partners are Tikanga Māori, Tikanga Pakeha and Tikanga Pasifika.  Tikanga means ‘the right way of doing things in one’s own culture’. So Pakeha have their own right way of getting things done through the Pakeha culture, and so also do Māori and Pasifika through theirs.

Our Tikanga church is to be celebrated, and constantly worked upon, so that there truly is equal partnership.

‘Their own right way of getting things done’ leads us onto this week’s reading in which Mark describes a two-part confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees.  In part one, Jesus and his disciples are walking through a grain field on the Sabbath.  When they get hungry, the disciples pluck a few heads of grain to munch on. Jesus doesn’t stop them, and the Pharisees pounce, asking Jesus why he’s allowing his followers to break the Sabbath.  Jesus answers, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”
In part two, Jesus enters the synagogue and meets a man with a withered hand.  Knowing that he’s being watched, Jesus asks the Pharisees whether it’s lawful to “do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill.”  But the Pharisees refuse to answer.  Angered and grieved by their hardness of heart, Jesus heals the man.  The story ends, predictably, with the Pharisees leaving the synagogue to plot against Jesus’s life.

Traditional interpretations of this incident pit a rigid, legalistic Judaism against Jesus.  But that reading (in addition to being harmful and inaccurate), lets us off the hook way too easily.

The Pharisees in this story are not a stand-in for Judaism.  They are a stand-in for all convictions, values, traditions,  commitments, doctrines, absolutes, preferences, and essentialisms — no matter how cherished, noble, or well-intentioned — that stand between us … and compassion.  In other words, the question this story asks is not, “What was wrong with first century Judaism?” but rather, “What have we — here and now — become hardened too, at our peril?”
What mortal, broken thing have we deified … instead of love?  Who or what have we stopped seeing because our eyes have been blinded by our own best intentions? 

What are we clinging to that is not God?

We do an injustice to the Pharisees if we write them off as bad people.  They were good people — good people trying to preserve and protect those things — laws, rituals, traditions, habits — that mediated faith for them.  Don’t we do exactly the same thing when we hold fast to our favourite worship practices, our cherished spiritual disciplines, and our beloved daily rituals?  Don’t we just as readily decide what is sacred in our own lives, and then refuse to budge even when those things become obsolete and lifeless?  The Pharisees were not wrong to uphold the Sabbath.  They were absolutely right.  But rightness is not love.  Rightness is not compassion.  Rightness will never get us to Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath.  Only compassion will do that. 

This is an unnerving story.  It’s a story about Jesus walking through the sacred fields in our lives, and plucking away what we hold dear.  It’s a story about Jesus seeing people we’re too holy to notice, and healing people we’d just as well leave sick.  It’s a story about a God who will not allow us to cling to anything less bold, daring, scary, exhilarating, or world-altering … than love.

Why would anyone bring the business of a synagogue to a grinding halt on a Sabbath morning?  Why would a man risk his own life to heal a stranger’s withered hand?

Apparently, nothing is more sacred than compassion.  The true spirit of the Sabbath — the spirit of God — is love.  Love that feeds the hungry.  Love that heals the sick.  Love that sees and attends to the invisible.  If we truly want to honour the Lord of the Sabbath, then we have to make relevant all practices, loyalties, rituals and commitments we hold dear — even the ones that feel the most ‘Christian’.  There is only one absolute, and it is love. 

Pastor Steve Garnas-Homes says this of today’s reading in a piece titled Do good or do harm?:

In all our discerning what is right or lawful or acceptable, it comes down to this: the choice to be kind or to be unkind.
The ‘right’ thing to do is always kind; cruelty is never right.
I am wary that what may feel like ‘justice’ to me is actually revenge; I renounce it …
The goal is not to be right but to be loving.
Life is complicated; kindness is not.

Dear Family, Rules and Laws are important but, as Jesus tells us, everything we do must be weighed by the greatest of all commandments: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.
Nothing is more sacred than compassion.

Only with this costly love embedded deep within us will our beloved three Tikanga church truly flourish.  Only with this costly love embedded deep within us will we become capable of following the way Jesus came to show and truly see that which is sacred in our lives.

In the Name of Julie

We were travelling to Tauranga for the weekend, and a new friend, Rosemary, asked if I wouldn’t mind picking up a grocery order for her from New World. Sure thing, not a biggie.
We love adventures while on a break – doing different things, exploring new areas and places – so we thought this could possibly be tagged ‘adventure’, and thus added this task to The Adventure List. Easy.

The instructions for collecting the groceries seemed clear: Ask for Julie by name, receive the package, pay $116.80, thank you very much, walk away with a smile.
Julie had been informed: the package would be collected today.
Wanting everything to go smoothly for us, Rosey provided extra information: the cost of each identical item (forty in total) was $2.92, the supermarket’s address and phone number. Double easy.

