Review

In our last passage (Mark 2:18-22) Jesus shocked the vigilant scribes and Pharisees by fraternizing with “unclean” publicans and sinners.  In so doing He made it clear that the Kingdom He comes to inaugurate has nothing to do with “performance” or “being good enough.”  The key to this Kingdom is absolute attachment to His Person. 

In this week’s section He takes His bold assertions to another level. 

Pushing the Envelope

23 And it came about that He was passing through the grainfields on the Sabbath, and His disciples began to make their way along while picking the heads of grain.[i]  

In and of itself, there is nothing illicit about the behavior of Jesus’ disciples, though it is about to spark another controversy.  Deuteronomy 23:25 explicitly states, “When you enter your neighbor’s standing grain, then you may pluck the heads with your hand, but you shall not wield a sickle in your neighbor’s standing grain.”  This, like the regulations governing gleaning (Leviticus 19:9, 10), was part of the Mosaic Law’s provision for the needs of the poor and the hungry.  It was a nod in the direction of humanity as over against the claims of personal property and heartless legalism. 

The problem, then, was not that the disciples were plucking grain.  The problem was that they were doing it on the Sabbath.  For according to the rabbis, picking grain was the same thing as “harvesting”.  And harvesting was work.       

We’ve seen Jesus violate the Sabbath before (Mark 1:21ff.).  We will certainly see Him do so again.  But there’s a difference here.  In almost every other instance recorded in the Gospels, Jesus oversteps the accepted bounds of Sabbath observance in order to meet some pressing human need.  He casts out demons, cures debilitating ailments, and liberates people from lifelong bondage.  Nothing of the sort is at stake in this scene.  The disciples don’t have to pluck grain on the Sabbath; they’re aren’t starving to death.  In the words of one commentator, they are simply “having a snack.”[ii]  There’s something almost glib, playful, and irresponsible about their Sabbath-breaking on this particular occasion.   

Why then does Jesus tolerate it?  Why does He permit them to act like this when He knows the self-appointed Guardians of Traditional Religiosity and Public Morality are watching?  In the case of the leper He went out of His way to avoid giving offense to the religious authorities (Mark 1:44).  Why now does He so brazenly push the envelope?

This question lies at the heart of Mark’s message.  We’ll attempt to answer it in what follows.             

“Not Allowed”

24 And the Pharisees were saying to Him, “See here, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”   

Since authority has been one of our key themes over the past few weeks, it’s worth noting that the Pharisees possessed no official jurisdiction over the lives of the common people.  No one had appointed them to act as the “Spiritual Police.”  They simply volunteered for the position.  Throughout the Gospel accounts the Pharisees appear in the role of Christ’s most dogged antagonists, but they weren’t all bad.  Most of them were zealous, well-meaning Jews who just wanted to make sure that God’s standards of righteousness were consistently upheld in both private life and the public square (sound familiar?).

Unfortunately, their zeal encouraged the development of a mindset all too common among upstanding religious people in all times and places.  This attitude is neatly summed up in the language they use:  “Why are they doing what is not allowed (Greek ho ouk exestin)?”  The Pharisees’ whole outlook was wrapped up in an almost neurotic obsession with correctness.  Their concern with propriety had completely overtaken that part of the brain which might have responded favorably to Jesus’ offer of Life – the effervescent Life that explodes wineskins.  Their entire world was hemmed in by anxieties about what is and what is not “permitted”.  And they didn’t even recognize their desperate need for redemption and release.                        

Royal Precedent

25 And He said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and became hungry, he and his companions; 26 how he entered into the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest and ate the consecrated bread, which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priests, and he gave it also to those who were with him?”    

But Jesus doesn’t take this opportunity to comment on the repressive spirituality of the Pharisees.  That’s a subject for another time.  Instead, He responds by drawing attention to Himself.  And He does so by citing a scriptural precedent. 

“Don’t you remember what David did,” He asks, “when he and his men went into the tabernacle and ate the sacred showbread to satisfy their hunger?”  (See 1 Samuel 21:1-6.)

What’s noteworthy about this retort is that the details of the comparison don’t exactly line up.  David and his men – outlaws in hiding and on the run – were in desperate need of food and water at the time of the incident in question.  As we’ve already pointed out, this was not the case with Jesus and His disciples.  So what does the analogy mean?

