3rd of June: 2 nd Sunday after Pentecost: Deuteronomy 5.12–15;Mark 2.23–3.6

Keeping the Sabbath Holy

From the opening scene of Jesus’ public ministry, where he drives out an evil spirit, Mark is quick to let us know about the opposition Jesus faced to his authority and power.

Questions about healing, questions about fasting, questions about the company Jesus kept: if the Gospel’s opening chapters reveal that God’s power is at loose in the world in a new and decisive way, these same encounters suggest there is trouble ahead, trouble from those who feel their power and position coming under threat.

So it is that with his ministry having started on a Sabbath in a synagogue, a holy place on a holy day, this morning we hear that an angry Jesus is left wondering at the Pharisees’ apparent lack of understanding and compassion while they in turn plot with the Herodians about how they might kill Jesus.

And central to the dispute was the Sabbath and what it means to keep it holy.

Sacred days were probably quite common in the ancient world but the instruction to keep a weekly Sabbath as a day of rest may well have been unique to Israel.

Whereas Biblical scholars suggest that among other nations sacred days were marked by taboos, arbitrary superstitious prohibitions in case the gods should be offended, ¹ the Sabbath commandment only prohibited one thing—work.

In the Exodus account of the Ten Commandments (20:8–11), people are invited not to do any work on the Sabbath because of the divine pattern set in creation.

For six days God created the heavens and the earth but on the seventh day God rested.

What is noticeable, however, is that in the Deuteronomic version of the commandments the motivation to observe the Sabbath is humanitarian.

In Deuteronomy the people of Israel are reminded of their enslavement in Egypt, presumably a time when they endured forced labour and were made to work all the hours.

Having experienced the grinding hardship of unremitting toil the people are now encouraged to take a day’s rest from their labours—and not just them, their family, their employees and their animals too.

Although work is not defined—this was not an invitation to idleness because clearly animals would still need to be fed and watered as much as human beings would need to look after themselves—the principle of what was being proposed was clear enough.

God’s purpose is always to provide for our well-being, the well-being of others and the well-being of all creation, and so from ancient times the Sabbath was given as a day apart from the more normal routine of life, a day when as well as the human heart and soul, the whole of God’s creation could be nourished in different ways.

And that was one of the things which so upset Jesus when confronted on a Sabbath by a man with a disabled hand, namely, that the Pharisees and others had lost sight of the principle of human nurturing and human flourishing.

‘Is it lawful to do good or to do evil on the Sabbath,’ Jesus asked, ‘to save life or to kill?’, and you can hear his voice shaking with anger and frustration at the Pharisees’ failure to realise that the Sabbath had been established for the welfare of humanity, not the other way round.

In order to grasp the depth of what is involved here, we also need to understand something of what was at stake for the Pharisees in this controversy.

From their perspective, the myriad laws surrounding what was allowed and what was not allowed on the Sabbath were intended not just to encourage personal rest and recreation but to provide public markers of a community’s devotion to God.

Observing these many rules and regulations was what obedience and faithfulness looked like and breaking them carried the risk, as the Pharisees saw it, not just of offending God but of diminishing an individual’s commitment to the community of faith.

And so as the opening chapters unfold, what began as a fairly mild questioning of Jesus and his disciples, a wondering if they didn’t quite understand what they were doing healing or plucking corn, soon became an aggressive interrogation and a lying in wait to trap him as the Pharisees and Herodians sensed the threat Jesus actions and attitude posed to their power and control.

This commentator puts it well when she writes, ‘Jesus’ radical freedom to authorize acceptable Sabbath behaviour poses a threat to those who seek governance over these matters.’ ²

Important as it is to grasp something of what was at stake for the Pharisees in their confrontation with Jesus, is it not even more important to ask what is at stake for us.

Or to put that in other words, what do you do to keep the Sabbath holy—and as a community of faith what do we do to keep it holy?

As we hear these ancient texts we do so against a background of incessant noise and activity.

With news channels running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and with the big superstores open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, many people struggle to keep up and feel burdened by so many demands upon their time and energy.

How many parents, working Mums in particular, struggle with the competing demands of balancing work and home and family life?

Juggling the different balls, keeping all the different plates spinning; choose your own metaphor but it is though these patterns of behaviour have become part of everyday life and discourse almost without us noticing.

Asset rich and time poor, always on the go, little time to pause and catch breath, a frenetic scheduling of all our competing commitments—and at what cost, at what cost to our health and well-being, at what cost to our family’s health and well-being, at what cost to our community’s health and well-being?

At a time when the internet has allowed us to be more connected than at any other time in human history, why is it that loneliness and feelings of disconnect are identified as among the major social and spiritual ills of contemporary life?

Listen again to the gospel, to the story of Jesus and his disciples walking through a field and picking some corn, and to his Sabbath confrontation with the Pharisees over a man with a disabled hand—and knowing everything God asks us to do is asked for our health and well-being, ask yourself this: what you are doing to observe the Sabbath and to keep it holy?