14 Tangled

14 Tangled

“The worst of us is not without innocence, although buried deeply it might be.”

Walt Disney.

Have you ever seen the calluses on a guitarist’s fingers? They aren’t formed overnight. They come from the repeated action of fingers on wire. At first it hurts in between playing but over time you can’t feel it anymore.

So it was with the Israelites, the children of God. Those called to bless the nations. Repeated action over centuries had formed calluses over their hearts and their ears. They found it harder and harder to hear the voice of God.  In earlier times, when they ceased playing, they felt the pain and they listened to Him again. By the time of the Prophets they had all but forgotten what He sounded like.

The deafness, the hardness, the forgetting. They had been suspended between their calling and their compromise for centuries, hardly noticing how trapped they had become. Now they were suspended waiting for their rescue. Systems to survive the waiting grew up over the 400 or so years between Malachi and Matthew, and a religion formed in place of a friendship.

New tribes emerged.  Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and Zealots amongst others. Self-proclaimed messiahs came and were dispatched pretty swiftly. Ruling powers changed, rebellions promised liberation and ended with disappointment.

The Israelites moved from being a people with a mandate to bless the nations to a system designed to preserve itself. This they remembered: the Messiah would come. They just disagreed on how. And they forgot why.

Sometimes a memory emerged of who they once were, but it was fleeting. I’m reminded of the Disney film Tangled, a story based on Rapunzel, by the brothers Grimm.

Rapunzel was a princess with a gift that could bless the world. She was stolen from her family by one who wanted to use that gift only for themselves. She grew up suspended in a tower and, created a world within its walls, in order to survive. Her captor told her she was safer hidden and she believed them. Somewhere inside she carried fleeting memories of who she once was, but they passed so fast she couldn’t catch them. Her song is:

I wonder, wonder, wonder, wonder, when will my life begin?

For the Israelites the wondering could have ended as God inhabited the womb of a girl. The Rescuer had come. Thirty years on, in the Gospel stories, we read of that same Rescuer inviting them to have enough hope and courage to finally leave the tower.

In Mark’s gospel there are two stories, on two sabbaths, that illustrate this beautifully. They follow one after the other. The settings are different. The invitation is the same:
Rapunzel! Let down your hair.

“One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grain fields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.”  Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” Mark 2:23-26

The disciples picked heads of grain and ate them. They knew they shouldn’t, and it doesn’t say they were particularly hungry or desperate. They were with Jesus and somehow they forgot the rules they’d been told would save them. The Pharisees were watching as they often were. They were the party of the people. The same people now gathering around the carpenter. So they made their accusation to the man leading their people “astray”.  Jesus hears them, really hears them. He loves them, so he feeds them with a story and a secret. Remember David, he says, and see the promise fulfilled in this field today. Then he leans in closer, and draws a line between himself and the prophecies of the mighty Daniel by referring to himself as the Son of man. (Daniel 7:13-14) He so wants them to know who he is, the children who watch him, waiting for him to falter, fail, or finish well. He so wants them to know him.

“Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shrivelled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shrivelled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.”  Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.” Mark 3:1-6

In the fields he tells them a secret: this is who I am. In the synagogue, their tower, system and structure, he reminds them: this who you are. They are the withered hand, but when Jesus shows up withered hands get new life. The only problem is they don’t want to be healed. They don’t want to stretch out their hand and own their deep need for a rescuer.

He did these things on the Sabbath because the Sabbath was a glorious picture, painted for them and the surrounding nations. A picture of a God who did the work, rather than requiring work be done for Him. The Sabbath picture was painted for the wider world to see what it means to belong to Him: invited into rest and blessing creation from that place of grace.

Rapunzel has an invitation too. Her story ends, as good stories do, with a rescuer calling her down from the tower because a kingdom also waits for her.

There’s so much passion in these stories. The fierce love of a God who wants to be known. His anger at the lies of the captor, and His deep distress that they have been believed.

Rapunzel! Let down your hair! The rescuer has come to remind you of who you were born to be. To expose the lies of the one who stole your affections, and to invite you out of the world you have created and into the one He created for you. In places of work (field) and places of worship (synagogue) the message is the same: Come down, your kingdom awaits! Enter rest! Withered hands he longs to heal. Callused ears he longs to open. Hard hearts he longs to soften. He came because of the song heaven heard sung in the Israelites’ saddest moments.

Save what has been lost, bring back what once was mine.

And I say amen, and please do it again.

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