Breaking the ‘Religious’ Rules

Photo by Anna Tarazevich: https://www.pexels.com/photo/screaming-face-of-a-handsome-man-5234267/

Sometimes sermons almost seem to write themselves, but sometimes they require back and forth editing and re-editing. The leadership team at our church know all to well that sometimes I send them a sermon to ask if it’s actually any good because it’s been back and forth in my head for days. The sermon that this article was based on was in danger of becoming like that, but instead I thought that perhaps it would help make the point if I led you through the thought processes as it developed.

My first thought on reading the Gospel set for this week (below) was that it reminded me of how we live in an interesting time. For a while it was referred to as postmodernity but I suspect that word is out of fashion somewhat now, but what we have noticed over the last hundred years or so is a continuing drop in respect for institutions. Once they were regarded as bastions of truth and authority, but all of that has been questioned.

Once they were thought of as the places that guarded our culture with the best rules and the most upright leaders, but in the wake of one political scandal after another, of abuse and exploitation, of not even keeping the rules they set for an emergency, so we have reached a time where everyone questions authority.

And speculation about how much things have changed brought me to the question of how we engage with religious rules because that was what was at the heart of the Gospel. The reading goes like this:

Mark 2:23–3:6

One sabbath, Jesus was going through the cornfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?’ And he said to them, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.’ Then he said to them, ‘The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.’

Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man who had the withered hand, ‘Come forward.’ Then he said to them, ‘Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent. He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

Reading through this reminded me of how I used to be very good at rules, dare I say it, downright pharisaical. I came from a family where my father lived by the rules and laid down the rules, and we, his children, pretty much lived by them too, up to a point. It’s not that I didn’t want to rebel, it’s just that I really wasn’t any good at it. I had such a guilt complex about disobedience that I didn’t want to do anything wrong. In fact the closest I ever got to it was when my sister, Ruth,and I went to a gig in the new romantic era (anyone remember Classix Nouveaux…?), and I didn’t put any eyeliner on until we were in the taxi, because our father had already made it abundantly clear what he thought about men in make up! I thiiiiink we got away with it…

But this obedience to the rules was quite helpful in the process of looking towards ordination. OK, so I didn’t have a great testimony of a bad life turned around by following Jesus, but I did want to do the right thing. As far as the Church of England was concerned, I was what might have been called a ‘company man’, as someone who would recognise and respond correctly to authority and follow whatever I was told to do, at least within reason. And so it was until about 2012 when I went on sabbatical in order to study what was happening in the British Pagan scene. And it was there that I began to hear one story after another about how badly people had been treated by Christians in churches. And as I began to respond to that, and to start to really question it, so I began to be treated badly by some Christians as well. And if you wanted me to clearly define what type of Christian would behave like that towards someone who is supposed to be in the same spiritual family, I can bring it down to two clear types: Those who wanted power, and those who wanted everyone to obey the rules, or at least their interpretation of them. If you put those two types together, then you had a recipe for the kind of people who would abuse people spiritually, judging them repeatedly, cast them out of the church, and think that, in doing so, they were doing the Lord’s work. What you see is an echo of the behaviour of the Pharisees here; a group who watch closely those of whom they are suspicious in order to find an opportunity to catch them out.

So when I read today’s Gospel, it hit a nerve, because of the similarity of the religious judgmentalism I’ve heard of, seen and experienced firsthand. But as I looked closer, halfway into deciding what to speak about, so I found myself mentally putting on the brakes, because it began to emerge that there is more to this passage than immediately meets the eye.

You see, it’s not simply about pharisaical behaviour.

The abuse they dished out to Jesus was appalling, but the more I looked at it, and the more I read about what others think was going on here, the more I began to wonder if Mark was using their behaviour, not to teach about the perils of religious bigots, but about the nature of Jesus. And for we who may think of ourselves as hesitantly trying to be his followers, the passage demands that we reflect on how we ourselvesrespond to religious rules. You see, the vital detail is that, if we know our Old Testament, we are left in absolutely no doubt that Jesus and his disciples broke the law. It’s spelt out in black and white here:

Deuteronomy 5:12–15

Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work — you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.

So there can be no question about it. They broke the law, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that quite so clearly before. In both parts of the Gospel reading, work was done on the sabbath. And the problem this faced me with was the question of whether Jesus could break the law because of who he is, or whether a willingness to break religious rules is a general approach for all Christians.

This is a question we have to answer because it may set boundaries for us in terms of how we respond to religious authorities.

You see all Church of England clergy have to swear an oath of canonical obedience which includes the words: ‘I swear by Almighty God that I will pay true and canonical obedience to the Lord Bishop and their successors in all things lawful and honest: So help me God.’ In my role as a spiritual leader I am therefore called to lead people likewise in obedience to the Bishop in all things lawful and honest. So what do we do with the problem that Jesus permitted and even led his disciples into disobedience to the religious authorities?

Can you see how this is a potential problem?

What do we do when we think the church is wrong?

Was it that Jesus could be disobedient to religious authorities because he was Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man, but we can’t be disobedient, or was this a new paradigm that he was laying down; that all his followers could be disobedient to religious authorities if they felt that it was spiritually necessary to do so?

