Delivered June 26, 2011
My name is Marshall Davis, and I am a Sabbath-breaker. My guess is that all of you are Sabbath-breakers also. So welcome to Sabbath-breakers Anonymous! The Sabbath is the most ignored of the Ten Commandments, even more than taking the Lord’s name in vain. Every few years there will be a controversy somewhere in our country concerning the Ten Commandments. Recently a Virginia school board voted once again to post copies of the Ten Commandments in its schools. Earlier this month the Louisiana state House voted to approve placing a Ten Commandments monument on the state capitol grounds in Baton Rouge. Inevitably the ACLU gets involved and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and people get all riled up. And there are placards and demonstrations. It is all a bunch of smoke and mirrors, because even those who fight the hardest to post the Ten Commandments don’t keep the Ten Commandments, especially number 4 “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.”
The command reads in Exodus 20:8-10 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work….” I say that we all break this commandment because the Sabbath is the seventh day, which is Saturday, not Sunday. To be technical, in the Bible the day starts at sundown, so it really begins Friday evening. Sunday was not considered the Sabbath by Christians until the 4th century A.D. Nowhere in the NT does it authorize transferring the Sabbath to Sunday. Sunday is “the Lord’s Day,” the day the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, and that is why it was observed by Christians. It had nothing to do with the OT law.
But that did not keep generations of Christians, right up to the twentieth century and even into this century, from keeping Sunday as a Christian Sabbath. Some strict Christians keep the Sabbath religiously today. One pastor of a very conservative congregation secretly went golfing on the Sabbath, although it was forbidden in his religion. The angel Gabriel saw him, and summoned God. "Lord!" said Gabriel, "We have a preacher golfing on the Sabbath. Strike him down with a lightning bolt." God said, "I've got a better idea." Just then, the preacher took a swing at the ball, and it drove 420 yards, bounced and rolled up onto the green and fell directly into the cup, a hole-in-one. The pastor was ecstatic, whooping it up. Gabriel says to God, "I thought you were going to punish him?" God says, "I did. Who's he going to tell?"
I grew up in Danvers, Massachusetts, which was originally part of Salem, the part of Salem where the witch trials took place. The Puritan heritage ran deep in my hometown, and in my family. My parents were Congregationalists, and kept the Sabbath, as much as anyone did back in the 1950’s. Of course you really didn’t have much choice back then with the Blue Laws. You couldn’t buy anything if you wanted to because all the stories were closed. But my parents went further, and said we could not watch TV on Sundays either. That continued until Bonanza appeared on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM. Then suddenly Michael Landon was more important than Moses. Sabbath was a big deal in Jesus’ time, and it has something to teach us today. Let’s look at the Sabbath under three categories.
I. First is the Law of the Sabbath. In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus was walking with his disciples one Sabbath day. They were walking through some grain fields, and they picked some heads of grain and separated the grain from the chaff with their hands to eat. You would think this is nothing more than eating a snack on the road. But to the Pharisees this was considered reaping and threshing, which was work, and therefore a violation of the Sabbath command. Verse 2 “And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, “Look, Your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath!” The Pharisees were religious folks who took the Sabbath very seriously.
Many people still do today. Many keep a Saturday Sabbath. The Seventh Day Adventists keep the Sabbath on Saturday. There is also a group called the Seventh-Day Baptists. Judaism still keeps the Sabbath, especially orthodox Jews. When we were on Sabbatical in Israel, one of our clergy friends was walking through Mea Sherim, a Hasidic neighborhood in Jerusalem, and Hasidic Jews started throwing pebbles at him, apparently for no reason. Later he found out that they considered him to be breaking the Sabbath because he was carrying a pen in his shirt pocket. At the hotels in Israel there are Sabbath elevators. They stop at every floor on Saturday, so that observant Jews do not have to press a button in the elevator, because it is completing an electrical circuit, which is making fire, which is considered work, which is forbidden.
We might see this as legalism, but the observance of the Sabbath is a serious spiritual discipline for many Jews and Christians; it is seen as a blessing, not a burden. Perhaps you have seen the 1981 movie Chariots of Fire, which tells the true story of two athletes in the 1924 Olympics: Eric Liddell, a devout Scottish Christian, and Harold Abrahams, an English Jew. Liddell saw running as a way of glorifying God before going to China to work as a missionary. He says at one point in the film, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.” Liddell learns that the heat for his 100 meter race will be on a Sunday, and he refuses to run the race because his Christian convictions prevent him from running on the Sabbath. He refuses to compromise his religious convictions, despite strong pressure from the Prince of Wales and the British Olympic committee. Eventually a teammate gave up his place in the 400 meter race on the following Thursday to Liddell, and Liddell wins. But it was his religious convictions in the face of national athletic pride – and not his gold medal - which made headlines. So let us not dismiss the spiritual discipline of the Sabbath too quickly. Many find that strict observance of the Sabbath can be a way of glorifying God.
