Jesus as he really is (Mark 12:1-12)

Tonight I spoke at the last 'Free week' event at the University of Cumbria. I spoke on the parable of the tenants (Mark 12:1-12). The talk is reproduced below. I struggled to sufficiently include the original challenge to the religious teachers of Israel, but hopefully haven't changed the message too much.


I recently heard about magazine article in which a mother wrote in to say this, “Our 10 year old son Robin would invariably live in a complete mess. His bedroom was a sight to behold. Finally after all the nagging seemed to have failed, I wrote the following note and left it on his pillow:

‘Dear Robin, I wish I was clean and tidy like all the other rooms in the house. Please could you do something about this? Love, Bedroom.’

Next day, to my surprise, I found the room spick and span, and my son had left a note for me to find. It read:

‘Dear Bedroom, There you are. I hope you feel better now. Love, Robin. PS You’re beginning to sound just like my mother.’"

I guess you could say our parents are our earliest landlords. We live in their space. They have rightful authority over us. And yet from the word ‘go’ we show our natural inclination to reject that authority.

That, in effect, is the issue that Jesus addresses in the story we’re going to spend just a few minutes looking at tonight. The title of the talk advertised was ‘Jesus as he really is.’ And we’ll see that to understand Jesus as he really is, we need to turn to the issue of taking other people’s things for ourselves, passing them off as our own and rejecting their love. It would be helpful if you turned to page 39 in your black books [Matthew 12:1-12], as that’s where the story is recorded. We’re going to look at it in three parts.

First of all, it’s a story about bad tenants. Let’s read verse 1: ‘Jesus them told them this story: “A farmer once planted a vineyard. He built a wall around it and dug a pit to crush the grapes in. He also built a lookout tower. Then he let his vineyard and left the country.”’ Now that wasn’t that unusual at the time of Jesus. There were plenty of mostly foreign landowners who let their land out to Jewish tenants. But perhaps the thing that might have jumped out to Jesus’ original listeners was how generously the owner had provided for them: a wall to protect the vineyard from wild animals, a winepress where the process of fermentation could begin, and a lookout tower ensuring that the vineyard isn’t destroyed by animals or humans. These tenants are in a good position thanks to the provision and kindness of the owner.

But the tenants don’t seem to appreciate the owner’s kindness. Let’s read on, in verses 2-3: ‘When it was harvest time, the owner sent a servant to get a share of the grapes. The tenants grabbed the servant. They beat him up and sent him away without a thing.’ When we read that the owner had let the vineyard to the tenants, the deal was that they were responsible to pay a fixed part of the proceeds. It’s a bit like on Dragon’s Den, where the Dragons resource entrepreneurs on the basis they’ll get a future share of profits. But when the owner sends a servant to ‘get his share of the grapes’, they resist him. At the time, you could establish your right as owner of a piece of land if you had undisputed use of it for three years. And so the tenants refused to pay their share of grapes as rent, they were attempting to deny the owner’s claim of possession. They wanted to keep the vineyard for themselves. And so the tenants treat the servant that had been sent to collect the rent like a robber, trying to deprive them of what they considered already to be theirs.

Read verses 4-5 and you see that, despite the patience of the owner with the tenants, the pattern continues: ‘The owner sent another servant, but the tenants beat him on the head and insulted him terribly. Then the man sent another servant, and they killed him. He kept sending servant after servant. They beat some of them and killed others.’ They all receive the same reception. The tenants intended to keep the fruit for themselves. They were using the vineyard as a means of gaining power for themselves. In their minds, the vineyard was their vineyard, like Robin’s room was, in his mind, his own. He could live as he wanted.