Walking boldly into the store, scanning confidently, it quickly became obvious that there was no counter for enquiries or customer service. No one making eye contact. And no Julie waiting at the entrance all day for me to drop on by at any hour and be served because she had no other tasks on her To Do List that day.
The supermarket was buzzing with the lunch time rush.
Okay. Not a great time to come. Which one is Julie?? How do I even find her, let alone speak with her?

Feeling less-than-bold now, I edged towards a kindly looking lady and her empty checkout. “Hello, I’m here to pick up some groceries for a friend. I was told that Julie had organised everything. My friend just said to come in and ask for Julie. Are you able to help me?”
Big blank eyes from kindly lady, followed by enquiring expression and tilted head. Was I rambling? Did Julie even exist? Wasn’t this supposed to be easy?

Kindly lady kindly smiled. “Julie? Yes, she is here. I will get her for you.” And off she went.  Whew.
Letting out the breath I didn’t know I was holding, I smiled. Easy. Julie does exist, and her name was the key! Easy unlocked.

Except that kindly lady was now returning down the aisle, Julie-less. “I’m sorry, Julie is on her break. But she left a note. You’re picking up an order of forty items for Rosemary, is that correct?” I nodded. Yay Julie! Thanks!
“I’ll just go and get the order.” And off she went. Again.

Returning still Julie-less, but this time with an oversized box, she slipped into her checkout. Blip went the scanner, and the total was calculated. “OK, so the total is $140. How would you to like pay for that?” Kindly lady really did have a kindly smile.
“Umm, that’s not right.”

My reply probably came out a little more forcefully than I meant it … “Oh, but I was told that the total would be $116.80. Julie said it would be one sixteen eighty, not $140.” What will I do if Kindly insists on one forty? Stand my ground? Ring Rosey, disturb her at work? Walk away …

I started rambling again. “My friend has been speaking with Julie, and Julie said it would be $116.80.” Did I not just say that? Definitely rambling.
“She’s budgeted for that price, so I’m not sure I should take them if it’s the higher price. I might have to ring her up and ask her what she wants to do.” This is SO not an adventure. Well, not a good one.

Kindly reread the note that Julie had attached to one of the items. “Oh, I think it’s because your friend ordered a different brand, and we ran out of that, so Julie has given her another brand, and it’s more expensive. But if Julie said that was the price, then that will be the price.”
She turned the note over. “Oh! Julie has written on here to charge you the lower price. I’m sorry that I didn’t see that at first.”

My turn for blank eyes, enquiring expression and tilted head. What? Then, Yay Julie! Your name is King (or Queen) here! Aww, and how kind …

Transaction completed, thanks all round, we walked out of New World thinking that everything had worked out so well. Julie’s name really did make all the difference! It obviously carried authority. To use it was to get results! Rosey would be stoked too. Everyone loves a bargain, right?

Why has this adventure stuck in my mind?
Well, if we dare to look beyond the face-value of all of our experiences, and invite the Holy Spirit to teach us, we can learn so much. There’s actually a name that we as Christians have been told to use – the Name of Jesus. I wonder if we truly understand the force of wielding it?
Do we speak his Name with confidence and boldness, knowing that his authority is higher above anything we perceive or imagine? Do we expect that, in the Name of Jesus, paths will be cleared, obstacles will be shifted, power will be released, results will be good?

Food for thought. And probably more than $116.80’s worth.

Keri Pollard

Pass-it-on Love

by Pat Lee

(Based on John 15:9-17; Acts 10:44-48; 1 John 5:1-6)

I found this little exercise written by Nathaneal Vissia. It is actually a children’s sermon, but the idea appealed to me because of its simplicity. Often the simplest things we experience are the ones which we remember best. So I thought it would be worth doing. It is not difficult, but something we can maybe have a little fun with.

I’m going to give a tennis ball to S. I want her to pass it to the person closest to her. Once that person gets it, pass it to the next person as quickly as possible. Keep doing this until it gets back to me.

Ready? Go!

Very good.
Now let’s see if we can do it with two tennis balls – one after the other.

Ready? Go.

Very good.
Now we’re well practised, let’s see if we can do it with ten tennis balls in a row.

Ready? Go.
(Pass out the same two balls and look into the bag to see where the other eight are).

Hold on! Wait! Just a minute! I think we have a problem.
It looks like I don’t have ten tennis balls to pass out.

Well … I guess we can’t do what we’re planning to do.

(Shrug) Sorry about that.

Though disappointing, I hope my lack of planning will help us think about today’s Scripture. In it, we hear Jesus talking to his disciples about what he expects them to do after his crucifixion/resurrection/ascension. He starts by saying that he has loved the disciples the same way that God loves him. He then tells the disciples to love one another ‘as he has loved them’. In other words, God first loves Jesus and then Jesus loves the disciples and then the disciples love one another. So this love that Jesus is talking about is like our tennis balls, right? I pass it to you, you pass it to the next person and so on. Pretty simple, right?

