Preached · January 2, 2022
Series · Mark Confronting the Powers
Text · Mark 2; Mark 2.23-28
Hello, and welcome back to my basement. My name is Anthony Parrott, and I get to serve as one of the pastors here at the Table Church. I'm live right now, so what you have been seeing so far has been pre-recorded — Pastor Tonetta recorded some stuff, we were using things from previous services — but this is me right now, because I wanted to see you in the chat and see your sassy comments about my sermon, my preaching. Because your sass feeds my soul, and I need it.
So here we are once again. If you are new to the Table Church, then this is a new backdrop — these are some of my books. If you've been around for a while, this is all too familiar of a backdrop, because it's like deja vu all over again. This is where a lot of my preaching started for the Table Church. I started at the Table in March 2020, and I got installed as your pastor. And then this pandemic came along, we shut everything down, and then we thought the pandemic would come to a close, and we opened everything back up, and now here we are again.
And as Pastor Tonetta Hall already mentioned, this is not what we expected. This is not what we thought was going to happen. We honestly thought, hey, we could at least livestream from our downtown location and get the band together and everything. But — apologies if this is a HIPAA violation — it's hard to get a band together when everybody has COVID or is exposed to COVID. If you're anything like me, you know more people than you've ever known who are currently sick in some way. And it's just a rough season. It's a rough season. Yes, I do have a ring light — you can see it in the reflection. So we've got some upgrades in good old Pastor Anthony's basement.
A Prayer for the Death of a Dream
I wanted to begin with a prayer. There's this excellent, excellent book of prayers called Every Moment Holy. It's got litanies and prayers for all sorts of situations, including ones you wouldn't even think of — like for those feeling the impulse to buy, or before shopping, or before eating a meal alone, or a prayer for the loss of electricity. But here is a prayer for the death of a dream.
And I remember moving to D.C. almost two years ago — dear goodness — and getting on the metro and shopping for office space. And then the pandemic hit, and the life that I thought me and my family's life was going to look like dramatically changed. And as we enter into 2022, as we closed out 2021, I know that many of us had dreams that, if they didn't die, they were at least delayed. So I wanted to offer up this prayer for all of that and the current angst that we're in right now.
So would you pray with me? And I know some of you have kids running about. Some of you are alone. Some of you are trying to be religious without your roommates knowing it. You're all in all sorts of different situations. Whatever you are in, know that God is with you and present with you and can hear your prayer. So would you pray with me?
O Christ, in whom the final fulfillment of all hope is held secure: I bring to you now the weathered fragments of my former dreams, the broken pieces of my expectations, the rent patches of hopes worn thin, the shards of some shattered image of life as I once thought it would be. What I so wanted has not come to pass. I invested my hopes in desires that returned only sorrow and frustration. Those dreams, like glimmering fairy feasts, could not sustain me. And in my head I know that you, God, are sovereign even over this — over my tears, my confusion, my disappointment. But I still feel in this moment as if I have been abandoned, as if you do not care that these hopes have collapsed to rubble. And yet I know that this is not so. You are the sovereign of my sorrow. You apprehend a wider sweep with wiser eyes than mine. My history bears the fingerprints of grace. You were always faithful, though I could not always trace quick evidence of your presence in my pain. Yet you did remain at work, O God, working in the wings, sifting all my splinterings for bright embers that might be breathed into more eternal dreams. I have seen so oft in retrospect how you had not neglected me, but had, with a master's care, flared my desire like silver in a crucible to burn away some lesser longing and bring about your better vision. So let me remain tender now to how you would teach me. My disappointments reveal so much about my own agenda for my life, and the ways I quietly demand that it should play out — free of conflict, free of pain, free of want. My dreams are all so small. Your bigger purpose has always been for my greatest good: that I would, day to day, be fashioned into a more fit vessel for the indwelling of your Spirit, and molded into a more compassionate emissary of your coming kingdom. And you, in love, will use all means to shape my heart into those perfect forms. So let this disappointment do its work. You are the king of my collapse. You answer not what I demand, but what I do not even know to ask. Now take this dream, O God — this husk, this chaff of my desire — and give it back, reformed and remade according to your better vision. Or don't give it back at all. Here in the ruins of my wrecked expectation, let me make this best confession: not my dreams, O Lord, not my dreams, but yours be done. Amen.
Again, that's from Every Moment Holy.
Announcements
So, friends, we are back as much as we can be. By way of just a couple of announcements: we do have some learning opportunities coming this month, and they will be online. I know January is already kind of a month where maybe we're hunting for some things to do, and we're looking to better ourselves, and we've got that New Year's fairy dust sprinkled on top of us.
So, a couple of learning opportunities. As Meg mentioned in the chat earlier, we've got a prayer school coming up this second Wednesday of January, and it's on meditation. It's going to be taught by our justice and compassion director, Allie Cole. She's been a practitioner of meditation for a while now. And meditation, contrary to some popular belief, is not contrary to prayer or to knowing God or Jesus, but rather is a way of entering into God's presence. So that will be next Wednesday in the evening, virtually.
And then the other thing that I'm really excited about — and the sermon I'm about to preach is kind of all prelude to this — is that Pastor Tonetta and I will be co-teaching a class, which I am pumped about. We're going to be co-teaching a class called "Reading the Bible for Liberation: How Not to Read the Bible Like a Jackass." Pastor Tonetta came up with the "Reading the Bible for Liberation" title. And that's, I think, going to be a good way of what this class is going to look like — of us bringing our varied and different and yet oddly similar ways that we read Scripture to bear in teaching all of you who show up, about how to read Scripture, not like a jerk, but in ways that bring life and liberation and justice into this world. So it's going to be very much of a how-to class, it's going to be about eight weeks long, and we are really excited. That's going to be on Sundays. I would tell you a time, except Sundays we don't know what they're going to look like week to week right now, thanks to this whole COVID, Omicron thing. So we'll just say they're going to be Sundays, probably mornings, maybe afternoons — we'll let you know. And you will be in for the time of your life.
Mark 2:23-28
With that, if you have a Bible, I invite you to turn it on, flip it open, whatever works best for you. We're in the Book of Mark, which, if you've been with us for a couple months, shouldn't be a huge surprise. We've been in the Book of Mark for some time now, and we are about to finish chapter two, friends. So, a preview of things to come: we're going to be in the Book of Mark for a few weeks, and then we will be taking a break from Mark as we start Lent in the top part of March, which is the lead-up to Easter. But we'll be looking at the Book of Mark, looking specifically at this idea of how Jesus confronts the powers. And we'll be talking a lot about what the powers are — spirits and demons and principalities and authorities in the world.
But right now, we're in the Book of Mark, chapter two, toward the end, in verse 23. And this is what it says:
One Sabbath, Jesus was going through the cornfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some ears of corn. And the Pharisees said to him, "Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?"
So we'll pause there for a moment.
What Sabbath Meant
If you're unfamiliar with Scripture or Jewish practices: Sabbath was a day of the week, from sundown Friday till sundown Saturday, where — because of the commands and the expectations that God placed upon the Israelites and the Jewish people in the Hebrew Scriptures — this entire nation rested. And it meant that they, as much as possible, stayed at home. It meant that before sundown Friday, they would prepare meals so they wouldn't have to cook for that day. And this rest was a reminder of Yahweh God's provision, that God could keep the world spinning without their labor. This was a good law. This was a good command that God had placed in the lives of God's people. And, of course, it comes from the first part of the book of Genesis, where God creates the world, creates humanity, tells the first humanity to rule, multiply, subdue, and — for their very first full day of being alive — rest. Because even God rested from God's labor. So this is what is being talked about with Sabbath.
Jesus is already breaking some expectations here, because Jesus and his disciples, they're walking around. Shouldn't they be at home, not out and about walking? And they are plucking grain. This translation, the NIV, says they're picking ears of corn. They are doing labor, or work. Shouldn't they have prepared beforehand? And so the Pharisees — who are the people's party, those who want to resist Rome, those who wanted to listen to God's word, those who wanted to be separate from all of those who were opposed to God — the Pharisees have this concern: "Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath? God set up this good rule, this good law, this good expectation to rest, and you are pushing back against it." We oftentimes make the Pharisees out to be enemies, to be these villainous, kind of mustache-twirling bad guys. But the Pharisees were simply wanting to listen to God.
David and the Consecrated Bread
So Jesus answered, "Have you never heard what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, David entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And David also gave some to his companions."
So Jesus is referring back to the story in 1 Samuel about not-yet-King David fleeing from Saul. He and his companions are hungry, and so they go into the not-yet temple — but a tabernacle, a house for God, a place of worship — and they eat this holy bread that, according to the book of Exodus and Leviticus, had been set aside for the priests only. It was consecrated, made holy, set aside for the priests who worked in the tabernacle for God. And it's interesting: if you go back to the book of Leviticus, where this bread is explained, and what its purpose is, and how it's set apart for just the priests, the very next story in Leviticus is about someone being stoned to death — that is, to have rocks thrown at them as a form of execution — because they had blasphemed the name of God. So you get the idea of the seriousness that this command is given.
So Jesus says, "Have you not heard about how David, not even King at the time, he had hungry people in his group, he was hungry himself, and so he goes and breaks this command, breaks this rule, so that he can feed himself and those with him?"
So Jesus concludes, verse 27: "The Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man, Jesus, is Lord even of the Sabbath."