Now look at verse 12, because this makes sense of the story: ‘The leaders knew that Jesus was really talking about them, and they wanted to arrest him.’ Jesus originally told this story to religious leaders, and they understood exactly what he’d been saying. They’d have known this because they were Jewish people familiar with the Old Testament, the part of the Bible written before Jesus came. In the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah tells a very similar story to this one by Jesus, involving a vineyard rented out to tenants. Isaiah’s story is addressed to the people of Israel – he reminds Israel that although God built them up as a nation, they’d turned against him. He sent prophet after prophet to speak to them and to call them back to him. The difference with Jesus’ parable is the bit involving the son. But the key thing is that the people there understood that they represented the tenants. The scandal is that, despite having been warned otherwise, they took things that belonged to God and passed them off as their own.

The story of the Bible opens with God creating the world. As humans, he made us tenants in God’s world. God has given us a responsibility to look after the world and to enjoy it. But we don’t own it. God owns the world and we are ultimately answerable to him. And so we’re just like the tenants in the parable.

We’ve seen that the tenants acted as they did because they thought it would lead to getting the vineyard for themselves. They wanted to be owners of the vineyard and run it their own way. And that describes the attitude of each of us. God has made us tenants in a world that belongs to him, he’s kindly provided for us – but our response is to choose to ignore God, to own the world and rule and run it as though it all belongs to us. We want to be God of the world for ourselves.

But here’s the thing. A world that has walked out on God will always end up a war zone. God created us to submit to him, at the centre of our lives. Everything fitted together for God's good purposes. But now each of us has tried to redefine reality so that we are at the centre serving our own ambitions.

So if I am trying to rearrange the world so that I get to the top, I’m probably not very bothered about the rainforests or the fact that a child dies every six seconds of a preventable disease. When it doesn’t suit me, I am not going to be very bothered about you either. I am looking out for myself. And things get ugly because just as I am looking out for me, you are looking out for you. In my version, I get to the top, in your version you do. So what so we do? We fight. Not just with bombs over Baghdad, but with snide words and cutting remarks over the washing up. We try to prop up our version of how we think things should be. That’s what happens when we take God out of the picture and when we forget that God is the true owner.

So here’s the scandal. Blessing upon blessing has come our way from God. But what have we done with them? Thanked God the Giver? Not exactly. The natural reaction of each of us is to take each of these gifts for granted, rejecting his love. Even though our every breath depends on God, the natural reaction of each of us is to airbrush him out of our existence.

But look again at this story. Do you see how much God is showing his patience with his people – how much he loves them? He sends messenger after messenger and in one last desperate act we read in verse 6, last of all he sent his son to them and says, 'They will respect my son.' That is how much God cares for a wayward world and wayward people. He sends Jesus. A lot of people think that Jesus has come to stop their fun. But, as we see in this parable, Jesus’ claim is that he is the son; that he is the owner of everything. In other words, when he calls us to repent – to put God at the centre of our universes – he isn’t calling us to some strange religious cult, he is calling us to do what we should rightly do, what we are made to do: to submit to his authority as the King sent by God and give all that we have to him.

But let's look at what happens to this son, as we turn to its second element: a story about the death of a much-loved son.

Look at verses 7-8: ‘But they said to themselves, “Some day he will own this vineyard. Let’s kill him! That way we can have it for ourselves.” So they grabbed the owner’s son and killed him. Then they threw his body out of the vineyard.’

The Bible teaches that, far from what we often think, rather than being essentially good, humans are essentially bad. And the ultimate proof of that, according to the Bible, is that we murdered our Maker. That is what Jesus’ death on the cross, illustrated in this parable by the murder of the Son outside the vineyard, means. Remember Jesus’ call was just that each of us should place God at the centre of the Universe, in the place that he belongs. He said that humans experience true freedom when we live this way, the way we were created to live. As a fish is free in the ocean, as an eagle is free in the air, so humans are free when we live in the environment in which we made to live, submitting our lives to God. And Jesus’ life backed up this claim as, through submitting his own life to God the Father, he always put others before himself. And so the human response to him, to sentence him to death, is the ultimate insult, the supreme gesture to what we think about the idea of God as our king, as the owner of the vineyard. It is the final snub which puts the lid on all the snubs that God has received from the human race.

