Second Sunday after Pentecost
Mark 2
23 One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. 24 The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”
25 He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? 26 In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.”
27 Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
Sometimes I think you’re keeping stuff from me.
Stuff like great quotes, little know facts, and historical tidbits that you know I’ll enjoy. Take, for example, the eminently quotable John Fitzgerald Kennedy. President Kennedy collected quotes, shared quotes, and generated quotes in a way few presidents have.
And those of you old enough to remember President Kennedy have first hand knowledge of something I have only recently learned: He loved reversals, lines that take something and then turn it into something else. An example? I’ll ask you. What’s his most famous reversal?
“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
It kind of defined the spirit of the age. The president challenging people to set aside narrow self-interest in favour of serving others. Oh, how times have changed. But let’s not dwell on that, let’s look instead at these great reversals that JFK loved and no one felt the need to share with me.
"The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us."
“Our problems are manmade—therefore, they can be solved by man."
“Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
"Together we shall save our planet, or together we shall perish in its flames."
I’m going to assume it’s something he picked up at Harvard, perhaps while reading the classics, since this type of reversal was quite popular among Greeks and Romans. It has a technical name, antimetabole (anti-meh-tab-oli), a device that allows new meaning from the reversal of (often) common words.
Take for example, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” See how the use of the word “tough” transforms from “hard times” to “people who can handle it.” So the linguistic trick is to employ the same words, but expand the meaning. Some have suggested that “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” was first said by Joe Kennedy, father of JFK, so perhaps the president found this linguistic habit a little closer to home.
And the technique doesn’t even need to be that complicated. Back to the first example (“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”), all the president is doing is shifting the focus from selfish to selfless. He still reverses the words, but mostly seeks to create a comparison. And since the preferred option is usually presented last (“what you can do for your country”) it reinforces that this is the option to choose.
I share all of this because we should all strive to remember what presidents are like, and because Jesus also favoured reversals—we find one in our passage:
27 Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
It’s an antimetabole (anti-meh-tab-oli) of the more simple variety, reversing the same words, but in this case presented the preferred option first. In this way to seems to add authority. It fits with all the “verily, verily” passages, which continue “I say unto you...” followed by some important lesson.
So what does this sabbath lesson mean, and who on earth is Abiathar?
Maybe we’ll look at the second question first. We get to Abiathar through a field of grain, as Jesus and his disciples create some controversy picking grain on the sabbath. The Pharisees challenge them, and (as is his custom) Jesus offers them a lesson. Jesus recounts the (then) familiar story of David’s struggle with King Saul.
David is on the run from Saul, who considered him a rival for the throne. He shelters among the priests, and seeks food for himself and his men. The chief priest prays to the LORD for guidance, and is instructed to give the sacred bread of the priests to David and his companions (1 Samuel 22.10). Lacking weapons, David also asks for a sword, and the priest turns over a treasured relic, the very sword that David took from the giant Goliath years before, and the story continues.
The lesson Jesus points to is God’s willingness to overlook a hard-and-fast rule for the sake of David’s future. The story of Israel’s greatest king hinges on surviving this moment, and God provides. In other words, it’s God’s rule, and God may belay the rule if it conflicts with something else God hopes to achieve.
For the rule-driven, for the Pharisaic, this kind of thing drives them mad. Why make a rule if you’re going to set the rule aside the first time some future king is in trouble? What’s the point of having capital L laws if they suddenly become optional? To this, Jesus would say something like “the sabbath law was made for humans, not humans for the sabbath law.”
In other words, observing the sabbath is supposed improve our situation, not make it worse. If Jesus and his disciples are hungry, and David and his companions are hungry, why should following the law add to their burden? If the point of sabbath is renewal, how can hunger on the sabbath renew them?* Clearly, it can’t.
Just now you might be thinking “I’m not really a rule-bound person, but even I wonder at God’s willingness to make exceptions.” And I hear you, even if you’re just thinking to yourself. I wonder too at this subjective God, making and breaking rules to suit this or that need. And then I remember Exodus 32.
It’s one of my favourite scenes in the Ten Commandments. The Israelites roll out the Golden Calf, which in the film looks like a cross between a rabbit and whippet, painted gold, and paraded among the people. The narrator says the people were “perverse and crooked,” when it actually looks more like a country line-dancing.
Meanwhile, on Sinai, God fumes at their disobedience. Making another god to worship jumps to the top of the shall nots, and God says “look at what your people do. In my anger I will destroy them all and make you into a great nation instead.”
