Religious and political leaders can be viewed as pantomime baddies in our interpretations of the New Testament. Today’s reflection issues an invitation to enter imaginatively into the hearts of several characters, including those we find offputting. Perhaps we can see ourselves in them all?
Maleficent, the Queen of Hearts, and Captain Hook. Thanks to Leigh Caldwell under Creative Commons.
Today’s story (at the end of a chapter where Jesus keeps getting into trouble!) is here.
The Sabbath was supposed to be a day of rest, according to the religious rules Jesus’ community followed. The Pharisees guarded that law and so here Jesus, once again, finds himself and his followers on the wrong side of them. They are picking corn - classed as work and therefore breaking the law that demands rest on this seventh day.
There are many ways to approach the story. Spend a few moments simply noticing your thoughts and feelings about it. You may like to read it, slowly, again.
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An imaginative approach might be to see what each protagonist in the passage represents.
What might Jesus represent to us? A new way of looking at the world perhaps?
In The Secret Message of Jesus, Brian McLaren says his ‘message of the Kingdom of God scandalises by showing the weakness of the apparently powerful and the power of the apparently weak.’ Jesus represents a revolution in our understanding of the way the world works and asks us to see it from the viewpoint of the least, overlooked, left behind, excluded - and to work for a world that inverts the power structures we perpetuate.
The disciples are those who have been touched by this message and are trying to live it.
They are working at it. That is what Disciple means here: one who engages in learning from another. It is clear from other Christian gospel stories that they often get it wrong - even spectacularly wrong! But if they are prepared for the humiliations, they can become agents of the new republic of love.
So. What of the poor old Pharisees? Shall we boo as they enter stage left?
They were very devout and committed to their rituals and rules. Pharisee means set apart, separated.
Do they represent an instinct in all of us? If we find a place to stand that we consider ‘right’, we feel the need to preserve that and will stick to our guns. We can become rigid and unyielding, considering ourselves firm and principled.
This stance can create blinkers that blind us to the very righteousness we attempt to propound. Even while we keep arguing, quite rightly, that Sabbath rest is vital.
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We are invited to look deeply at this story. To question everything, especially our own motives.
In pointing out that the rules were made for man, and not the other way around, Jesus is a captive to compassion first and foremost. The word means to suffer with. Look for the suffering inside ourselves and in those around us and we begin to unravel the mysteries of the Kingdom.
Here is Brian McLaren again:
“Why did it take so long?
Why has it been such a struggle?
Why didn’t anyone tell me all this?
Were others trying to hide the truth, or was the truth intentionally hidden by Jesus himself?
Is it possible that Jesus was intentionally keeping this message of the Kingdom a secret so that it wasn’t obvious, wasn’t so easy to grasp, wasn’t like a simple mathematical formula that can be quickly learned and repeated?
Is it possible that the message of Jesus was less like an advertising slogan – obvious and loud – and more like a poem whose meaning only comes subtly and quietly to those who read slowly, think long and deeply, and refuse to give up?”
It takes a long time to figure all this out. If we’re aware of that, in our work of the heart, it is a good starting point.