Deuteronomy 5: 12-15 & Mark 2:23 - 3.6
You may recall the news we heard a year or two ago that a local history buff in the small town of Tuam in Ireland had compared the lists of children who died in a mother and children home run by the catholic church and the burial lists of her local church and realised that the bodies of the little children must have been disposed of somewhere else. She linked this to rumours of bones being found where the home had once stood and this led her to uncover the fact that the bodies had been disposed of without ceremony in a septic tank.
Hundreds of bodies were disposed of in this way to cover up the fact that hundreds of children had died due to cruelty and neglect.
The Catholic Church in Ireland is still coming to terms with the impact of this discovery. Last week it was on the losing side in the referendum on abortion. The church has called for the unborn child to be protected on the basis that all life must be protected and loved. But when the Irish nation entrusted vulnerable mothers and their born children to the church, they were not protected or loved.
The church has been seen to be clinging onto its rule of no abortions but to have forgotten the principle of love that lay behind the rule. It is left just trying to exert control over people’s lives.
I do wonder whether the disciples were encouraged by Jesus to openly flout the law of the Sabbath by plucking the grains of wheat. Did Jesus deliberately provoke the ire of the Pharisees in order to expose them?
The Pharisees had clung onto the rule about not picking food on the Sabbath but forgotten the principle of love that lay behind the rule. They were left just trying to exert control over people’s lives.
That principle is set out in the Old Testament. The text reads ‘Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.’ Slaves didn’t get days off in the ancient world. For some of the slave owners, every day was a day off. The Sabbath gives us time to rest, time for each other, time to love each other, time to do good, time to save life.
Today is the Sabbath. It is a gift from God. It is the gift of a day when we are freed of the oppressions of the world. Use it well.