The answer is that Jesus is using this situation to make another point about the nature of the Kingdom and His own Identity as King.  According to N.T. Wright, He’s equating Himself with David in David’s “Already-But-Not-Yet” period.[iii] 

At this moment in his career, David was “in between” things:  long since anointed as king by Samuel, he was nevertheless still on the lam from the persecution of Saul.  He was like Aragorn in his Strider phase; Richard I in Sherwood Forest; or young Wart in the time immediately following his surprisingly successful attempt at pulling the sword from the stone.

Jesus’ position is precisely parallel.  He is the True King, but few acknowledge Him as such.  He’s the Incognito Messiah – a theme we’ve encountered before in our study of Mark.  And as the unrecognized King and Messiah, He has the authority to by-pass the Sabbath regulations.  That’s the point of this little story. 

Wright concludes:  “This kind of Sabbath-breaking, so far from being an act of casual and wanton civil disobedience, is a deliberate sign, like the refusal to fast:  a sign that the King is here, that the kingdom is breaking in, that instead of waiting for the old creation to come to its point of rest, the new creation is already bursting upon the old world.”[iv]                   

The Sabbath and Its Lord

27 And He was saying to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.  27 Consequently, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”      

Jesus states His own conclusion in the form of a sort of two-part syllogism.  First, He makes a definitive statement about the purpose and meaning of the Sabbath:  it exists to meet human need.  The Sabbath is supposed to serve man, not the other way around.  In other words, it’s an image of salvation.  Secondly, He asserts that He is the “Lord of the Sabbath,” inasmuch as He is also “the Son of Man.”

In these few words Jesus claims to be King both as God and as Man (remember Hebrews 1 and 2).  For while the Sabbath was made for Man, and is thus subordinated to the Son of Man, there is another sense in which only Yahweh – the Creator of the universe who rested from His labors on the Seventh Day – can rightfully be regarded as its author and Lord.              

Final Thoughts:  The Presence of the Kingdom

A “deliberate sign” indicating the Presence of the Kingdom in the Person of the King.  The fulfillment of the real Purpose and Meaning of Sabbath Rest, manifested in exclusive allegiance to His Power and Authority.  That’s what these six verses are all about.  And in their own way, they remind us once again that, like the King Himself and His forefather David, we, the subjects of this Kingdom, are living out our days in an “in between” time.  We, like our Master, are called to carry out our mission in the context of the “Already-But-Not-Yet”:  between longing and fulfillment, sorrow and joy, turmoil and peace.         

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[i] This week’s Scripture quotations are taken from The New American Standard Bible. 

[ii] Eckhard Schabel, The Tyndale Commentary on Mark, p. 77.

[iii] N.T. Wright, Mark for Everyone, p. 27.

[iv] Ibid.

Review

Let’s not forget that we undertook this study of Mark with the intention of glancing back at the Letter to the Hebrews from time to time to see how its theology might illumine our reading of the Gospel.  Last week’s discussion provides a good example:  Hebrews takes an in-depth look at the religion of the old Levitical law and demonstrates how it has been completely fulfilled and swallowed up in the actual presence of God in Jesus Christ.  Mark 2:13-17 does something quite similar:  it gives us a picture of Levi, the disgraced and disillusioned heir and namesake of the Levitical priests, abandoning everything to follow the Incarnate God-Man. 

In this week’s passage Mark continues along the same trajectory, giving us some further insight into the differences between the Old and the New.     

Emptiness

18 Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting.  So they came to Jesus and said, “Why do the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples don’t fast?”[i]  

Notice that this question comes to Jesus from two widely disparate groups:  John’s disciples and the Pharisees.  John is a wild, unconventional prophet.  The Pharisees are the staid, stodgy, established custodians of the religious status quo.  Yet the two groups have something in common:  both practice the spiritual discipline of fasting.  And both wonder why Jesus and His disciples don’t follow their example.  What’s the controversy all about?

We can’t answer this without first settling a preliminary question:  what is fasting?  Why does anybody do it?

Fasting in the Old Testament has a predominantly negative significance.  For example, the Day of Atonement was a day of fasting:  a time to mourn over and make up for past sins (Leviticus 16:29, 31).  Other fast days (see, for example, Esther 9:31; Zechariah 8:19) had a similar focus and purpose.  Fasting is about sorrow and regret and repentance – themes that have an obvious connection with the preaching of John. 

