St. John’s UCC, Union, Illinois
Isaiah 58:9b-14; Luke 13:10-17
It’s
such a delightful day, isn’t it? The sun is shining, friends are gathering, we’ve
heard beautiful music. A good day for rest, for sabbath. We don’t use the term
“sabbath” much in our conversations. “What are you doing on the sabbath,
brother?” “Oh, I’m going down to the temple to pray, then resting in the park.”
We might ask someone, “What are you doing on Sunday?” And they might reply, “Going
to church, then watching the ball game, you?” But just because we don’t use the
term “sabbath” doesn’t mean we don’t know what it means.
In
the church, we long ago took the Jewish practice of sabbath from Friday sundown
to Saturday sundown, and replaced it with “The Lord’s Day” or Sunday, and it’s
more of a midnight to midnight thing. Going to the temple was replaced with
going to church, but prayer and the worship of God are still the focus. And
we’ve kept the idea of keeping Sunday as a special day. Thanks to the labor
movement, now we have two special days and we call them the weekend, which is
nice. But Sunday is still special for most of us.
Sunday
is the day we relax with family and friends. Some people run marathons (which
seems like a lot of work to me), play golf or other sports, watch other people
play sports, eat out, eat together around the dinner table, or other things we
don’t usually do during the rest of the week. Most of us don’t work on Sundays,
though some of us do. But I’ll guess that all of us with jobs outside the home
get a day or two off each week.
That
was part of the point of keeping sabbath, even for our ancient ancestors. The
idea of taking a break from work, a day to rest and recuperate, is important to
our well-being. Even God took a break after creating the world in six days. The
keeping of sabbath as a law or religious ordinance, however, wasn’t established
until Moses went up the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments from God. The
word “sabbath” doesn’t appear in the Bible until after Moses has led the people
out of Egypt. And what were they doing in Egypt? They were slaves.
Slaves
don’t get a day off. Slaves don’t get paid either, let alone health benefits
and a retirement fund, but they did usually receive food, water, and perhaps
shelter. But there was no break from work, no day off to rest, recuperate, and
cheer on the chariot racers. Slave work wasn’t sitting at a desk occasionally Facebooking
either. Day after day after day of endless hard labor with never an end in
sight. Imagine that. Imagine working hard, day after day, getting ever more
tired and worn down, and never getting a break. Sounds like parenting,
actually. But seriously, I worked some long stretches when I worked at the
bank, at month end, and after twelve days straight I was about ready to die. I
can’t imagine never getting a break.
The
sabbath is a gift from God. For the newly forming Israelite community, it must
have seemed incredibly wonderful. Over time, it became a signature
characteristic of Jewish people, that they didn’t work on the sabbath. Taking a
break from the routine, taking time to worship God and be with their families
was, and still is for most, part of their identity. Exodus 20, the first list
of the commandments (yes, there’s more than one list), reads:
Remember the sabbath
day and treat it as holy. Six days you may work and do all your tasks, but the
seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord
your God. Do not do any work on it—not you, your sons or daughters, your male
or female servants, your animals, or the immigrant who is living with you.
Because the Lord made the heavens
and the earth, the sea, and everything that is in them in six days, but rested
on the seventh day. That is why the Lord
blessed the sabbath day and made it holy (Exodus 20:8-11).[1]
This
idea of getting a day off from work, and taking time to worship God, is
precious. Certainly, this was important to a people who had just been enslaved.
This precious gift from God must be protected. And so, later in Exodus, the
Lord gives Moses instructions for keeping the sabbath, and says:
Keep the sabbath,
because it is holy for you. Everyone who violates the sabbath will be put to
death. Whoever does any work on the sabbath, that person will be cut off from
the people (Exodus 31:14).
This
is serious business. God really wants you to take a break. This is reiterated
in the Isaiah passage we just read:
If you refrain
from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if
you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways,
serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; then you shall take
delight in the Lord, and I will
make you ride upon the heights of the earth (Isaiah 58:13-14a).
Keeping
sabbath, and keeping it holy, is a really big deal. Bad things happen when you
work on the sabbath, and good things happen when you don’t. This is why the
leader of the synagogue is so upset by what Jesus does. Jesus heals the
bent-over woman; he does work on the sabbath. No, no, no! That’s not what we
do. “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and
be cured, and not on the sabbath day” (Luke 13:14). The sabbath day is
precious. If Jesus starts working on the sabbath, then his followers will start
doing work on the sabbath, and pretty soon no one will get a day off ever
again!
This
poor guy who is leading the synagogue that Jesus visited that day. He’s trying
to be faithful. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things; if you want
to please God, we’ve got laws that tell you how to do that. Religious
observance is the way to win God’s favor, so make sure you have interesting
worship services, lovely buildings, beautiful prayers, and a lot of focus on
the law, in this case the law about doing no work on the sabbath.
Okay,
maybe they pushed things a little too far, as Jesus points out when he
responds: “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or
his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water?” (Luke 13:15). A
little work is okay, because sometimes things need to be done now, and they
can’t wait. And this woman, this daughter of Abraham, needs to be set free now,
she can’t wait any longer, her life is too precious. Yes, the sabbath is good,
and important, but if you really want to please God, worry less about following
the letter of the law, and worry more about how you treat one another.
This
religious leader, and others like him, were folks who got up in the morning
thinking about God and how they might serve God better. They didn't always get
it right, but they were sincerely trying. Sounds a lot like you and me. We
don’t always do things the way that God might want us to. What would Jesus do?
I don’t know for sure, so I’m going to guess. But I’m trying. And when I let
Jesus point out the shortcomings in the way that I’ve been thinking, I might
just be a little more forgiving of myself, and more kind to others.
Taking
a break, resting and worshiping on the sabbath, on the Lord’s Day, is valuable.
It’s important. But maybe the point is not about whether we keep the Sabbath or
not, but the way in which we keep it, and keep it holy. So, I come to church
and worship God. I’ll rest and take some time to be with my family. But if
something needs to get done, and it just can’t wait, I’m not going to beat
myself up about it. I’m not, however, going to let whatever it is take over my
day, and take away my opportunity for sabbath.
I’m
not going to spend all day focused on my computer screen, or my cell phone screen,
or my TV screen. But if I need to know the weather forecast, I’ll look it up. I
will just try to resist the temptation to check Facebook and my email. If I
want to relax in front of the game with friends, that’s fine, but I’ll try to
make my friends, and not the game, the main focus of my time. I may check my
cell phone once in a while, but I’m going to take it out of my pocket and set
it down somewhere so that it doesn’t command my attention constantly.
We
might do a little work on the sabbath, and we might not follow the letter of
the law, but we’re celebrating the spirit and the point of the law which is to
be loving, caring people, resting in the presence of one another, stepping out
of our routine to celebrate the gift of sabbath, a gift given by God for our
well-being. Let us take delight in the Lord’s Day, share the sabbath meal
together, and remember the one who came to show us the way to be holy, the one
who healed on the sabbath day. Amen.
[1] The
scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version
Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National
Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
Used by permission. All rights
reserved.