Scripture Text: Mark 2:23-3:6 (Proper 4B)

 ²³One sabbath he was going through the grainfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. ²⁴The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” ²⁵And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? ²⁶He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.” ²⁷Then he said to them, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; ²⁸so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”

3Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. ²They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. ³And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.” ⁴Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. ⁵He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. ⁶The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

“And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.  So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.” 

We know these familiar verses.  But where was the part about the rules?  (Yeah, they’re not there.  I think, sadly, those may have been inserted later!)  Truthfully, the Sabbath was never meant to be governed by rules.  The Sabbath was meant for us.  But many of us read the beginning of the second chapter of Genesis as sort of a pretty poetic “wrap up” to the whole Creation account. We read it as “whew! That’s done!”  But the Sabbath is much, much more.  This divine resting is part of the created order.  This divine act of blessing the Sabbath is God’s act of giving power to the temporal order; it is the honoring of the cycle of work and rest that is part of the implicit rhythm of Creation.  God did not stop working at Creation to take a nap.  God rather created the Sabbath that we might embrace all that had been created.  Essentially, the Sabbath is the climax of all there is.  And so, we are given the commandment to “remember the Sabbath” or to “observe the Sabbath”, depending on where you’re reading, not because it’s a rule but because it’s part of who we are. 

But in the passage, there are those who forgot this.  In one of his poems, T.S. Eliot said that “we had the experience but missed the meaning.”  This describes it to a tee. They were so worried about Jesus breaking the “rules” of the Sabbath that they forgot compassion; they forgot justice; they forgot who they were; they forgot what the Sabbath was meant to be; they forgot that the Sabbath was there to sustain who they were. 

The Hebrew term for Sabbath, Shabbat, means“to cease and desist”. It is a call to stop—to stop work, to stop accomplishment, to stop worrying, to stop possessiveness, to stop controlling others, to stop trying to be God.  It is not a legalistic commandment, but a calling to wholeness, a calling to who we are called to be.  You see, this Sabbath, or Shabbat, that God created, the climax of all that is created, is the culmination of all things.  It is a glimpse of the holy and the sacred, a chance for us to experience the life that is to come. 

Nice as we all are, we do not gather on the Sabbath simply because we enjoy one another’s company.  We could go sit at Starbucks and do that.  We come because in the deepest part of our being is a hunger for the Kingdom of God.  Sometimes that’s hard to define.  Hans Kung defines the reign of God as “God’s creation healed.”  That means all that we see, all that we are, body-bent and soul-starved, will be able to stand and praise and join with God.  In 1951, Rabbi Abraham Heschel wrote what I think is the quintessential classic entitled The Sabbath.  In it, Heschel says that “unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath while still in this world, unless one is initiated in the appreciation of eternal life, one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come.  Sad,” he says, “is the lot of the one who arrives inexperienced and when led to heaven has no power to perceive the beauty of the Sabbath…”

But I must confess that I struggle with keeping Sabbath.  There is too much to do; there are too many places to be; there are too many things that only I can do.  (Oh, come on!)  The truth is, when I am feeling overwhelmed, I tend to buy books on “Sabbath” and “Simplicity”.  Needless to say, I have a lot of them.  I think I am trying to create the perfect setting for my own “Sabbath-keeping”.  And therein lies my problem.  The call to hallow or remember or keep the Sabbath is not a rule.  It is an invitation to freedom, to wholeness.  That’s exactly what our Creation account implies that God did, if only for a day in time.  God created Sabbath rest and then rested in the beauty and rhythm of the Creation that was already there.  God quit creating and intentionally rested in what was created.

And by remembering and observing the Sabbath, we too, can enter the rhythms and cycles of Creation just as they are intended to be.  Heschel contends that “The Sabbath is more than an armistice, more than an interlude, it is a profound conscious harmony of [humans] and the world, a sympathy for all things and a participation in the spirit that unites what is below and what is above.  All that is Divine in the world is brought into union with God.  This is Sabbath, and the true happiness of the universe.”

There is a story of an American traveler on safari in Kenya.  He was loaded down with maps, and timetables, and travel agendas.  Porters from a local tribe were carrying his cumbersome supplies, luggage, and “essential stuff.”  On the first morning, everyone awoke early and traveled fast and went far into the bush.  On the second morning, they all woke very early and traveled very fast and went very far into the bush.  On the third morning, they all woke very early and traveled very fast and went even farther into the bush.  The American seemed please.  But on the fourth morning, the porters refused to move.  They simply sat by a tree.  Their behavior incensed the American.  “This is a waste of valuable time.  Can someone tell me what is going on here?”  The translator answered, “They are waiting for their souls to catch up with their bodies.”

That is what God has given us in the Sabbath—the gift of reconnecting with our soul, the gift of reconnecting with God, the gift of once again realizing what the freedom of life means.  It is the chance to once again stand up straight and praise God for all that we are and all that we will become.  It is the freedom to be what God intended us to be, to cease being weighed down by things that are not part of that.  Maybe that’s something we ought to put on our “to do list”.

The traditional Jewish Sabbath begins at sundown, the Christian Sabbath with morning worship.  In both, Sabbath time begins with the lighting of candles and a stopping—to welcome the Sabbath in.  Marcia Falk writes that “three generations back my family had only to light a candle and the world parted.  Today, Friday afternoon, I disconnect clocks and phones.  When night fills my house with passages, I begin saving my life.”  This is the beginning of sacred time.  This is the beginning of eternity.  This is where we find life.

Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha’olam. Asher kidishanu b’mitz’votav v’tzivanu. L’had’lik neir shel Shabbat.  Amein

Blessed are you, Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe Who has sanctified us with [these] commandments and commanded us To light the lights of Shabbat.  Amen.           

Faith dies when religion declares its certainties beyond question. Faith is a journey, and there is always more to discover. If you want a solid “Biblical truth,” it is that we have more to see. The other is the freedom to rest. Not just take a day off from work, but rest, stop, open our mouths to sing and, from no hymnal ever fought over, discover the song we and God are composing. We cannot know what that song is until we stand still. We cannot know what work God is doing in our lives until we stop our own striving. We cannot know what truth God would show us until we set aside all that we think we know. We cannot accept the gift God would give us until we put down tools, weapons, certainties, and pious accoutrements, and simply hold out open hands to God. (Tom Ehrich)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli