Jesus Makes an Exception to Religious Tradition

 I wrote this early on Monday morning, and this morning after allowing time for it to mellow and for me to see if it still made sense in the light of day, I sent it to our ministers.  I made only minor changes this morning.

**********

Yesterday’s Sunday School lesson from Mark 2 concluded with these words of Jesus: “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”  Pondering those words gave me insight into how we might profitably view religious traditions, even if those traditions did not originate in the Ten Commandments as Sabbath keeping did for the Jews in Jesus’ audience.

In the context in which Jesus said those words, his disciples had been criticized for plucking heads of grain to thresh in their hands and to eat as they walked along on the Sabbath.  Although permitted in the Old Testament law (as long as no sickle was used), layers of Jewish law established since the law was given originally had forbidden the practice.  

In the beginning, rest was mandated as part of keeping the Sabbath holy.  The practice was rooted in God’s creative activity, when he “worked” at creation for six days and rested on the seventh.  Since working and resting were understood to be mutually exclusive, and since gathering and threshing grain was work, complete abstinence from it was called for as far as the Jews were concerned.

I see Jesus’ words in Mark 2 as effectively reining in the excessive rigidity that had become the norm in Jewish Sabbath keeping practice, while he preserved the essential elements of the law’s  original intent.  Jesus’ words could perhaps be paraphrased like this: “God intended Sabbath observance to be a gift to man–not a burden to him.”  Perhaps his words could also be understood to mean that the principle of Sabbath keeping is too important to man’s well-being to set aside completely, but wisdom calls for making occasional exceptions to the traditional application of that principle.

What if we viewed our religious traditions in a similar way?  While it might feel like a stretch to see all of our traditions as gifts, I think it’s reasonable to see most of them as having come into being as good provisions for meeting legitimate and recognizable needs.  What if we could find a way to do as Jesus did–not reject the traditions that were instituted for people’s benefit, but make occasional exceptions to the traditional application of the principle behind the traditions?  In other words, what if, instead of rewriting our principle-recognizing codes, we could identify circumstances (either in advance or in-the-moment as relevant circumstances arise) that would allow occasional exceptions to the specific application of the principles that we still wish to honor?  I would idealize group involvement in making exceptions, although it would almost certainly not always be practical.  

I’m guessing that our German-influenced love for efficiency and its penchant for having a policy for everything would result in some stiff headwinds if this approach were implemented in our religious communities. I don’t deny that it could be challenging.  My impression is that, even so, it might be the best way forward in cases where different factions within a group want to resolve differences peacefully.  

Simply starting over seems ill-advised to me–akin to the chaos that would surely have resulted if Jesus had said about Sabbath keeping that “we’re starting over from scratch at this point, because the traditional applications are no longer relevant.” Instead, he refocused on the principle behind the current Sabbath keeping practice and proceeded to show his audience how it could be reasonably applied to the situation at hand.  If it’s good enough for a perfect God-man, it should probably be good enough for you and me and all of us together.