At a deeper level, fasting is a way of expressing unfulfilled longings.  The person who fasts embraces physical emptiness as a way of acknowledging spiritual emptiness.  He confesses that something is lacking and engages in an intense effort to seek and find it.  He aches and groans within himself, reaching for that One Necessary Thing which alone can fill up the yawning abyss within.  He wants something that he desperately needs without necessarily knowing what it is.  The Pharisees fasted twice a week, possibly as a way of hastening the coming of the Messiah and the Last Days. 

Fasting, then, is about emptiness and yearning.

Consummation

19 Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they?  As long as they have the bridegroom with them they do not fast. 

Weddings have nothing to do with emptiness and yearning.  The wedding feast is a celebration of present joy.  Once the wedding day arrives, the period of longing and yearning has come to an end.  The point of satisfaction has been gained.  This is the time of fulfillment.  This is the moment of consummation. 

Jesus uses this imagery to clarify the significance of His presence among us.  He taps into ancient Hebrew ideas about the “marriage” between Yahweh and His people and the coming of the Messiah as the long-awaited bridegroom.  In so doing, He underscores the uniqueness of His Person.  Jesus is God, and in Him God is with us.  Nothing like this has ever happened before.  It’s new, uncontainable, and real. 

Here’s the point:  as long as Jesus the Bridegroom is present in our midst, it’s party time.  This is not an occasion for fasting.  There is no room here whatsoever for unfulfilled longings – for wishing and hoping and groping after something better, something more.  “The kingdom of God is at hand.”
                       

In-Between

20 But the days are coming when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and at that time they will fast.  

But that’s not the end of the story.  For a time is coming, Jesus says, when the party will come to a screeching halt.  The bridegroom will be violently snatched out of the revelers’ midst and they will suddenly find themselves in a very different situation.  When that happens, they will fast indeed.  On that day there will be a marked shift in the tone of their day-to-day experience.  This is the time in which we are now living.

“At that time they will fast.”  How are we to understand this?  Is Jesus here laying a “religious rule” on His disciples?  Instead of setting them free, is He linking arms with the Pharisees and saddling His followers with yet another burdensome obligation?  Is He telling us that, if we really want to be holy, we’re going to have to eat fish on Friday and give up chocolate for Lent?

I don’t think so.  I believe He’s speaking on a much deeper level.  He’s talking about the fundamental nature of the Christian life in the In-Between Time.  He’s drawing our attention to the emptiness and deficiency that sometimes characterize our lives in that uncomfortable place between the “Already and the Not Yet.”  The “fasting” He has in mind is the ambiguity of knowing both joy and unfulfilled longing within the context of a single experience.  This is the “Normal Christian Life” as Paul describes it in Romans 8:23; a life in which “we also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we eagerly await our adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” 

Wineskins

21 No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and the tear becomes worse.  22 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the skins will be destroyed.  Instead new wine is poured into new wineskins.

Much has been written and preached on these two images – the unshrunk patch of cloth and the wineskins.  They are two different ways of describing the relationship between the Old and the New.  I don’t want to belabor the subject here.  Suffice it to say that the Reality of the Kingdom (and this brings us back to the book of Hebrews) is too unpredictable, too effervescent, too vibrant to be held within the confines of the dry and ossified forms of traditional religiosity.  As we said at the beginning of this entry, the Old has been both fulfilled and swallowed up in the New – which is just another way of saying that the Old cannot contain the New.  It’s the difference between the chick and the egg, the butterfly and the chrysalis.  New wine requires new wineskins, says Jesus.  Why?  Because it is bursting with Life.    

Final Thoughts:  “To Every Thing …”

“To every thing there is a season,” says the writer of Ecclesiastes, “and a time to every purpose under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3:1).  Appropriateness is the central idea.  When Jesus is on the scene, all is triumph and victory and peace.  But when His face is hidden from us, it is entirely fitting to acknowledge our own emptiness and need.  The ordinary Christian life is like a wavering line that oscillates between these two poles.

So if you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands; but if not, don’t fret too much about it.  That’s the way things go in this unpredictable space between the Ages.  

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[i] This week’s Scripture quotations are taken from the NET Bible. 