Two Ways to Read Scripture
We can read Scripture in one of two ways. We can read Scripture in a way that makes the point of Scripture obedience to it — it makes Scripture out to be a God in and of itself, that we must obey Scripture, period. Or we can read Scripture in a way that points us to a greater purpose, namely human flourishing, love, justice, liberation. And we see these two ways of reading Scripture coming into conflict, because the Pharisees, they come at Jesus and his disciples, and they see Jesus breaking this rule, this good rule, and say, "Why are you doing this? You are breaking a command, a command to rest, a good command." And Jesus says, "Yes, there was a command to rest, a command to Sabbath. But what was the purpose of that command?" It was human flourishing. It was knowing our limits. It was knowing when to stop, when to say no, and also when to feed yourself.
Scripture has this way of, throughout history, being a tool for oppression, a tool to keep people downtrodden under rules. And these rules maybe originally were meant for good, but people get a hold of them and use them to control others. If you've been around religious communities of any sort, you probably know this tendency for organizations and institutions to bend toward oppression, to bend toward control, to bend toward keeping you down. And what was originally meant to be life-giving and soul-enriching eventually becomes soul-sucking and takes away life within us.
But it is my belief that our understanding of Scripture, our interpretation of Scripture, the way that we read Scripture, is meant to bend toward love and justice and liberation. It is meant to bend toward human flourishing. When we read a piece of Scripture, when we read the Bible, we are meant to ask ourselves, "How do I best understand this in a way that causes myself to be more loving, that causes others to be more free?" Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and it will set you free." So, friends, if something is not setting you free, it ain't the truth.
Now, many folks hear an interpretation like this one, and they will say, "Well, man, you're just going to bend Scripture, twist Scripture, to make it mean what you want it to mean." And I suppose that is a way that you could go about understanding this. But that assumes that when we use Scripture to oppress, to say no, to keep people under our thumbs of control, that that's somehow not twisting Scripture to mean what we want it to mean.
So I think we have to ask ourselves two questions. One: how do I understand Scripture — bend my interpretation and understanding of Scripture toward love and justice and liberation? And two: am I making sure that Scripture is also bending me toward love and justice and liberation? It's a two-way street.
Because it's my belief — and this is probably no surprise to you if you've been around my preaching at all — that when we understand this library of documents that people and their experiences with God put together, if we pay attention to it and sit under good teaching and listen to its words, it will bend us toward being more compassionate and more loving and more justice-oriented. That's my belief. Now, I know you could probably point out to me a thousand examples of how that hasn't happened, but as I've said before, because someone misuses a thing doesn't mean that thing is of no good. It's my belief that when we come at Scripture wanting, desiring, to be people more known by love — because Scripture itself says that God is love — if we come at Scripture desiring that, then we will find the evidence that we need to see that God is loving and is moving his people toward being more loving and kind and compassionate and just.
And friends, I'm not saying that these are easy answers. The world is a complex and dark and messed-up place. And love — you can say it all day long, but eventually it's got to put its boots on and get to work. But when we pay attention to it, it will set us free. It is the truth, and it will set us free.
Why Start the Year Here
And I wanted to start out the year with a message like this, because many of us have been hurt or harmed, or somebody has tried to hurt or harm us, with religion, with Scripture, with Bible verses used to beat us over the head. And you're here tonight because a group — many groups, generations of groups of people — have come across this library of a collective's memory of their experience with God, and they have found something life-giving from it. They have been in, I think, darker places than even you and I have been. They have been in places with much more violence and bloodshed and turmoil. They have been under threat of sword and death. And they have come to this library of experiences, and they have found something true, something that sets them free.
So as a community, as a church, this year our vision and our purpose and our goals are very much the same: that we want to thoughtfully and authentically follow the way of Jesus. We believe that if we pay attention to the way of Jesus, that if we take action in the way that Jesus took action, that that will lead us to become even more loving, even more kind, even more compassionate, much more willing to confront evil, much more willing to confront injustice. And that may make us unpopular in some places. It may make us a home for those who have been spiritually homeless. It may do things to our life and our community that we did not expect. But if we listen to God, if we listen to one another, if we listen to the cries and the pleas and the voices of the marginalized and the oppressed, then I think we may just find truth that sets us free together.
Closing Prayer
Would you pray with me? Good and gracious God, I thank you for the example of Jesus, who did not let tradition, who did not let years of understanding and misunderstanding, let him and his disciples go hungry for a day. I thank you for the principle that Jesus shows us, that our understanding of Scripture is meant to lead toward human flourishing. It's meant to lead hungry people to food, hurting people to wholeness, marginalized people to the center of belonging. So, God, as a church, as a community, as a gathering of broken and wounded and bound-up people, may we listen to your voice in prayer and meditation, in Scripture, in study, in conversation. May we listen to your voice as you speak through those who need a home, who need a place to belong. May we listen to your voice so that we may be formed into a more compassionate and justice-oriented people. We pray these things in your name. Amen.
This is a transcript of the sermon as preached, lightly edited for readability.