Sure, none of us was actually there when Jesus was crucified. ‘Oh yes,’ we say, ‘It was all their fault. The Jews, the Romans, we all know how barbaric they were. The crucifixion of Jesus was such an appalling act of judicial murder.’

But it’s the conviction of the Bible that those that actually put Jesus to death merely represented each of us. Some of us are represented by the Roman bureaucrats, turning a blind eye to the injustice of the crucifixion, just as we turn a blind eye to the evidence for Jesus today. Some of us are represented by the smug religious leaders, very religious but wanting rid of Jesus for the sake of the quiet life. Perhaps most of us are represented by the crowd crying ‘Crucify, crucify’. Our hands were not the actual hands that drove the nails into his hands and the wood, but our lives show that we want rid of Jesus’ claim to be at the centre of our lives.

Sometimes I catch myself thinking about what Jesus cried out on the cross: 'Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.' But this parable shows the generosity of that prayer, because verse 7 shows that the tenants knew exactly what they were doing. If there was any ignorance in those that killed Jesus, it was an ignorance for which they were responsible. And we living today have even less excuse for rejecting Jesus than they had for we have the whole Bible in our hands, God's complete and clear revelation. To walk away from Jesus is to add our own personal nail to the cross.

And this is why Jesus gives us a final element to the story: a story about a choice that faces each of us.

Remember, Jesus is speaking to those who quite literally got rid of him. In this parable he paints a picture of them as confident that they can get rid of him and get away with it. But Jesus goes on at the end of his story, in verse 9, “What do you think the owner of the vineyard will do?”

Jesus assumes that his listeners have the sense to see the story can’t end at verse 8 – the tenants can’t have the last word, they surely can’t get away with it. The owner must ultimately step in and act. And so he continues, “He will come and kill those tenants and let someone else have his vineyard.”

And he goes on, “Surely you know that the Scriptures say, ‘The stone that the builders tossed aside is now the most important stone.’” That’s slightly enigmatic stuff. In fact, it’s a quotation from the Old Testament, from a time when God’s Old Testament people were under attack. The people around them were trying to overthrow their king in order to build their own empires. And God had turned the tables, the attackers had failed, and the king had survived. So this line came to be written, ‘The stone that the builders tossed aside is now the most important stone’, in other words, ‘God’s king the attackers rejected has now become the most important one.’

So the picture is of a building site and there is a stone lying there. The architect’s plan is that that stone is central to what he is building. And various other builders say ‘Well, actually we want to build differently. We want to get rid of that stone.’ So they chuck it out of the building site. Then the architect himself walks onto the site. He turns the tables by rescuing that stone, bringing it back and building on it. That’s the picture Jesus is building. He’s saying that he’s the stone, God’s son, our rightful king.

The builders, the leaders of Israel are about to crucify him, and throw him off the building site thinking they can get on with building their lives as they please. But Jesus says, ‘Not so. Very soon you will realise the stone the builders tossed aside is now the most important stone.’ He is God’s king, he is risen from the dead and he will judge. And so, in effect, Jesus says, “You can reject me, but you cannot ultimately get rid of me, and you will ultimately have to reckon with me. The reality is that I belong at the centre of the universe.”

And so, it seems like a grim story, as we’ve all been bad tenants. The amazing news, however, of Mark’s Gospel that we’ve been sharing for the whole week is that God still longs to have relationship with us, the people he has created. And so Jesus’ first words in Mark’s Gospel, way back in chapter 1, are these: ‘The time has come! God’s kingdom will soon be here. Turn back to God and believe the good news!’ The good news is that God will accept us back just as we are, if only we will put him back in his right place, admit that he owns the vineyard, and believe the good news. The good news is when we admit we don’t deserve anything from God, he accepts us through Jesus’ death on the cross in our place. At the cross, Jesus took the punishment in our place and in our shoes. As we’ve been saying all week, that’s the best news about accepting the resurrected Jesus as our King: he lays aside everything and gives his life so that we might be forgiven.

