Perfect Harmony (Colossians 3:12-14)

Dolly Parton died this week, a breaking news story that touched disparate corners of this country like few others can.

Who else will be mourned this weekend in gay dance clubs and evangelical churches alike?

Only Dolly.

Even more than her talent as a songwriter and a musician, Dolly’s true genius, it seems, was her love for people. I think that’s why so many mourn her death. They mourn because, even though they never met her, they believed that she cared about them, that when she said, as she so often did, that “she just loved people,” she meant it, and that her love included all of us.

By putting people above everything else, Dolly had a special way of getting us to appreciate and think about things that really matter, about holy things, and the ways of Jesus, and it was her death that got me thinking about a story from the Gospels.

One day, having worked up an appetite while following in his steps, Jesus’ disciples plucked some grain, some wheat or barley, from a nearby field and ate it.

And that’s when the trouble started.

Mark’s Gospel tells us that some Pharisees–that is to say members of a Jewish sect who were particularly zealous about observing the community’s religious law–took issue with the disciples’ snack break.

The problem was that it was a Sabbath Day, the God-ordained day of rest, and, in the eyes of the Pharisees, the disciples’ actions constituted a Sabbath violation.

The Pharisees said to [Jesus], “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” (Mark 2:24)

And Jesus, as he did so often when asked a pointed question, responded with a story.

In this instance, he gave the Pharisees a history lesson, and reminded them of the time King David played loose with the rules in order to feed his troops.

And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food, how he entered the house of God when Abiathar was high priest and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions?” (Mark 2:25-26)

Then, as he also did so often, Jesus took a conversation about food and made it into something so much more than food.

He said, “The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)

Said another way, “The Sabbath was made for us. We weren’t made for the Sabbath.”

Jesus’s point is pretty straightforward.

As a day of rest, the Sabbath is a gift from God to humanity for our enjoyment and benefit. It’s a celebration of freedom and God’s blessings, not a chore or a cudgel.

According to Jesus, it was the religious gatekeepers “tsk tsk,” not the disciples’ snack, that most seriously missed the mark.

In this way, the story about Jesus and his disciples getting scolded for eating heads of grain on the Sabbath illustrates some timeless conflict that exists in religious circles—the conflict between law and grace, between rules and freedom, the conflict between people and institutions.

An observation by Professor of New Testament Matt Skinner elaborates on this point. Skinner writes,

It must be noted that Jesus’ argument was hardly novel and therefore not scandalous on its surface. In fact, when he notes that the purpose of the sabbath has always been to serve humankind (as opposed to making humankind serve some stern religious principle), he is essentially restating [a well known scripture] in which God institutes the sabbath so a people who once toiled in slavery can forever enjoy at least a modicum of rest. Rabbinic traditions dating to a century after Jesus if not earlier expressed opinions similar to his words in Mark 2:27…The proper function of the sabbath is to promote life and extol God as a liberator. Everyone knew that.

The next time we read through Mark’s Gospel we can dig into why Jesus made the authorities angry if he was only doing what everyone agreed was right. After all, he didn’t end up on a cross without stirring up some trouble.

For our purposes this morning, however, I want to dwell a bit longer on the conflict at the heart of this story and how we can apply it to our ongoing discussion about praying. Specifically, I want to bring it to bear on the topic of confession and praying for forgiveness.

Maybe more than anything else we do, praying for forgiveness and to forgive others brings to mind our relationship with the rules that we aspire to live by because praying like this is both an exercise in telling on ourselves for breaking those rules and naming names when we believe someone has broken a rule and harmed us.

When engaging in such prayers, our hearts and minds can be pulled to one or two extremes.

On one hand, we can become so obsessed with the rules that we find infractions and sin everywhere we look. Some will turn their gaze inward and become obsessed with their own failures and wretchedness, while others will excel at pointing out the problems with what everybody else is doing.

In the end, however, it doesn’t matter where they’re looking, because the closer one drifts to this extreme, the more calcified and joyless their heart becomes, the more burdensome their version of faith becomes, the less like Jesus their witness becomes.

