Mark 2:14-28
If you are a fan of the show, "Star Trek," like Benton Stull is, you know who The Borg are. The Borg are a collection of humanoid species that have been captured from all over the universe and made to serve the collective. The collective is like a hive mind. When a person is captured by The Borg, they are injected with nanobots that immediately begins transforming the person into a part human, part robot. Once transformed, the now Borg, is assimilated into the collective, no longer an individual. The Borg, who fly around space in this huge mechanical cube, are nearly impossible to stop. They are probably one of the scariest and most powerful species--if you want to call them that--that Captain Picard and crew encounter. The main mantra of the Borg was, "We are Borg; resistance is futile."
The Borg, in Jesus' day, was the religious "collective", made up of at least three main groups: the Jewish priests; secondly, the Scribes--who were like the theology professors of the day; and, lastly, the Pharisees--who were the self-appointed keepers of the law, trying to make sure everyone else did the same. The organization--the religious system--behind these three groups formed the "hive mind" like the Borg. This religious establishment was so powerful, just about everyone who got in their way was either made a part of that collective religious mind, or eliminated. "We are the Jewish religious establishment; resistance is futile."
So, what we have here in the second half of the second chapter of Mark, is the beginning of that collective religious mind being exerted against Jesus and the new disciples. Right after Jesus begins organizing, and recruiting disciples, the Jewish religious Borg swoop in, in an attempt to inject Jesus and the disciples with their collective way of thinking, and derail any attempt to do something different. Right after the disciples have become disciples, and they are full of the heady excitement of being a follower of Jesus, the sabotage of the collective Jewish mind is unleashed upon them. "Resistance is futile."
We know how this is all going to end for Jesus. It appeared resistance was futile. But for the moment, let us see how it begins.
The first story is about Levi-Matthew becoming a disciple. Levi was a tax collector. That means he was Jewish, but he was working for the Roman occupation forces. The people in Israel had to pay a tax to the Romans for being a part of the Roman Empire. The Romans recruited local Jewish businessmen to collect the taxes.
The way it worked was, the Roman government had a meeting with the tax collectors at the start of the year. The Roman authorities had already assessed how many people there were in Israel at the time. Do you remember the birth story of Jesus and why Joseph and Mary had to go to Bethlehem? Because the Roman government had dictated a census be taken, to find out how many people there actually were in Israel, so the Romans could figure out how much taxes they needed.
That amount was passed down to the tax collectors to collect from the people. But the Jewish people hated the tax collectors. It seemed to everyone that the tax collectors were in cahoots with the Romans and were therefore traitors to the Jewish nation.
Plus, how the tax collectors got their money was by charging more than the taxable amount. The Roman government allowed them to charge whatever they wanted, just as long as they Romans got what was their due. A lot of tax collectors were charging an exorbitant amount for taxes, and pocketing a lot of it. They were some of the wealthiest people--and, as I mentioned before--some of the most hated.
Levi-Matthew was one of those. And Jesus asked him to be a disciple. What is surprising is that none of the other disciples ever questioned Jesus' choice of Levi. When Jesus and the disciples were eating supper with Levi and some of his tax collector associates, the disciples--to their credit--sat right down at the table with them. The disciples may have been muttering under their breath. Or thinking ill of all the tax collectors sitting around the table. But we aren't told anything like that in the story.
You have to understand, in Jewish culture and hospitality ethics, if you sat at table and ate a meal with someone, you were telling that person that you accept them whole-heartedly. You weren't just being civil. You were completely embracing them as a person, by sharing a meal together. By eating a meal with someone you were promising their protection and your friendship.
That's what the religious collective was upset about. Jesus was showing this embracing hospitality to hated tax collectors. Notice, they didn't go to Jesus with their complaint. They went to the disciples and tried to divide and conquer. If the religious Borg could get the disciples to question what was going on, they could divide them from Jesus and cut off his following right from the start.
So, in this first encounter, what we find out is that with Jesus, no one is excluded from the table. But the religious collective's beliefs were that there are people who are in, and there are people who are out. They were telling the disciples that if you want to be like us, if you want to think right, if you want to be part of the religious establishment, you have to know who's in and who's out. You have to make judgements. You have to be exclusive, because you don't want the riffraff, tax collector types to be part of the collective.
Jesus and the disciples established a different standard. Everyone is welcome to come to the table, because it is by the grace of the one at the head of the table that everyone is there, anyway. It isn't your social standing, or what you may have done or refused to do. It is by the grace of Christ that you are in. And everyone is in.
The second attack by the Jewish version of the Borg had to do with fasting. This time they come at Jesus instead of the disciples. They tried criticizing Jesus to the disciples, but Jesus stepped in and answered the Pharisees directly. Jesus wouldn’t let the Pharisees create contention between him and the disciples. So the Pharisees and religion scholars aim their next attack at Jesus. They make it sound like they are criticizing the disciples for not fasting, but that kind of mentoring would fall on Jesus’ shoulders. So they are ultimately criticizing Jesus.
