;Luke 13:10-17
13 Pentecost / Proper 16 / Year C
26 August 2007
The Church of the Good Shepherd
Wareham, Massachusetts
Preached by the Rev. David Fredrickson
There are a number of encounters that Jesus had throughout his adult ministry where he was caught doing something on the Sabbath that was truly repulsive to those who adhered to a strict Jewish interpretation of what it meant to keep a holy Sabbath. This morning’s gospel story is an example of one such encounter. In this particular story, Jesus found himself teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath and out of nowhere a crippled woman appeared before him. Curiously, she said absolutely nothing; Jesus assumed that she wanted healing and he obliged her. But the leader of the synagogue, the equivalent of today’s rabbi, said to Jesus, “You can’t do that today, not here, not anywhere.”
But here Jesus reacted very much as he did in the other encounters where he was accused of committing blasphemy against the fourth commandment, he asked, “…Ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?” In Mark chapter three, he puts the question a little differently, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?” [Mark 3:4]
Throughout the history of Judeo-Christian tradition there have been periods of great confusion about what it has meant to keep a holy Sabbath. The commandment itself seems clear in both places where it is found in the Old Testament, in Exodus 20 and in Deuteronomy 5. “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. [It says in Exodus 20] Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is as Sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work-- you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.”
Seems fairly clear, doesn’t it? But interpreting this commandment has been a great source of perplexity throughout history for both Jews and Christians. In the earliest Jewish communities the commandment had a twofold purpose, (1) to establish a day set apart for the worship of God and (2) to set aside a day for the rest and recreation of God’s people, including slaves and cattle. Seems simple enough, but it wasn’t long until the prohibition against work became highly regulated. In the Maccabaean period, a century or two before the birth of Christ, these regulations became increasingly strict. Some pious Jews even allowed themselves to be killed rather than take up arms to defend themselves on the Sabbath day. To us, this seems not only silly, but insane. Yet the stakes were high, for these people believed with all their heart that serving and pleasing God was paramount even to their own lives.
In the Christian church, interpreting this notion of keeping Sabbath has also been rather difficult throughout the centuries. Though the early church largely continued to keep the seventh day as a day of rest and prayer, the fact that the Resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit had taken place on the first day of the week, that is on Sunday, it soon led to the observance of Sunday as the Sabbath to the exclusion of the Jewish Sabbath which of course was and is on Saturday. As part of the English and Scottish Reformation when the Anglican and Puritan churches were formed, there was a rigorous observance of Sunday as a day of rest or Sabbath. This strict Sabbatarianism played itself out in the political arena as well. In 1618 James I issued his Book of Sports imposing a cessation of work but allowing lawful recreation. When Charles I tried to reissue this legislation, in 1633, however, the Puritans had become quite a force to be reckoned with and there was a storm of protest. The actual Book of Sports was burned by Parliament ten years later in 1643. From that moment the Puritan Sabbath was imposed by successive acts of legislation prohibiting any kind of recreation on Sunday; even going for a walk was prohibited. In 1677 Charles II created the Act for the Better Observance of the Lord’s Day and it was passed by Parliament. This act still forbade all work and travel by horse or boat on Sunday, but it was silent on the issue of recreation.
Today, all but those who belong to either Conservative or Orthodox Jewish sects or a few Christian splinter groups have completely abandoned any remnant of keeping Sabbath in this way. The Blue Laws that largely existed in our country up until the last 20 years or so were the last vestiges of this old philosophy of Sabbath keeping. Today, most of these restrictions have disappeared; Saturday and Sunday have become nearly indistinguishable from the other five days of the week.
So why did I take you on this very brief journey of the history of the fourth commandment? First of all, I wanted to do raise awareness. For most of us, Sabbath taking doesn’t register, it’s not on our radar screens and yet throughout the history of Jewish and Christian community, this injunction to set aside the Sabbath Day and make it Holy has been taken very seriously.
Secondly, and finally, I wanted to appeal to you to think about making room in your own lives for Sabbath. When Jesus healed that poor woman on the Sabbath in the Synagogue he found himself in a very different context then we find ourselves. When the Synagogue leader said to Jesus that he couldn’t heal on the Sabbath, he was working out of a legalistic paradigm that was stifling; a paradigm that Jesus confronted in Mark chapter 2 when he said to the Pharisees, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, humankind was not made for the Sabbath.” [Mark 2:27] As we saw in the few examples I gave earlier, strict sabbatarianism has flourished throughout the history of both Judaism and Christianity, ignoring these life-giving words uttered by our Lord. Indeed the Sabbath was made for you and for me, to help us reboot. Putting heavy burdens upon people admonishing them to a strict Sabbath observance was and is not life-giving. But neither is ignoring the commandment to rest.
In the optional lesson this morning from Isaiah, the prophet pronounced these words of the Lord: “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.” That’s quite a promise.
We all need to rest, to find time to be refreshed and to re-create for we are mortal made of dust and it is to dust that we shall return someday. Somewhere along the line we lost our perspective, we lost our way. For most of us if we take a day off to do nothing but worship and be with our families, a day a week away from the television and the computer, the chores around the house, and the other obligations of our lives, we feel like we are slacking off; we feel lazy, unproductive and even guilty. And yet the question is out there. Has the world that we have created, a world that values busyness and productivity, made us any happier? Has this world made us more secure, has it made our families stronger or our lives more fulfilled or any less complicated? Has it brought us closer to God?
You and I need to rest. We need to remember that we belong to God and we are dependent upon God for all that we have and all that we are; for we are dust, you and me, and we’ll be returning to dust someday. You and I need to find a time every week, preferably a whole day, any day, to be refreshed and reflect upon who and what we are. We need to fight the culture that is telling us that we are lazy or slackers for doing what we were created to do. And through it all, let’s remember to keep our eyes and ears open because in the stillness and quiet of a day of rest, we will indeed find the delight of the Lord.
In Jesus Name; Amen.
