R & R

Mark 2:23-3:6

June 3, 2018

            Last Sunday when I was in Nashville, I went to church with Brent. His church starts at 11:00 am, fifteen minutes later than us. Phoebe called right when church was over here to tell me how our service had gone. Seeing that I was still in worship I declined her call. So, when we were walking out to the car, I called her back and said,

            “I’m sorry I couldn’t answer, Pheebs. We were still in worship when you called. How did it go?”

            Her response was not,

            “Church was great!” or “Everything was fine.”

            No, she said,

            “You went to church?!”

            I laughed and said,

            “Well yeah, why?”

            “You went to church?! On your Sunday off? I can’t believe you went to church!”

            I said,

            “Well Phoebe, I hardly ever get to sit in the pew and just worship, just be there. It was nice to sit with Brent like every other person and not be the one in charge. So yes, I went to church on my Sunday off.”

            She said,

            “Okay, I get that.”

            Then she proceeded to tell me how her Sunday here went. Thank you all for being so loving and supportive of her. Not that you would have been or done anything differently.       

Many of my friends on Facebook and other social media sites post pictures and memes that refer to the joys of reaching Friday. Finally! Friday is here again. They have reached the weekend. Now they can kickback and enjoy two days of non-work. It doesn’t mean they won’t have two days of busy activity, but it will generally be two days of non-work. When I hit Friday, however, I think

“Here it comes, the relentless return of the Sabbath.”

            Because, as we all know, Sunday – the Sabbath – is my prime workday. Many people think that this is my only work day. That isn’t true. But it is my primary one. Alternatively, while other folks moan about Mondays and going back to work, I’m like Monday! Six more days before Sunday returns!  Six more days before the relentless return of the Sabbath! When it comes to a day of rest and relaxation, Monday is my day. I try to protect my Mondays. That is my down day, the day that I recharge and renew. I do errands and other stuff on Mondays. But it is a day for me. Monday is my Sabbath.

            Yet, I realize as I say that that I am missing the point of what the Sabbath is supposed to be about. It seems to me that is the crux of our stories from Mark. The religious folks have missed the point of the Sabbath. Jesus cut right to the heart of this in verse 27 when he said,

            “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.”

            What did Jesus mean when he said that? Think back to what your Sunday, your Sabbath, was like when you were a kid. Blue laws were still actively in effect when I was growing up. That meant very few places were open on Sundays. My parents were not as strict with me about what I could and not could not do on a Sunday as their parents were with them, but Sundays were still basically reserved for church, rest and more church.

            When my parents were growing up, they were not allowed to see movies. My mother snuck in to see her first movie when she was 12. She saw “The Pride of the Yankees: the Lou Gherig Story” on a Sunday afternoon. While my mom loved the movie, and she couldn’t believe her parents had kept her away from this magical world of movies for so long, she also felt terrible pangs of conscience for disobeying her parents. So she confessed to her mother what she’d done. My gramma was more upset that she had gone to a movie on a Sunday than she was that she had gone to a movie. That was the Sabbath.

            But that again begs the question. What is the Sabbath for? Why was it created? The book of Genesis, the book of beginnings, tells us that after six days of non-stop creation, God spent the seventh day in rest – a model of rest for all creation. In the Ten Commandments, the Law, we are told to keep the Sabbath holy. Was this a pronouncement because the Law was an end in itself? Or did God make the observance of the Sabbath part of the Law as a means to another end? Was the giving of the Law in its entirety a means to another end?

            In Jesus’ time and context, keeping the Sabbath holy meant following a strict set of rules and regulations about what you could do and what you could not do. It had narrowed from a day of rest from labor and holy observance to restrictions and limitations. Although, Jesus and his disciples were not technically doing anything completely unlawful in their actions, they were pushing the boundaries of the Sabbath guidelines. Jesus had been pushing the boundaries since the moment he arrived on the scene as it were, so it is not surprising that the Pharisees and scribes and other religious authorities were paying close attention to what he was up to.

            But Jesus challenged the good religious folk on what the Sabbath was truly supposed to be about. What did it mean to keep something holy? Was it only to follow the rules? Were the rules more important than human need?

            Maybe that is what Jesus meant when he said that the Sabbath was made for humankind and not the other way around. The Sabbath was made so that all creation could truly have rest – people who lived in bondage could rest from their labors. Even animals, who lived and worked at the mercy of the people they served, could have rest. If Sabbath was truly followed, even the land would have rest.

            And in the context of the Law, the Ten Commandments, the Sabbath was not just about rest and taking a day off, it was about relationship. Every one of the commandments is about keeping relationship – whether it is keeping relationship with God, by not worshipping idols – or with one another – by not coveting or envying what our neighbor has and we do not. We keep the Sabbath, not just so we can have downtime, but so that we can engage in worship, so that we can build community. We keep the Sabbath so that we can build relationship, with God, with one another and with God’s children in this broken, hurting world.

            To keep Sabbath is to rest so that we can return to the work to which we are called. To keep Sabbath is to see with clearer eyes the human need which is all around us. Jesus did just that. Jesus knew that the Sabbath was made for us, not us for the Sabbath. The Sabbath is not an end in itself, but a means to a greater end. The Sabbath is a day for R and R; for rest and relaxation, true. But it is also for restoration and renewal, for replenishment and revitalization. The Sabbath is our day for rest, so that we may go back out and work for the renewal of God’s world.

            Thanks be to God! Alleluia! Amen.