From time-to-time I get a question about fasting—what it is, what it is all about, why should they fast for other than dieting reasons. The Jewish religion views three essential purposes of fasting. All of these have been carried over into Christian practices of fasting. One purpose in fasting is for atonement of sins and for the times you were supposed to show your faithfulness to God, but didn’t. Fasting is not considered the primary means of acquiring forgiveness from God. Instead, fasting is the demonstration of the believers sincere regret for doing wrong and wanting to set things right. It was the believers way to demonstrate your repentance by fasting.
The second purpose in fasting is commemorative mourning. Most communal fast days that are set permanently in the Jewish calendar fulfill this purpose. The purpose of a fast of mourning is to mark the anniversary of some great event of loss either in your personal history or the history of your people. For a country it might be a day like 9/11 or Pearl Harbor Day. In your personal life it may be the anniversary of the death of a parent or of a child. These fast days become a part of your grieving identity.
The third purpose in fasting is a sign of a person's gratitude. Since food and drink are physical needs, not eating serves to provide a unique opportunity for believers to focus on the spiritual side of gratitude. By refraining from such a basic activity as eating and drinking, each believer can more greatly appreciate their dependence on God, leading to appreciation of God's benefits in taking care of His people.
But Jesus knew that even though fasting was an important religious rite, there was one situation that overrides the rules about fasting. It had to do with what happens as part of the wedding ceremony. After a Jewish wedding the couple did not go away for a honeymoon. They stayed at home. For seven to ten days, the newlyweds held an open house. There was continual feasting and rejoicing. It was the happiest week in a man and woman’s life.
There was a rule of the rabbis which said, “All in attendance of the bride and bridegroom are relieved of all religious observances which would decrease their joy.” All wedding guests, for the whole open house time, were exempt from fasting; joy was more important than the ritual importance of fasting. That is what was important about Jesus’ parable here about the bridegroom.
The Jewish religious collective was trying to get Jesus to be about following the rules—that religion was about serious business like repentance and fasting. Jesus and his disciples resistance to this Borg-like mechanical view of the religious life, was seen as a threat. And futile. For Jesus, the religious life was about joy and celebration, like the joy and celebration of a wedding, and he used the rabbis teaching against the religious collective.
Jesus follows that up with his parables about the new cloth and the old garment, the new wine and the old wineskins. The religious collective was trying to pull Jesus back into the old ways of doing things. That true religion is about old things done the old way, no matter how tattered or useless they are. But for Jesus, there is something new that is happening—new wine into new skins, and, new cloth for a new garment. The religious Borg of Jesus day wanted to pull Jesus back into the old ways. Jesus resisted that and said, basically, “Sorry, the Kingdom of God is about new things done in new ways.”
The last incidence of Jesus being hounded by the religious Borg is almost spooky. Here’s what happened. Jesus is walking from one town to another with his disciples. They are cutting cross country through a field of wheat. As they are walking, they get hungry and pick some heads of wheat, rub them between their hands, pick out the grain, and eat it. No big deal, right.
But, and here’s the almost spooky part, the Pharisees—the people who were the self-appointed follow-all-the-rules police, were walking a few paces behind Jesus and the disciples, just waiting for them to break one of the religious rules. It had to be kind of freaky. How would you like it if you had someone following you around just waiting to slap you on the wrist every time you broke one of their rules? That’s why the Pharisees, like the Borg in Star Trek, could say, “Resistance is futile.” The Pharisees just wore the people down with all their rules. And they were following Jesus around trying to do the same thing to him.
The other thing was, that particular day was the Sabbath--Saturday--the day when people were supposed to rest. On the Sabbath day, no faithful Jew was supposed to do any work. But the Pharisees—the rules guys—had to come up with the answer to the question, “What is and is not work?” Well, one of the rules, in answer to that question, was you can’t harvest on the Sabbath. Harvesting is work. But how much grain can you pick or cut before you are really harvesting? Three stalks? Ten stalks? Evidently Jesus and the disciples picked one too many wheat stalks and were instantly reprimanded by the Pharisees.
What was two-faced about the Pharisees was, one of their own rules about working on the Sabbath had to do with how many steps you could take on the Sabbath. Jesus and the disciples, by walking quite a distance on the Sabbath were breaking that rule. But so were the Pharisees by following Jesus around. The very guys who made all the silly rules and tried to get everyone else to follow them, were breaking their own rules themselves! And they were breaking their own rules in order to slap Jesus and the disciples if they broke a rule. It was craziness!!
So when the Pharisees jumped all over Jesus and the disciples for rubbing the heads of wheat between their hands to eat a few grains of wheat, Jesus replied, “Look, here’s the thing. All those rules you guys make up are silly and some are down right stupid. To my Father God, life isn’t about rules—it is about people. People and their basic needs are more important than your rules. You guys overlook the people and what they need, and tell everyone your silly rules are what life is all about. Sorry, it’s people first, rules second.”
We don’t get to see how the Pharisees responded. We know how they ultimately respond to Jesus. They demonstrated, by eventually killing Jesus, that “Resistance is futile.” This was the start of Jesus’ resistance to the Jewish Borg-like system that sought to diminish his identity, or enfold it into the collective way of being, so Jesus would be just like them. But Jesus begins to resist that diminishment with these three incidents. And it is important for us to learn from him about what true resistance is all about. Because any resistance we put up, as Jesus did it, putting people before rules, is not ultimately futile.
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