So will you come clean tonight? Will you admit that you’ve acted as though you’re the owner of the vineyard, that you’ve lived at the centre of your Universe and that you’ve ignored the true king? Do you see how deluded that is, that it messes with true reality? If you will, and you will admit that you’ve nothing to commend yourself before God, he will accept you tonight on account of Jesus. Each of us must face Jesus as either saviour or judge. It would be an amazing thing if you arrived here tonight as a rebellious tenant, and go home reconciled through Jesus’ death on our behalf.

Ronald Kernaghan on Mark 13

I've been working through Mark's Gospel in my own personal Bible study over the past couple of months. Mark 13 is a difficult chapter (although I think it's easier when you consider that essentially its describing something of the nature of Jesus' kingdom), but I think Ronald Kernaghan's commentary has helped me to unpick it.

Here's a fascinating thing the commentary showed me, unpacking these verses:

Mark 13:26-27: 'At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels [or 'messengers'] and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.'
Mark 14:61-62: 'Again the high priest asked him, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?" "I am," said Jesus. "And you [i.e. the Sanhedrin] will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven."'

Here's Kernaghan's commentary:

'Mark 14:62 extends the imagery of 13:26 so that the members of the Sanhedrin are told not only that they would see the Son of Man coming with the clouds, but also that they would see him seated at the right hand of God. The picture of Jesus' sitting at God's right hand recalls the concluding condemnation of the leaders of Jerusalem (12:35-37) in which Jesus quoted from Psalm 110:1: 'The Lord said to my Lord: "Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet."' That image of judgement and condemnation does not appear explicitly in Mark 13, but it is consistent with the central theme of this prophecy - the destruction of the temple. Indeed, since Jesus entered Jerusalem in 11:11 his condemnation of the temple has been the catalyst for every other event. The best answer then to the question of what they would see is the destruction of the temple. That event would be the corollary of the Son of Man's exaltation. The exaltation of the Son of Man to heaven would be an event that the chief priests, elders and scribes could not actually see because it would take place before the throne of God. The exaltation of the Son of Man, however, would also mean the destruction of the temple. In its destruction, they would see the vindication of the Son of Man.'

I find this very helpful. It sheds real light on the nature of Jesus' kingdom. Jesus has been demonstrating throughout Mark's Gospel that his kingdom isn't what the disciples were expecting. It comes partially, as the word is proclaimed, rather than at once (see Mark 4). Now Jesus shows that, following judgement on Jerusalem, and as he takes his seat before the Ancient of Days (which doesn't refer to this second coming - see Daniel 7:13), his kingdom still does not come immediately in its fullness. The preaching of the gospel to the whole world will be accomplished, not through temple activity but through the Son of Man's own agents in the world. There is a period where his angels (or messengers) gather the elect before his return. His kingdom continues to grow today (even through the distribution of copies of Mark's Gospel in the FREE Gospel Project), before its consummation at his return.

Falling apart and being made new

Nathan I have just returned from a CU meeting at Blackpool School of Art & Design, the CU which was only started earlier this year.

Blackpool is quite a place. It's struggling not to live on bygone glory, and it's quite hard to see how the run-down parts of the city will improve in the near future. A lot of what's left in Blackpool is either quite-run down or aiming to appeal at the budget market. We were quite tickled by the GR8 Hotel (pictured), across from which we parked earlier (Nathan accurately put it that this was just the kind of name for a hotel that your 12 year old sister might come up with!).

It was quite a contrast to look at Mark 1-2 with the fledgling CU there: Sam, Dave, Jamie & Tom. Whilst the whole of creation is in bondage to decay (including our own bodies, and the bodies of the leper and the paralysed man), we worship a saviour who has dealt with the root cause of that decay - our sin - and look forward to a day when he makes everything new.

Gospel as story

I was reminded once again in reading this article of the power of stories. It's no coincidence that God's revelation to us is of a big story, which itself is a patchwork of different forms of literature (but very often in story form).