But Moses pushes back: “First of all, these are your people, the very people you just rescued from Egypt. Do you want the Egyptians to say ‘what kind of god would rescue the people only to kill them in the wilderness?’ I don’t think so. So turn from you anger and keep your promises, the promises you made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
And God repents. God’s subjectivity saves the Israelites—God’s willingness to turn aside from anger and forgive them the party and the whippet-rabbit cross. God’s subjectivity is based on the very practical principle that the law was made for us, we weren’t made for the law.
The law is meant to guide us, to temper our actions, direct our choices, not bind us to fail. If we were made for the law, our constant failure would eventually render the law void. Is a law even valid if no one is able to keep it? Jesus knew that keeping the sabbath (and all the other laws) were aspirational, goals for human living, and not the kind of legislation that would lead to our doom. We’re too broken for hard-and-fast, too human for the letter of the law.
But just as God’s law is aspirational, God’s forgiveness is aspirational too. God’s forgiveness is the signal that God sees more in us than we can see in ourselves. We know our limitations, but God sees beyond them to see what David and his companions can do, what the disciples can do, and ultimately what we can do—when we understand that we are loved and forgiven.
So if I had to sum it up, I might say something like ‘you can’t have faith in God unless you accept that God has faith in you.’ Amen.
*Lamar Williamson
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
Ephesians 4, 5
25 Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbour, for we are all members of one body. 26 “In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, 27 and do not give the devil a foothold. 28 Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.
29 Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. 5 1 Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
The name of this game is Guess the Actress.
In one of her first starring roles, nearly 20 years ago, she played an insurance investigator pretending to be a thief in order to catch a thief, in this case played by Sean Connery. It’s hard to explain the most iconic scene the film—it’s sort of yoga with lasers.
Her next big film, set in the Jazz-Age, she plays a singing and dancing murderess surrounded by other singing and dancing murderesses. This unlikely story is loosely based on fact and nets her an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
In her next major role, she is chasing thieves again—twelve of them—with the added twist that she is the daughter of the most famous thief of all, LeMarc. Once again the iconic scene involves lasers (and this time dancing!), clearly a homage to the first film I mentioned.
The answer, of course, is Catherine Zeta-Jones, and next question is ‘why does Hollywood seem so interested in thieves?’ Jewel thieves, car thieves, art thieves, and those who steal secrets—the thief is a cinematic staple that never seems to get old. The theme seems to lend itself to large, ensemble casts and exotic locations (and who doesn’t love large, ensemble casts and exotic locations?) but it also works as the lone thief fleeing a smart apartment with a pocketful of jewels, and usually appearing sometime later wearing a tuxedo.
Oddly, we cheer them on: holding our breath as they tiptoe past an alarm, leaning in while they speed away, and celebrating with them as they luxuriate with their ill-gotten gains. Cinema is all about escape, so I suppose you could say we are taking a moral holiday—enjoying something that we wouldn’t do ourselves.
But that hasn’t always been the case in congregations, and my proof is found in Ephesians 4.28:
28 Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.
Clearly, there was a thief in the congregation at Ephesus. The church was the only audience for this letter, and St. Paul wrote pastoral letters for the sole purpose of commending or condemning behaviours he learned were happening in the church. Therefore, we can conclude that there was a thief in the church at Ephesus—or maybe more than one.
And notice too the Robin Hood reference in the verse. Paul says ‘stop thieving, get a job (since you obviously have some skills) and then share what you gain with the poor.’ Maybe they had developed a new take on outreach, a little too Sherwood Forest for these supposedly upstanding citizens of Rome.
Either way, Paul says ‘stop.’ Whatever your motive, crime does not pay. And as a Roman speaking to Romans, Paul would be thinking specifically about the penalties for theft in the Roman world at this time. If you were a slave (remembering that the early church included many slaves) you could be flogged, sent away, or even crucified for theft.
Free citizens of Rome were usually subject to fines, several times the value of the item stolen, with the exception of getting ‘caught in the act,’ which could bring harsher penalties such as public shaming (ignominia) or banishment. Obviously this might reflect badly on the congregation as well as the thief, and may have been part of Paul’s motivation for including this particular warning.
