Do-gooders
The Rev. Amy Morgan
January 30, 2011
In this section of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has been teaching and healing in the towns around Galilee. Some of his teaching and healing has been well-received, but, as we heard last week, some people, especially those in religious leadership, didn’t take well to Jesus’ teachings. Here again, we find Jesus in conflict with some of those religious authorities.
Matthew 12:9-14
9 Jesus left that place and entered their synagogue;
10 a man was there with a withered hand,
and they asked him,
"Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath?"
so that they might accuse him.
11 He said to them,
"Suppose one of you has only one sheep
and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath;
will you not lay hold of it and lift it out?
12 How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep!
So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath."
13 Then he said to the man,
"Stretch out your hand."
He stretched it out,
and it was restored,
as sound as the other.
14 But the Pharisees went out
and conspired against him,
how to destroy him.
There is a battle raging.
In our courts.
On our borders.
Between churches and neighbors.
The disagreement is over whether or not humanitarian aid is a crime.
Now, this might sound strange. How could helping someone be a crime? Aren’t laws in place for the good of all the people?
Most of us are not so naïve as to think that all laws benefit all people all of the time.
We know that our legislative system is broken, that government policies get manipulated by lobbyists and special interests. We know that the political landscape of our nation is deeply divided and contentious.
But it seems outrageous that, on any level, humanitarian aid could be construed as criminal activity.
In July of 2009, Federal Agents handed out littering tickets to 13 members of a group called No More Deaths. The group’s mission is to “end death and suffering on the U.S./Mexico border through civil initiative.” The group members were ticketed for placing gallon water jugs in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, an area many migrants must cross as they make their way into the United States. Illegally.
Opponents of the No More Deaths group argue that this is aiding and abetting law-breaking invaders. Others who sympathize with the government’s position point out that other groups provide water in the desert for immigrants in a way that doesn’t damage the environment.
No More Deaths and their advocates argue that gallon jugs allow border-crossers to carry water with them. The group claims they clean up trash on the wildlife refuge as they place the jugs and pick up discarded jugs. The group also claims they encountered roadblocks in the process to obtain a permit allowing them to deliver humanitarian aid legally.
The 13 members of No More Deaths were acquitted of the littering charges in September of last year.
In a Washington Times article in March of last year, a professor of political and Chicano studies is quoted as saying, “when [federal law and human rights] are in conflict, human rights should always win. It’s a false dichotomy. Human rights and positive law shouldn’t be in conflict.”
And yet they often are.
Our nation has plenty of “positive law” that, in its interpretation and application, conflicts with human rights, unfairly burdens the poor, increases the suffering of the weak, and overlooks basic human needs. It isn’t a cut-and-dry, liberal versus conservative, Republican versus Democrat issue.
Good laws can be wrongly interpreted. Good intentions in keeping the law can result in injustice, cruelty, and oppression. And this happens in one of the wealthiest nations, one of the most developed nations, one of the most civil nations on the planet. Imagine how out-of-hand legal interpretation can be in parts of the world that don’t have the resources, education, or values our nation does. In this country, and all over the world, good laws leave people in suffering.
That is the situation Jesus encounters in our text today. He does not walk into the synagogue to dismantle Jewish law, to dismiss the Sabbath as empty ritual. As Jesus enters the synagogue, he walks into an ongoing, centuries-long debate over proper Sabbath observance.
The Sabbath was a central practice in first-century Judaism. Not only was it mandated in the Ten Commandments, it was established by God from the very beginning of creation. In addition, Sabbath-keeping was one of the fundamental things that set the Jewish people apart from the surrounding Roman and Greek cultures.
It’s important that in talking about the Jewish Sabbath, we don’t confuse it with the Christian Lord’s Day. The early church established Sunday as the Lord’s Day, the day to worship God and celebrate the resurrection of Christ. The Jewish Sabbath, on the other hand, was a day of rest from work and festive eating and drinking. Some early Christians kept both holy days, but as the centuries went on, most Christians either quit keeping Sabbath or blended the two days together.
The debate that had been going on for centuries by the time Jesus entered the synagogue was what constituted work on the Sabbath. The example Jesus uses about pulling a sheep out of a pit is drawn from one group’s belief that rescuing an animal on the Sabbath was work, and therefore forbidden.
Most Jews believed that human welfare and relationships trumped honoring God, and therefore healing on the Sabbath was permitted. However, some felt that you could only heal on the Sabbath in life-threatening situations. If the healing could wait for a day, then one should not heal on the Sabbath.