But Jesus wanted to point beyond the law of the Sabbath. In Jesus’ time the Sabbath had become a stumbling block to true spirituality and a barrier to compassion. So Jesus intentionally broke the rules surrounding the Sabbath on many occasions, thereby winning the scorn of the Pharisees, which in part led to his arrest and death. Breaking the Sabbath law was serious offense back then. Exodus 31:15 says, “For six days work is to be done, but the seventh day is a day of sabbath rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day is to be put to death.” It was a capital offense. So Jesus was doing and teaching something radical in his day. Jesus defended his actions by appealing to scripture. Verses 3-7.
3 But He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: 4 how he entered the house of God and ate the showbread which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? 5 Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless? 6 Yet I say to you that in this place there is One greater than the temple. 7 But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’[a] you would not have condemned the guiltless.
Jesus appeals to the example of King David, who broke the laws concerning the temple and priesthood. He also quotes the prophet Hosea, who said, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” Hosea was saying that there is something more important than religious observances. He is saying that following religious rules and laws can get in the way of following God. That is Jesus’ point, and it is an important point for us. Religion can lead us to God, or it can get in the way of our relationship with God. We need to be always vigilant to make sure that our religious practices foster true spirituality and not get in the way of it.
That is why Jesus healed on the Sabbath in our passage. Verse 9-14 “9 Now when He had departed from there, He went into their synagogue. 10 And behold, there was a man who had a withered hand. And they asked Him, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”— that they might accuse Him. 11 Then He said to them, “What man is there among you who has one sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out? 12 Of how much more value then is a man than a sheep? Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” 13 Then He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and it was restored as whole as the other. 14 Then the Pharisees went out and plotted against Him, how they might destroy Him.” Jesus went right into the Pharisees stronghold – the synagogue – and broke the Pharisees’ rules surrounding the Sabbath to show that their observance of the Sabbath, which was designed to honor God, was actually was violating the will of God, which is to do good on the Sabbath - to heal and set free. “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”
II. This leads into my second point, which is the Principle of the Sabbath. Very few Catholic, mainline Protestant or evangelical Christians keep a Sunday Sabbath any more in a strict sense. But the principle of a day of rest is still valuable. We all need rest. Jesus observes, “Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless?” Priests worked on the Sabbath. Preachers work on Sunday, but we still need a day of rest. My father-in-law, who is a retired Baptist pastor, boasts that in his forty years of ministry he never took a day off. That was not a good example to me as a young pastor starting in ministry. I need my day off, and I list my day off in the bulletin. I am grateful that you honor my day off – except of course for emergencies, when I want you to call me. In case of death or serious illness, I set aside the Sabbath – which is the example of Jesus. I can usually take my day off later in the week if I have to.
The law of the Sabbath points to a deeper principle of the Sabbath. Jesus broke the laws surrounding the Sabbath, but he did not break the spirit of the Sabbath. He really fulfilled the Sabbath – as he fulfilled all the Law - by cutting through the human rules surrounding it. But the principle of a day of rest remains valid. We all need rest. The land needs rest, and there was a law in the Bible that the fields lay fallow every seven years to recover. Professors and pastors take Sabbaticals to be reenergized. In fact the Sabbath law was based on the rhythms of creation. The Fourth Commandment reads: 8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” The Sabbath is built into the order of creation. It says even God observed a day off!
The parallel list of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy gives a different rationale for the Sabbath. 12 “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you. 13 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 14 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, …. 15 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.” According to this version of the fourth commandment, the Sabbath is meant to show that we are not slaves to work. We are not just workers; we are not just consumers. We are not just economic creatures. We are spiritual creatures who need to be reminded of our spiritual core. That is the meaning of the Sabbath.
III. We have talked about the Law of the Sabbath and the Principle of the Sabbath. Third is the Lord of the Sabbath. Jesus says, “8 For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” The phrase “Son of Man” was Jesus’ favorite way of referring to himself. The whole point of Jesus’ in-your-face confrontational approach to the Sabbath laws was to break open the whole concept. The Sabbath observance at that time was the symbol of religion, and Jesus came to break open the religion of his day. That is why he talked so much about the destruction of the temple, which really got him in trouble. That is why he cleansed the temple by driving out the money-changers. Jesus said that one greater than the temple was here. One greater than the Sabbath was here. He – Jesus – was Lord of the Sabbath.
The Sabbath points to Jesus. He was the end and purpose of the Sabbath. Jesus was the fulfillment of the Sabbath. Jesus came to give true rest and peace. Jesus said, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” The Book of Hebrews goes into detail about the Sabbath rest and concludes, “There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. 10 For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.” Jesus is the one that the Sabbath honors and points to. You could say that Jesus embodies the Sabbath.
For his first sermon in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus chose to preach on a passage from Isaiah, proclaiming the Jubilee year. The OT proclaims a Sabbath year every seven years. Then after seven groups of seven – after the 49th years, the 50th year was a special super Sabbath – the Jubilee year. All slaves were freed, debts canceled, and land returned to the original owner. This is the passage that Jesus read in the synagogue and then he said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” He was saying that his ministry was a jubilee. He is freedom. He is healing. He is peace. He is the perfect rest for the people of God, and we are restless unless we find our rest in him – to paraphrase Augustine. The Sabbath points to the Lord of the Sabbath. We keep the Sabbath by resting in Him.
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