God of the Creatures

In the beginning, everything was formless and void. And then, God spoke. He created the night and the day, the moon and the sun, the light and the dark. He created the mountains and the valleys, the land and the sea, the skies above. Then, He filled everything with creatures - things that swim in the waters, things that fly in the skies, things that move along the land. 

All of it. 

All of them.

So often, when we talk about an artist or a creator, we talk about the things that they create as an "it." Something static. Something that now just exists. Perhaps they are fond of it or think of it with a certain sense of pride, but there's no continuing relationship between the potter and the clay. The pot simply is now. It simply sits wherever it sits, and it is a "thing." 

Not so with God and His creatures. 

We know, of course, that He shares a special relationship with us as human beings created in His image. We know that He sent His Son to die for us and to walk out of that grave for us. We know that He loves us with a special fondness that knows every hair on our heads and knit us together in our mother's womb. We know that God is more than our Creator; He is our God. Our ongoing Lord. In constant relationship with us. 

Did you know that He is with the so-called creatures, too? 

He knows every inch of the giraffe's neck. Every scale on the fish. Every quill on the porcupine. Every hair on the orangutan. He knows every slither of the snake's tongue, every waddle of the penguin's feet, every quack of the duck's bill. 

But He doesn't just know these things in some kind of objective sense; He knows them because He is still in conversation with His creatures. Every day. 

When Job sits in his pile of dust and ashes and wonders what God is up to, when he speaks to his friends, when he calls out God and God answers, they have this exchange in which God brings up the creation of the animals, the creatures, as evidence of His mightiness, His wisdom, His goodness. Can Job know any of these things? Can Job know that the ostrich has wings to flap them joyfully before the Lord? 

Buried quietly in God's eloquence about the creation of the creatures is a small little verse that indicates for us that He didn't just create them; He still loves them, the way He loves us. He's still in relationship with them, the way He is with us. 

It's in Job 41. God says, when speaking of Leviathan, "Do you imagine it will beg you endlessly for mercy or lower its voice to a whisper when speaking to you? Will it strike a deal with you and enter into your service as a lifelong slave? Will you play with it?" The implication is that these are things God can do - does do - with Leviathan. 

He has a relationship with it. 

I love this. I love this so much. We talk about God frequently as a master artist, and it can lead us to believe that this whole creation is in some ways nothing more than a museum - a holding place for masterpieces. A storeroom for things God created and then set aside to look at forever, to just let exist. Even if we believe that God loves His people, we can still convince ourselves that He loves His other people, but not us. We? We're just museum pieces. 

But if God has conversations with the creatures, if He barters with them, if they speak and He listens and He speaks and they listen, if God plays with them...even them...even Leviathan, then there's no way to ever believe that a single one of His masterpieces was ever made just to be a museum piece. 

Every single one was created to be loved. 

Including you. 

Including me. 

Yeast

Beware the yeast of the Pharisees...

Jesus spoke these words to the disciples as they were in the midst of their travels, talking about how hungry they were and where they might get some bread. When He said these words, they thought He was talking about actual bread, but He was talking about something else entirely. 

Yeast has exactly one function in bread: it causes it to rise. It gives it its volume, its dimension, its airiness. It gives it the texture that we expect bread to have. (And if you love bread like I do, you know what I'm talking about.) 

Without yeast, you don't really have bread; you have crackers. 

Communion has always been crackers or wafers or flatbreads; never bread like we think of it. The reason is that the Passover was always celebrated with unleavened - unyeasted - bread. Back when Israel was leaving Egypt, they were told to take what they have and to not put yeast in the bread because they would be on the move, and it wouldn't have time to sit and rise. Whatever yeast they would put in it would be wasted, and the bread would be flat anyway. No reason to worry about your yeast when you're running into freedom. 

That was the problem with the yeast of the Pharisees: it wasn't doing what it was supposed to do. 

Yeast is supposed to make the bread rise, but the yeast of the Pharisees was only puffing them up. It was supposed to make the bread light and airy, but it was only giving them airs. It was supposed to give it volume, but it was only making them loud. There was more yeast in the Pharisees than bread, and it was making them so full of themselves that they didn't have room for anything else. 

And that became all they were worried about - their size, their volume, their puffiness, their airs. It was all they could think about. Something better was standing right in front of them - His name was Jesus - and they were so busy making sure their own bread was rising that they couldn't pursue the freedom He was offering. 

Let it not be so with us. 

We still celebrate this Table with crackers, not bread. We still memorialize this moment the way Jesus did - with unleavened bread. Without yeast.

Because He wants us to not be worried about the yeast, but about the freedom that lies ahead. He wants us to not be so full of ourselves that we can't pursue His freedom. He wants us to not be puffed up, but to be brought near. He wants us to not be waiting on bread to rise, but accepting the bread that's already broken. For us.

Beware the yeast of the Pharisees.... 

Take this and eat. 

Speak

The whole synagogue is silent. Everyone's holding their breath. The Pharisees, who just seconds ago were salivating over their impending victory are now choking on the dryness of their own mouths, and Jesus has this weird little smile on His face. 

Into the heavy silence, He speaks. "Hold out your hand." 

In an instant, the crippled man holds out his deformed hand, and as he stretches it forward, it becomes whole. You can hear the whole synagogue gasp.

He's done it. He's healed the man. 

But then, in a moment of sudden remembrance, all eyes turn the Pharisees, the men who set this whole thing up. What will they do next?

What can they do?

See, at first, we must answer the question: what just happened? Jesus didn't do anything. He never touched the man. He never did anything that looks like work. He simply...spoke a word. 

Is speaking on the Sabbath a violation of the holy order? Is speaking work? 

