When Jesus Gets In the Way of My Religion:
This Beautiful Mess and The Shocking Embrace of God
Phil Schaefer
2/15/09
Key Scripture: Mark 2:23-3:6
Introduction:
We’re doing a study of Mark’s gospel and pairing it with the book No Perfect People Allowed. We are looking at 5 areas that are real struggles in today’s postmodern world. They are: trust, tolerance, truth, brokenness, and aloneness.
This morning we are looking at truth.
- What is it?
- How do we understand it?
- How do we apply it?
- How can we, as the church, create a culture of truth?
The question in these readings is, why does Jesus break the rules of the established order of religion (truth)? Or why does it appear that He does?
Much of what we do in life is sustained by rules and regulations, practices and rituals. These are very helpful in bringing some order to our lives. In terms of religion and faith, they can be very helpful in dry and difficult times.
These things can become like boundaries or markings on the field that tell us what is in bounds and what is out of bounds, or like the white line drawn down the middle of the road to keep us safe. When it is dark and rainy, it is particularly helpful to have these lines. But when we become so dependent on these, we can lose sight of the greater thing going on around us. We can become totally focused on the lines and staying between the lines.
We are living in the days when the lines are being re-drawn. When Luther posted his 95 Thesis, the lines of Christianity began to be re-drawn, the boundaries moved. He said: Scriptures Alone, By Faith Alone, Through Grace Alone, and The Priesthood of Believers.
Can you imagine what radical shift in the lines was going on for the Jews when Jesus came? Jesus seemed to be moving the lines. This is what was going on in this passage between Jesus and the Pharisees.
We mainly want religion to be familiar and comforting and secure. But this is where we can get into trouble, because so easily our religion can get in the way of God. When my truth gets in the way of God, He is messing with my religion. This is what we read here in this passage.
1. When my religion gets in the way of God.
- The Pharisees held 39 different forbidden activities on the Sabbath:
No plowing, no sowing, no reaping, no binding sheaves, no threshing, no winnowing, no grinding, no pounding to powder, no sheering sheep, and apparently no healing.
- One commentary wrote” One cannot help but feel sorry for the Pharisees here. They were, on the whole, good men. What was hard for them is that their status in society so strongly depended on their being in the right.”
- Religion says, “Here are the rules, if you want to be right with God, follow them.”
2. Jesus is saying, “God doesn’t give us rules to make us good. God gives us rules to do us good! This is huge if we can get it.
- Mark 3:4-6 “ Then He said to them, ‘What is the right thing to do on the Sabbath, to do good or to do evil, to see people saved or to condemn them? But they kept silent. And when He had looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, He said to the man, ‘ stretch out your hand.’ And he stretched it out and his hand was restored as whole as the other. Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians againstt Him, how they might destroy Him.”
- It says Jesus was angry and deeply distressed. It means also sympathetic, full of compassion.
- They had gotten God’s ways so twisted that they lost sight of the good, in order to uphold what they viewed as was right.
3. How do we get our religion in the way of God?
- When our religion is used for accusing others rather than defending others, our religion is in the way of God.
- When our religion leads to sorrow more than it leads to comfort- our religion in in the way of God. Jesus was ‘deeply distressed, sorrowful’
- When our religion is more fault-finding than fault-forgiving, our religion is in the way of God.
- When our religion is more about preserving familiar customs rather than meeting human need, our religion is in the way of God.
- It is quite easy to get our religion in the way of God. It is brought out so often in the gospels So what about me?
4. How do we get Jesus in the way of our religion? It is ultimately this:
- Truth is a person. Truth has gone relational. Truth is Jesus Christ.
- If we approach truth about God like we would approach getting to know a person, it will help others come into truth in a more profound and satisfying way.
- The Pharisees were concerned about upholding the Sabbath, and Jesus is there saying that “He is the Lord of the Sabbath.” The Sabbath is about who he He is.
- Truth is to know and experience God’s love in a personall way.
- Today, the post-modern mindset is not concerned with our propositional truth. It doesn’t mean that we get rid of propositional truth, or that it is irrelevant. It is not.
- But for a person who doesn’t believe there is absolute truth, we are not going to convince them by saying our truth is better than their truth.
- “ Truth is not so much asking ‘what is true?’ but ‘Do I want to be more like you? Do I want what you have, Do I want what is inside of you?” John Burke
5. How do we make truth relational?
- What can make us attractive in our day as Jesus was attractive in His day?
- Humble truth:
- Admitting our limitations
- Being able to say, I don’t know.”
- Genuinely believing “I am no better than others.”
- Not holding to an “Us vs. Them” mentality.
- Recognizing that everyone is on a spiritual journey.
- Even if they say they are agnostic or atheist- that is the spiritual journey that they are on.
- Ask them how they got there.
- Find out their story.
- Respect them for where they are in their journey.
- Bring in your times of doubt about faith, and God, and prayer, and how it all works.
- Doing good speaks louder than being right.
- Recognize that we are all hypocrites, the difference is whether we admit it or not.
- Ask yourself, do I look at people through the labels, and judge them? Do my labels discount or dismiss them so I can feel better about myself?
- Would others define my life by the good things I do, or by the bad things I don’t do?
6. Colossians 2:13-17- “And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all your trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He mad a public display of them, triumphing over them in it. So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbath, which ate the shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.”
God is out to do us good!
Discussion questions:
What did Jesus mean in Mark 2:27-28 when He said that:
- “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”, and that
- “The Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath”?
How might the idea that ‘truth is relational’, and ‘truth is a person ( Jesus Christ’), change our concept of evangelism?
How do you feel about the statement that “doing good speaks louder than being right”?
What is the difference between ‘being religious’ and ‘having a relationship with Christ?’
