June 2, 2024
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
2 Corinthians 4:5-12; Mark 2:23-3:6
The Sabbath’s Gift
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
One Sunday morning a mother called up the stairs to her son. “Son, it’s time to get up. It’s Sunday morning. Church begins in an hour and a half. I’m fixing your breakfast.” Her son just pulled the pillow around his head and went back to sleep.
She called up to him a second time, “Your breakfast is ready. It’s an hour now until church.” Again, he just rolled over and went back to sleep.
Then she called to him a third time: “It’s only 45 minutes to church time. It’s time to get up. Your breakfast is cold.”
Finally, she went up the stairs and entered his room. “Son! You have to get up RIGHT NOW in order to get to church on time.”
He grumbled, “Why do I have to go to church? The people there aren’t friendly. The music is awful and the sermons are dull. I can’t stand it!”
She said to him, “Son, you’re a grown man. You KNOW why you have to go. You’re the minister.”
Our gospel reading today centers around two stories about sabbath. The disciples and Jesus both engage in activities which the Pharisees dictate are out of bounds for the sabbath day.
The sabbath day is the seventh and final day of the week. The origins of the sabbath come from the creation story in Genesis chapter one. During the first six days of the week, God brought all things into being. And then on the seventh day, God rested. That seventh day was named the sabbath. Sabbath means, literally, to cease, to end, to rest.
But what does it mean, that God rested? It’s not that God was taxed and worn out from all the labors of creation, like God needed to hit the pause button to recuperate. No, that divine rest was a day to revel in and savor all that had been made, everything that God deemed so good. By resting after having brought all things into being, God was validating and affirming the universe.
It's like that moment after you finish a task, like mowing the lawn. You step back and your eyes take it all in. You tarry there to appreciate the fruits of your labors and the inherent beauty of your lawn. You see that it’s good, that your labors were worthwhile.
I’ve always thought there was a certain level of irony to our national Labor Day holiday. It’s the day when we don’t work! Everybody takes Labor Day off! But on that day, we pause. We acknowledge that our labors are good. We’re grateful for all our combined labors as a people. We acknowledge the value of their time and abilities.
Gratitude takes time. If we just kept sweating away, nose to the grindstone, we couldn’t appreciate the goodness and value of what is done.
So God rested. God drank in the beauty and worth of the universe. And this holy rest was so good that God commanded humanity to keep the sabbath. We are directed to set aside one day a week to rest FROM our labors and rest IN all that God has done for us – as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
God gave us the sabbath as a gift. It was intended for blessing. It’s a day to hit the pause button, to revel in life, and to rest in the assuredness of God’s steadfast love and grace. The sabbath is a day in which we can mercifully let go of the reins, let go of our need to control EVERYTHING. We rest in the goodness of God.
But if it’s possible to make a work out of doing nothing, the Pharisees excelled at it. The open expanse of the sabbath, its refreshing, unrestricted liberty was intimidating to them. And so they’d made a science of it. Lest they break the Lord’s command to rest, they made an extensive list of what it was possible to do, and more importantly, what it was NOT okay to do on the sabbath.
The sabbath is often framed by what we CANNOT do. I’m old enough to remember when “Blue Laws” ruled the day. Most businesses were closed on Sundays. There were certain items you absolutely could not buy on a Sunday, like alcohol. My mom grew up Missouri Synod, and she refused to write a check on a Sunday. That was a transaction, and that should not happen on a Sunday. However, I do remember my family going to the local restaurant after Sunday church, so I’m not sure how they paid the bill!
The Pharisees had turned the sabbath into a long list of no’s. God’s gift of Yes had been eclipsed by a bloated No. A commandment intended to give life was constricted by an elaborate system of regulations.
But the sabbath was not intended to be a negation. It was intended as an affirmation of life. In fact, it’s one of only two commandments not worded in the negative. The rest are all worded in terms of “shall nots.” You shall not have other gods; you shall not kill, steal, bear false witness.” But this command is worded in the positive: “remember the sabbath, to keep it holy.” And the fourth commandment as well: “honor your father and mother.”
