Summary 

What do we do with Sabbath? Well, so often it is used as a badge of honor, a way of sowing who is in and who is out. What it was always intended for was as a celebration and a reflection of God's good work of creation and recreation.

Transcript

I would guess that many of you have seen the comedian Nate Bargatze’s SNL skits as George Washington. In the SNL 50th anniversary episode he plays George Washington crossing the Delaware. His soldiers are dejected, wondering how they will ever live the battle. And he steps in to enliven their courage with these words: 

“We will live through the battle ahead because we fight to control our own destiny, to create our own nation, and to do our own thing with the English language.”
“Our own thing sir?” says one of his troops.
“Yes. I dream that one day, our great nation will have a word for the number ‘twelve.’ We shall call it ‘a dozen.’” 
“And what other numbers will we have a word for?”
“None, because we are free men. And we will be free to spell some words two ways.”
“What words, sir?”
“Donut. And the name Jeff.”
“We will also have two names for animals–one when they are alive, and a different one when they become food. So cows will be beef, and pigs will be pork,”
“And chickens, sir?”
“That one stays. Chickens are chicken. And we will create our own foods. And name them what we want. Like the hamburger.”
“Made of ham, sir?”
“If it only were that simple. A hamburger is made of beef, just as a buffalo wing is made of chicken,” he clarified. “But fear not, men: hot dogs will not be made of dogs.”
“What is it made of, sir?”
“Nobody knows.” 

In the previous skit he rallied them with the freedom we have as Americans to choose our own system of weights and measure. To which, of course, one of his soldiers replies, “Weights and measures, sir?”“Yes, I dream that one day our proud nation will measure weights in pounds and that 2,000 pounds will be called a ton.”
“And what will 1,000 pounds be called, sir?”
“Nothing.”
“Seems like we should have a word for 1,000 pounds, sir?”
“And yet we won’t, because we are free men. And we will be free to measure liquids in liters and milliliters, but not all liquids, only soda, wine and alcohol.”
“Only those, sir?”
“Yes. Because for milk, paint we will use gallons, pints and quarts, God willing.”
“And how many liters are in a gallon, sir?”
“Nobody knows.”

Ok, I could go on, but you should just go watch it. And no secretly right now on your phones.But I share this with you because we watch it and laugh because it all sounds both so uninspiring and so arbitrary. 

Summary 

What do we do with Sabbath? Well, so often it is used as a badge of honor, a way of sowing who is in and who is out. What it was always intended for was as a celebration and a reflection of God's good work of creation and recreation. 

Transcript

Somewhat like rules around the Sabbath. 

Some of you are old enough to remember Blue Laws, laws that states put in place to guard what is done on Sundays. Now, I want to say that I think that many of those rules likely had merit and good intentions. Chronological snobbery is something that every age wrestles with, but maybe especially us modernist with our ideas of societal progress. We should all at least consider that encouraging one another to slow down one day of the week and doing so with laws may not have been a bad idea. But do you know that here in Pennsylvania we still have a couple Blue Laws in place?  

I read that you cannot buy a car on Sunday in Pennsylvania, which I actually find hard to believe. Maybe it’s true still, and maybe car salesmen should all be imprisoned. Do you know, that besides three Sundays a year, you cannot hunt in PA and that you can never hunt Turkey on Sundays, but that you can always hunt foxes, crows and coyotes on Sunday in Pennsylvania. I didn’t either. And we would all admit that that feels a little random and arbitrary. 

We are in the final of five run-ins that Jesus has with the Scribes and Pharisees in these beginning chapters of Mark. Last week the fourth run-in was on the Sabbath. There Jesus was walking through grain fields and his disciples were plucking heads of grain and eating them on the Sabbath. And the Pharisees (I imagine them jumping out from behind some grain, though they were probably just in the large entourage that was following Jesus) they said “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath.” Last week, we saw how Jesus answered them by directing them to David and his eating of the consecrated bread that was for the priests. And I suggested to you that what Jesus was saying is that in their built-up rules they were missing God’s anointed one when he is right in front of them. I said that we can be close to God and miss him. That’s a real warning for all of us religious folk. Religion can obscure God.  

Today we have another sabbath run in. And today I want us to consider sabbath breaking and sabbath keeping. 

First, Sabbath breaking

So, the Pharisees are watching Jesus. Jesus is at the synagogue, the place of Jewish worship, and there is a man there with a withered hand. The Pharisees are watching Jesus to see if he will heal this man on the Sabbath, verse 2 says, “so that they might accuse him.” They are the Sabbath keepers, they are the gatekeepers, they are the ones who know the law, BUT what Jesus says, fairly plainly to us, is they are Sabbath breakers. 

Why do I say that?  

Well, because Jesus says to them, “Is it lawful?” Right? He’s getting at the right and the wrong, the breaking and the keeping.  What he is doing in this is suggesting that they are actually the ones who are not keeping the law if they think that Jesus healing this man on the sabbath is wrong.  

