Speaker: Pastor Stephen “Tig” Intagliata
Bible Passage: Mark 2:23-28; 3:1-6
Summary: We could say that Jesus’ teachings–as seen in the Sermon on the Mount and in his encounters with religious leaders– deconstructed the teachings and traditions of Israel in order to reconstruct a new faith that was more Christ-centered and life-giving. While “deconstruction” is often seen as a bad thing, it can lead to a healthy process of growing in new and beautiful ways as followers of Jesus.
In 2019, one of the most holy spaces in the world was devastated by a fire. It was the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The world was stunned to see the damage done to this beautiful Gothic Cathedral with so much history and tradition.
In our scripture stories today, we could say that the Pharisees and other religious leaders thought Jesus was an arsonist who was setting fires to their cherished traditions, so they wanted to put out the fires and do away with the arsonist.
In the two passages we heard, the cherished tradition was the sabbath. In the first story, Jesus’ disciples are in the fields picking grain to probably make into bread later that day because they were hungry.
In the second story, Jesus heals a man in the synagogue who has a withered hand.
The Pharisees accused Jesus of breaking the sabbath laws because according to their strict interpretation of their law, both harvesting grain and healing people would have been considered “work” and work was forbidden on the sabbath, which is supposed to be a day of rest.
These two short stories give us snapshots of the contrast between Jesus and the religious leaders’ understandings of what it means to be holy and have a faith that honors God.
The Pharisees really were serious about pleasing God by being obedient to the Old Testament laws and commandments. So when this unorthodox Jewish rabbi named Jesus came onto the scene, they were appalled by his seeming lack of respect for God’s laws and their traditions.
The Pharisees and many other religious leaders were content with the way things were and were resistant to any kind of change or understanding faithfulness in new ways.
Yes, they were motivated by their desire to be faithful to God. But maybe they also wanted to keep things the same and closed to Jesus’ new ideas because the existing system benefitted them.
In their system, they were the authorities, the keepers of the gate. They had control to determine who was in and who was out, who was a sinner and who was holy.
And a case can also be made that the Pharisees were controlling the food production in a way that benefitted them economically, at the expense of poor Palestinian peasants,and if this is the case, it actually went against the underlying meaning of the sabbath. Ched Myers, in his commentary on Mark, Say to this Mountain, explains this. He says that:
“there was resentment among Galilean peasants about the control exercised over the sowing, harvesting, and marketing of produce. Many poor peasants couldn’t afford to obey the laws concerning tithing, or leaving their fields fallow during the Sabbath year… From their point of view, the Pharisee’s adjudication of Sabbath rules had become a way of regulating the economy to Pharisaic benefit.”
Oh how we love to get legalistic when those laws benefit us!
The underlying purpose of the sabbath was to make sure that both the land and the people were not overworked, and to guarantee that there would be enough for everyone instead of concentrating the wealth in the hands of a few.
This helps us understand what Jesus meant when he said “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath.”
And Jesus’ story about David and his companions eating the bread that was meant for the priests underscores Jesus’ value that hungry people have a right to food even when it seems to go against the law.
In the story of the healing of the man with the withered hand, Jesus is so upset with the critical attitude of the Pharisees that he it says that he looked around at them “with anger”.
This is the only time in the gospels where it says “Jesus was angry”, though we can assume that he was pretty angry the time when he overturned the tables of the moneychangers in the temple.
And then it says that Jesus was not only angry, but grieved at the Pharisees’ “hardness of heart.” Jesus taught and modeled that faith in God should move us to be compassionate and loving toward others, not cold-hearted and mean-spirited.
But these religious folks’ hearts had become so hard that they were judgmental instead of compassionate, prideful instead of humble, and legalistic instead of showing grace and understanding.
Russell Moore is a current editor of Christianity Today. He’s a conservative evangelical Christian whom I have come to respect and admire over the past few years.
Like Jesus, Moore is grieved at what he is seeing in “good religious people” and how their attitudes and actions are so unlike Christ and such a bad witness to the outside world.
Moore has called out those evangelical Christians including those in his former denomination who are so self-righteous that they have refused to acknowledge racism in our country, who have swept sexual abuse allegations under the rug, and who have aligned themselves with an immoral and corrupt political leader to the point of idolatry.
Recently Moore said this:
If we are hated for attempted Christlikeness, let’s count it all joy. But if we are hated for our cruelty, our sexual hypocrisy, our quarrelsomeness, our hatefulness, and our vulgarity, then maybe we should ask what happened to our witness.
When Jesus inaugurated the Kingdom of God here on earth, he taught and lived a new way to practice faith, a new understanding of what it meant to be holy and live a life that is pleasing to God.
Jesus didn’t come to totally throw away the Old Testament law that the religious leaders believed and taught, but as he said in his Sermon on the Mount, he came to fulfill the law, to uncover God’s original intentions for those laws.
In the Sermon on the Mount, there are these “You have heard that it was said…but I say to you” statements regarding God’s commandments.
You have heard that it was said “you shall not murder; but I say to you do not be angry with your brother or sister.”
Or “You have heard that it was said ‘you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you if you look at a woman with lustful intent you have committed adultery in your heart.”
Or “you have heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”
In a way, Jesus is deconstructing the Old Testament law, so something better and more beautiful could rise up out of it.