There's a conundrum here for the Pharisees. There's nothing in their law that prohibits speaking on the Sabbath. If there were, these men who love their power would be in trouble. But there is nothing. Speaking is not work. On the other hand, something happened to the man on the basis of that word. Does the result make that word work?

And who is it that can speak a word that becomes a work? 

In the beginning was the Word.... In the beginning, everything was formless and void, and then, God spoke.... 

To say that the word became work is to confess that this man, this Jesus, is one who can speak such a word. And the only one who has spoken such a word to this point in all the history of the world...is God. 

They thought they had Jesus, but Jesus had them. They either had to deny what everyone has plainly seen, that a miraculous healing has taken place among them, or they had to admit that this Jesus is one like God, who can speak a word that becomes a work. 

Which will it be, gentlemen?

A Heavy Silence

The Pharisees thought they had it. They brought a crippled man into the synagogue on the holy day, making themselves unclean, but no matter what happened next, they were going to preserve their power. Either this Jesus would choose not to act, in deference to the Sabbath, and the Pharisees would be proved right in all their purity laws...or this Jesus would act, do something, and the Pharisees would show everyone what a sinner He really was - working on the Sabbath; He can't possibly be such a "good" teacher after all. Thus, they remain the best teachers. 

So they shoved the crippled man toward Jesus, and they held their breath, tasting their victory as the saliva built up in their mouths. One way or the other, they were coming out on top. 

And then...

Jesus spoke. 

He asked them about the things that they owned, the things they built their lives on. If one of their animals, which made possible their agricultural work, fell into the ditch on a holy day, wouldn't they go and pull it out? 

*An interesting aside: why would one's working animal fall into a ditch on the Sabbath in the first place? One of two things must be happening - either the animal is working, which means a man set it to working and thus broke the Sabbath already, or the animal is grazing, which implies the presence of a shepherd or guardian who would be tending the animal and thus also already breaking the Sabbath. But no one responds to Jesus's musing by saying that the animal should not fall into a ditch on the Sabbath, for that would mean someone was working. But, you know...details. 

At this point, the Pharisees are the ones who are caught. If they say that they would not pull their animal out, they are guilty of its death, which makes them unclean in God's eyes. If they say that they would pull their animal out, they are guilty of work on the Sabbath, which makes them hypocrites (at the very least) and shows that even they are willing to break the Sabbath for some things. 

You can feel the tension in the air as that saliva that tasted so sweet like victory dries completely up and the Pharisees are left speechless. Jesus has so far done nothing with the crippled man that they planted in the synagogue to preserve their power, and they've already lost it. 

There is no way to respond to His question. 

I imagine Jesus let the tension just hang there for longer than anyone thought was comfortable. I imagine the silence lingering for just enough time to become awkward. I imagine Jesus sneaking a small smile out the side of His mouth toward the crippled man, a smile that says, "Just wait," as He continues to watch the Pharisees, waiting for their reaction. They start to squirm. They start to point fingers. 

But...but...the crippled man, they insist. Enough about us. What are You going to do about the crippled man? 

Jesus smiles. You could hear a pin drop, were it not for the shuffling of the Pharisees' feet under their long, ornate robes. 

Then, Jesus turns to the crippled man, starts to reach out His hand for the man's, but stops. With a quick, knowing glance toward the Pharisees, then back to the man, He speaks again.... 

Unclean

So there's a crippled man in the synagogue on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees basically shove the guy toward Jesus and wait to see what the "Rabbi" will do. Will He honor the Sabbath...or heal the man?

But as we saw yesterday, there's more to this story. Because under normal circumstances, no Pharisee is going to let a crippled man into the synagogue on any day, let alone on a holy day. The crippled were supposed to be cut off. 

So the Pharisees are already breaking their own laws. 

Isn't that interesting? The Pharisees got together, and they thought about things, and they decided that they would rather be unclean and pollute the entire holy place...than be wrong. (Interestingly enough, if they bring an unclean/unpresentable man into the holy place on the Sabbath and nothing terrible happens to the holy place or the people, aren't they already wrong?) 

This was the real threat that the Pharisees faced from Jesus. It wasn't just that He was claiming to be the Messiah, although that would raise questions for anyone. It wasn't that He was talking about destroying the Temple and raising it up in 3 days; crazy men do crazy talk sometimes - it's nothing to get in a big tizzy about. 

The trouble with Jesus was that His holy presence - His love, His grace, His mercy, His redemption, His talk about the Kingdom, the promises whispered with His every breath - threatened their power. 

They had built their entire power structure on being the arbiters of holy truth. They were the ones that knew the laws. They were the ones that knew the rules. They were the ones who understood God and what He wanted and what pleases Him and how the people were supposed to act. If this Jesus comes in and not only tells the people there's another way, but shows them, the entire power structure crumbles. 

If the power structure crumbles, those at the top come crashing down. Hard. 

No one will ever listen to them again. 

So what they've actually set up here is a power play with Jesus. They think they can't lose. If He doesn't heal the man because it's the Sabbath, then they were right - the Sabbath requires no work, even healing work. If He does heal the man, they get to call Him out and maybe something terrible will happen, and wouldn't that be even better? At the very least, though, they get to point out that He doesn't know the most basic rules of the faith, so how could He be the "Messiah"? He's got God all wrong. 

They expect that no matter what happens with this crippled man in the synagogue on the Sabbath (and quite honestly, they don't care what happens to him; he's just a tool they are using for their own purposes), they are going to be able to prove their own right-ness and re-secure their place atop the power structure.

It's a win for them either way, so they're willing to put up with a little bit of uncleanness, even in the holy place, if it gets them what the most want - their power back. 

Amazing how quick some folks are to break their own rules for their own reputation. 

Of course, what they hadn't counted on was, well, Jesus actually being Jesus....