a homily on Mark 2:27 by the Rev. Matthew Brench
Today we heard from the heart of the Law, the Ten Commandments, and from the words of Christ we heard an important word of interpretation: The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. This gives us a sense of posture change in how we should understand the law. Because typically we think of the Law in terms of an external imposition, something that is foisted upon us from outside of ourselves that we have to follow otherwise we get in trouble. That is the general sense that most readers get when going through the Bible, and as we hear the ten commandments it certainly can come off that way. But what Jesus reveals in this Gospel is that the Law does not exist simply to be an arbitrary set of rules that God made up for the sake of it. Rather, he says, the Sabbath was made for man. This subtle reversal indicates that we don’t exist in order to follow an arbitrary set of rules that God just decided one day to throw down at us, but rather, the Law exists to serve us: to better us, to teach us how to be fully human, to teach us how to be holy, in short, the Law teaches us human flourishing. And thus, with the Sabbath as the specific example here, we see that these divine commands are not meant to be burdensome but to be celebrated and obeyed with gusto, knowing that we better ourselves in the keeping of them. Or rather, that God the Holy Spirit is sanctifying us through these means of practicing virtue and holiness. Christ has redeemed and justified us, that is God’s free gift, but now the Spirit is working in us and through us, and inviting us to cooperate, not to grieve or quench his work, but to walk in step with him and to grow up into our salvation.
On a practical level, one of the things that this helps us to realize, contrary to what is perhaps the prevailing attitude of our age and culture, is that we should not take a minimalistic approach to following “the rules”. Freedom, especially in our American perception of it, tends to be couched as the ability to do what we want without external restriction, and thus when we look at rules we look at them with the mindset of trying to figure out what we can get away with while merely ticking off the boxes so we don’t get in trouble. In the church, sticking with the Sabbath example, this often looks like Christians keeping the Lord’s Day but labeling other appointed times and seasons as adiaphora and therefore unnecessary. But if God’s Law exists to increase human flourishing: holiness and virtue, then so too are the rules, or traditions, of the Church aimed at spiritual flourishing and growth. Rather than seeing the seasons of Advent and Lent and Easter as optional things that we can ignore if we prefer, we should see these spiritual disciplines of the church as opportunities to seize upon, to invest in, and thereby to grow. When the church invites us to fast, such as on Fridays through most of the year, we should not blithely say “no thanks” because we have freedom in Christ, but we should seriously give consideration, realizing that this invitation is for our good and for our growth in Christ.
In the Old Covenant Law, you may recall, there were three major holidays in which all the men of Israel were required to gather and celebrate: the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Passover), the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost), and the Feast of Booths. The first two are direct precursors to what we celebrate now as Easter and Pentecost; the third, if you trace its development through history, finds itself a thematic echo in Chanukah and Christmas. In Easter we celebrate the deliverance that God has carried out on our behalf, in Pentecost we celebrate the giving of the New Law (that is, the Holy Spirit), and in Christmas we celebrate the establishment of the new Temple, the human body of Christ. Just as it was crucial for God’s people under the Old Covenant to celebrate God’s great gifts to them, so it is for God’s people under the New Covenant today to celebrate what Christ has done for us. And so throughout history the Church has ordered the year – the times and seasons – around those three great feasts, and nearly everything else in the Christian calendar is related to them.
But, again, these times and seasons were made for you, not you for them. You are no more bound to observe the Roman Catholic “Ordinary Time” any more than you are bound to observe the traditional Pre-Lent “Gesima Sundays” of the old calendar, or the “Kingdomtide” of modern Methodist practice. The calendar, the lectionary, liturgy, the way that we celebrate the rites and ceremonies of the Church, are all changeable and variable across time and culture, so long as they continue to point to the same truth, stem from the same Scriptures, proclaim the same faith. So if people ever ask you why you’re interested in traditional worship services, or follow a Bible-reading plan, or observe seasons in the church calendar, you can tell them that these are gifts offered to us from countless generations of believers, tested through many centuries of use and refinement, for the benefit of our very souls. As with the other Commandments, God has put forward means of sanctification and images of holiness. There is nothing legalistic or pharisaical about observing traditions such as these; the legalism and the pharisaism come in when you elevate tradition to a moral imperative: “observe Lent properly or you’re sinning!” And indeed, those who utterly reject these traditions, telling us we’re devolving into paganism for celebrating Easter, are also falling into legalism and pharisaism themselves. For these seasons, lectionaries, liturgies, and traditions are like mere earthen vessels, jars of clay, simple human creations meant to carry the great treasures of the Christian faith.
As we heard in Psalm 81, Sing we merrily unto God our strength… blow the trumpet in the New Moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast day; for this was made a statute for Israel, and a law of the God of Jacob. Let us continue to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, and let us take a closer hold of his many good gifts to us, through his Church, for our life and our salvation.
Leorningcnihtes boc 