Stretch Out Your Hand - Second Sunday after Pentecost
Author: Pastor Carolyn Hetrick
June 02, 2024
Have you
ever noticed that Jesus walked a lot? Through the countryside, by the Sea of
Galilee, in the Temple, even on water. Walking takes time, so much so today
that often when we think about going somewhere, we choose to drive. Walking
gave Jesus time to see things. And throughout the gospels Jesus also stepped
away to pray and to recharge. If Jesus had been moving more quickly, he could
have reached more people. But if he had, they might have become a blur to him. Just
another number. Instead, they came into focus for him, and he for them. While
we often pay attention to what Jesus said and did, we pay less attention to the
pace at which he did it. There may be a lesson here for us where we all move
so quickly that we do not actually often see or hear others around us. And
of course that’s often the last thing we want to hear. Maybe we do not want to see or walk with what God would have us attend to for too long. It
disrupts our needs. And so maybe instead we walk around looking for reasons not
to, like in today’s gospel.
Imagine a
chorus of Pharisees following Jesus around rural Galilee, waiting for him to
trip up, muttering along the way, trying to goad him into a different pace or
course. They watched him like a hawk to see whether he would do something they
could use to accuse him. They follow Jesus into the middle of nowhere in fields
of grain. Think of the effort that took.
Would that they spent as much time allowing people to come into their focus who
longed for healing or help, who could be restored, and that they could
participate in that. That’s what sabbath is about.
I wonder if
they really hoped they could catch Jesus in a more public setting like the
synagogue. They couldn’t rest until they got him. I wonder if they even hustled
to make sure that guy with the withered hand was there that day as they
attempted to use Jesus’ heart against him. Jesus was wrecking their plans. And Jesus
knew it. He knew that they were manipulating God’s word for their own purposes,
claiming to speak for God in one sense while drawing rigid boundaries and
exclusionary ways that kept the sabbath from other people. I wonder at how
exhausting it was to never take a break from this mission of theirs. What if
they had allowed themselves to sabbath? How did they miss it? How might we?
Replenishing
in a non-stop world is miraculous for any of us. The world of a man who could
not support himself was a non-stop world of misery. A world where we cannot
stop or allow others to do so, can be a world of misery today. People who live
with disability are trapped between what they can earn and do and what we will
not afford for them because of all the rules. People who long to have a quality
of life find that one job is not enough. It takes two or more for even the
basics of life, and we have an affordable housing crisis which leaves many
homeless. No day is sacred and sleep is in as short supply as food. We see
what a world where we are starved of sabbath looks like. While we wonder what
it takes to make it easier for people to love. It takes the expansive love of sabbath.
About one
third of our lives are to be spent in sleep. Through these “years” of days, God
is at work in us and in the world, redeeming, healing and giving grace. When we
sleep, have you realized, we practice letting go of our reliance on self-effort
and abiding in the goodness of our Creator? Embracing sabbath is not only a confession of
our limits, it is an act of reliance on God. [1] God commanded animals too should receive this rest and once every seven years
even the soil should get a break. It’s not just for stress reduction, but a way
to hold time so that it serves the purpose of glorifying God by paying
attention to the rhythms God created and that God knows all of creation needs.
But, the
very fact that God had to make “keeping Sabbath” a commandment in the first
place tells us all how foolish we can be. It’s like giving someone an ice cream
cone and then having to tell them to start licking and enjoying. The fact Jesus
HAS to ask if it lawful for hungry people to eat. Really? Our questions are not
all that different.
The sabbath
is made for humans as rest, and of living toward the fulfillment of the
unfolding of creation. It is time lived outside the constraints of time. Jesus
says to the man with the withered hand, “come forward” while asking the Pharisees,
“IS it lawful to do good on the sabbath? It was an invitation to the Pharisees
to come forward to be healed too. Of COURSE Jesus did good and healed on the
sabbath. Keeping a Sabbath means opening yourself to restoration of heart, mind
and body. The man with a withered hand was keeping the Sabbath by responding to
Jesus. And Jesus wanted to Sabbath - to restore everyone.[2]
There is no
joy or delight in any of life, including on the Sabbath, if our “rules” and
demands eclipse all else. When Jesus asks IS it lawful to save life or to kill,
ironically this encounter with the Pharisees will end on a note of murder. They
turn a day of life giving into a deadly and deadening day. Their response to
Jesus is to plan to kill. As if that is not work. I wonder why they didn’t
think to ask if THAT was lawful to do on the Sabbath? The rules had become so important even God
dropped out of sight, not to mention other people.[3] OF COURSE no one should kill on the Sabbath, and yet the Pharisees committed
murder in their hearts that day - doing harm on the Sabbath day. What is perhaps truly ironic is that when you
think about the origin of the Sabbath, in the book of Genesis, Eugene Peterson
once observed, Adam and Eve’s very FIRST DAY of existence was a Sabbath. God
created them and then God rested. Humanity begins with the proverbial “day
off.” God modeled it for us. The human race started its existence on a Sabbath
as a reminder of the very reason God created in the first place: love. We were
made in love, for love. Love for God and for one another sets the Sabbath
tone.
The
Pharisees who claim to know so much about Jesus that he would not resist
healing, knew so little about his fundamental nature, much less that of God the
Father, or the kingdom he proclaimed was at hand. Hate is a symptom of hardness
of heart. Hurt prevailed because hearts
that have been starved for so long were seemingly impervious. Friends, that is
what we can transmit around us too. Time
can affect us, and we can affect time around us. That’s why there is such a
thing as Sabbath. Even if you say, but Pastor, I do spend my days laboring
to heal injustice and poverty, you and your heart still need to journey
slowly and rest with Jesus. Stretch out
your hand.
That day in
the synagogue, everyone needed to be healed, and so today does each of us.
Jesus is saying to us, “Stretch out your hand,” slow down, and focus upon Jesus’
loving gaze and God’s heart. It will expand and transform us. That’s what love
is always meant to do. And when it transforms us, we see with the eyes of our
heart. We look around and really and truly see the people and the creatures and
the planet around us in all that truly is possible, not the limited view of our
judgments. A real Sabbath - a real Sabbath will melt our hearts and heal the
wounds of the world. Who doesn’t want a world like that?
[1] Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary
[2] Suzanne Guthrie, At The Edge of Enclosure,
[3] Scott Hoezee, Center for Excellence In Preaching, 6.3.2018
Sermon
Texts: Deuteronomy 5:12-15
12Observe the sabbath day
and keep it holy, as the Lord your
God commanded you. 13Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 14But the seventh day is a
sabbath to the Lord your
God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male
or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the
resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as
well as you. 15Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and
the Lord your God
brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm;
therefore the Lord your
God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.
Mark
2:23—3:6
23One
sabbath [Jesus] was going through the grainfields; and as they made
their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. 24The Pharisees said to
him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” 25And he said to them,
“Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and
in need of food? 26He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and
ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests
to eat, and he gave some to his companions.” 27Then he said to them,
“The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; 28so the Son of Man is lord
even of the sabbath.”
3:1Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a
withered hand. 2They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the
sabbath, so that they might accuse him. 3And he said to the man
who had the withered hand, “Come forward.” 4Then he said to them, “Is
it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But
they were silent. 5He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their
hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it
out, and his hand was restored. 6The Pharisees went out
and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
Copyright Rev. Carolyn K. Hetrick, 2024 All rights reserved. May not be
reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.
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