The Pharisees harped on the disciples for munching on some grain as they passed through a field. Jesus reminds them that even King David had taken the holy bread of the presence in the tabernacle when he and his companions had no food. And then he makes a very simple but profound statement: The sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the sabbath.
In reducing the sabbath to a list of taboos and regulations, the Pharisees had eliminated the joy and blessing intended for the sabbath. God gave us the sabbath so that we can rest in its grace and freedom. It’s meant to remind us that the core of our existence is not about the rat race. Life is more than the accumulation of things and accomplishments. The sabbath bears witness to the source of all life and goodness.
The sabbath is contrary to our human notions of how the world operates. It challenges our notion about who is in control. It calls into question our notions about our own importance and indispensability. It dares to ask what would happen if we were to step away for one moment. Will the world come tumbling down? And by pausing for one day, we’re reminded that there will come a day when we cease to exist, where our influence will come to an end through our mortality. And yet, the world will still go on without us.
The sabbath also challenges us to step up to justice. How much should a person receive for their work? Is it right for a person to have to string together three jobs, eating up all their family time in order to put food on the table? Can they never rest? What is a just wage?
The sabbath affirms that there is life in abundance when we jump off the ever-spinning merry-go-round. There is room to breathe, to expand, to renew in the grace of God who provides for all our needs.
The story is told of two friends who both enjoyed splitting wood. They each bragged about how much wood they could split. So one day they decided to have a contest. They’d each split wood for the entire day, and at the end of it, they’d compare who produced more split wood.
On the appointed day, the men came to the appointed spot and started splitting logs. This went on for about an hour when the first fellow noticed that his friend had sat down and was taking a break. “Aha!” he thought. “He’s tired already! This will be easier than I thought.” He continued his splitting.
After about 15 minutes, the second man resumed splitting. But after a while, the first man heard the sound of his friend’s chopping cease again. He kept on splitting logs, and in about 15 minutes his buddy joined in again.
This went on the whole day. About every hour, the second fellow would sit down for about 15 minutes. By the end of the day, the first man was certain that his wood pile was much bigger than his friend’s. So he was gob smacked when he saw that his friend had cut more wood.
“How could you have chopped more wood than me? You took a break every single hour!”
The second man said, “Well, every time I stopped, I was sharpening my axe.”
We aren’t machines. We are something more akin to a clay jar. Many years ago, when I worked on an archaeological dig in Israel, our chief archaeologist, Rami Arav, spoke to the pottery shards we were unearthing. “Pottery is one of the most durable substances in the world,” he said. We were digging up shards that were 3000 years old! “But,” he said, “pottery is also very delicate, and so it breaks.”
Durable but delicate. That describes the human condition as well. We have been formed by the hands of our divine potter, each one of us a unique form. Each of us has been designed according to the exact intentions of our maker. Like a clay jar, we were formed with innate capacity. Each of us can be filled and contain. We can hold but we can also pour out and deliver.
In honoring the sabbath, we acknowledge that we are not machines; we are clay jars. In that, we might be durable, but we are also delicate and vulnerable.
There is something counterintuitive to the sabbath. It commands us to stop and rest. We rest FROM our labors, and we rest IN God. We rest in the knowledge that there is One greater than we are, one who placed the entire universe into being. In the sabbath we lean on the assurance that we are not the prime mover; God is. God has acted, and we receive in gratitude.
And in the person of Jesus, God has brought about reconciling all things to the divine. He has done it all, and there is nothing – nothing at all – that we have to do. His grace is free and unmerited. We rest in all that Jesus has done for us. It’s so significant that, as Christians, we’ve change our set-aside day from Saturday to Sunday. And on this day, we rest and abide in all that Jesus has accomplished for us.
In this sabbath understanding, we lie down, and our soul is restored. In that rest, we are strengthened and renewed for our own service. We commit our labors to the purpose of our divine potter. As jars of clay, may we be filled with the grace of God, brim full, so that we may, in turn, pour out our lives as an offering.
