Jesus Broke the Rules

Campaigners this morning was great (but when has it been anything different)! As has happened every week this year, we had our biggest turn-out yet with over 70 kids. I have been blown away by the growth we have seen this year. Every week I am shocked to see how many kids are hanging out by the time we start our first game. Who would have thought so many kids would be excited to wake up early on a Friday?!? 

As we continue to grow, I pray that every kid coming gets a personal point of contact with one of the leaders. We are doing this for several different reasons, but one of the biggest is to make sure that these kids know they have someone that cares about them, that wants to be their friend, and wants to support them however we can. Relationships with older adolescents and adults that care are extremely important for middle school kids. We want to see kids live a full and abundant life, its what Jesus wants for us all, and that leads me to what we talked about this morning.

Jesus wanted to heal, he wanted to restore, and he wanted to lead people into a full and abundant life. Jesus cared so much about loving people that he often got in trouble for it. He did not always follow the religious rules of his time, in fact, he was killed, in part, because he broke those rules. 

This morning we talked about one of the times when Jesus broke one of the biggest religious rules of his time, and how plans were set in motion that lead to his death because of it. 

In Luke 6:6-11 we see this played out. Jesus and a bunch of the religious leaders are at the Synagogue, much like what it would be like to be at a church today. Jesus was teaching and the religious people were there watching. There was a man in the crowd with what Luke calls a "shriveled hand." What this would have meant for this person is a diminished life. In those days manual labor was the way a normal person would have earned a living, someone with a deformed hand would have a had an extremely difficult time making it in that world. They would not have been part of normal society, and while Luke doesn't say this, it could have been that this man could only make a living begging. The religious leaders knew that Jesus would most likely heal this man, so they watched, waiting to see if Jesus would break one of their rules.

This all took place on what was called the Sabbath day. This was a day that God had told the Israelites to separate for rest and prayer and worship. He gave this law to the nation of Israel right after he had freed them from slavery. Fast forward hundreds of years to the time of Jesus and it had become something completely different. These religious leaders had created hundreds of rules around the original law to make sure that no one broke it. The original law was, that they shouldn't work, that they should make that day holy, but the religious leaders wanted to make sure everyone knew what constituted work so they decided to define it. They made hundreds of rules about what was work. Things as simple as washing your face was considered work, and the real reason for the original law was lost. Instead of a day of rest and worship, it was a day spent trying to make sure you were obeying the rules.

Jesus broke these rules. He was not interested in making sure people thought he was a "good" person, he was interested in loving God and loving others. In fact, he claimed that all the laws of the Bible were summed up in one rule; "Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself." This was what Jesus cared about, this was what Jesus wanted his followers to care about, and this was partly why he was killed on the cross. 

Jesus did see the man with the shriveled hand that day, and he did heal him. He restored this man, he helped this man walk into a life that was more full than before, and the religious leaders did not like it. They actually started plotting how they would kill Jesus that same day (ironic because,according to their own rules, planning in this way was something people couldn't do on the Sabbath). Jesus could have waited and healed this man the next day and nobody would have been upset, but Jesus wanted to show people that following the rules is not what life is about. Life is about knowing and loving God, and loving others as we love ourselves. There are true rules that God has given us that help in this, but if we are overly consumed with obeying the rules, we may miss what the rules are supposed to lead to, we might miss what living a life with God is really about.

So, if you would like to talk more with your child about what happened at WyldLife today, ask them about charades, and what some of the rules were for the game, ask them about standing on one leg and getting closer to God. Ask them how Jesus broke the rules back then, and then ask them what Jesus thought was the most important thing.

We ended our time with John 13:34-35, the last night Jesus had with his disciples before he was killed on the cross Jesus told them, "A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this EVERYONE WILL KNOW you are my disciples, IF YOU LOVE ONE ANOTHER."