But there was certainly more than cat burglars and joyriders in the church at Ephesus. (Grand Theft Chariot?) In the handful of verses for today we have discovered that the church was filled with:
Liars of all kinds
Anger-mongers (including the petulant, the peevish or just plain crabby)
Unwholesome talkers (I’m going to come back to this one. Unwholesome talkers may include slanderers, gossipers, the potty-mouthed or the braggadocious)
The bitter
The pugilistic
And those who engage in “every form of malice.”
So if you have a time-machine, take me with you to Ephesus, circa 50 AD, since this seems like quite the crew. It must have been the most interesting group of people ever assembled, or perhaps they were was just like me and you.
Now, I’m not going to point a finger, so I’ll stick to my own faults. I can be peevish AND petulant—even crabby—and I’ve said the occasional bad word while sailing or renovating. But I’ve never stolen anything, unless you include the occasional sermon idea.
You can make whatever confessions you need to make over juice and cookies, but before you do, you should note one important thing: there was room for all these people—everyone on Paul’s list—in the church. He didn’t say ‘go away,’ he said ‘mend your ways.’ Even notorious Ephesian jewel thieves weren’t shown the door—they were strongly cautioned to mend their ways.
But there is more to this passage than simply the message that sinners are welcome in church (though thank God for that)—there is another hidden issue that I happened upon while trying to understand this idea of unwholesome talk.
In a Bible study written for student athletes at Princeton University (see, a footnote!), the author makes a connection between our passage and the Epistle of James.* In our passage, we are told to avoid unwholesome talk, choosing instead to use language that will build others up. As I noted, this is the garden-variety stuff that comes with community, including gossip and gossip’s evil twin slander. But now let’s look at James 2:
My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. 2 Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. 3 If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” 4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
Here, unwholesome talk includes the way we speak to people, or the way we speak about people, when we imagine that our situation or station is somehow better. Ask anyone in a frontline job dealing with the public, and the candid ones will confess that how people look, talk, and carry themselves will have some bearing how how they are treated. Add to this gender and race, and it soon becomes clear that “inequality of treatment” is as true today as it was in New Testament times.
But there is more. If unwholesome talk includes the way we speak about those we struggle to respect, or look down on, or have written off as foolish (or worse), we’re going to be severely tested in the Age we live in. Just last week I said that “bread and circuses” refers to the people who want to be distracted and entertained by bad behaviour, failing to live up to the values on which free societies were founded. Should I be more understanding? Do I have a choice?
I do. We all do. We are tempted to refer to someone’s “stupid followers” as if they were a enablers and wrongdoers rather than broken people like you and me. It seems that unwholesome talk includes generalizing about an entire of group of people without acknowledging that every person has a story and everyone’s motives are based on a lifetime of experiences, both good and bad.
Trust St. Paul to look in on us, see our brokenness, and say something like this:
32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. 5.1 Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
*http://www.princeton.edu/~aia/files/vbc/Unwholesome_Talk.pdf
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
John 6
24 Once the crowd realized that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum in search of Jesus.
25 When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”
26 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. 27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
28 Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
29 Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
30 So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? 31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’[a]”
32 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
34 “Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”
35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
A funny thing happened on the way to the forum.
You forgot to pick up the bread! You remembered the wine, the oil, the garum (the fish sauce—the ketchup of the Roman world) and maybe a bit of salt, but you forgot the bread.
You’re not rich, so you’re not buying actual bread. You’re heading to one of the many communal ovens in the city to pick up the bread they baked for you overnight. You see, it’s far too dangerous to have a city full of homes with ovens. There’s already too great a risk of fire with all the oil lamps in use, without adding the additional risk of household ovens. So you drop off your dough, and by daybreak you’ll have bread.
But we should back up a bit. There are a few steps first. The recipe you’re using is the same one your parents and grandparents used, and it was already old when they made their bread. It’s from Cato’s classic de agri cultura (“On Agriculture”), a kind of cross between the Joy of Cooking and Farmer’s Almanac. It starts like this:
Recipe for kneaded bread: wash both your hands and a bowl thoroughly. Pour flour into the bowl, add water gradually, and knead well. When it is well kneaded, roll it out and bake it under an earthenware lid. —Cato, On Agriculture, 74*
(Note to my 21st century listeners, this recipe is actually incomplete. Cato was describing a type of sourdough bread, and it needed a starter. He doesn’t mention it because it’s assumed. Thank goodness for culinary historians. And thank goodness that he reminds us to wash our hands. Some advice never gets old.)
