Adventures in Missing the Point

This past Sunday, I spent some time in Matthew 11:28–12:14. There are three connected stories contained within these verses.

It begins with Jesus’ invitation to those who are “weary and heavy-laden” to come and take on his yoke. This is an invitation to those who are worn down by the religious rules and regulations of the day. Those who are trying to live their lives the best way they can, but keep getting more and more “stuff” thrown at them. As the next two stories unfold, we see that the traditions of the Pharisees are reasonably what is considered to be making the people overburdened.

In the first, the Pharisees get on the disciples’ case because they picked a few heads of grain on the Sabbath. The Pharisees that were watching believed this was breaking the Sabbath. Notice: the disciples were gathering more than what they need to satiate their hunger in that moment, nor did they actually bake any bread. They simply picked and ate some heads of grain.

In the next story, Jesus heals a man who had something wrong with his hand. In some translations, it says his hand was “withered”; in others, “deformed”. Whatever was going on, his hand was unusable. Jesus tells him to straighten out his hand, and he is able. The man is healed. Who knows how long he had been dealing with this issue, but now his hand was whole again.

In both of these stories, the Pharisees are upset with Jesus for breaking the Sabbath. All the while, they miss the point that Jesus is trying to make. The Sabbath was commanded so that humanity might recognize the importance of rest. Instead, by placing these undue burdens on the people, the Pharisees were making it about keeping the Sabbath as a means of one more rule to obey.

Now, I don’t want to turn this into a post about the Pharisees. Like the rest of us, they were simply trying to live out their faith as best as possible. You could argue that they overstep in trying to make others follow their rules, and I think you could put together a valid argument. In fact, I think this is something we see even today — certain Christians trying to make sure that everybody else lives by their rules and understanding of Scripture.

And really, I don’t want to focus on the Scripture passage or the heart of the message in this post either. Instead, I want to share a conversation I had with somebody after the service.

I don’t want to share her name (not that you would know her anyway) because I don’t want to call her out specifically. This isn’t about her; it’s about a general attitude that we have in the Church today. So, we’ll call her Jane.

Now, some context, Jane is a… different… person. In the last few years, she has made it very clear to me that she drinks deeply from the Fox News Kool-Aid. She has complained to me about how the Democrats are terrible and all they are trying to do is inhibit President Trump from “making American great”. You know the type, unfortunately.

So, after this message on the overbearing rules and regulations of the Pharisees, and our need to come to the Sabbath as a time of personal renewal and reconnection, not as one more rule to follow in order to be a “good” Christians, Jane comes to me after the service and says, “Have you ever had an altar call at the end of service?”

I tell her that I’ve never really done it before. It wasn’t part of the culture when I was growing up, so it’s not something that’s on the forefront of my mind. I’m not opposed to altar calls, I just don’t have any experience with them, and so I don’t really do them.

Jane: “Don’t you think it’s important that people come forward and understand that their sins are only forgiven if they are washed in the blood of Jesus, and they put their faith in him? How else are they going to know they are saved?”

And then she follows that up with, “Haven’t you said those words? How do you know you’re saved if you haven’t said those words? How did you get saved without an altar call?”

I (very briefly) tell her that I was raised in the church, and there came a time when I put my faith in Christ. But that I didn’t need an altar call to make it happen.

So, after a message where we focused on releasing ourselves from the overbearing rules and regulations of the traditions of the religious people of Jesus’ day, she thinks this is the time to ask me if I’ve said specific words to ensure that I am saved.

There are days when I feel like I was very clear in my message. I thought yesterday was one of those days. Apparently, I wasn’t clear enough for this person, who now probably thinks her pastor isn’t saved because he doesn’t fit into her narrow definition of salvation.

I’m not going to let it bother me too much though. It was a weird conversation, but not the first weird one I’ve had with Jane. And it certainly won’t be the last. If nothing else, it serves to remind me that not everybody is going to get the message, and I need to work on clarifying the key point a little more. (To be fair, somebody else came up to me after the service on the verge of tears and thanked me for the message, calling me “an inspiration”. I thanked her and try not to let those kind of comments inflate my ego.)