Exception to the Rule

The scriptures referred to are Luke 13:10-17.

A few weeks ago I was reading an article about the decline of the religion called Christian Science. I don't generally designate groups that call themselves Christian as different religions entirely but this group starts out by denying the first part of any historic creed, which is that God created the earth. Founder Mary Baker Eddy taught that the material world is an illusion. Only the spiritual world exists and so evil, sickness and death do not. God is not personal but simply Mind or Principle. There is no Trinity. Jesus is a Christian Scientist who first manifested the Truth and the Holy Spirit is Christian Science itself. Though Christian Science focuses on healing, this simply consists of the believer convincing himself or herself that since matter is not real, neither is their illness. And their prayer for healing is supposed to work best when the patient does not seek medical help. In 1875 when Eddy published her book Science and Health, the state of medicine was such that your odds of getting better weren't notably improved if you did go to a doctor. He might be able to diagnose you but treatment was often just a traditional remedy which might actually kill you. However with the discovery of germ theory and antibiotics and insulin and anesthesia and the steady improvement of medical techniques and equipment through the 20^th century, neglecting to get medical attention for serious illnesses could be a death sentence. And sure enough, many members of Christian Science have died over the last century and a half from readily treatable conditions. Christian Science parents have been prosecuted for letting their children die from illnesses and injuries that could have been cured had they simply gone to a hospital.

One of the charges leveled at religion in general is that it sometimes gets in the way of helping people. And, yes, that has happened a lot more often than it should. But putting beliefs ahead of actual help is not restricted to religion. Anti-vaxxers choose to believe a discredited study linking vaccines and autism over the many studies that show no relationship between the two. And not having your children vaccinated endangers not only them but children around them. In the UK and much of Europe, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is thought to be a psychiatric illness, to be treated with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and graduated exercise, despite the fact that these have been shown not to help. And in the case of exercise, it can actually make the condition worse. A study of medical students has shown that people of color are still believed to experience less pain than white people. And since most medical studies are done on white men, many of their findings may not even apply to women.

It's not just true of medicine. In 1980 geologist Walter Alvarez and his father Luis discovered a layer of iridium in the same strata of sediment all over the world. The concentration of iridium in this layer is hundreds of times greater than usually found in earth. Iridium is more abundant in meteorites and asteroids. So the Alvarezes proposed this layer was evidence of a large asteroid having collided with earth, just about the time the dinosaurs went extinct. And though the evidence supporting their hypothesis has been accumulating for the last nearly 40 years, such as discovery of the crater site in the Yucatan, and despite a panel of international scientists endorsing their hypothesis, there is still opposition to it. And one of the original objections was that the elder Alvarez was not a geologist but a physicist! In a similar way it took most of the 20^th century for geologists to accept continental drift, in part because the heads of geology departments at major universities would have become footnotes in the paradigm shift because their lifework was built on the older idea of the surface of the earth not moving. It took a new generation of geologists to seriously consider the mounting evidence and accept the new model. Every group has its orthodoxy, even if it is a group of scientists in a specific field.

Last week we talked about how God's people were not producing good fruit but the bitter fruit of injustice and violence and oppression among other things. And so God let them be taken into exile. And the Jews realized that they were there because they didn't obey God's law or Torah. And so, because they had no temple in which to worship nor the ability to make sacrifices, they decided that they needed to focus their religion on obeying the other parts of God's law. They brought together the materials that became the Hebrew Bible: the origins of the world, the history of their people, their wisdom literature and surprisingly, the prophets they hadn't heeded. And they codified how to be God's people apart from the land he had given them and the temple in Jerusalem. To adapt to changing circumstances, they interpreted and expanded the written law into an oral law, often making rules so stringent that if you observed them you couldn't possibly get close to violating the written law. The oral Torah eventually became as orthodox as the written Torah.

After 70 years, the Jews were allowed to return home and rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. But rabbinic Judaism, the religion of the Torah, centered in the synagogue, continued to exist alongside ritual Judaism, the religion of sacrifice, centered in the temple. And that is the era in which Jesus ministered.

