June 2nd, 2024
A pack of ‘undesirables’.
Today’s gospel begins in an idyllic rural setting. The sun is shining, the birds are tweeting, and the corn is standing tall and gently swaying in the breeze. Dark clouds are a distant memory. It’s a sabbath day so there is no activity, no hurlby burly, all is calm and well. Think Of Snow White and the seven dwarfs when the creatures join in the singing. A scene of innocence and wholesomeness. Or the opening scene of Oklahoma. The world is as it should be. It’s all going so very well.
Jesus has even been chattering about wine and wineskins. There’s no hint of the argy bargy that is about to follow.
Now read on.
On this serene Sabbath Jesus and his mates are strolling through the grain fields helping themselves to some of the corn from Farmer Ishmael's bumper crop. Enter stage right a mob of angry Pharisees. Why is their blood pressure so high and their voices so loud?
It’s not walking through cornfields on the Sabbath that upsets the religious authorities about Jesus and his cronies. It’s not that they have helped themselves to farmer Ishmael’s corn. What really gets up their goat is the fact that Jesus and his good Jewish disciples have plucked the corn … the … Sabbath. Picking corn counts as work, so it’s forbidden; but what is even worse than that, is Jesus reinterpreting the law. ‘The Sabbath was made for human beings’, he points out: ‘Not the other way round’.
Everyone should have one day of rest per week to remind us that God is the centre of life rather than ourselves. Actually… we aren’t indispensable. Workaholism is not the same as holiness- and yes, I’m preaching to myself here, too. Clergy are innovative at persuading themselves that they are indispensable and that the way to heaven is to show that your diary is overflowing with reminders and appointments. The technological age did not give us more time at all to be with family and friends. It seduced us. It lied! We find that the addiction to the screen and the need to fill up blank pages in the diary is its own form of insidious slavery. We are not better at keeping the Sabbath at all. The sabbath was made as a gift to us and for us. Why are we so quick to shun it? Why can’t we reach out and grab it and run with it? Relish and revel in it. We would come back so much more insightful, so much more energised, so much more fruitful and attractive to those we seek to serve. Sadly to our detriment and those around us, we are less than we ought to be because we have less to offer them. We are unable to give them what they rightly need and so richly deserve.
The Pharisees, those on the inner, rebuke Jesus and his disciples and ask why this pack of undesirables aren’t keeping the Sabbath.
The Holy Clerics see only one thing. That the Sabbath is being broken. They do not see the hunger or the need of the disciples. Further, the Pharisees miss out on the likely truth that these blokes in the cornfields might have something quite lovely and important to offer them.
And of course, there is a lesson here for any of us who has ever considered ourselves to be on the inner. To see past what is outwardly going on and to recognise the needs of our brothers and sisters. Not what is happening but why this is happening and having ascertained our brothers and sisters need to go and do something about it. And if we are very brave we might see WHO it is, that stands among us. The one who is hungry for our love and has so much to offer to us.
“A pack of undesirables.” Vagabonds, misfits and scoundrels. Marching in on our territory. Stomping all over what we have worked so hard to establish and grow and flourish and on the Sabbath let me tell you! No respect, no understanding, no comprehension of our sabbath, our ways and they clearly have no desire to fit in. They should never have come here. There is no place for them. They should just move on.
In God’s eyes, everyone is desirable. None are undesirable. All are infinitely precious to Him, no matter how they dress, what their tax bracket, their family status or the colour of the skin from which they emerged from the womb. It matters not if they are one of 6 kids under 10 or an only child from a private school. They are desirable no matter the dialect on their tongue or the faith culture they happen to have grown up in.
Like those ‘undesirable,' hungry disciples, it is those in greatest need who walk closest to God. It is those who stomp all over our sense of what we think is right and proper who actually have the most to teach us.
Would God smite us terribly if we spent more time keeping the sabbath and mucking about in the cornfields with the ‘undesirables’? Well hey, there’s only one way to find out.