Mark 2:23-3:6
Pentecost 2
Pastor Ron Koehler
Grace—Tucson, AZ
June 2, 2024
Do you ever listen here in church or read your Bible on your own and run across names of people or groups and you have no idea who they are—or maybe only a little idea? For example, if I told you I was going to right now walk the aisle and ask a few people to take the microphone and tell us all who the Herodians were, would you suddenly need to use the bathroom…or take a kid out for a minute…or crawl under the pew? Would you feel a little better if you knew that I’d be asking about the Pharisees? Some of you, maybe, but many of us would not be too confident about them either. Since we run into the Pharisees and Herodians this morning, let me give you a quick sketch of each of those groups. The Pharisees were pretty much lay people, middleclass Jews who were very, very religious…and very, very admired by the common people because of the way they lived for God…and very, very feared by the upper classes because of their influence over the Jewish people. The real problem with them was their legalism. The quickest way to explain that is that they felt that they earned God’s love and acceptance and even salvation by obeying all the Old Testament Law PLUS all of their extra laws and traditions they layered on top of God’s expectations. And they looked down on people who didn’t try to follow all of that. It’s pretty rare that we talk about The Herodians. That’s because they are only mentioned in this account and a time when they questioned Jesus about paying taxes to Caesar. They were Jewish people who sided with the Herod family, from which several rulers of Israel came (always local rulers under the umbrella of Roman rule). At Jesus’ time, the Herodians saw Herod Antipas as one who might give them more control over their country by collaborating with the Romans. So, they were a political group looking for a political Messiah for Israel. The Pharisees and the Herodians were not aligned politically–or probably spiritually— and they looked for two different kinds of savior for God’s people. So how did we get to where we are today where they are colluding to kill Jesus? A couple of Sabbath Day Lessons will help us understand that and we’ll… 1. Learn How to View the Sabbath Law of God 2. Learn How Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath
(2:23-27) (2:28, 3:1-6)
1. Learn How to View the Sabbath Law of God
(2:23-27)
It always strikes me as quite odd when Christians don’t prioritize coming to God’s house for worship each week. In some cases, people even claim to be Christians but never go to church. There’s a long list of reasons I think that is weird, but a big one is that Jesus himself always went. He always celebrated the Sabbath, going to synagogue, being with God’s people, hearing the Word. If Jesus did that and tells us to, it’s hard to understand us not doing it! Today we hear about two Sabbath days on which Jesus taught some lessons, not in the way we have teaching and preaching in church, but as he reacted in a couple situations to people who had weird ideas about the day of worship, which for them was called the Sabbath, which means “rest.”