In today's gospel Jesus runs head-on into a key restriction of the oral law. In their zeal to obey the Torah the rabbis found that they had to dive deep into interpreting the Torah's rather general written rules, as one does with any law code. And one of the things they did, in regards to the prohibition of working on the Sabbath, was try to figure out just exactly what work is. They came up with 39 categories of activities that qualify as work but in general their definition is almost the same as the scientific definition: work is accomplishing something by the expending of energy. Thus in modern Orthodox Judaism they will not turn on anything electric on the Sabbath. In Israel they have had to re-engineer things like patient call lights in hospitals and elevators so that Orthodox Jews are not completing a circuit when using them.

In Jesus' day, they didn't have to worry about electricity but they were strict about things like practicing a profession. A doctor could save a life on the Sabbath but not do other medical treatments. There was even a debate among the schools of thought within the Pharisees as to whether you could pray for the sick on the Sabbath or lay hands on the person to heal them as Jesus does here. The more liberal school of Rabbi Hillel permitted such things; the more conservative school of Rabbi Shammai opposed them. Obviously the synagogue leader in our passage took the stricter view.

Jesus ran into this problem again and again. Religious leaders would get angry because he healed someone on the Sabbath. And Jesus had a variety of responses. In today's passage Jesus points out a contradiction in his critics' behavior. This was an agricultural society and just about everyone had at least one work animal. And while the Bible tells us that even animals were to rest on the Sabbath, that didn't mean their owners could neglect them. Even though the oral law forbade tying or untying knots on the Sabbath, animal owners were allowed to untie their donkeys or oxen and take them to the watering trough. So Jesus made the analogy that this woman had been similarly constrained by her infirmity for 18 years, and could be released from it on the Sabbath. And when put that way, his opponents were humiliated for having greater concern for the health and welfare of their animals than for a fellow human being.

In the very next chapter of Luke, Jesus is eating at the house of a prominent Pharisee on the Sabbath when he sees a man with an abnormal swelling. He then asks the people at the feast, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” The Pharisees and scribes say nothing so Jesus heals the man and then says, “If any of you has a child or ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?” (Luke 14:1-6) Here the analogy Jesus chooses is not that of the normal expected care of an animal, but of healing as a form of emergency rescue. The religious restrictions go out the window when a life is at stake. We don't know if the man's edema signaled a life-threatening disorder but Jesus is saying that a person in distress takes precedence over religious scruples.

In Mark Jesus sees a man with a withered hand in the synagogue. His critics are watching to see what he will do and Jesus says to the man, “Stand up in front of everyone.” Then he asks, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” And when no one speaks, Mark tells us Jesus was angry at their silence in the face of suffering and he heals the man. (Mark 3:1-6) Healing is not work in the usual sense; it is doing good which is surely permitted and even encouraged on a sacred day. In Matthew's account of this same incident Jesus again uses the parallel of rescuing an animal, this time a sheep, who fell into a pit on the Sabbath. He says, “How much more valuable is a person than a sheep!” (Matthew 12:12) There is a hierarchy of values, and saving a life or restoring a person to good health is more important than a rule, however good it otherwise might be.

We recognize this in civil law. A cop may chase you if you are speeding but if he finds you have a woman in labor or a person who is bleeding in your car and you are trying to get them to the hospital, he will likely drive ahead of you with lights flashing and siren blaring to get others off the road so that you can get that person medical help. And indeed in modern Judaism the principle is that an Orthodox Jew can break any law in the Torah, except idolatry or murder, in order to save a life.

Jesus goes even further in an incident in which the disciples pick some heads of grain while walking through a field. (Mark 2:23-28) This is permitted in the Torah (Deuteronomy 23:25) but the problem is that they are doing it on the Sabbath and it is considered reaping, a form of work. Jesus' defense in this case is multi-pronged. 

First, he cites the example of David when he is on the run from King Saul. He and his companions happen upon a priest who has no bread to share with them except some consecrated loaves. This showbread was put out at the tabernacle on the Sabbath and then eaten by the priests alone. (Leviticus 24:5-9) David talks the priest into giving him some of the bread, saying he is on a mission from Saul. He is lying and the consequences to the priests when Saul catches up to them is heavy. So this is a problematic episode from David's life. But Jesus is focused on the principle that preserving lives outweighs religious rituals.