One of the frustrations as a Staff Worker is often that students will less discernment often like speakers who don't really unpack the word of God. So why are these speakers often so popular? Because they are great story tellers.

At the moment, I'm writing a batch of talks on Mark's Gospel. The temptation is to flatten these stories to find some 'kernel of truth'. So how can we best let these amazing stories of Jesus speak for themselves? One of the things I'm trying to do is to re-tell the stories in the present tense in order to preserve the feeling of immediacy. But I'd love to hear tips from others on how we can avoid robbing narrative of its power.

Jesus on the wrong view of sin

A reflection on Mark 7:1-23.

As this passage opens, we read of an argument about purity. This isn't just a discussion about hygiene - it's one of religious cleanliness.

Jesus is confronted by the Pharisees. Jesus has evidently told his disciples that they don't need to obey the oral Torah and the other extra-Biblical regulations that the Pharisees have added to those of Scripture. To the Pharisees, this is something that rebounds on Jesus' own view of purity ("Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with 'unclean' hands?").

Jesus' reply is strong. The Pharisees have placed their own traditions about the revelation of Scripture. Worse still, they set aside the commands of God through their own traditions that were intended to help them to keep it! They weaken the demands of the Law through adding their own regulations!

How is this possible? It's because the Pharisees have a wrong view of sin. A wrong view of sin will inevitably mean that you seek to combat it in a way that appears effective to you. The Pharisees ineffective view of sin meant that they settled for an ineffective way of dealing with it.

This is underlined by the fact that Jesus calls the crowd to him in verse 14. Previously, this had been a discussion with only disciples and Pharisees present. Calling the crowd to him emphasises the big teaching point that Jesus is about to make. It's this: "Nothing outside a man can make him 'unclean' by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean.'" First of all, this must have sounded like toilet humour. But Jesus' point is serious and grave, as he clarifies in verses 18-23.

The Pharisees' problem is that sin is something outside of them. It's as if in their cores they are good. Sin is 'out there' - and so it can be controlled by manipulating your environment. To avoid being made unclean by sin, I avoid going to and doing things that might defile me. To the Pharisees, sin is something like a tropical disease I could catch in certain countries. The antidote? Don't go there.

Jesus' diagnosis is much more radical. Sin comes from inside us, from within, out of our hearts. We can't manipulate our hearts in the same way as we can manipulate our environments. We can't control our sin ourselves. And so, implies Jesus, a much more radical cure is needed.

A few weeks ago, I wrote of how there is widespread confusion on the nature of sin. Many Christians are unsure of exactly what sin is and so look in the wrong place for its antidote.

Legalism and sanctification-by-keeping-the-rules sprouts from an inflated view of human nature and the belief that sin is 'out there'. A friend I know refuses to go to the pub because of fear of somehow getting 'infected' there. A few years ago, I remember a friend once saying that she thought that open accountability relationships with other Christians are the primary way of ridding sin from our lives. Don't get me wrong - I think accountability is good and beneficial (when people enter these relationships with the right expectations). But we are close to being Pharisees if we think that will somehow deal with our sin: it's an evangelical way of seeking to control our circumstances to become 'clean', that implies that sin is 'out there' rather than 'in here'.

Let's not forget the far more radical (and only successful) alternative that Jesus offers to deal with sin as it really is.

A reflection on Mark 5:21-43

Reading through this section of Mark 5 can leave the reader with as many questions as answers.

Here are two that I've been considering:

- why is Jesus so keen to talk to the woman after she touches his cloak to be healed?
- why does Jesus send everyone out (except the three disciples and the girl's mother and father) before raising Jairus' daugher?

I wonder if the answers to these two questions are linked (not surprising, given Mark presents this account as a '24'-style 'split screen' account where we're supposed to notice the links between the events).