So it’s kneaded, formed into a circular loaf, and scored in the same manner later Romans might score a pizza. You have added your personal stamp (how else will you know which loaf is yours?) and you have delivered it to the neighbourhood oven. Some time tomorrow, you and your household will have bread.
And you dig in, because you’re going to need your strength to line up later today for the dole. It’s your right as a citizen—free grain—given out every month. What was once a heavily subsidized staple, cheap for anyone willing to line up, eventually became a giveaway. Famine can lead to unrest, so some clever politician (Clodius) ran on the “free grain” ticket and won. It fell to every politician that followed to figure out how to keep it up. Free grain is an idea that works.
And then much later, it was the little known Emperor Aurelian who decided to simplify the process and just hand out bread. He also gave away pork and wine, which begs the question ‘what type of wine goes with a ham sandwich?’ History is silent on the matter. Setting that aside, Aurelian should be the second-most-famous person who called for “daily bread,” but most have never heard his name. So on then, to the most famous:
30 So they asked [Jesus], “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? 31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’[a]”
32 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
34 “Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”
35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
The chapter begins, of course, with the feeding of the five thousand. Five loaves and two fish are miraculously transformed into enough food to feed the five thousand, with a dozen baskets of bread left when people had their fill.
But the food and the baskets also prompt questions. ‘Surely,’ they say, ‘this is the great prophet we are waiting for.‘ But Jesus must slip away, knowing—John tells us—that the people intended to force Jesus to become king. This was never the plan, so Jesus retreats to the mountainside to be alone.
Later, of course, he is discovered, and more questions follow. How did you get here? (word was already out that he walked over the lake) How can we be faithful? What other signs are you prepared to show us?
It is here that these witnesses make the connection to the story of their faith. “Our ancestors,” they said, “ate manna in the wilderness. What will you do?” So Jesus completes the connection.
First, he tells them, there is bread and there is true bread. True bread comes from God and brings life to the world. “Then give us this bread” they say, seemingly unaware that Jesus has entered the realm of metaphor. And then the reveal: “I am the bread of life” he says, “whoever believes in me will never go hungry.”
Some time later Jesus will teach them to pray saying “give us this day our daily bread,” and they will no doubt remember that Jesus is the daily bread, and a daily walk with Jesus is the cure for the hunger and the emptiness that everyone feels. And the same daily walk will slake the thirst for righteousness (Matthew 5.6) and ensure they are filled.
And this takes us back to Rome, not that we ever really left. For you see, bread and the politics of bread loomed in the background of Jesus’ words, something that he would work to redefine or redeem, transforming the bread of the Roman street into the bread of heaven. But it was never going to be easy.
It was the Roman poet Juvenal who coined the phrase “bread and circuses,” words that I have always taken to mean the things that your leaders will offer you in place of real action. Seems I was wrong. Take a careful look at Juvenal and his context, and a different meaning emerges.
The poet, you see, was a satirist—and satire is always written for an audience. So while the object of the satire might seem to be the powerful—particularly the foolish powerful—the real object is the audience. The idea is ‘make them laugh and make them think,’—to send them home with a lesson or a more realistic sense of themselves.**
In this sense, “bread and circuses” is a commentary on the people who are willing to be distracted, and the extent to which people need to take a hard look at themselves.
When the emperor is trying to incite the crowd by calling some “the enemy of the Roman people,” they need to think. Or when the emperor suggests that a wall be erected to somehow keep the world’s more powerful empire safe, the people need to think. Or when the emperor makes 4,229 false or misleading statements in 558 days (as of yesterday), then the people need to think.
Eventually the people need to think, ‘what will be the cost of all this “red meat” and circuses? What damage is being done to the collective, and what damage is being done to individual lives?’ If there was ever a better illustration of ‘what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul’ I can’t think of it. The hope is that over time, one-by-one, people will think and say to themselves, ‘this is not right’ and ‘what was I thinking?’
When you feed five thousand people, it’s always going to be difficult to convince them that you were mostly preparing them for a metaphor—and that our Saviour and Lord is the only bread you need. People were slow to think, slow to realize that the daily bread Jesus was offering was himself. “I am the bread of life” he says, “whoever believes in me will never go hungry.”
Then give us this bread, Lord, and give it always. May we walk with you daily, fed with meaning and filled with righteousness. And help us help others on this daily walk, thankful that never walk alone. Amen.
*http://pass-the-garum.blogspot.com/2012/10/moretum.html
**https://www.improbable.com/ig/
