Sermon for June 2. 2024
Pentecost 2 B
Mark 2:23-3:6; Deut. 5:12-15
Graduates Recognition
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
Back when I was in high school and considering where to apply to college (this was the days before e-mail, before social media)—colleges that were trying to recruit you would actually mail a catalogue to you—a thick booklet filled with descriptions of what their campus was like and what kind of education they would offer, and illustrated with pictures of satisfied-looking students and handsome buildings, and lists of all the different courses you could take.
One of the things that attracted me to the college I eventually attended was their mission statement, written in the course catalogue, that read in part: “Rooted in the Christian gospel, we believe life is more than a livelihood, and we seek to teach students how to lead lives of worth and service.” This mission statement was inspired by the Lutheran theological tradition, which emphasizes the importance of vocation—your calling in life. Specifically, a vocation or calling is not only something that pastors have, but is something that every Christian has.
Your vocation as a Christian began when you were baptized, and through water and God’s Word, God poured out the Holy Spirit upon you; and ever since, the Spirit has been working in your life, calling you to find the intersection between the gifts and talents God has given you, and the needs of the world. Your vocation might change over time, but wherever your find that intersection of your gifts and the world’s needs, then your vocation can really come to life; and you can receive satisfaction and meaning by serving others in love, and giving glory to God.
Keep in mind, your vocation is not necessarily your employment. It is if you’re lucky, but even if it’s not you can still find way to apply your true vocation within your employment—and really, within every aspect of your life. You can use your God-given gifts and talents in a way that encourages others to be true to their vocations as well, realizing that a vocation is “not a goal I pursue, but a calling that I hear” [Parker Palmer]. That’s because the word “vocation” comes from the Latin “voca”, meaning “voice”. The voice to listen for is God’s voice. You can listen for that voice through prayer, through reading and hearing the Word of God, through working alongside and talking with other people, and through paying attention to the events and emotions of your own life. But one way or another, God’s voice will be speaking. Will we be paying attention so that we may listen?
Today’s gospel is a lesson in vocation, because as Jesus teaches about the Sabbath, he makes a point similar to the one I first encountered in my old college catalogue: Life is more than a livelihood; faith leads us to lives of worth and service. Jesus uses the events of the particular Sabbath day recounted in these stories from Mark chapters 2 and 3, to reveal his vocation on behalf of the world. Jesus and his disciples were walking through the grainfields on the Sabbath and began to pluck heads of grain to eat. They were hungry. This was considered a form of work, and taken to be violating the commandment to “observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy…and not do any work—not you, or your child, or your animals, or the immigrant living in your town.” Everyone needs and deserves a rest.
Why was this such a big deal? Beginning in the time of Moses, Sabbath rest was a sign pointing back to the creation of the world; if even God took a rest when he was finished, then we mortal humans need a rest, too. After Moses lead the Israelites through the wilderness and they were about to enter the Promised Land, Sabbath rest became a sign that they were finally free people: “remember you were slaves in Egypt” Moses tells them, and were never allowed to rest. By the time of Jesus in the 1st century, Sabbath was a badge of Jewish identity. It was a source of pride, that in the face of being persecuted and even killed just for being Jewish, they were able to maintain the gift of rest for one day each week, a gift God had given them.
Since it was so important—this Sabbath rest—people followed rules based on a mix of motivations: religious belief, cultural traditions, social pressure, and legal enforcement. People also debated what the rules should be and what things counted as work. We see in today’s gospel a group of Pharisees criticizing Jesus and the disciples for “doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath”. Perhaps these Pharisees looked at plucking a few heads of grain as one of those “slippery slope” dangers. You know, you pick a few heads of grain, and then you pick a few more because what’s the harm in it, and before you know it you’ve harvested your whole field and you never got the chance to rest and enjoy life at all that week. But in the way they were leveling their criticism, these particular Pharisees had taken a commandment that was designed to promote healing, restoration, and freedom—and turned it into a weapon of “exclusive nationalism” [N.T. Wright, Mark for Everyone].
It’s like they’re challenging Jesus: are you a faithful Jew, or not? Are you on our side, or not? Just who do you think you are? They’re using the rules of the Sabbath as a way to attack one group (the disciples) as being inferior to their group (the Pharisees), instead of using the Sabbath as a way to grow in being a light to the world; a light that sets a good example that others would want to follow without being coerced, because it’s life-giving. Now, it’s important to realize that this “us vs. them” attitude was not universal among the Pharisees, who were a large reform movement among the lay people of 1st century Judaism. Pharisees were mostly regarded as upstanding, faithful pillars of their community. In today’s terms we would call them faithful church members. But as is the case with any reform movement, there can be a self-righteous dark side, which is what we see going on in today’s gospel.
So, for this particular group of Pharisees, following the rules of rest on Sabbath had become more important than the purpose of the rules—the purpose was healing, rest, and redemption—which is what Jesus is doing by plucking grain to feed the hungry, or healing the man with the withered hand. And this is when Jesus reveals his vocation, the calling God has for him: “The Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” This is a big, audacious claim he’s making about himself, and with it he’s letting us know that he’s at the “cutting edge” of God’s promised new creation; through Jesus, God’s kingdom keeps breaking into the world in new ways.
And Jesus has come to fulfill the purpose of the Sabbath rules—to give all people access to healing, restoration, and freedom in God through faith. Through Jesus, the Holy Spirit calls to you, to give you assurance that your life is worth far more than you are able to earn or accomplish. Your God-given value as a child of God, along with the value of every other person on earth, is worth so much that Jesus willingly gave himself on the cross for your forgiveness, new life, and salvation.
Because of what Jesus has done for us, therefore we are free to join him in an attitude of the true purpose of the Sabbath. We can encourage the things that lead to real healing, restoration, and redemption in people’s lives. Advocating that everyone needs a Sabbath includes having the opportunity for everyone to rest one day a week, and it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t work hard at an honest job. But in a world that tells you: you should live to work, rather than work to live—we can offer ourselves through faith to be signs that life is more than a livelihood. And we can offer the love of a gracious God to everyone who needs to hear it (especially those who have often been devalued in our society—it may be black people, or gay people, or homeless people, or unemployed people) that their lives, like our own, are of infinite value and are worth caring about. Amen.