Firstly, consider how the woman might have gone away from her encounter with Christ had he never spoken to her. It's possible that she might have gone away with any number of misunderstandings - perhaps that it was the magic of Jesus' cloak rather than her own faith and Jesus' power that led to her healing, perhaps that Jesus was indifferent to her pain and suffering. Perhaps, above all, she would have never have heard Jesus say that she could now experience the peace and joy of healing and restoration. Jesus wants to tie together the healing of the woman and what that means for the woman.

The necessary action as Jesus prepared to raise Jairus' daughter was different. Jesus' actions were so radical that, at the time, the knowledge that Jesus could raise the dead might have led to his own death too soon. And so Jesus tells the crowds that the girl is only sleeping, not dead. Everyone is then sent away - apart from Peter, James and John and Jairus and his wife. They alone are allowed to see at this point that Jesus can raise the dead. Why? Because Jesus is revealing to the disciples his own identity. But why do Jairus and his wife stay? Surely the same reason as why he wanted to speak to the bleeding woman. Jesus didn't want the girl's parents to merely think that they were deluded (that somehow Jesus was right: the girl really was asleep and not dead, surely the rumour that did the rounds), but that their faith was well-placed, even that he had power and authority over death.

The thing that links these two stories is that Jesus not only has authority over disease and death, but that he wants those who place faith in him to know that he alone (not his clothing or his magical skills) has this authority. He is the Christ. Those who place faith in him can know the peace and joy of a relationship with him.

Jesus and the Law (2)

On several occasions, Jesus seems to imply that the keeping of individual laws is unimportant. However, I think that a closer look at these texts actually suggests that Jesus is making a greater point: that the desire to keep the Law in obedient response to God’s goodness and grace is more important than legalistically keeping individual laws. See, for example:

• Matthew 7:12. As Jesus starts to close the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus ‘sums up’ the Law and the Prophets by saying, ‘do to others what you would have them do to you.’ This interpretation of the essence of the Law robs it of its legalism without completely belittling it.
• Matthew 9:13. In the context of responding to the charge that he ate with sinners, Jesus quotes Hosea 6:6 in telling the Pharisees: "Go and learn the meaning of this: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice'" (see also Matthew 12:7). He seems to be saying that the place sacrifice is itself pointless if it is not accompanied by a commitment to obediently keeping God’s Law. This will show itself in showing mercy to others.
• Matthew 23:23-24. In accordance with the Law, Pharisees tithed one tenth of their produce as the first tithe, which was to be given to the Levites, who then were to tithe to the priests (see Leviticus 27:30-31 and Numbers 18:21-32). In accordance with their understanding of the Law (I believe in accordance with the oral Torah), Pharisees separated a second tithe, intended for consumption in Jerusalem during the festivals (cf Deuteronomy 14:22-29). In Matthew 23, Jesus criticizes the Pharisees for observing the tithing laws with such exactness that they tithe even garden herbs, but neglect "the more important matters of the Law – justice, mercy and faith." Note that Jesus does not counsel the Pharisees to give up tithing; however, but they must not to miss the ‘more important’ issues of the Law – those of loving their neighbours as themselves. They should not 'strain out the gnat but swallow the camel', presumably by which Jesus means to be so concerned with less important commandments that one neglects obedience to the whole thrust of the Law.
• Mark 12:28-34. In this episode, with Jesus is asked what the greatest commandments in the Law are. Jesus replies, quoting from Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18: “Love the Lord your God” and “love your neighbour as yourself.” Any Jew would probably agree up to this point. However, some would presumably have been surprised by the fact that Jesus then endorses the statement that obedience to these two commandments ‘are more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.’ Jesus’ implication is this: love for God and for other people will express itself in the commitment to sacrifice; not to treat sacrifice as an end in itself.

Jesus seems to make a distinction between legalistic Law-keeping and obedience to the Law as a whole. The whole Law is to be obeyed, but an attitude of commitment is more important than obedience of individual laws. Above all, Jesus stresses purity of heart, out of which naturally flows obedience to the individual laws. When the heart is pure, therefore, little else is necessary.

