27 February 2010
Psalm 55; Gen. 41:1-13; 1 Cor. 4:1-7; Mark 2:23-3:6

Two whole years pass with Joseph in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Pharaoh’s dream becomes the catalyst for Joseph’s release when the cupbearer remembers, “Oh yeah, that guy in prison interprets dreams, I had forgotten all about him.” At least we hear that he recalled his shortcomings. I wonder how Joseph would have described this recollection. The time has come when knowing Joseph has some benefit and he suddenly remembers him. We tend to forget those who helped us on the way up until we believe they can help us in the present. Joseph, it seems, didn’t bear a grudge.

It is amazing how quickly opposition formed against Jesus and for what reasons. He and the disciples were walking through a field and they reached out their hands, plucked the grain, and crushed it in order to extract the edible portion and the Pharisees want to talk about laboring on the Sabbath. Jesus gives the Biblical example of David eating the showbread in response. The sustaining of life is the important part, not the legalism of Sabbath regulations. In the synagogue He heals a man and because it is the Sabbath the Pharisees and Herodians determine to destroy Him. There were exemptions in the law for getting an animal out of a ditch if it presented a danger to life and there was an exemption for circumcision but they drew the line at this healing as unnecessary. What if He taught other people to be lawless?
They couldn’t see the greater good He was doing and to what it pointed, they were only concerned about their law.

Paul is playing against type here. He will say in other places that he was a Pharisee with respect to the law, and we know that they judged everyone all the time. The work Jesus has done in him has pointed him to grace and because of that he has lost his appetite for judgment of himself and others, preferring to allow the Lord to judge. There is an innate tendency to judge ourselves and others, it requires the spirit of God to overcome that tendency. Those who think of themselves in a secular way as non-judgmental are typically those who judge Christians as non-thinking simpletons who like rules unlike themselves who don’t judge anyone and believe in the complete freedom of the individual. There are some things we must judge, but the intentions of the heart are generally hidden from us and it is there we need to have grace with one another.

Give ear to my prayer, O God,
and hide not yourself from my plea for mercy!
Attend to me, and answer me;
But I call to God,
and the LORD will save me.