In fact Jesus' second argument explicitly states that “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” This is an important ethical principle. Why did God create the Sabbath? Why did he decree a day of rest every week? According to the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, “The hallowing of the seventh day—even the use of a seven day week—was unique in Israel within the broader Near Eastern world.” In Exodus the reason given for the commandment is that God made the world in six days and rested on the seventh. (Exodus 20:8-11) The implication is that human beings, made in God's image, should emulate him in this way as well. In the restating of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy, the reason for the Sabbath is to remind the Hebrews that they were slaves in Egypt and, of course, slaves get no days off. But now, thanks to God, they are free and should reflect on that for one whole day a week. Even their animals and slaves must rest. As the study Bible says, “While the law in Exodus also carries religious overtones, it includes a humanitarian component, allowing rest for everyone on all levels of society.” Jesus agrees. The Sabbath is for our benefit, our physical and spiritual refreshment. Life, then as now, can eat you up if you don't take a break.

But we can't take a break from helping others when they need it. I suppose Jesus could have said to the blind, the lame, the deaf and dying, “Come back after sunset Saturday and in the meantime, just grit your teeth.” But he doesn't. Healing is holy. In Matthew's account of the incident of the grain, Jesus points out that the priests work on the Sabbath. (Matthew 12:5) In John Jesus gives the example of circumcision on the eighth day. If it falls on a Sabbath, the circumcision still takes place. Jesus says, “Now if a boy can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry at me for healing a man's whole body on the Sabbath? Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.” (John 7:23-24)

That last statement is crucial. It was obvious that Jesus, who was a builder and not a doctor, was not practicing his profession when he healed others. Nor was he paid for healing people. Only to the unreflective person would it appear that he was working on the Sabbath. But some religious people and an awful lot of bureaucrats seem more worried about giving the appearance of not obeying the law than the fact that sometimes they may be violating the spirit of the law. And yet even the secular law recognizes that this can happen. The “slayer rule” prohibits a person from inheriting money from someone he murdered, even if the victim, like, say, their mother or grandfather, had put the killer in their will. This "slayer rule" can invalidate certain provisions in someone's personal will. The idea is you cannot profit from your crime. 

Yet we often see people trapped in Catch-22 situations where the rules, originally created for some good purpose, are instead being used to do them harm. In Orthodox Judaism only a man can grant his wife a get or certificate of divorce. And so many men refused to do this, even if a beth din, or Jewish court, ordered them to, that a group of Brooklyn rabbis ran a torture-for-hire ring that would kidnap such husbands and work them over till they gave their wife a divorce! Apparently that was preferable to trying to change the rule that gave men all the power in this matter.

Some people are worried that by doing anything other than strictly enforcing the letter of the law they will unleash chaos upon the world. But in reality we make exceptions to rules all the time. Jeffrey Epstein would have gone to jail more than a decade ago here in Florida were he treated like a pedophile without wealth and powerful friends. Because of an egregious and atypical reduction of his sentence for child trafficking, he raped more young girls. That is how exceptions to rules usually get made: favoritism towards the powerful. And that is bad.

Jesus is saying, instead of that, we should be making exceptions for the powerless: the sick, women, children, aliens, the poor, the hungry. You may remember this story from the 1980s. A news story about a single mother with cancer being unable to buy toys for her daughter for Christmas led to a wave of donations of toys. Because the value of the toys were more than the assets the woman should have to qualify for Medicaid and welfare, her benefits were cut! The president stepped in to right the situation but I think we can agree that the bureaucrats responsible should never have decided to take away the benefits of a dying woman and her daughter because of toys given by compassionate people.

Too often this world punishes those who are already at a disadvantage but gives more advantages to those with plenty to spare. If you are a celebrity actor presenting an Oscar you get a swag bag full of an estimated $100,000 in luxury items. If you are a poor cancer patient with a daughter who receives too many donated toys, you can lose your benefits.

This is not how things work in the kingdom of God. Jesus teaches us that even religious rules should make exceptions for compassionate reasons. At the grain picking incident, Jesus says to the Pharisees, “If you had known what these words mean, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the innocent.” (Matthew 12:7) What is mercy if not making an exception out of compassion? Jesus said, “Be merciful, as your Father is merciful.” (Luke 6:36) And “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” (Matthew 5:7) He also said, “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged...” (Matthew 7:2) James, Jesus' brother, wrote, “Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.” (James 2:13) So a good rule of thumb is: when an otherwise just rule is being used to perpetrate injustice, show mercy. For everyone's sake. It's what Jesus would do.