A Religion to Kill For

In Matthew 12, the Pharisees' hatred of Jesus boils over.  The chapter is full of conflict between Jesus and these religious leaders.  In fact the Pharisees' hatred of Jesus becomes so great that Jesus withdraws from the region because He knows that the Pharisees will try to kill Him.  What is the immediate source of all this animosity?  Picking grain.  The Pharisees come to hate Jesus because His disciples pick grain on the Sabbath.

I have to say that at first blush I would be on the Pharisees' side.  I like rules.  And the Ten Commandments are pretty clear.  God said honor the Sabbath.  The disciples seem to be violating that commandment.  Couldn't they have picked on Friday and prepared for their needs?  Why did they need to work on that day to be fed?  I am a rules person and if God has spoken that is how it should be.

Jesus, however, introduces another factor into the debate: mercy.  He reminds that Pharisees of a Scripture that seems to show the rules being bent in service of human need.  Jesus seems to say that there are times that the rules can be temporarily laid aside so that people can be loved and ministered to.  This represents a rather creative reading of Scripture on Jesus' part.  It shows a willingness to let narrative and story speak as loudly as dogma and theology.  It may challenge a hermeneutic that wants to see rules as the center of the Biblical project.

The amazing thing here is that the Pharisees wanted to kill to preserve a religion that would tell the hungry that they needed to stay hungry even when the hungry were righteous men on a mission from God.  Religion became more important than mission.  It became more important to be dogmatic than merciful.  Even God had to be sacrificed in the name of correctness and right thinking for the religion to be saved.  God save us all from religion like that.