“Smoking, Nonsmoking,
or First Available?”
I was around seven or eight years old, and my family was down in Raleigh, North Carolina, for my brother’s soccer tournament. We were looking for a carb-rich dinner, I suppose, and so we found an Olive Garden not far from the hotel. Crowded restaurants were common on tournament weekends, so we went early to beat the rush. In fact, we arrived at the restaurant just as it was reopening for the evening. We were the first ones there.
This was the time when restaurants were still divided into smoking and nonsmoking sections. The hostess at the front of the restaurant greeted us. “Smoking, nonsmoking, or first available?” My dad, who couldn’t help but see the funny side, looked around at the empty restaurant and replied, “First available.”
Seemingly oblivious to the situation, or perhaps just not in the mood for humor, the hostess wore a blank, questioning look. Finally my dad dropped the joke and said, “Nonsmoking.”
This memory was quickly cemented in family lore. Now, whenever a business or an institution holds so fast to its script, its programmed interaction, that it completely misses the demands of a particular situation, we will jokingly say, “Smoking, non-smoking…or first available?”
“Is It Lawful?”
Today’s scripture is about the inadequacy of our scripts. It is about when our rules and routines get in the way of the very thing they were meant to serve. It is about the danger of “just following orders.”
When Jesus’ disciples pluck some heads of grain and eat them on the Sabbath, the Pharisees ask Jesus why they are doing “what is not lawful” (6:2). In response, Jesus points out that David himself and his companions also did what was “not lawful” by eating the sacred bread in the tabernacle (6:4). In other words, Jesus does not contest the Pharisees’ accusation that his disciples have acted unlawfully. He does not say, “But it is lawful, if you would just look at it this other way.” Instead his response relativizes the law. It puts the law in its place. He implies that, whatever the law is, there is something more important. “Yes, my disciples are breaking your law, just as David broke the law.” In a way, he is asking a question. “What is the importance of the law? Why did David break it? Why are my disciples breaking it?”
The very next scene offers a compelling answer. This time, it’s not Jesus’ disciples who are breaking the Sabbath. It is Jesus himself. He is teaching in the synagogue. There is a man with a withered hand. Jesus sees him. The scribes and the Pharisees see him. Everyone is thinking the same thing. Will Jesus heal him? Surely Jesus could wait a day and avoid the controversy. But he doesn’t. He seems resolved to make a point. He calls to the man with the withered hand, “Come and stand in the middle” (6:8)—in other words, “front and center.” This is Jesus’ sermon, more than anything he has said. Then Jesus asks his audience, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?” (6:9).
The silence that follows this question, speaks volumes. The point that Jesus is making, I think, is not that it is lawful. The fact that some Pharisees and scribes are filled with fury and are determined to retaliate suggests to me that they are not persuaded. They see this healing as unlawful. They see Jesus as an outlaw, someone who has no respect for their rules, for their law and order, for their tradition.
The point that Jesus is making, I think, is that there is something more important than the law. Something bigger than their script.
To Think More Deeply
I want to tread very carefully here. When I was sharing some of these thoughts earlier in the week with my brother, he rightly pointed out that this interpretation could quickly unravel into a sort of “do-whatever-you-think-is-right” kind of life, with no regard for the law or for the wisdom and traditions of our ancestors. And I don’t think that’s what Jesus is advocating. He clearly reveres the Jewish tradition and scriptures himself, viewing them as God-inspired. This is evident in Matthew, where he insists that he has come not to abolish the law but to fulfill it.
I don’t think Jesus is telling people to have less regard for the law, to think less about it. I think he’s telling them to think more about it. To think more deeply about it. To remember why God gave it in the first place. To think about its purpose and how it might occasionally get in the way of its own purpose. Indeed, the same transcendent purpose that inspired the law may one day come to subvert it.