But what happens if the disciples run out of love – just like I ran out of tennis balls – and don’t have any more to pass out?
This is why it is important to notice where Jesus gets his love from – because he doesn’t create it himself. Instead, Jesus receives love from God, his Father. This is important to remember because humans can run out of love, just like tennis balls. But God does not run out of love – God always has more love to give us. So, we keep turning to God, like Jesus did (and taught his disciples to do), then we’ll always have more love to receive and always have love to share with one another.

All the passages we’ve heard today have the thread of love running through them. Peter (in the Acts reading) recognized that what was happening was an act of God’s love to the Gentile people, so he had them baptized. 1 John 5 is about loving God and obeying his commandments, while the gospel of John is about the loving relationships we have with God, with Jesus and each other.

David Eck, an evangelical Lutheran in America, writes, “The expression ‘love one another’ is perceived as something pretty. It evokes rainbows and warm, fuzzy feelings and the smell of chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven. ‘Love one another’ is our grandmother’s voice singing sweetly in our ears. It’s a sight of beautiful wild flowers blowing gently in the wind.
“But is this what ‘love one another’ is really about? Is this what Jesus had in mind when he told his disciples, ‘I give you a new commandment, …’?

“Let me ask those of you who have been married for ten years or more: Is this what ‘love one another’ looks like in your relationship with your beloved? Is it all rainbows and warm, fuzzy feelings?  Hardly! Loving one another in the context of a marriage is hard work. It takes patience, lots of listening, and lots of forgiveness. It takes learning to live with the things our spouses do that drive us crazy; and recognizing that we are also guilty of doing things that drive our spouses crazy. It involves sacrifices and frequently putting the needs of our beloved before our own. Loving one another is not happily skipping through a meadow of wildflowers. It’s slowly trudging through a field of landmines with the awareness that we can only navigate it successfully if we do it together.

“Let me ask those of you who have or are raising children or grandchildren: is this what ‘love one another’ looks like in your relationship with your kids or grandkids? Is it all hearts and hugs and cuddly kittens? Hardly!
“Loving one another in the context of parenting and grandparenting is hard work. Like marriage, it takes lots of patience, lots of listening, and lots of forgiveness. It takes time-outs and difficult conversations. It’s setting boundaries and keeping kids and grandkids safe. It takes learning to live with things our children do that drive us crazy; and recognizing that we are also guilty of doing things that drive our children crazy.” (End of quote)

Jesus demonstrated to the disciples what he meant by ‘love one another’. On the night before he went to the cross, he washed his disciples’ feet; and told them to do the same. He was not talking about cleanliness, but about humble service.

Jesus knew that he was going to be betrayed. Did that knowledge stop him loving Judas? No, it didn’t. But after Judas had left them at the table, Jesus gave them the words, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.”

Peter denied him three times. Did Jesus stop loving Peter? No. He gave Peter a chance to redeem himself over that denial, by asking him three times if Peter loved him. Jesus understood completely what it means to love. He knew the love of his Father, and was able to love even when he was betrayed or denied by those closest to him. He forgave. That’s what he wants us to do as well.

In our humanness, we find it hard when anyone has hurt us, betrayed us, broken our hearts or broken the bonds of fellowship, but to forgive, as Jesus did, is exactly what we are called to do out of love, the kind of love the Father has for Jesus and that Jesus has for us.
How can we do that?
John 15:10 says, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.”

In Our Daily Bread, on Tuesday, I read a story written by a woman whose name I can’t pronounce (Xochitl Dixon). This is what she wrote: “When my now-grown son, Xavier, was in kindergarten, he stretched his arms wide and said, ‘I love you this much.’ I stretched my longer arms and said, ‘I love you this much.’ Planting his fists on his hips, he said, ‘I loved you first.’ I shook my head.  ‘I loved you when God first put you in my womb.’ Xavier’s eyes widened. ‘You win.’
‘We both win,’ I said, ‘because Jesus loved both of us first.’

“As Xavier prepares for the birth of his first child, I’m praying he’ll enjoy trying to out-love his son as they make sweet memories. But as I prepare to be a grandmother, I’m amazed at how much I loved my grandson from the moment Xavier and his wife told us they were expecting a baby.” (End of quote)

The apostle John affirmed that Jesus’s love for us gives us the ability to love him and others. Knowing he loves us gives us a sense of security that deepens our personal relationship with him. As we realize the depth of his love for us we can grow in our love for him and express love in other relationships. Not only does Jesus empower us to love, but he also commands us to love: And he has given this command: “Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.” When it comes to loving well, God always wins. No matter how hard we try, we can’t out-love God!          Amen.

