Inheriting the Promises January 16

We earnestly desire each of you to demonstrate the same eagerness for the fulfillment of hope until the end, so that you may not become sluggish, but imitators of those who, through faith and patience, are inheriting the promises. Hebrews 6:11-12

“Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?” Mark 2:24

Piety

Jesus, you teach us to be obedient and then you show us the path to civil disobedience. Give us the fortitude to surge ahead with the same eagerness for the fulfillment of hope that you instilled in your apostles. Give us the faith and patience to be worthy to inherit the promises you made to your brothers and sisters. Amen.

Study

http://www.usccb.org/nab/011607.shtml

The pattern of confrontation with the Pharisees continues. Jesus asserts to them that the Sabbath was made for man. The notes to the NAB explain that this statement is a “reaffirmation of the divine intent of the Sabbath to benefit Israel as contrasted with the restrictive Pharisaic tradition added to the law.”

Jesus started a practice which has been followed by others in his footsteps. His work has inspired other people who have challenged unjust conditions in society.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old African American woman who worked as a seamstress, boarded this Montgomery City bus to go home from work. On this bus on that day, Rosa Parks initiated a new era in the American quest for freedom and equality.

One of the most significant protests of the civil rights movement took place at a lunch counter now preserved in the Smithsonian Museum. On February 1, 1960, four African American students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College sat at this "whites only" lunch counter, asked to be served, and, when they were not, refused to leave. The sit-in and boycott of the store lasted six months and was the focus of national publicity. On July 25 the lunch counter was desegregated, a victory for the civil rights movement.

Just as Jesus challenged the Pharisees in today’s reading on the Sabbath laws, I think Jesus would have been sitting with Mrs. Parks and with the college students in Greensboro.

Action

Have you ever disobeyed a law you did not consider just?

Why?

Why not?