It is also worth noting that Jesus seems to object to any idea of what it means to obey the Law that might possibly lead to hypocrisy. In Matthew 23:5-7, for instance, Jesus objects to the Pharisees who appear to be righteous, but are not. Because they wear religious clothing (in the light of Numbers 15:38-39 and Deuteronomy 22:12), people assume wrongly that the Pharisees are obedient to God in every other respect. In fact, Jesus says the Pharisees obey the Law primarily in order to receive public acclaim. Jesus’ words on giving, prayer and fasting (Matthew 6:1-18) may also fit in here. These things in themselves are good disciplines – but not if they are done self-righteously.

Jesus and the Law (1)

After a bit of a break, I'm going to start a series of blog entries continuing to think about the Law. The next few posts will all think about the relationship of Jesus to the Law.

An important text on Jesus' relationship is Mark 7:1-13, where it is often presumed that Jesus repeals the food laws. I blogged on this passage in the summer and I'd commend readers take a look here. I don't think the food laws are repealed in this passage.

On other occasions, Jesus seems to imply breaking the Law. All of these passages are related to the Sabbath:

• Matthew 12:5. Jesus’ point here is that there must be exceptions to not working on the Sabbath, because otherwise priests could not work in the Temple of the Sabbath, which work, of course, is required by the Law. It seems that Jesus is saying this: when the Sabbath leads to unnecessary hardship, then the minimum work in order to prevent that hardship should be allowed.
• Mark 2:23-27. Jesus' disciples pluck grain and eat it, but, according to the Pharisaic view, this is work (harvesting) and should not be done on the Sabbath. Jesus replies by citing the example of David's breaking the Law in time of need, in order to make the point that the intention of the Law is not to lead to hardship (see 1 Sam 21:1-9). Jesus would probably have argued that out of love for his hungry disciples, the Pharisees should allow them to pick what grain they need to satisfy their hunger. After all, the Sabbath was not intended to be a burden. If Jesus' accusers say that they would like to do this, but cannot, since the Law forbids it, they will find themselves holding the absurd position that they love human beings more than God does! Some commentators have suggested that the phrase, ‘The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath’ probably means that the Sabbath exists for the benefit of human beings [i.e. ‘sons of men’] and should not for that reason cause unnecessary suffering. In other words, the phrase ‘son of man’ may not refer to Jesus, but to humanity in general (See Mark 2:27.)
• Healing on the Sabbath. There are several examples of Jesus' healing people on the Sabbath in conscious opposition to the interpretation of the Sabbath law as prohibiting such activity. In each case, it is Jesus' compassion for the sick person that motivates his actions. Jesus is criticized as working on the Sabbath for healing people, even though he did not do any work according to the Law. To love one’s neighbour always takes precedent. Any interpretation of the Sabbath law that would prevent good from being done must be wrong. See Mark 3:1-6, Luke 13:10-17, Luke 14:1-6, John 5:1-15, John 7:16-24, John 9:1-34 and equivalent passages.

All of this goes to show, I think, that Jesus is not against keeping the Sabbath law per se, but against the harsh and rigid interpretation of Sabbath observance that the Pharisees had (which often included extra-biblical laws).

You Pharisee!

Perhaps one of the things that we're clearest on when reading the gospels is this: the Pharisees are the 'bad guys'. Yet quite why Jesus is so critical of the Pharisees is, I think, sometimes misunderstood by many.

It's often assumed that whenever we read of Jesus criticising the Pharisees that he is criticising the religion and spirituality of all who held to the Old Testament Law. People understand Jesus to be criticising the desire to want to keep the Old Testament Law. This is an error. In fact, the sect of Pharisees was not established until after the return from exile. The Pharisees themselves claimed theological descendency from Ezra. However, history shows that the Pharisees probably did not become part of mainstream Judaism until after 400BC.