Love and Sharing

by Liz Young

(Based on John 15:1-8; Acts 8:26-40; 1 John 4:7-21)

In the Gospel, Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches.” Such a close, natural reminder of our relationship with Jesus.
Then comes the reading from Acts, where Philip, on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza, met the Ethiopian official of the Empress, reading Isaiah, who had prophesied, “… as a sheep is led to the slaughter: justice was denied Him …” And Philip was moved to tell this official, a Gentile, the good news of Jesus’s love, and then baptized him in water found by the wayside. And, finally, that beautiful reading from John 1: Beloved let us love one another, for love is of God and he who loves is born of God and knows God. No man has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.  God is Love. He who abides in love, abides in God and God abides in him.

Last year I visited the Orkney Islands, and the stone rings set up there 10,000 years ago, where  people would come annually to meet, feast and celebrate the sun’s solstice.  5000 years later more stones were erected further south in the Orkneys and, finally, in 2000BC, similar stones were erected at Stonehenge, all with amazing astronomical accuracy.
People have stood in awe and worshipped the sun for thousands of years.
We worship Jesus, the one true vine, and belong to a church with branches all over the world, celebrating Christ’s Love. 

The Bible has many stories of love, both in the Old Testament (eg, Ruth and Boaz, Elisha and Elijah, Nahum) and in the New testament, where Jesus taught us both to love God and to love each other; and gave us pithy, challenging examples of how to do that, such as the story of the good Samaritan.

Today’s readings are all about Love.
The Greeks had several different definitive names for Love:
Philia – a soul connection; affectionate love between like-minded friends.
Storge – family love, devoted love within the family.
Ludus – playful love, shared laughter.
Eros – erotic romantic love.
Pragma – enduring love (celebrated at Golden weddings, etc).
Philautia – self-love.
Mania – selfish, obsessive love.
And, finally, Agape: selfless love, love which goes on giving.
Many of the medieval mystics, such as Julian of Norwich, meditated on Agape. Costly Love.
St. Francis, an ex army man, taught us to love animals and plants.
[We reflected on this costly love, last Thursday, when we remembered and honoured those people who gave up their lives in the First and Second World Wars, for our freedom. We remembered not only those that lost their lives but also those who were damaged mentally beyond repair, those who suffered from shell shock, now known as PTSD.]
Today we remember Jesus’s costly love for us, his death on the cross.

When we love we want to share. The Collect for today reads, Christ of the New Covenant, give us the happiness to share, with full measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, all that you give us.
This prayer encourages us to show that Love in practical ways, by sharing, and so I thought about the ways we share here in Tairua.
We share water: in the first house John and I lived in on Paku we had 2000 gallons of roof water in a concrete tank and only ran out once. Once the fire brigade filled our tanks, and it rained the next day!  We were told to stop using this tank water in 1982, and now we’re being asked to put in tanks in newly built houses; so now we will need to know what we can paint our roof tops with, and whether the water we’ve collected is safe to drink.

We share knowledge: in schools, on the internet and in libraries. We share magazines. I take my copies of the Listener and the New Scientist when I’ve read them, and drop them down to the library for others to read. And at coffee morning at the Golf Club we share women’s magazines.

We share clothes: we’re all grateful to the Op Shop.

Many of us share plants and cuttings.
For me it’s our plum tree, whose fruit is eaten by our neighbours while we’re at sea in February. Our citrus fruit, and maybe we should put in a fig tree. Recently I’ve realized that I should have planted a pecan tree, and a pine nut tree, twenty years ago, and they could have been a legacy for those who will live in our house after we’ve died.

These are all good examples of the sharing we do now or could do in the future.

When we reflect on our own actions, when we confess our sins, we also review how our love for others, for our own family members, often falls pitifully short of Jesus’s expectations; and thinking about failures leads me to thinking about forgiveness … which leads to recalling South Africa’s ground-breaking process of truth and confession (under Desmond Tutu in the ’90s), leading to forgiveness and healing.
Let us make an effort to quickly acknowledge when we hurt someone else with thoughtless words, spoken without emotional intelligence, and ask for their forgiveness.

Jesus said, “Love your enemies.” We are blessed in New Zealand that we have few international enemies; we are too small.
But each generation has its own bogeyman. One of ours is currently Putin, whom  I try to understand as a threatened child. His childhood would have been awful, encouraging him to fight his way to the top, and if the media is correct, he still lives with fear every moment.
But we no longer live in fear, we live and trust in the knowledge of Jesus’s love.

Yes, we need to pray for peace and justice. I was encouraged this week to hear that Australia has pledged to help Tuvalu retain enough land, and to create new sand dunes, for Tuvalu to remain an independent nation. May we each seek out ways to help those we love, and are responsible for, to achieve their own independence, and to make their own decisions.

If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
Let us leave here thinking of Christ’s Love for us, and let us work out how we can show love to all around us.
Amen