sermon: Sabbath

Keeping Sabbath

In college, we had a t-shirt that said:  If God was a Davidson student, he would have played for six days and pulled an all nighter.  The creation story shares that in six days God created the world, and set aside one more day to rest, to see that all is good, to delight in the creation that was made.  God rested, and should we. 

            It has been a long time since Sunday has been held as a day of rest.  Some might remember a time when stores were closed and families would go to church and then often gather for a meal together.  Our lives are so different then the day and age of when Jesus walked this earth.  The rules governing life, society, faith cultures have softened greatly.  We still get a glimpse of it every once in awhile.  I am always amazed in this modern world when I see Orthodox Jews walking to the synagogue or when I hear stories of the rules around whether you can turn on the oven on the Sabbath. 

            Rules around Sabbath keeping exist to help us understand, to help us set aside this time as sacred and holy.  How do we differentiate one day from the next, one day from the normal work that we do, from a day that is set aside as rest, as sacred, as a gift from God?  We act differently, we follow religious guidelines, we give our time and attention to God.  I am pretty sure in the day and age of Jesus, they did not have weekends.  Having one day a week as a day of rest, as a day of no work, was a gift.  For us, it is often just assumed.  Everyone has the weekend, we all get two days off from work, well that is if you have a mainstream vocation, or don’t have to work two jobs to pay the bills.  There are millions of people that have to work all week long, that don’t get the weekend, that don’t have the luxury of slowing down and finding time to be intentionally present with God with a faith community. 

            Every once in a while, we still lament the loss of some of these rules that protected the Sabbath.  We lament that there are sports and practices and so many other activities that happen on Sunday morning.  But we have also not adapted to the changing culture.  We have set ourselves rigidly as a group that gathers on Sunday morning.  This is our time, this is the time we set aside for worship, for gathering as God’s people, for our Sabbath keeping.  But what does this do to us a as a greater community of faith, as a people called together to be in fellowship with each other?  We end up forcing families to make a choice, sports or worship. 

            I wonder how Jesus would negotiate our Sabbath struggle in today’s world.  Because Jesus pushes against the rules of Sabbath keeping that exist in his own day and age.  The two stories we have today involve Jesus doing work on the Sabbath.  He and his disciples are walking through a field and they pluck some grain and eat it.  Seems like something we might do, go out to the garden in summer and pick a few tomatoes and enjoy them fresh off the vine.  But the rules were so rigid that this was considered work, they were involved with harvesting unprepared food, and they had to separate the grain from the chaff.  They were processing their food.  Eating is allowed on the Sabbath, but not picking and processing your food.  You eat something that has already been prepared.  Jesus then points back to King David, that when he was hungry on the Sabbath, he ate, even if it was food he was not suppose to eat.  Here he says, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.  He has not yet defined himself as the Son of Man, and so those that head this were left wondering what he meant, who is the Son of Man?  And what does this have to do with what Jesus is doing? 

            Luke has placed two Sabbath stories together here, this next one happens on another Sabbath when Jesus is teaching in the synagogue.  It seems as if the scribes and Pharisees have caught onto him, since it says they were watching him to see if he would heal on the Sabbath.  And sure enough, he does.  There is a man with a withered hand and Jesus calls out to him.  As the man comes to Jesus, Jesus speaks to the thoughts of the scribes and Pharisees and asks:  I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?  And Jesus heals the man’s hand. 

            Eating and healing, responding to hunger and brokenness, these are two things that Jesus lifts up as viable practices on the Sabbath.  He is pushing back against the rigid rules of his faith tradition that prohibited these actions.  Yes, we need a day of rest, yes, we need a time of holiness, but we also cannot ignore human need just because it happens to be the Sabbath. 

            And so, in a day and age where we seem to have no rules protecting the Sabbath, Jesus just might come to us and ask about our fellowship, our time together as a faith community.  Jesus might challenge us to creatively find ways to keep the Sabbath, creative ways to gather as a faith community, ways in which we are fed and healed not just physically, but spiritually, since that is worship is intended to do for us.  How are we meeting people in their hunger and brokenness?  Are there ways to create sacred space throughout the week, rather than just the few hours set aside on Sunday morning?  Sabbath keeping is about rest, but it is also about sacred connections, about seeing God at work in the world, about connecting to the sacred and finding the good.