A Flexible Heart
A Flexible Heart
Matthew 12:1-8
How much change can happen in one week, right? The NCAA basketball tournament is gone. The NBA is shut down. Broadway and Disneyland and South by Southwest are on hiatus. I saw lines at Heinen’s this week that were unimaginable a week ago. (I also watched the guy who saw the lines and then had his wife hold his place while he went to get a beer!) The Outreach Fundraiser is on hold…for who knows how long. And…most shockingly, it appears that I am about to become a televangelist as we livestream worship for those who are trying to be healthy at home.
One of the things that I am thinking a lot about these days is the work trip. It is such a fixture in Tracy and my life. From the earliest days of our marriage, we’ve gone on these trips every year like clockwork. For seven years, I did two every summer. They have taken us all over the country, from Georgia to West Virginia to Maryland to Missouri. This year, we are planning to return to Berea, Kentucky and build a few things and paint some murals in a school. In fact, the scouting trip is coming up on the Sunday after Easter. The scout trip is when that year’s work trip feels real.
Except…the work trip feels vulnerable this year. Last year, we were able to reimagine the whole trip in a day after the school year was extended due to the Polar Vortex. That’s how we ended up in Kentucky, not Missouri. However, this year, the trip is already planned a week later than usual. If the schools close for any length of time and the year gets extended then we are into all the other summer plans that the kids have—jobs, camps and so on. There’s not a lot of margin for error, not a lot of flexibility.
As I was pondering such things, I did what I often do—I started working my way through past trips. I remembered a trip that we took in Michigan where things were particularly challenging. The most important thing on any work trip is flexibility—the ability to accommodate other people’s needs. In the group, itself, you have adult leaders who try to pretend hard that 8 hours of hiphop music in a van filled with teenagers really isn’t that bad. Even among the teenagers, everyone tries to let it slide when that one kid keeps buying the smelliest beef jerky known to man at each stop. In the interface between the locals and the group, there are always challenges. It is amazing how many names there can be for the same piece of hardware at a lumberyard in another region of the country: “Here’s what we call this part. I can draw what it looks like. What do you call this part?” We learn to be patient with one another. We learn to laugh our way through the challenges.
This was not the case on the trip to Michigan. We were staying at a camp. The truth is that camps can be pretty rigid places, even though at the surface level things might look like they are all fun and games. There is almost always a way things are done—the camp’s way. Everything is fine until you try to do something slightly differently. It doesn’t even occur to you that you’ve broken a rule until— YOU HAVE BROKEN A RULE!
So, at the camp in Michigan, we had already had a few clues that this was not going to be a really easy week. The director just seemed super anxious. She had really strong views on the work that we would do in the camp and was pretty quickly about the business of giving us our marching orders, even though we were paying for the work and doing the work. Just a bit of background—good work trip advisors can adjust to all sorts of things—except being ordered around! The tension was palpable.
Then, it was time for dinner. Actually, it was time for the crew of our kids and adults to show up and set up the dining room. No problem! Trust me when I say that the director had shown us all precisely how this was to be done. Above all else, we were not to be late. The good news was that our group was early. They did the job exactly the way that she had shown them how to do it. “This will please her! Now, we’ll get on her good side!”
There was only one problem. The director showed up and began violently shaking her head: “No…no…no! This is unacceptable.” There was absolutely no problem with how the tables were set. No, the problem was that she had not rung the bell to call them for the table set up. The group stood there staring at her—totally stunned. She literally made them take the table settings down. Then, she rang her beloved bell. Finally, she announced that they could now go ahead and set the tables. And smoke silently poured out of the ears of every adult in the room…
It’s amazing in life how a little bit of power can be such a corrupting force. I’m sure she was probably a nice person. However, she was so intent on holding onto her power that she was willing to bulldoze a whole group of folks who were there to do nothing other than help. To the credit of those adults, we survived the week. By weeks end…she was no less rigid—not one ounce! Needless to say, we’ve never gone back to that camp.