The original Sabbath law, expressed with minor variation in Exodus and Deuteronomy, “focuses less on the duty of the individual to observe a Sabbath rest [himself and more on] his duty to allow his servants and even beasts of burden to have a day without work.”[1] The purpose is expressed this way: “…so that [they] may rest, as you do” (Deut 5:14). The purpose of the Sabbath is not to please some God who’s keeping track of whether you lift a finger or not. The purpose of the Sabbath is rest and well-being, not just our own but others! The way the law is expressed implies that, Yes, we are our brother’s keeper. So when Jesus sees a man in need of healing, a man who has carried heavy burdens, his duty is clear. His duty comes not from the law, but from the God who liberates, the God who heals, the God who is working for the redemption and well-being of all creation.
The Irresponsibility
of “Obedience”
A big risk of laws and rules and scripts for living, is that they might invite us to stop thinking, to relinquish responsibility and hide behind obedience. Whether it is a restaurant hostess who welcomes customers with the same formula, regardless of the situation, or a religious community who settles into a routine, regardless of the needs and demands that surround them, when we defer to the ways things are normally done, we risk becoming irresponsible. Theologian John Caputo puts it rather provocatively this way, “Looking for a rule to follow is always the height of irresponsibility. I was just following orders is a lamentable excuse.”
When Jesus looks pleadingly around the synagogue, he’s not looking for law-abiders, he’s looking for God-fearers. He’s looking for people whose faithfulness is not about checking off a box but about doing good and saving life.
What Are We “For”?
I will be saying more in the next couple of weeks, but today I want at least to introduce a conversation that I will be inviting you to join. A few Saturdays from now, here at church, I will be inviting us to share in an open, congregational conversation about our future as a church community. The purpose of the conversation is not to make any decisions or even really to contemplate decisions, but rather to be honest about where we are..and to begin listening. (Listening is perhaps the most underappreciated part of prayer, at least in western culture.)
The unspoken modus operandi of many churches is, “Let’s do what we’ve always done.” It is to approach change with the question, “How can we stay the same?” Maybe small tweaks or adaptations are necessary, but the question is, “How can we stay the same?” But as I’m reading through Luke, I’m struck by the continual confrontation between Jesus and the religious establishment, how Jesus is regularly challenging the way things have been done. Not to be contrarian, but to be faithful. Instead of deferring to old patterns, to “I’m just following orders,” he thinks deeply about what God wants and what that looks like. He reveres the law and tradition, but he has a deeper memory than many of his fellow Judeans. (Or as C. S. Lewis puts it in the Narnia series, he remembers a “deeper magic.”) He remembers the why, which on occasion has been obscured by the overgrowth of the very law and tradition that was originally meant to serve God’s purpose.
That is effectively what I will be inviting us to ponder and share. What is the “why” of gathering for church? At this stage, change is inevitable. Not just for our small church community, but for many church communities. It is projected that in this one year of 2025, over 500 churches in the state of Virginia will be closing their doors. Staying the same, in the strictest sense, is not really an option. But rather than seeing change as a threat, I would like to see it as an invitation and an opportunity in which the question becomes, “How do we stay faithful to who we are, as everything around us changes? How do we stay faithful to who God has called us to be?” Which begs the question, “Why do we gather in the first place?”
My dad tells me that my grandpa, who was a pastor, would encourage him, “Don’t tell me what you’re against. Tell me what you’re for.” I would like to think my grandpa was inspired by Jesus, who is always clear about the why. In today’s scripture, he’s not flouting the Sabbath to be a contrarian or a revolutionary. He is not against resting. He is for the healing and well-being of others, for their rest as well as his own.
Is it a coincidence that this is what God seems to have had in mind in the first place?
Prayer
For whom, whatever the question,
The answer is always compassion—
Inspire us by the unruly love of Christ,
Who kept first things first
And loved others,
Especially those who had been neglected or excluded.
…
Grant us the joy and peace
Of living in your Spirit,
Which is free
And unburdened. In Christ, who is our Lord and teacher: Amen.
[1] Linda Lee Clader, “Luke 6:1-11:
Homiletical Perspective,” pp. 417-419 in Feasting
on the Gospels: Luke, Volume 1 (Cynthia A. Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson,
eds; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2014).
No comments:
Post a Comment