Let’s look at those two options, and we’ll take the case of this being just about Jesus rather than a general principle for his followers to start with. Tom Wright seems to argue the case for this being primarily about Jesus as he makes the point that in the first half of the reading it appears that Jesus is comparing himself to King David, and then referring to himself as the Son of Man, the enigmatic Messiah character from the book of Daniel. Clearly Jesus and his disciples have attracted enough attention to be watched by the Pharisees to see whether there is something about them that can be used as evidence against their apparent holiness, and it appears that there is. It’s a sabbath and by picking the ears of corn the disciples have broken the law that no work should be done on the sabbath.

And Jesus doesn’t deny it!

Instead he refers back to scripture and essentially says that the followers of King David did much the same thing when they broke the law. Essentially one can argue that Jesus is saying that if King David broke the law, and he is greater than King David, then he can break the law too. In other words, the breaking of the law by his disciples is a sign that he is greater than King David. He is the Lord of the Sabbath. In my reading of it, Tom Wright seems to be implying that this is primarily all about Jesus and is not therefore a general principle. To quote, he says that ‘…the Messiah… has authority over institutions that might otherwise repress human beings.’ 1

Now I don’t think any one of us would want to dispute this, but we are still left with the question — but what about us?

If we call ourselves followers of Jesus on some level, do we likewise have this kind of authority?

I believe that we do, but with a caveat. We need to be self-aware followers of Christ in a sense that we test our actions and decisions against his in order to be sure that when or if we choose to be disobedient, we really are doing it because we believe that this is what Jesus would do and not simply because it’s something we want to do because we’re annoyed at the Bishop or the crown.

My reasons for saying this is that it seems inherent in everything that Jesus taught his disciples by word and by deed that they and we are meant to follow in his footsteps. Indeed when he spoke in John’s Gospel about sending the Holy Spirit he referred to the Spirit as being another advocate, counsellor, comforter; essentially another one like him, only to guide from the inside, not the outside.

And when we are taught to pray, to heal, to teach in the name of Jesus, that phrase isn’t a magical one, that if we utter it at the end of a prayer to ensure that what we’ve prayed must take place. Doing something in the name of someone else who has greater authority means that we are acting in their authority — literally that we are doing what they would do.

So while Jesus’ rebellious actions were definitely a sign of who he was, I believe that they weren’t only that. They were also a sign of who we should be — people who follow him above the rules of any religious authority. However, that should never be done in arrogance. Most of the bishops I’ve had the pleasure of working for were people of great spiritual depth, wisdom and intelligence; I could see why they occupied positions of authority.

I would therefore want to caution that if we are a part of the Church of England (the perspective from which I’m writing) then we operate under its authority. However, I would also caution us to never make that an excuse for religious rigidity or conformity. The Lord of the sabbath is greater than the canon law of the Church of England.

For example, it is not very long ago that the General Synod, our ruling body, actually gave permission for clergy to not have to robe for services, but long before that permission was granted (and before my time there), clergy robes had already been discarded in the church I now serve at St. Paul’s in Wooburn. And I believe that was the right thing to do, because in our context with the kind of services we have here and their general informality, robes would have added a formality that would have counted against this.

Likewise, in our liturgies, while I am careful always to make sure that particular elements like the words of absolution at confession and the Eucharist prayers are straight out of the authorised liturgies, I tend to be more creative with other parts of the service because Church of England words often lack creativity, placing theological correctness through wordy formulas in language not used in society higher up the ladder of importance. (And if you think that’s a wordy sentence, you should see some of the prayers I don’t use!)

To my mind, if we are truly to serve Christ, then that means making his Gospel accessible and not doing anything that could suggest anyone can be excluded from that, and that is more important than strict canonical obedience. Part of the reason for our church joining Inclusive Church was to show a willingness to go beyond the current C of E rules about not being permitted to marry same sex or transgender couples.

So should we keep religious rules?

Yes, but only up to a point. However, if we genuinely believe that they get in the way of the Gospel message or are obscuring it in any way, then after prayerful consideration, I believe it is appropriate to follow our consciences in the hope that we are being led by the Spirit. It seems to me that this was what Jesus did by healing someone on the sabbath.

However, there is one final warning here and it comes in a rather interesting piece of Greek towards the end when Mark tells us that the Pharisees and the Herodians, normal enemies united by their hatred of Jesus, conspired on how to destroy Jesus. While the NIV translates it as ‘kill’, the NRSV, a more accurate translation, renders it ‘destroy’. My (amateur!)reading of the Greek suggests that’s more correct. When we stand up for what we believe is right, it must be with a willingness to acknowledge that there could be consequences. As Jesus said, if they hated him first, then if we adopt his ways, we may be hated too. A lot of people, sadly, interpret this as a reason to be self-righteous and shout at others they regard to be sinners. But instead I want to suggest that if we follow the ways of Jesus, that can put us on a collision with anyone who sees themselves as being a guardian of religious righteousness. They may not be able to kill us, but they could still seek to ‘destroy’ our reputations.

This is exactly what I have seen happening and have experienced myself. It’s why I go to great pains to be sure of a course of action before I take it. I want to be able to defend my reasons why.

Jesus went to the people that the religious leaders thought were beyond the pale. When we do the same kind of thing and associate with those regarded as, ‘sinners’ by the religiously righteous, and perhaps bend the rules to accommodate them, then the consequences can be deeply painful.

But Jesus never said it would be easy…

1Wright T. Mark for Everyone, London: SPCK, 2001, 28.