Jacob Neusner, a Jewish writer, explains that what set the Pharisees apart from other Jewish believers of the time was their approach to the Old Testament Law. He suggests that the Pharisees interpreted Exodus 19:3-6 literally – i.e. that God wanted all members of the people of Israel to act as literal priests. This meant that the Pharisees believed that all Jewish men should observe all of the rules and rituals concerning purification that were originally given to the Temple priesthood alone. In addition, a massive number of traditions, which the Pharisees rooted in the unrecorded oral teachings of Moses, held an authority alongside the written Law.

In some cases the traditions of the Pharisees led them to extend what the law required. The Law, for example, requires priests to bathe themselves before entering the Temple to make sacrifices. But the Pharisees demanded washings before all meals. Other laws – for instance, those governing the Sabbath alluded to in the gospels – also had extra-Biblical rulings added by the Pharisees.

With this background, we can see that much of Jesus' teaching - where he has often been understood to be criticising Law keeping - is actually criticising the traditions of the Pharisees.

A clear example of this is shown in Mark 7:1-13. In this passage, the Pharisees (and, according to Mark 7:3, 'all', which seems to mean all observant Jews) were attempting to ensure that they were in what they considered to be a state of ritual purity when they ate their everyday meals, in order that their food would remain ritually pure. However, the shock here is that nothing is said in the Law about ritually washing hands before eating everyday meals; this set of rules must have been added by the Pharisees. Similarly, there's nothing about purifying cooking and eating utensils in the Law, apart from those used in Temple worship (see Leviticus 11:32-35; 15:12; Numbers 19:15), even though the Pharisees demanded this. And so the question asked by the Pharisees of Jesus and his disciples in this passage is not why they are breaking the OT Law, but why why Jesus and his disciples did not abide by the Pharisees' written regulations.

Jesus is not anti-Law in this episode. In fact, both Mark’s narrative and Jesus’ teaching uphold the source of the Law as coming from God. Jesus’ criticism is not of the desire of ordinary Jews to seek to keep the Law. Instead, Jesus criticises the placement of man-made burdensome traditions above those of God (including the Pharisees teaching regarding ‘corban’, which does not appear in the Law) and legalistic self-righteousness (which in itself was never designed to be a feature of the old covenant) above actually wanting to keep the covenant, shown in obedience to the Law. Thus the Pharisees ‘nullify the word of God’ by the traditions that they have passed down, which take precedence over why the Law was originally given.

This context is vital when we consider Jesus' teaching on food laws, that appears later in the chapter (in verses 17-19). At a first glance, it appears that Jesus repeals the laws of clean and unclean meats from Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. But as we have seen, the subject of the discussion is not food in general. It does not regard which meats are clean or unclean. The Greek word used in verse 19 is ‘food’. Apparently an entirely different Greek word, kreas, is used in the NT where meat is specifically intended (see Romans 14:21; 1 Corinthians 13:8 etc.). So this passage concerns the general subject of food rather than meat.

Verses 1-2 and verse 5 helps us understand the context: the subject debated concerns eating ‘with unwashed hands’, and the traditions of the oral law. Food laws are not in question here. The topic is ritual purity based on religious traditions of the oral law. The disciples were being criticized for not following the proper procedure of ceremonial hand-washing prescribed by these revered religious traditions, not for the foods they were eating.

Jesus explains that ceremonial washing is not necessary for spiritual purity or spiritual health. In fact, whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods (verses 18-19). Dirt not removed through elaborate hand-washing will be purged out by the human digestive system in a manner that has no bearing on the heart and mind of a person. Since spiritual purification must involve the heart, the traditional ceremonial washings of the Pharisees are ineffective and unnecessary in preventing spiritual defilement.

Jesus' over-riding point in this chapter is, I think, this: the Pharisaic traditions have presented the will of God from being done. Their religious traditions and misunderstanding of Scripture is preventing people from making the right response to the covenant: a humble obedience to God's Law. And so Jesus rejects the Pharisaic traditions and vehemently rejects them.

Which leaves us, I think, with an interesting question that I've been mulling over: What traditions do we have today amongst God's people that prevent the will of God from being done? What do you think?