The intent of the Pharisees in this story is to trap Jesus in this ongoing legal battle. They ask about what is lawful, but they really want to accuse Jesus. Jesus, however, turns the focus from what is allowed to what is “good.” This small, four letter word is enormous in this text, and in the bible as a whole. The Sabbath is established by God because creation was “good.” Adam and Eve are driven to eat forbidden fruit so that they might be like God, knowing what is “good.”
The Ten Commandments are given by God so that people will know what is “good.” We heard in the prophet Micah, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good.”
And Jesus tells the Pharisees that the answer to their legal question about healing is that “it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” And then, Jesus heals a man with a withered hand. The man’s hand is a disability. It might even be painful. But it doesn’t make him sinful or unclean. It doesn’t ostracize him from society. It is a healing that could have waited until tomorrow.
It is a healing that certainly improved the man’s quality of life, but it didn’t necessarily impact his soul.
In the text we read last week, Jesus is presented as a physician sent to heal sin-sick souls.
In this text, Jesus is concerned for the physical wholeness of this individual. He is so concerned, in fact, that he doesn’t wait until tomorrow. He heals him on the Sabbath, smack in the middle of a debate with the Pharisees over this very issue. Of course, this is no accident. The point that Matthew is driving at in this episode is that the best way to follow the law, the best way to honor God, is to honor God’s creation, particularly God’s greatest creation – humankind.
The Pharisees were what I would call “do-gooders.” We all know the type. The one who always follows the rules. The one who tattles when others break the rules. The one who knows the rules by heart and reviews all the rules for the game before you can start playing, the one who always has every form filled out correctly and ahead of time at the Secretary of State, the one who reads the Book of Order for fun, the one who files their taxes in January and gets exactly $300 back each year.
You’re looking at a class-act do-gooder here, but many of us have a tendency to want to follow the rules, meet expectations, color inside the lines. There are those who believe rules were made to be broken, but most of them aren’t Presbyterians.
Jesus was not a do-gooder. Now, he didn’t criticize the rules. He didn’t abolish the law as useless ritual. He didn’t feel the rules were made to be broken. Instead, Jesus reminded the Pharisees, and us, that the law wasn’t given so that we could be do-gooders. The law was given so that we could be good doers. It was given to guide and direct us in everything we do to know what is good, not what is legal, or correct, or inside the lines. The prophet Micah reminds us that we know what is good, “and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
The thought that what God desires most of us is doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God is something that makes sense to people who are good doers. Helping an animal out of a pit, regardless of what the rules might say, makes sense to people who are good doers. Healing those who are broken –
spiritually, emotionally, or physically –
makes sense to people who are good doers.
And that is who we are here in the body of Christ.
Sometimes it’s hard to get through our Presbyterian heads. But our hearts know that we are good doers, not do-gooders. Our Deacons are good doers – attending to the immediate physical needs of our members, neighbors, and local community. The Presbyterian Women are good doers – mounting their amazing Rummage Sale twice a year to raise funs that will support good doings locally and around the globe. Wider Church Outreach is a committee full of good doers – helping all of us engage in hands-on good doings from CROP Walk to South Oakland Shelter, encouraging each one of us to reach one in need. Families in this church are good doers – making meals for families with new babies or those going through an illness, caring for each other’s children, helping out whenever and wherever they can. Our youth – people, let me tell you – our youth are some good doers. They have a passion for healing and justice and compassion that is going to transform the world.
I could go on and on. We are a church full of good doers. But most of the good we do doesn’t conflict with our desire to be do-gooders. We don’t have to break the law to feed the hungry; we don’t have to enter into the debate over immigration to house the homeless.
But we do allow suffering to continue, injustices to be committed, and cruelty to go on while the debate drags on over what is correct. We could talk about immigration reform. We could apply this to ordination standards in the church. This text applies to injustices in school funding, the foster care system, or the tax code. But Jesus isn’t talking about any one of those issues. He’s talking about all of them, and more. He takes the single issue of healing on the Sabbath, and turns it into a demonstration of the Kingdom of God.
The point is not what issue we take on, which law we advocate to change, which injustice we set about to correct. Whether it’s immigration or ordination, taxation or representation – the law, the rules, are often complex. The point Jesus is making is that we can spend our lives – our God-given gifts and resources – on the argument, the debate. Or we could just go ahead and heal people.
The question of Sabbath observance was a complex issue, too. It had gone on for centuries, and Jews are still divided over it today. But in all the complexity, in all the divisiveness, Jesus healed anyway.
So my question for us today is:
Where is healing having to wait?
Where is what is good being hampered by the debate over what is right? Where is our desire to be do-gooders keeping us from doing good?
May our God,
who desires to heal the world in body and spirit,
empower us to be good doers,
in this place,
and in all of our lives. Amen.