What is deconstruction? Well the Oxford dictionary says deconstruction has to do with “analyzing something in order to expose its hidden internal assumptions and contradictions and subvert its apparent significance.”
It’s like taking something apart to take a good honest look at it before putting it back together, and then deciding if you want to put it back together, and how it might look different from the original.
If you do decide to put it back together in a new way, it could be called reconstruction, or rebuilding, or restoration.
It’s kind of like what my grandchildren do when they’re playing with Legos. They build something, then take it apart.
And then after taking it apart, they decide if they want to put it back together again. They might keep some of the blocks and replace some of them with other blocks, and their new creation might look similar but also different from the original.
Somebody I follow on Threads talked about how deconstruction has been part of church history from the beginning, and how it’s central to the Christian faith.
He said: Jesus and the apostle Paul deconstructed the Law and the Prophets.
The Reformers deconstructed the harm in the Catholic Church at the time.
Abolitionists deconstructed how the Bible was used to justify slavery.
As an Anabaptist, I might add a few things like: “The Anabaptists deconstructed the emphasis on “sola scripture” of the Reformers and put the focus on making Jesus (not scripture) the center of our faith.
The Anabaptists deconstructed the alignment of the church with the state and separated the two.
The Anabaptists deconstructed a violent Jesus and recovered the Jesus who is the Prince of Peace.
When I came into the Mennonite Church, these were some things that I deconstructed and reconstructed in my own faith journey.
The guy on Threads finished his post by saying “If you’re deconstructing, you’re just following the footsteps of the saints. “Self-correction is baked into our faith.”
So friends, it’s not just the Pharisees in our story today that needed some deconstruction and restoration. It’s really something that all of us need to do in order to prevent becoming hard-hearted,
in order to rid ourselves of the unChristlike influences of the world around us and embrace new ways of what it means to be faithful as followers of Jesus.
Now I think it’s helpful to remember that Jesus is the foundation to build our “spiritual house” on. A favorite scripture of our Anabaptist forbearer Menno Simons was from 1 Corinthians 3:11: For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.”
Now as Christians there’s a temptation to have other things be the foundation, like the Bible for example. I see this sometimes in evangelical circles, where the Bible seems to be more revered than Jesus.
One of my favorite authors, Brian Zahnd, recently wrote a really good book on deconstruction called “When Everything’s On Fire: Faith Forged from the Ashes”. Here’s what he says about Jesus and the Bible:
My Christian faith is bigger than the Bible—and I dare say, better than the Bible. Jesus Christ is the only perfect theology and the only enduring foundation. …
… the foundation the church is built on is not the Bible or theology or reason or historical evidence or apologetics, but the divinely given revelation that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. (sounds Anabaptist to me!)
Now it’s also important to have a clear understanding of who exactly Jesus is when we have him as the foundation of our faith, and what kind of God he came from.
The late great Dallas Willard once wrote: God is the most joyous being in the universe… “God is simply one great inexhaustible and eternal experience of all that is good and true and beautiful and right.
And friends, I believe that all of the goodness of God, all the truth of God, all the beauty of God is embodied in Jesus, the God who has become one of us.
Mennonite pastor and author Meghan Good has a fairly new book called Divine Gravity, and in it she says:
This book is about hope- for a more beautiful, faithful, and truthful Christian story than many versions in recent history; an awakening to a bigger story than what we once imagined. we are seeking a Christianity that thinks and acts more like Jesus.
God is more wildly gracious and generous than anybody ever imagined.
Is this the kind of God and Jesus that we believe in and show the world around us? Does the way we live embody the goodness and truth and beauty of God like it did in Jesus?
Or have we become hard-hearted in our faith like the Pharisees in our story today?
Maybe we need to do some deconstruction and then some rebuilding, some remodeling in order to embrace and embody a faith that is filled with goodness and truth and beauty.
If our faith is like a car and we look under the hood, maybe we just need a tune-up, or maybe we could use a complete overhaul, or somewhere in between.
In Brian Zahnd’s book, he talks about his own process of deconstruction, and then restoration. He says that his “theological house” had become too small, and too informed by things like modern fundamentalism, individualism, consumerism, and nationalism.
He says these things clashed with what he calls “the beauty of Christ.”
He said that the restoration of his faith involved praying, and reading from a variety of perspectives, and honest conversation with trusted friends. He said that the Holy Spirit was his contractor during the renovation.
He gave himself permission to become more comfortable with mystery, doubt, and where both faith and reason are compatible.
He used the metaphor of the reconstruction of the Notre Dame Cathedral. He said that like the Notre Dame Cathedral,
“we can’t restore art with the same tools we use to demolish a parking garage. Demolition is easy—any fool can do it. But restoration requires wisdom, knowledge, respect, and patience.”
Brian Zahnd’s restored faith has become more life-giving and beautiful because he built a theological house that reflected a God and a Jesus whose identity is rooted in goodness, beauty, and love. He said
If you sense that God is good, God is beauty, God is love, and most of all, that God is like Jesus, stick with these instincts and your theology will not go far astray from the truth.
What beauty do you see in Jesus and his message of “good news”?
What is something that might need deconstructing and restoring in your life and witness as a Christian?
I invite you to reflect on these questions. You will have a chance to share about them in the sermon response time.
May we be open to allowing God’s Holy Spirit to guide us through whatever deconstruction and restoration we need in order to embrace a more beautiful and life-giving faith and witness to those around us. AMEN.