This reminds me of the scene in the movie “Saved!” in which the judgmental character played by Mandy Moore angrily hurls a Bible at a wayward classmate as she snarls, “I am filled with Christ’s love!”

On the other hand, the other extreme turns talk of forgiveness, pardon, and salvation into some sort of toxic brew that convinces believers that the rules don’t apply to them.

People who succumb to this temptation act as though Jesus has somehow given them carte blanche.

“I’m forgiven,” they seem to say, “so I can do whatever I want.”

Or they come to believe that “rules are for suckers” and that having a good cause or reason for what they’re doing means they're no longer bound by any authority.

And in the end, the closer one drifts to this extreme, the more calcified and joyless their heart becomes, the more burdensome their version of faith becomes, the less like Jesus their witness becomes.

This reminds me of politicians, or pastors, or anyone who lies, cheats, or even commits violence to protect the reputation of their leader, their movement, their institution, their church, or, as is probably the case most often, to protect their own fragile ego.

“Rules for thee, but not for me” would be their motto.

But as he did on that Sabbath Day so long ago, Jesus points us to a more excellent way.

We just don’t get a sense that Jesus wanted us to be religious for religion’s sake. He, instead, lays out a way of living that sets us in harmony with God and one another.

Dolly was on to something when she aspired to just love people.

Listen to how Saint Paul explains this is our reading from Colossians.

Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. (Colossians 3:12-14)

Notice how Paul speaks about forgiveness in the context of practices and virtues like compassion, kindness, and love that build and repair relationships.

There’s nothing static or legalistic here.

Rather, the Gospel message sets us free from such rigid systems, systems that prioritize their own survival, and turns us towards one another as a matter of utmost importance and a means of strengthening our relationship with God.

So it seems we can bring all of this to bear in our understanding of forgiveness.

Just as Jesus would point out that the Sabbath is made for us and that we aren't made for the Sabbath, I think it can also be said that forgiveness is made for us and we aren't made for forgiveness.

By that I mean that we have been given this gift that sets us free from having to be defined by and to define others by the biggest mistakes that we make.

Instead, we can rest in God's love and to aspire to the kind of harmony, partnership, and friendship that Jesus demonstrates and invites each of us to enter into with him.

And that brings us back to Dolly.

This week you've probably heard a little bit of the background behind her huge hit, “I Will Always Love You,” a song born of her friendship and business partnership with a man named Porter Wagoner.

Little side note, Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton played the county fair in my hometown in the early 70s.

Anyway, during that era, Dolly was coming into her own as an artist and was ready to break out and pursue her solo career. She had a contract with Wagoner, though, that he intended to enforce and that inevitably led to conflict.

The situation became quite bitter.

Dolly wrote “I Will Always Love You” for Wagoner as a statement of self-respect and defiance.

She was going to do her thing.

She was going to break out on her own, but her action was not born out of hatred or animus.

She did, and always would, love him.

Now, that's a beautiful sentiment, but I think one of the really powerful aspects of that song’s significance is that, towards the end of Porter Wagoner's life, as their careers had gone in very different directions once they split, Dolly purchased his entire musical catalog and gave it back to him as a gift, so that he and his family might have a measure of financial security.

It's one thing to sing songs about always loving someone. It's another to demonstrate the kind of forgiveness that bears witness to that love in real terms.

Dolly gives us a beautiful example of that of what it means to put people first.

And as we come to be a people of prayer, thinking about forgiveness, thinking about our own need for it and our own calling to share it, I pray that we'll do the same.

I pray that we will come to understand prayer as a force of our liberation and the liberation of others. Prayer offers us a way to reach our highest ideals, and, above all, as St. Paul tells us, it is a means of clothing ourselves with love–a love that binds everything together in perfect harmony.

It’s only right that on the Sunday after Dolly passed, we find ourselves thinking about perfect harmony, isn't it?

So let us endeavor to do that in how we live, how we pray, and how we treat others.

Thanks be to God then for this good news today. Amen.

Image: Publicity shot of American singer Dolly Parton, 1977. Public Domain