Mark #7 - Jesus Breaking the Rules

Mark 2:23-3:6 (NIV)

So far in Mark’s Gospel we’ve been introduced to a number of characters and groups of folks that are becoming main actors in the drama that’s unfolding. One key tension throughout the narrative is between Jesus and the Pharisees who are following him around. They aren’t following him to become like him, or to learn from him, rather they follow him to pick and to critique and to try to dismantle the things Jesus is doing. These are self-appointed moral guardians of Israel who believed that in order for the Messiah to come, Israel needed to observe the Law with precision. The tragedy is that they made the Messiah himself the object of their critique.

We see this on full display in today’s passage. The Sabbath was a key practice that set the Jewish people apart from the surrounding nations. It was a day where every Jewish person was to stop, cease their work, and to enter the Lord’s rest for a day. Over time there were all sorts of rules imposed onto the practice of Sabbath, and ironically they made keeping Sabbath a whole lot of work.

Listen today and imagine yourself in the scene. What characters are you drawn to? What do you hear, taste, smell?

----------REFLECT----------

1. Which situation captured your imagination the most—eating on the Sabbath, healing on the Sabbath, or both?

2. What if we imagined the antithesis of this scene. How would you react if Jesus forced his disciples to go hungry? Or what if he turned the man with the shriveled hand away? What conflict would that cause in you?

3. Sometimes we can be so focused on unneeded rules that we fail to support the restoration and healing that God wants to do around us. In what ways are you guilty of that? In what ways is your community guilty of that?

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