Doing the Right Thing
“On Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as His disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to Him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?’
“He answered, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.’
“Then He said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
Mark 2:23-27
How do you judge the greater good?
For the most part, the laws of nature seem fairly clear. The Law of Gravity will cause an apple to drop from a tree and keep the Earth in its orbit. The Laws of Nature work together to bring forth birth or bring about death. With the exception of domesticated animals, interaction between animals and humans is not the norm. There are, however, times when these laws are breached.
I once spent an entire day scuba diving with large herds of manatee in Crystal River, Fla.[1] The creatures are large and while some may say they are a bit clumsy, they are really more docile. Those that migrate to the same areas year after year have grown accustomed to human visitors and it is common for them to approach divers out of curiosity. Some of these “cows of the sea” will actually allow a pat on the head or scratch on the back.
I was fortunate to have an even greater rare moment as I approached a mother and her calf. The mother was probably close to eight feet long, and the calf was much smaller. Neither swam away and as I gently approached, clearly mom was “on guard,” but she allowed for my frivolity. The calf approached and, at first, allowed for a gentle stroke or two, but as we spent more time together, it actually rolled over onto its back and allowed a full tummy rub. Mother floated nearby and allowed this unusual play between mammals to continue for a few minutes, but then, as if she was speaking to two children on the playground with the words, “Time’s up,” she gently moved over to the calf, gave it a little bump, it turned, snuggled up against mom and the two swam away. It was a brief “break” in the laws of nature, but for a few moments, we were both the better for it.
Perhaps it is contrary to the familiar quip, but laws were not made to be broken. As my reader probably knows, the Great Laws of the Old Testament were summed up in the Ten Commandments that were given to Moses on Mount Sinai.[2] Over time, they were expanded to over 600 various laws, about a third being positive laws (what “to” do) and the remaining being negative (what “not to” do). Of course, these laws were interpreted in a wide variety of ways and the faith they were supposed to enhance, in some circles, became an intricate and restrictive religious system by which one won favor with God (i.e. Keeping the law was good, failing to do so was bad). The problem with this thinking is that the faith then became focused far more on the rules than the Rule-Maker.
As Jesus came on the scene and unveiled the possibility of relationship with God unfettered by legalistic rule-keeping, some believed He was handing out hall passes for unjustified truancy. He was quick to respond, “I have not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.”[3] In some sense, it seems, Jesus even made the law more restrictive. He told His listeners that, though they had heard they were not to commit adultery, Jesus would take it further and say that lust in the heart is equal to adultery of the body. Where some believed only physical violence against another was unlawful, Jesus would say violent thoughts are just as bad.[4]
On the other hand, we see Jesus consistently throughout His earthly ministry bumping up against the various laws, as in the Scripture cited for this meditation. According to Jewish tradition, working of any sort on the Sabbath was forbidden.[5] Those who spotted Jesus’ disciples picking some grain on the Sabbath deemed them lawbreakers. Jesus did not dismiss their concerns, but used the opportunity to remind them that the law is there to serve its maker and not the other way around.
He pointed them to the time when David and his companions ate consecrated bread and while this also was unlawful, it is always lawful to do good. David was acting in accordance with the spirit of the law; he was not rejecting the validity of the law, but choosing a greater good for the benefit of his friends.
Jesus took the law seriously, but He (and He alone by the way) was able to “be” the living law. We see in Jesus what the “law” really looks like. For Jesus, choosing the greater good within the spirit of the law, at times, trumped the letter of the law. This was, of course, the exception, not the rule.
Jesus was not proposing circumstantial morality or situational ethics, but He was always pushing His followers to look for the deeper meaning of the law — doing good as a fruit of that right relationship with God. At times, it seems that even included stepping across some rather well-defined barriers.
I was fortunate to benefit from a breaking of the laws of nature those many years ago during a brief encounter in a lagoon off the coast of central Florida, but it reminded me that the law was meant to serve, not to be served.
There is a final caveat here. Jesus ends this little teaching with a bold claim — that in the end, He is actually the Lord of the Sabbath. That means Sabbath rules — and, in fact, all rules as they apply to our relationship with God and one another — should be guided by Jesus and His greatest law: love of the other — a law that trumps all others.
A Question to Ponder
I realize offering this meditation is opening a small can of worms. There is a slippery slope in suggesting that laws are, at times, to be broken for the greater good because anyone could define good to their advantage and, thus, break the rules with the same motive. However, Jesus’ teaching, and frankly model, suggests that such an ethic only applies when it is for the good of the other, not the self. With that in mind, is there someone in your life right now, today, who needs you to operate more out of the spirit of the law than its letter? To serve him or her out of the great law of love over and above the law of the books? Take that dilemma to Jesus and let Him guide you to the perfect law.
A Prayer
"Grant to me, O Lord, to know what I ought to know, to love what I ought to love, to praise what delights You most, to value what is precious in Your sight, to hate what is offensive to You. Do not suffer me to judge according to the sight of my eyes nor to pass sentence according to the hearing of ignorant men; but to discern with true judgment between things visible and spiritual and above all things to inquire what is the good pleasure of your will. Amen."
Thomas a’ Kempis, d. 1471.
[1] For the most part, scuba diving is no longer allowed where manatee migrate, though visitors may snorkel with the creatures in controlled areas.
[2] See Exodus 20:1-19.
[3] See Matthew 5:17-20.
[4] See Matthew 5:21-30.
[5] See Exodus 34:21.