Review

Over the past few weeks we’ve watched the Kingdom unfold as a conflict between Arkys:  the authority of Jesus versus every other form of authority.  We’ve said that true, original, primal authority – the exousia of God – is not a matter of “bossing people around” but of healing and liberation.  We’ve seen Jesus put this genuine authority to work by casting out the Rulers of darkness, curing a leper, and commanding a paralytic to rise up and walk.  In this passage He brings the same power to bear upon a very different group of invalids and slaves … and offers it to yet another.

Crossroads

13 And He went out again by the seashore; and all the multitude were coming to Him, and He was teaching them.[i]    

The scene shifts in verse 13 from the house in Capernaum (2:1) to the shores of Lake Galilee, where the first disciples were called (1:16-20).

In many ways the seashore was the perfect setting for Jesus and His message.  It was a kind of Crossroads:  a commercial hub where merchants dropped their cargoes, loaded them on beasts of burden, and set out for points north and south.  It was an agora, like the Areopagus in Athens – a busy marketplace of conflicting personalities and contrasting ideas, where the Kingdom of God might thrust itself in amongst the kingdoms of this world in a powerful, striking way. 

It was also just the right spot to set up a customs office. 

Shift of Allegiance

14 And as He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting in the tax office, and He said to Him, “Follow Me!”  And he rose and followed Him.

Levi operated such an office.  No doubt the people who worked around the seashore had all kinds of problems with one another, but everyone had a problem with Levi.  He was the kind of guy who shafted his own people for personal gain:  a Roman toady, a sell-out to the occupying Oppressor, “the very embodiment of anti-nationalism.”[ii]  The Rabbis said that repentance was especially difficult, if not impossible, for tax-gatherers, because they regularly milked their neighbors for more than they had coming to them. 

Levi, as it turns out, was a fairly common name among first-century Jews.  Most of the men who bore it were of Levitical descent, suggesting that they may have been priests, religious functionaries, or synagogue leaders. This Levi was anything but.  His name contradicted his life. 

To be fair, it’s possible that Levi didn’t choose this path for himself.  He may have been just another victim of the system trying to make a living any way he could.  He may have despised himself just as much as everyone else did.  That might explain why he later changed his name to Matthew (Matthew 9:9), a variant of Nathanael:  “Gift of God.”

The “Gift of God” dropped into his life when Jesus – whom Levi had probably seen many times by the lakeside – walked up and said, “Follow me.”  For whatever reason, he was prepared when the moment came.  Without a word he got up, abandoned his living, and went with the Master.  This may not be as odd as it seems.  As N.T. Wright observes, “It was perhaps the first time for ages that someone had treated him as a human being instead of a piece of dirt.”[iii]   

“We shouldn’t miss the deeper meaning of Jesus’ call to Levi,” Wright goes on to say.  “Levi had been working for the man who thought of himself as King of the Jews [Herod Antipas].  Now he was going to work for someone else with royal aspirations.”[iv]

In other words, Levi’s response to Jesus’ invitation, like that of Simon, Andrew, James, and John, signals a shift in allegiance.  It’s another victory in the battle of the Arkys. 

Dinner Party    

15 And it came about that He was reclining at table in his house, and many tax-gatherers and sinners were dining with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many of them, and they were following Him.

Now comes another change.  Suddenly we find ourselves at a dinner party in the house of Levi, along with Jesus, His disciples, and a big group of “tax-collectors and sinners:”  “for there were many of them, and they were following Him.”  

Why the crowd?  That’s easy.  These folks had observed Jesus’ behavior toward one of their number, and they wanted a piece of the action.  They, too, were longing to know what it felt like to be “treated as human beings instead of dirt.”  His kindness had won their hearts (Romans 2:4). 

There’s deep symbolism in this scene.  A dinner party, like a seaside market, is just the kind of place you’d expect to find Jesus and His crew.  A feast, a celebration with food and drink – this kind of fellowship is what His Kingdom is all about.  Of Moses and the elders of the people it had been said, “They beheld the God of Israel, and they ate and drank” (Exodus 24:11).  Something similar is happening here.                 

“Spiritual Distancing”

16 And when the scribes of the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax-gatherers, they began saying to His disciples, “Why is He eating with tax-gatherers and sinners?”

