Picking Nits on Picking Grain

I once attended a debate in which the subject was what churches can and can’t do with the money that has been collected in church treasury. One of the disputants argued that the only Biblical use of church money was mission work and helping needy church members and using church money for any other purpose violated the NT pattern. So writing a check from the church to feed a hungry orphan who wasn't a member was sinful. Sure, it would be proper for individual Christians to feed that orphan out of their own pocket, but not for the church. When pressed, he admitted that it was OK for the church to buy fertilizer to feed the church lawn because it is "evangelistic" to have a pretty church yard. But it is wrong to feed hungry orphans out of the church treasury.

It is too easy for us to come up with a interpretive "religious" system and then filter everything we through that system. That is essentially what the Pharisees do in Matthew 12 (today's NT reading) when they see Jesus’ disciples “harvesting” grain on the Sabbath, a clear violation of the Law... or their system of intepretation of the Law.

At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. 2 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.” (Matthew 12:1-2)

Jesus points to flaws in their understanding and in their system. What God wants and expects from us is not the perfection application of a religious system. What he wants is relationship, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Matthew 12:7). The Pharisees were not consistent in their application of their system; that is why Jesus points to David and the showbread. Ultimately, Jesus is Lord of Sabbath. Faithfulness depends on our relationship to and reliance upon him. Jesus had just said that the real point of our response to God was hidden from the wise and learned (and their religious systems) revealed to little children (Matthew 11:25). The real point of religion is a relationship to Jesus Himself. Look at Matthew 11:27—

“All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

Jesus says that the religious system that says, “A handful of grain picked on the Sabbath violates the command of God” has somehow missed the whole point of God. And the system that says, “We can’t feed hungry orphans out of the treasury” has missed something about what God has revealed about Himself in scripture. I can think of few things God would more like “His money” spent on than feeding the hungry!

But none of that is the real point. The real point is this-- I wonder what blind spots there are in my religious system that keeps me from seeing God clearly. Somehow, it is much more comforting to apply this stuff to the Pharisees than it is to look into my own life!