Presentation of Our Lord
Luke 6:1-16
One Sabbath while Jesus was going through some grain fields, his disciples plucked some heads of grain, rubbed them in their hands, and ate them. But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” Jesus answered, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? How he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and gave some to his companions?” Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”
On another Sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught, and there was a man there whose right hand was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees were watching him to see whether he would cure on the Sabbath, so that they might find grounds to bring an accusation against him. But he knew what they were thinking, and he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come and stand in the middle.” He got up and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?” After looking around at all of them, he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was restored. But they were filled with fury and began discussing with one another what they might do to Jesus.
Now, during those days [Jesus] went out to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God. And, when day came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew, and James, and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Simon, who was called the Zealot, and Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.
Sabbath/Work
Last Friday, January 24th, federal agents arrived at Hamline Elementary School in Chicago to investigate a threat against a government official. Believing they were ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents, school representatives did not allow the agents to enter the school, or speak to any staff or students. It turned out that they were not ICE agents, but Secret Service. The mistake occurred because the Secret Service IDs were from the Department of Homeland Security, the same agency that oversees ICE. On top of that, there has been heightened concern within the school district because Chicago had been singled out as a city where increased ICE activity would occur, and there had been rumors that ICE had been seen in the neighborhood.
Across the country, thousands of students have been missing from school, because they are afraid of ICE. Parents are too afraid to drop off or pick their children up from school. And, the kids who do go have to try to learn while worrying about whether or not their parents will be there when they get home.
As you all know, we have our own immigrant communities right here in Helena. I had a disheartening call over the weekend, about how some of our refugee families were too afraid to send their children to school because of the possibility of an ICE raid. For over a decade, it has been ICE policy to avoid making arrests in “sensitive” locations, such as schools, churches, and hospitals, so that people wouldn’t be afraid to seek basic services. But, these restrictions have been lifted, sending a tremor of fear through immigrant communities across the country. It’s an unsettling turn in our supposedly Christian nation, when Leviticus tells us to “love the foreigner, because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.” Or in Hebrews, “do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” It begs the question, should we follow the law because it’s the law, or do we answer to a higher authority?
Our gospel readings today help to illuminate this issue. In the first story, which occurs on a Sabbath day, a prescribed day of rest, Jesus is walking through some fields with his disciples, who picked some of the grains and ate them. Some Pharisees saw them doing this and asked, “Why are you doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” because people were not supposed to work on the Sabbath, and gathering grain was considered work. So, Jesus asked them about their revered ancestor King David, who ate temple offerings with his men. It’s unlawful for anyone but the priests to eat those offerings, but Jesus seems to imply that it was okay for David and his men to eat it.
The text goes on to describe another Sabbath, when Jesus was teaching at a temple. A man was there who had a withered hand. As the scribes and Pharisees watched, Jesus challenged them. “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?” And, he healed the man’s hand. Instead of being inspired or joyful because of this miraculous healing, the scribes and Pharisees were enraged, and they began to plot against Jesus.
After all of this teaching and healing, Jesus understandably needed a break, and so he went to a mountain to pray.
So, there are two things going on here, whether or not to follow the law, and the Sabbath itself. Should we follow a law just because it’s a law, or do we decide whether or not to follow a law based on whether or not its morally right to do so? The law said that Jews could not work on the Sabbath and that only a priest could eat the food used as an offering in a temple. But, Jesus seems to be making a case for breaking the rules, because some things are more important than the rules. If someone needs food, it’s wrong to deny them just because it’s the Sabbath, or because the food was used as an offering in a temple. It is morally wrong to let a man suffer when you have the ability to help him, even if it is on the Sabbath. Human beings were not made for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for human beings.
There have been many laws throughout time that were morally wrong that I would argue we should not have followed. It wasn’t until 1974 that banks were required to consider credit applications from women, regardless of their marital status. Would it have been morally wrong to open a line of credit for a single woman before that time? There was a time when slavery was legal in this country, and when it would have been against the law to help an enslaved person escape to freedom. If slavery was made to be legal again today, would that make it okay to own a slave? Don’t forget, that it was against the law to hide Jews from Nazis during the Holocaust.
Just before I left the last place I was living before moving here, I found out that it was illegal to sell a home in that neighborhood to an Asian family. That was the law. Throughout our history, similar laws have been put into place all over the country, and I’m sure in many places around the world, to discriminate against all kinds of people. Just because something is a law doesn’t make it right.
Jesus asks us to think beyond our customs and laws. Jesus is the one who tells us to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Yes, for the most part, we need to comply with the laws of the place where we live. Most of those laws are good; they were written to protect people and to make things fair. But, some laws were created to do harm. We have a responsibility to not follow those laws, and not only that, to fight against them. That’s what Rosa Parks did when she refused to give up her seat on the bus. When she was later asked about that day, she said, “I had no idea that history was being made. I was just tired of giving up.”
Yesterday was the anniversary of the start of the Greensboro sit-ins. February 1, 1960: four black college freshmen from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr., and David Richmond, sat down at a ”whites-only” lunch counter at the F.W. Woolworth Company store. After being verbally abused and refused service the entire day, the four men went back to their university and recruited more students to join them.
The next morning, more than twenty black students, which included four women, continued the sit-in. This made the local news. The next day, the number grew to over 60, which included students from Dudley High School. About a third of the protestors were women, many from Bennett College.
The next day, February 4, over 300 people took part in the sit-in, filling the entire seating area. By February 6, more than 1,000 protestors packed themselves into the store. The movement soon spread to many cities in the south, with the Nashville sit-ins successfully integrating their downtown department store lunch counters by May of that year. The Greensboro lunch counters finally integrated on July 25, 1960, after $200,000 in losses at the store, over $2 million in today’s dollars. It wasn’t until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that all public accommodations were desegregated.
We are facing a crisis in this country right now, as rights and support are being stripped away from the most vulnerable members of society. People are scared. People are hurting. And, it is up to us to help them.
We can be like the teachers who are refusing to let ICE agents take their students away. Teachers care so deeply about the kids they teach; why else would they do what they do with such long hours and less than stellar pay, and sometimes, even less appreciation. Many teachers even have to buy supplies for their classrooms with money from their own pockets. A lot of teachers spend more time with the kids in their classes than their own parents do, and given the current situation of our schools, many teachers have mentally prepared themselves to jump in front of bullets to protect their kids. If a teacher is willing to jump in front of a bullet, you can be sure they’re not going to let an ICE agent take their kids away.
We are going to have a lot of work to do in the coming months and years if we are going to preserve our way of life, and protect our rights, and protect our neighbors. This work is going to be challenging and it might even be scary. But, it is the work that God has called us to do. It might be the work that God has been preparing us for, all of our lives. And, as we do this work, we must remember the Sabbath, to rest and regenerate so that we can continue to do the work that God has set before us to do. The world needs us now more than ever. So be strong, be wise, and go with the grace of God. Amen.
~ Rev. Charles Wei
