Home Free

The Sabbath had been turned into an obsession. The act of avoiding work became work. Every action had to be classified as work or “not-work.” In Israel today, all elevators are set to stop on every floor on the Sabbath, because if not people would have to use the stairs, because pushing elevatr buttons is work. And so of course the practice of medicine was considered “work.” If some one were acutely ill, then a healer was allowed some leeway. But in the case of chronic illness they taught that healing should be postponed out of respect for the law. This woman had suffered for eighteen years. Why couldn’t Jesus politely wait until the next day to heal her? Why did he have to poke the establishment in the eye? Very simply, he wanted to break their captivity to the system and move them into the true, life-giving freedom of God’s Sabbath rest.

We have overreacted, I think, against the legalism of the Pharisees, or even of the days of our own recent ancestors, when you couldn’t read a novel or play a game. Nowadays Sundays hardly mean anything, even to Christians, except for one or two hours in the morning. But think about it. God makes quite a big deal about the Sabbath. Why?

Until Moses, there was absolutely no known analogy anywhere in the ancient world to the idea of a seven-day week - or indeed a any period of time - marked by a halt to economic activity.

Not that there wasn’t any significance to the seventh day. There is. In Ugaritic and Assyrian and Sumerian mythology, all predating Abraham’s departure to Canaan, all kinds of important things happen in seven-day cycles. But most of them are bad. And the 7th, 14th or 21st of some lunar months were unlucky; many people thought that demons had special powers on those days.

Furthermore, and this is truly astonishing, whereas all major units of time in the Ancient Near east, the year, the month and the week, were all based on the phases of the moon and the solar cycle, the Israelite 7-day week is totally independent of either. It is completely independent of the movement of the celestial bodies. This is just an-other confirmation of the fact that God has already emphasized in the previous three commandments: that YHWH God, Israel’s God, is entirely outside of and sovereign over nature. He is lord of time as well as Lord of space. In a very real sense, then, the institution of the Sabbath day constitutes a suspension of time.

But even more than simply a suspension of time, the institution of the Sabbath implies a suspension of the curse.

Until Genesis 3, human oversight of God’s creation was an honor, one to be celebrated. But things changed. In Genesis 3, God curses Adam and Eve after driving them out of the garden, saying “cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you... by the sweat of your face shall you eat your bread.”[Gen 3:17b-19a]

This is in pretty sharp contrast to the original condition. We are made to be joyful workers, creators, doers - in God’s image - but the fall has poisoned our labor with struggle and bitterness. That seventh day of rest that God gave his people at Sinai was to be a day free of struggle and bitterness, a day to contemplate unfallen creation, not a day to give or receive orders, to rule or be ruled, but a day to rejoice in the gifts of God.