I have always been a rule follower. I was that kid who parents loved and most kids tolerated. When a new classmate would find her way into my car, I would begin with the rules: 1. Seatbelts will remain on at all times. 2. The radio must stay at an appropriate volume, so that sirens and other safety vehicles can easily be heard. 3. Car lights will be on in all circumstances, even in daylight and even when our more hip friends honk to tell us that our lights are on. Of course, rules are there for a reason and I would go to great lengths to remind those who found their way into my car of this fact. Rules keep us safe, rules keep us alive, rules give us structure and help to frame the choices that offer us the best chance for success and happiness. And when it comes to teenagers rules are often a matter of life and death. But the funny thing about rules is that sometimes we lose sight of the reasons they were crafted. We find that we are following simply because they are there instead of following in our effort to live life fully. It seems to me that rules and regulations, laws and dictums can be the very things that take life, the very things that jeopardize the safety of the human heart and the possibility of hope. And laws in Jesus time were seen as salvation to some and death to others.
Much of Christian thinking and writing and preaching about the Jewish Laws of Jesus’ time categorize them as a problem. Because our own faith narrative is at stake, we cast Jewish Laws to the side and argue that Jesus’ ministry was mostly about working around them. We say that the Jewish Law was rigid and binding. We tell ourselves that Jesus made a point of casting them aside. But, Carol Murphy writes, “It has always been easy to present the teachings of Jesus as a new and lofty ethic” …, but if often ends up serving as a type of a perfectionism that is more burdensome than the Jewish Law it was supposed to replace. Jesus wasn’t against Jewish Law, after all, he was a faithful Jew; rather Jesus was in favor of God’s love coming before any law that we human beings might create. We remember the story where Jesus entered the synagogue and healed a wounded heart with a withered hand on the Sabbath day. Doing anything, let alone healing on the Sabbath was indeed a good way to raise some hell. It was against the Law. And we remember from last week, that Jesus dared to touch people that according to Law were unclean, unworthy and unholy. But while Jesus believed deeply in the Law and the importance of keeping the Sabbath and honoring God, he was in favor of God’s love coming first.
In our efforts to describe Jesus’ work as replacing the Jewish Law, we craft a Jesus that is more golden. We build a Jesus that is easy to adore. We describe him as the only one worthy of praise. But in our attempts to make Jesus more accessible for those of us who say we want to follow over two thousand years later, I fear that the Jesus we hold before us now, is nothing like Jesus at all. We teach our children and tell ourselves that following Jesus is about being nice or obeying. We say that loving Jesus means doing what we are told and saying our prayers before we go to bed. We claim that being a good Christian means being a good person and being able to look back on our lives knowing that we followed the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” But following Jesus, it seems to me, has less to do with being nice or following the rules or calling ourselves good, and more about turning the world upside down.
One of my colleagues tells a story about his friend who is a pastor. He raised his family faithfully and dutifully in the church. He made sure that his kids soaked up every ounce of the stories of our faith found in the Bible. The children participated in camp and confirmation, children’s choir and Vacation Bible School. They attended all of the church functions and could even recite some bits of scripture. He went to great lengths to make sure that his children knew what it meant to be a good Christian. But when his daughter finished college and came home to announce that she would be moving to one of Africa’s most dangerous cities, he panicked. He wondered how this could happen. He wondered how his sweet, precious daughter could end up in a circumstance such as this. He wondered how after all of his efforts to ensure that his children would have a full and Christ centered life, his daughter could leave this all behind. How could she do this to her father and mother? But then of course it didn’t take long for him to realize that it wasn’t about him, it was about her faith. She was not only living a Christian life, she was seeking to follow Jesus- to follow him into the margins, to love the poor and be his hands to those who were hurting. She wanted to turn the world upside down.
So as much as we reduce Jesus to a white man with blue eyes hovering above us in a glowing robe and beckoning us to welcome him into our hearts and obey, Jesus was a troublemaker. We have packaged him nicely perhaps so we can stand to look at him, so we are not overwhelmed by his dark skin and wild hair, so we are not turned off by his tone, but I am confident that if he were to find his way into this church, most of us would find his message repulsive and unpalatable. Remember that when he showed up in the center of his house of faith, he screamed and yelled and turned over their tables. He spent more of his time outside his Temple. Jesus was a troublemaker. And when we meet him in the Gospel of Mark today he is stirring things up right and left. We find him in a home that is so full, that people are standing in the doorway and hanging out windows. There is really no way to get in or out. It was hot and crowded and stuffy. Jesus was trying to talk to them, trying to get a word in, but the gathered crowd was probably too loud. But a small group found a way, “Move over, coming through, get out of the way, we are coming in.” Their friend was hurting and had been for a while. He was paralyzed physically and his heart could barely move either. But the group could not get to Jesus, the people were in the way; doing their own thing, waiting for their own chance, blocking the doors and windows and the smallest openings that a soul could find. They all wanted to be in the presence of Jesus, of the healer, of the One, but they made it so that it was impossible for anyone else to enter. So do you know what the friends of the paralyzed man did? As Otis Moss says, “These gentlemen who are bringing this man to Jesus cannot get in through the front door because all of the church people are in the way and they're refusing to move from their seats.” So the frustrated group tears the roof off. They cannot find a way in, no one will move over, or out of the way, no one will make a path of welcome, so they go through the roof! The folks in the house were busy getting ready to witness the One for whom they had been waiting. “Do I look okay?” “Is this robe suitable for this Jesus of Nazareth?” “Do you think he will know that I followed all of the Laws today?” They were so busy trying to see him, that they missed seeing his message. They missed the chance to move out of the way and to move their hearts to be more like him.
I am still a rule follower by nature, but if I proclaim that I want Jesus to lead me, if we want Jesus to lead us, I wonder what it would like to follow him like the group seeking healing for their friend. Would we be willing to put aside convention or tradition or “the way we have always done it”? As we move forward together and seek to be more like Jesus, I wonder if we are ready to go to such great lengths. Friends, I believe that God has wild possibilities in mind for us, God has plans for us, but I believe they just might include doing something as crazy and wildly Christian as going through the roof. As we face our holiest season together, I wonder if God is inviting us to follow Jesus, not the Jesus we have decided is a rule follower and nice and easy to take in, but the Jesus who asks us to trying anything for the glory of God. Amen.
A Deeper Faith: The Thought of Paul Tillich (Pendle Hill Publications, Wallingford, PA)