Mark 2:23 — And it came to pass, that he went through the corn fields on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn.

I remember endless summers when I was a boy. From my last year or so in elementary school it seemed I was a free agent, free to roam as long as I was home before dark. Re-reading the passage in Mark this morning, about Jesus and his disciples picking corn on the Sabbath brought back a memory, powerfully.
I was walking one hot summer’s afternoon through a field of corn. I can’t have been much more than ten years old. I wasn’t four feet tall. The field looked huge to me, the sun was hot and I had taken the direct line from one side to the other. The corn towered over me. I was hot, sweaty and bothered — but as a great explorer, I was bound to press on, and then …
Then the farmer saw me. He was mad. My little ten year old body, pressing through his precious corn, was destroying his crop. Even now, fifty years later, I can’t see it. But it was a principle — ever since the enclosure acts in England eliminated the open field system and most common land, many English farmers have been deeply resentful of anyone using anything but the minimal path around the edge to get from one side to the other.
It was different in Jesus’s day. In fact it had been different all through Israel’s history. What bothered the Pharisees was not that the disciples were walking through the field. There were paths. They weren’t worried about the disciples picking ears of corn. It was expected! No, they cared about hungry young men grabbing a snack on the Sabbath!
The Israel of Jesus’s day had something we seem to be lacking more and more of. It had an assumption of community. As to this exact business of picking grain, way back in the law of Moses it says:

When thou comest into thy neighbor’s vineyard, then thou mayest eat grapes thy fill at thine own pleasure; but thou shalt not put any in thy vessel. When thou comest into the standing corn of thy neighbor, then thou mayest pluck the ears with thine hand; but thou shalt not move a sickle unto thy neighbor’s standing corn. (Deuteronomy 23:24-25)

The Jewish society wasn’t perfect, but there was general sense that neighbor would share with neighbor. Another passage in Deuteronomy says:

If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother: but thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth. (Deuteronomy 15:7-8)

Nothing in Judaism has ever changed the obligation to charity. What has happened along the way to Christians that so many of us don’t know who our neighbors are, and might even shy away from those in need? In July 2013 in “Relevant” Magazine, wrote “Tithers make up only 10-25 percent of a normal church population. Only 5 percent of the U.S. tithes with 80 percent of Americans only giving 2 percent of their income. Christians are giving at 2.5 percent per capita, while during the Great Depression they gave at a rate of 3.3 percent.”
How have we got so far off track? Giving, of course, is only one aspect of the breakdown in community. I could point to a hundred others. What will you do to help us get back on track?