One of the hardest things for me in being a pastor is that generally, I think, most people’s impression of what it means to be a Christian has to do with being rigid. Christians are the people who judge others. We are the people who spend our time pointing out who is not “in.” We are the folks who stand ready to point out all the things that are unacceptable about the world. I’m not saying this is true. I am saying this is the perception. It’s who people expect us to be which makes me so sad. All that judgement and worry about who is in and who is out is, in my opinion, the polar opposite of who Jesus wanted us to be. Remember, this is the man who told us two things mattered most: to love God and love our neighbor—and by neighbor he meant anyone who was in your path, whether you liked them or not.
In our text, the Pharisees are playing their rigid role. They are the enforcers of the faith. Their job is to make sure that people follow the rules. They have more than a little power. They are also pretty zealous in their work. Because they have already identified Jesus not only as a rule breaker but as someone who encourages others to break the rules, they are hot on Jesus’ trail. That’s why I imagine that they were delighted on the Sabbath when they spied Jesus’ disciples eating a few heads of grain.
You see, the Sabbath was a day that was to include no work. There were a lot of rules to enforce this and real penalties that a person would face if you broke those rules. However, there were exceptions granted to certain people and activities. If you were a Rabbi then you could work on the Sabbath. If there was an accident that put the life of a person or the life of livestock at risk, then exceptions were given. However, the Sabbath was complicated and, sort of like being the highway patrol on 294, you could pretty much stop anyone and they would likely be breaking some rule. (What is the speed limit on 294—85 or 90 miles an hour?)
At its best, the Sabbath, from the start, was not meant to be some minefield that no one could navigate. Rather, the Sabbath was modeled after God’s activity in the creation story in Genesis, chapter one. On the seventh day, God rested and enjoyed the creation. The Sabbath was this revolutionary idea that absolutely everyone deserved to have a day of joy every week. You ate good food with the people who mattered most to you. You loved your spouse. You spent time with your children. You were totally free from anything that looked like work. And the message was that you had value apart from work. Imagine being slaves for generations and then getting a day off—every week! Imagine, right now, for yourself, what an actual day off—completely off—no email from the office; no paperwork to take care of; no demands at all—imagine how amazing that would be for us today.
The problem was that this really good thing had been made a hardship in the hands of folks who just cared about the rules. So, Jesus and his disciples are hungry. The disciples dare to pluck a few heads of grain. The Pharisees go bananas. (Do you remember the Andy Griffith episode where Barney keeps running around town and stopping everyone, yelling, “Citizen’s arrest! Citizen’s arrest!”) “Really,” you ask those Pharisees, “Are your rules so paramount that you can’t look the other way?” Jesus knows the law. He rattles off a list of exceptions. Then, in our translation, Jesus says the most interesting thing: “There is more at stake here than religion.” Jesus talks about preferring a flexible heart over an inflexible ritual. What he implies is that mercy is preferred over judgment, that people matter more than the rules, that the Sabbath was created to set people free, not to imprison them.
Wow…what would happen if all the rigid Christians of the world suddenly realized that it was more important to love God and their neighbors than it is to love the rules? We wouldn’t argue about the words used in worship, we would delight in worshiping together. We would care less about how people think about communion and spend more time standing in awe at how God can be present in such an experience. We would stop looking for ways to exclude one another. We would make room for everyone.
That’s the general stuff, though. Let’s be specific. For an indeterminate amount of time, our daily lives are going to change. What if God is present and calling us to be flexible? Don’t cling to the structure that’s been altered. Don’t pout as if somehow the rules have been broken. Instead, look around yourself. You have people who matter all around you. Love those people! You have some extra time. Be flexible enough to play a game together or watch a movie you haven’t seen for a while. Reach out and invite someone whom you know is anxious to share a laugh. Be flexible enough to lighten someone’s load.
Then, remember this: the heart of Sabbath is still very real. So, maybe your work is going to be interrupted. Maybe all the things you do that make you feel that you’ve proved your value are shaking. Know this, the radical message of our faith is that you have value before you ever do a thing. You have more than enough value to be caught in this strange interlude and still discover joy!