Deut 5.12-15, Mark 2.23-3.6
One of the most famous images
in Western Art isn’t painted on canvas or hanging on a gallery wall. It is
painted on a ceiling, high above its viewers. It was painted, rather
reluctantly, by an artist who had at first refused the commission because he
said he thought of himself as a sculptor, not a painter. He was only persuaded
when he was told he could have free rein over what he painted. The result were
the extraordinary frescos painted by Michaelangelo in Sistine Chapel in the
Vatican, and in particular, the one I am thinking of, the Creation of Adam, the first in a series of
images inspired by the book of Genesis.
Everyone recognises it, even
if they don’t know anything about art. Most people don’t even need to see the
whole picture to recognise it. Just the outstretched hands of Adam and God,
almost, but not quite, touching. It’s so famous that it’s been turned into a
meme, altered, and captioned in all
sorts of ways over the years. I’ve seen versions where Adam is holding a pin
card reader out to God, or where Adam and God are stroking a dog, photoshopped
between them with the caption “And God said, ‘Let there be a good boy’ and
there was a good boy”. And those are just some that can be shared in a sermon
without getting me into lots of trouble. It might all seem a bit irreverent, but in a
way, those meme makers are doing exactly what the image meant them to,
pondering what might be happening in that encounter with God, in that small
space between God and humanity as they reach out to each other.
What brought that image into
my mind today was a curious coincidence in our Bible readings. I doubt it was
the main reason for these passages being chosen, but it caught my attention. Today’s
Old Testament and Gospel reading both talk about outstretched arms or hands.
In the Old Testament reading,
God calls the people of Israel, coming to the end of their wandering in the
desert, to remember that it was he who rescued them from slavery in Egypt, “with
a mighty hand and an outstretched arm”. That’s why they must keep the
Sabbath holy. It’s a weekly reminder that it wasn’t their actions which brought
them their freedom, but God’s. Keeping the Sabbath, ceasing from work, helps us
to see that we aren’t indispensable, that the world can turn without us, that
we can’t do it all, have it all, save ourselves, however clever or hardworking
we are, and more than that - we don’t have to. It reminds us that we are
still loved and worthwhile even if we aren’t doing anything, if we can’t
do anything, that we are loved and worthwhile in God’s eyes simply because we
exist.
That’s a huge relief -
especially for someone about to retire! - but more seriously, it ought to
prompt us to think carefully about our attitudes towards anyone who finds
themselves unemployed or underemployed or facing barriers to work. The phrase
“hard-working families” is everywhere as we approach a General Election, and I
hate it for the way it disparages families, and single people, who would love to have a job but can’t find one, people
whose disabilities, or society’s attitudes to them, are barriers to work,
people whose caring responsibilities mean they can’t earn a wage, asylum
seekers who want to work, but aren’t allowed to. Valuing people only or mainly
for the work they do is damaging and it runs completely contrary to how God
sees his creation.
We matter to God because we
are, not because of what we do.
That’s underlined in the
Gospel reading. The Pharisees are watching Jesus like hawks, waiting for him to
slip up. First, they spot his disciples picking heads of grain as they walk
through a wheat field on the Sabbath. But it’s not stealing or damaging the
crop that bothers them. That doesn’t seem to be an issue at all. It’s that they
are working on the Sabbath, because plucking grain, even just a head or two of
wheat, is work – harvesting – in their minds. Jesus has an answer for that,
drawn from the story of King David, and
they can hardly argue with David, a great hero to the Israelites. But when a
man comes to Jesus in the Synagogue on that same Sabbath day who has a withered
hand they think they’ve got him bang to rights. They don’t see the man, whose
“withered hand” would have made it very hard to live a normal life; he doesn’t
seem to count. All they see is an
opportunity to denounce Jesus.
And that’s where the second
outstretched arm in our readings comes in comes in. “Stretch out your hand”
Jesus says, inviting this man to do what he hasn’t been able to do perhaps for
years, maybe never. The man stretches out his hand, and as he does he is healed
by the power of God, by that outstretched arm which saved the Israelites from
slavery.
The Pharisees are outraged,
but perhaps triumphant too. Jesus has just given them a stick to beat him with,
and they go straight off to conspire with the Herodians, supporters of King
Herod, who also want to get rid of Jesus. Normally these two groups were at
loggerheads, but “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”, as they say.
Jesus knew that they would
react this way. He knew it would cause outrage that he had healed someone on
the Sabbath. But he saw someone in need, and knew that his need was more
important than the heartless interpretation of the Sabbath laws which the
Pharisees demonstrated. “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind
for the Sabbath”, he had said, and here was a perfect illustration of that.
Those of you who took part in
our Lent Course this year may remember that we spent some time thinking about
the word “Tend” as we considered our calling as a church to care for others, to
tend those around us. Tend, I explained, came from a word that meant “to
stretch out”. Tents are made of stretched out material. Tendencies are things
we have a leaning towards. We pay attention
to things and people that matter to us, leaning or stretching towards them.
Tendons allow our limbs to stretch out, as this man does to Jesus, and finds,
for the first time in we don’t know how long, that his tendons work.
He can only do this, though
because Jesus “tended” to him, paid attention, noticed him, and valued his need
for healing above the rules he had grown up with, and the risk of providing his
enemies with ammunition against him.
This is what that Sabbath is
really meant to be about, says Jesus, a day when bodies and minds and spirits
broken by the weight of unrealistic expectations can be healed, and a world
which values people solely by their economic activity challenged. It’s a day
when we practice this idea, so that we can take it with us into the rest of the
week. The Sabbath, kept properly, reminds us that whether we are able bodied or
disabled, working or not working, we matter to God and are loved by him. It
invites us, week by week, to stretch out to God, as he stretches out to us.
Amen
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