As in the time of Christ, so today there are people who don’t like this picture of the Kingdom.  They don’t want to rub elbows with “undesirables”.  The Pharisees were of that stamp.

The Pharisees practiced “Spiritual Distancing.”  Their very name derives from a Persian word meaning “separate”.  In the beginning it was a derogatory term; but like many other names of the sort – “Puritan”, for example, or “Yankee” – it was eventually adopted as a badge of honor by the group to whom it was applied. 

The Pharisees prized moral and spiritual purity.  “Touch no unclean thing” (Isaiah 52:11) was the foundation stone of their code.  That’s why they demanded that the disciples give an account of their Master’s actions:  “Why does He eat with tax-gatherers?” they wanted  to know.  “Why does He make Himself a ‘companion of sinners?’” (1 Enoch 97:4).

“Sinners” (hamartoloi) was a kind of technical term among religious professionals of the day.  It could refer to flagrant immoralists, like thieves and prostitutes and murderers.  But more frequently it was applied to the “common folk” (Hebrew ‘am ha’aretz) who failed to live up to the Pharisees’ rigorous standards of ritual purity:  moral “lepers” who might give you the spiritual “cooties” if you got too close to them.  From this point of view, a “sinner” was somebody who simply wasn’t “good enough.”                           

Sick or Well?

17 And hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not those are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” 

Jesus hears what the religious professionals are saying and gives them a direct reply.  As was often the case in His interactions with such people, His answer is laced with irony and sarcasm.  “I’m a doctor,” He says coolly.  “I’m here to heal the infected.  If you’ve tested negative, you don’t need my services.  You can go about your business.”   

Incredibly, some very astute Bible scholars don’t seem to get the joke.  “Is He excluding scribes and Pharisees?” wonders commentator Eckhard Schnabel.  “That hardly seems plausible.”  Schnabel concludes that Jesus’ main concern is “not exclusion but priority.”[v]

But is that really what He’s trying to say here?  I don’t think so.  On the contrary, Christ’s “main concern” in this passage, as in the “Parable of The Pharisee and the Publican” (Luke 18:9-14), is to stick a thumb in the ribs of “those who trust in themselves that they are righteous and view others with contempt.”  His point is that everyone is infected (Romans 3:10).  Everyone needs the doctor.  Unfortunately, only those honest enough to admit their infirmity are likely to seek a  cure.           

Final Thoughts:  Called to Jesus

Interestingly enough, the deeper meaning of this passage is powerfully illuminated by what might otherwise appear an abstruse question of textual criticism.  In some of our Bibles – most notably the original King James Version – the concluding sentence reads, “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” 

This rendering is founded upon the Textus Receptus, the edition of Greek texts established by Erasmus of Rotterdam in the 16th century and used as the basis for most Protestant translations up until the 19th century.  But older, more reliable manuscripts don’t include the words “to repentance.”  They simply read, “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”  In a sense, this is the key to the whole story.

“Christ,” says Alfred Edersheim, “came not to call the righteous, but sinners – not ‘to repentance,’ as our common text erroneously puts it, but to Himself, to the Kingdom; and this is the beginning of repentance.”[vi]

Why is this so important?  Because Jesus, in contrast to the scribes and Pharisees and almost every religious system in the world, befriends sinners while they are still sinners (Romans 5:8).  He makes a special point of extending Himself to people who normally wouldn’t be considered “good enough” for Him.

As Edersheim explains, “All other systems know of no welcome to the sinner till, by some means … he ceases to be a sinner and becomes a penitent.  They would first make him a penitent and then bid him welcome to God; Christ first welcomes him to God and so makes him a penitent.”[vii]   

“Jesus!  What a friend for sinners!”  And what a model for those of us who aspire to represent Him in the world!  His first priority is not to call people to “clean up their act.”  Instead, He draws them to Himself.  And out of the context of that friendship He becomes their Savior.        

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[i] This week’s Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible.   

[ii] Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Vol. I, Book III, Ch. XVII, p. 515.

[iii] Wright, Mark for Everyone, p. 20.

[iv] Ibid., pp. 20-21.

[v] Eckhard Schabel, The Tyndale Commentary on Mark, p. 73.

[vi] Edersheim, Vol. I, Book III, Ch. XVII, p. 507.

[vii] Ibid.