Preached by Frank Faine, Pastoral Intern, at the Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday, June 18, 2006.
Deuteronomy 5:12-15
12“Respect the Day of Rest; make it a holy day. This is God’s idea for your good. 13Six days is enough work in one week. 14Give the seventh day to God, and encourage your family and anyone else for whom you’re responsible to do the same. That includes your employees, your livestock, and even the stranger who enters your life. 15Remember, you once had to work very hard in Egypt, with absolutely no rest. So keep the Day of Rest as a reminder that Almighty God rescued you from such servitude.”
Hebrews 4:9-11a
9God has promised a Sabbath rest for the people of God. 10To enter into God’s rest is to cease from the work of creation, just as God did. 11We are encouraged to use every creative force to enter into that non-creating rest...
Mark 2:23-3:5 (abridged)
23One Sabbath day Jesus and his students were walking through the grain fields. Some of his students were pulling off heads of grain. 24The religious leaders were indignant. “See here! The shouldn’t do that. They’re breaking Sabbath rules.”
27Jesus replied: “The Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath. 28So the Son of Humanity is Master even of the Sabbath.”
1A short time later Jesus went into the synagogue, where he saw a man with a deformed hand. 2At the same time some people were keeping a close eye on Jesus, wanting to catch him violating the Sabbath rules.
3Jesus spoke to the man: “Stand up here so everyone can see.” 4Then Jesus turned to his watchers and said, “What brings the most honor to the Sabbath? To do good or to do evil? To save a life or to destroy it?”
He then turned to the man: “Hold out your hand!” He held it out, and his hand was completely healed!
Did you know that in Florida a single, divorced, or widowed woman may not parachute on a Sunday or she risks being jailed or fined? Or that there is a special law that says if an elephant is tied to a parking meter, that the parking fee has to be paid just as if there is a vehicle in that space? Or what about this local one: It is illegal to sing in a public place in a swimsuit in Sarasota?
Lest you think Florida is only the state with laws like this: In Denver it is illegal for you to lend your vacuum cleaner to your next-door neighbor. And under state law in California, you can’t peel an orange in a hotel room.
While I’m certain these laws are just brief examples of the hundreds of other silly, perhaps stupid laws we might find if we were to search the statute books of our state and local governments, it does make you wonder what was going in minds of the folks who drafted them. I suspect too, if we were honest, we might ask some of the same questions as we ponder today’s readings.
In the verses from Deuteronomy we are reminded of the commandment to respect and keep the Sabbath as a holy day of rest. Summarized here is the Divine plan for work and rest. Six are enough days to work with the seventh set aside as day of rest for our entire household and us. This pattern serves to show us God’s goodness towards us, the ways in which God has rescued us from the servitude of our various Egypt’s. The story from Mark’s gospel shows us Jesus not only questioning the meaning of the Sabbath laws and observances, but also demonstrating its true application in a decisive act of compassion and healing.
I don’t know about you but today as I ponder these two readings, I somehow feel a disconnect exists between them and where you and I really live. Seems to me the mantra of out time is “you snooze, you lose”. Our 21st century culture seems to be moving at warp speed. We seemed to be hooked in, signed up, buying, selling, checking our email, and answering our cell phone around the clock. For many of us we’d be lost without our Palm Pilots or Blackberry’s since they contain our schedules, our contact lists, and all that other vital data that runs our lives.
Take a nap, stop for a few minutes, and somebody might just take over our business, steal our partner, or give our job or position to someone else. After all its progress that’s important: We have to make our personal and economic goals. To do this we spend double the money that we did fifty years ago for our goods and services; we live in home three times larger with twice as many things; work longer hours often because we hold multiple jobs. In short our gospel has become what we have, what we do, rather than who we are.
“Days pass and years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles” go the words of a Jewish prayer used on the eve of the beginning of the Sabbath. “Sabbath is a gift, but we are reluctant to accept it, that God has made it a command,” writes contemporary religious writer Barbara Brown Taylor. Both of these statements are poignant expressions of our need to not only re-think our need for Sabbath, but also issue an honest call to look again at how we might receive this wonderful gift and the inherent goodness it offers us.
In spite of the rapid pace of our world, God is continuing to extend this Sabbath invitation to us, this time to pause as we seek holy rest and reflection. This is amply illustrated in our story from Mark’s gospel. Jesus and his disciples go from the grain field to the synagogue, from feeding the body, to feeding the soul. Jesus challenges to the Sabbath laws were designed as an intentional disturbance to free people from the smothering effects of these laws, moving them to the grace and renewal they embody. Jesus’ action to heal the man with the withered, arthritic hand becomes a dramatic demonstration of such grace and renewal. The very presence of this man in the synagogue was in itself a disruption of the purity laws. In his broken state he should have been barred him from entrance. The hostility of the Pharisees to Jesus compassionate act only further underscores their lack of understanding not only of the true meaning of the Sabbath, but also their rejection of the goodness of God it holds out to us in it.
Perhaps Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Jewish mystic and philosopher, aptly summarizes what Jesus intuitively understood about the Sabbath and the very gift it can be for you and me. He writes: “The Sabbath is reminder of the two worlds — this world and the world to come; it is an example of both worlds. For the Sabbath is joy, holiness, and rest; joy is a part of this world; holiness and rest are something of the world to come.”
How then are we to respond to this Sabbath gift? In what ways may we prepare ourselves to receive its goodness in our lives?
I believe we begin by affirming with Jesus, as he does in today’s gospel, that the Sabbath was created for us. A day of rest from our labors, a day to enjoy the goodness of God and God’s creation is indeed part of God’s divine plan. As we allow ourselves this time, our communion with the living God is deepened. In such Sabbath space we may then “care for the need of eternity planted” in our souls as Abraham Joshua Heschel again tells us. And as John Calvin, the Reformation theologian observes, “On the Sabbath we cease our work so God can do God’s work in us.”
Adopting a set a personal Sabbath practice becomes our next step. The exact shape of such practice will of course be shaped by our own individual needs and situations. However, a pattern which provides rest from our daily occupations and tasks; time to share in communal worship; opportunities for study and reflection on God’s action in our lives; time to engage in compassionate service to others; and activities that refresh and renew our bodies and spirits; all these may become channels to experience to God’s goodness to us through Sabbath rest. Our faithfulness to such a pattern will draws us deeper into the sacred rhythm God has woven into all life and creation.
Finally, both our affirmation of God’s Sabbath gift and our adoption of a personal Sabbath practice will enable us to become prophetic witnesses to God’s goodness to others. Again the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel capture this message:
To set apart one day a week for freedom, a day on which we would not use
the instruments which have been so easily turned into weapons of destruction, a
day for being with ourselves, a day of detachment from the vulgar, of
independence of external obligations, a day on which we stop worshiping the
idols of technical civilization, a day of armistice in the economic struggle with
our fellow man and the forces of nature — is there any institution that holds a
greater hope for man’s progress than the Sabbath?
I wonder is this “goodness of God” what we want to rest in? Is this not some of our “light” we want to share with world?
I trust this is so. Amen.
God is the source of Divine Goodness.
I rest in God’s Divine Plan for me.
I accept God’s healing and wholeness,
in my body
in my mind
and in my spirit.I welcome all God’s material and spiritual good for me.
I rejoice in all God’s goodness for me as I reach to share it with others.
and so it is. Amen.
