Second Sunday after Pentecost

“And [Jesus] said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
     
If you are paying attention to our current cultural moment, you may know that yesterday, June 1, marks the first day of Pride Month. Pride Month is the latest celebration of our current civic religion. It is the time of the year when those who identify themselves as LGTBQ+ express their “pride” in who they are. The implication of this is, of course, that in the past, LGTBQ+ identified persons were living in shame of their lifestyle and their choices, and in whom they chose to “love,” because they once lived in an “oppressive” and “judgmental” society where their choices and their lifestyle were considered shameful. Today, things have changed for the better supposedly, and LGBTQ+ persons can now demonstrate their “pride” in who they are. And the only ones who are supposed to experience shame are all those bigots who refused to acknowledge the value and worth of the choices made by the LGTBQ+ community.
           
How did we get here? How is it that we now live in a society and culture that now demands that we take pride in things that God condemns, in things that are harmful to people and to relationships? Fundamentally, it was because we thought that God’s laws were given to control us and make us miserable, rather then given by the God who loves us and wants us to experience joy and fulfillment.
           
In today’s Gospel lesson from St. Mark, we read about yet another confrontation between Jesus and the members of the Jewish religious establishment. Once again, the Pharisees think that they have got Jesus in a “gotcha” moment; that Jesus is teaching His followers to be lax about honoring the Sabbath. What is really going on here is the Pharisees are grasping at anything that they can use to discredit Jesus and His followers, because they know the power and the authority of Jesus and His message and ministry, and they feel that Jesus and His ministry threatens their privileged position within Jewish society.
           
As always, Jesus responds with love and truth. He reminds the Pharisees of what happened during David’s lifetime, when the priest gave David and his men the showbread from the Temple. While the Law stipulated that this bread was not to be eaten while it was in the sanctuary, the bread that the priest gave to David and his men was the old showbread that had been replaced by fresh showbread. A legalistic interpretation held that the bread should be disposed of, but the priest understand that it was okay to give the old bread away to hungry men who needed something to eat. To put it another way, a reasonable and proper interpretation was that feeding hungry people superseded their strict legalism regarding showbread.

The Pharisees, in their desire to discredit Jesus, and in their desire to avoid any kind of violation of the Sabbath, missed the proper application of the Sabbath law itself. And we see in other episodes, where Jesus violates the strict legalism of the Law for the benefit of others: He heals a man with a withered hand in the synagogue on the Sabbath. He touches a leper with his hand to demonstrate love and compassion, even though this made him ritually “unclean.” Here, Jesus reminds the Pharisees, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” Jesus tells the Pharisees that the purpose of the Law was not to put people in a religious straitjacket, but its purpose was to establish a way of life that would give glory to God, and bring health, happiness and fulfillment. To use the Law for any other purpose was to disrespect the Law and the God who made it.

Sadly, we are where we are today as a society celebrating “Pride Month” because in part, we thought of God’s law as a straitjacket and a vehicle of oppression. Ironically, we looked that the Law the way the Pharisees did, as an instrument of power and control. We thought of people who were in bad marriages, of people with unfulfilled longings, and it seemed right that we should help people get free of those things that were supposedly keeping them captive. Like the Pharisees, we forgot that God gave us the law for our benefit, to nurture our hearts and our spirits so that we would be set free from the power of our passions and impulses and truly love ourselves and others. We overreacted to the use of the Law as a straitjacket by getting rid of all the boundaries and guardrails that surround our relationship with God and each other. We told God to get out of our lives, and He did.

Today, we’re miserable and confused. We tried to satisfy our passions and our lusts, and to break through anything that was holding us back. It hasn’t helped. We are neither fulfilled nor happy. What’s worse is that today our society blames Christians for the fact that we’re miserable. It’s said that Christians are self-righteous and legalistic, and hypocritical. Maybe that’s true. But that’s not the reason that we are unhappy.

St. Paul writes this, “We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” The Church is under attack today not because it judges people or treats them harshly, but because it speaks the truth of God to a spiritually blind world. The Church has lost its credibility with people not because it proclaims an unwelcome truth, but because it tries curry favor by watering down the truth and by not living by it. If we want to see a revival in our nation, then we won’t see it come about by avoiding the hard issues. Instead, we must speak the truth and live the truth in love.

You may have noticed that our Old Testmant reading for today is the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are, as they say, an oldie but a goodie! They took them out of the schools, but do we teach them to our children? To our grandchildren? Can we recite them? Are we trying to live by them each and every day? Not so that God will love us; He loves us already. But to demonstrate our love for Him?

In our civic culture, June is now Pride Month. But for the Church, June has always been the Sacred Heart of Jesus month. When we talk about the Sacred Heart of Jesus we refer to that completely self-giving, sacrificial love that Jesus has for each of us. That is something that we as a culture and as a society have forgotten about. Let’s bring it back. We can respond to the Sacred Heart of Jesus by endeavoring to love Him by keeping His commandments. And in so doing, our lives will be a powerful witness to others. As St. Paul says, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

​+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.