Hmm. 

Sabbath was instituted by God at creation. We saw that in our OT reading. God created for six days and then he rested. And he didn’t rest out of need, as if God was wearied (a break from our weariness is not how we are to sabbath!). He rested out of delight in what he had done. And this was the foundation for sabbath keeping in Israel. It was never just to be some break because you are weary, which is how so many tend to view it, but it is rather a day for delight in what God has done. The argument for Sabbath observance in Exodus is God’s resting after creation and God was not weary, he was delighted. The argument for Sabbath observance in Deuteronomy was not the weariness of God or of his people, but they fact that God had delivered them out of slavery, so they did not need to be slaves to their work. The sabbath principles in the Bible are for the sake of remembering God’s work of creation and of recreation. 

Flemming Rutledge, the great Episcopal theologian, said this: “If you know that the reconciliation of all things is the grand design of the Creator of the universe, then your own individual and communal acts of faithfulness to one another become signs in this world of the world to come.”

 The Sabbath was to be a sign of what God had done in creation and recreation.  

Just think about this. We all look at the ten commandments and for the most part say “Yeah, that’s wise.” Coveting? Not good. Adultery? Yeah, don’t do that. Stealing? Not good. Sabbath? Yeah, break that one. It’s at least the one that many Christians engage with as a take-it or leave-it mentality. 
One of the few things we boast openly about in our world is how busy we are. We are always busy, and it is a badge of honor. I would bet that the number one answer I get, and you get when you ask others how they are doing is this: “I’m so busy!” “Life is so full!” 

And God invited, no, he commanded, Israel to rest, not just because it is hard to rest but because they were to learn to delight in God’s work of creation and recreation.  

“Wait, wait, wait, Peter, I thought you were talking about Sabbath breaking?” 

Well, I am.  

Because what the Jews had done, what particular these religious leaders had done, was take a good thing that God had given them and made it into badge and a flag. They had not only put all kinds of barriers around it, like not plucking grain and eating it on your walk with your fiends, but they had made it into a weapon. They had taken this good and right religious practice and weaponized it. Made it so that they could tell who is in and who is out. It was sign of being a true Jew. It was part their religious nationalism. The Sabbath was to be part of what set them aside as a people of light to the world of the creator God and of his commitment to its recreation. It was to be a light, bearing witness against workaholism, against exploitation of the land, against salvation by our own efforts, for the beauty of the world, for the truth that God brings order and beauty out of emptiness and chaos, for the truth that God is committed to the God of his world and his people. And yet they made it into a badge, a flag that says we are in and you are out! And this wasn’t just the case as a nation, but it also functioned towards the detriment their own people. For them the rules mattered more than the reality of what God had done and is doing.  

But Jesus says that in doing that to the Sabbath they were the sabbath breakers! 

You can engage with the good laws of God in a way that breaks them. Maybe this is why Jesus always seems so liberal in his sabbath observance. That is exactly what they were doing and what so many still do today. We can take God’s instructions for us, which are supposed to be sweeter than honey and more precious than gold and silver to us and use them to tear others down and to build ourselves up. And yes, we are seeing this all over today. This was a political way of engaging with the good instruction of God then and it is now. 

So, Sabbath breaking.  

Second, Sabbath Keeping. 

First, the text starts with “Again, he entered the synagogue.” We know that it was Jesus’ practice to worship on the sabbath in the synagogue. He keeps sabbath.  

But that also begs a question that many of you might have: Why Christians worship on Sunday and not Saturday? I mean, ever since Mt Sinai, Jews would set aside as holy to the Lord Saturday as a Sabbath and now Christians come along and set apart Sunday as a Sabbath to the Lord. Maybe some of you know why. The answer is that Sunday is the day of Jesus’ resurrection. We know from Acts 20 that early Christians gathered on the first day of the week to celebrate communion, which would be the day of Resurrection. We also know from 1 Corinthians 16 that that was the day they gathered for worship and to collect the monetary offerings of the community. And Revelation 1 calls it the Lord’s Day, because it was the day the Lord rose from the dead. 

Why would they change that practice for the resurrection? Because that is the day that established both is new creation and his recreation of his people. You see the original hope of the world of a place of goodness and peace that God delighted in on the original seventh day of creation is brought about in resurrection of Jesus. The salvation of Israel out from slavery in Egypt that they celebrated by setting apart for god the Sabbath is a foreshadowing Christ conquering all that enslaves us bye his resurrection.  

So, what is more consistent with a sabbath principle, to heal this man with the withered hand or to allow him to live enslaved to a world that is not right?! What is more consistent with what God did ate creation? What is more consistent with the resurrection?  

So, Jesus says to the man, in the face of these persnickety religious nationalists, “Stretch out your hand!” And it is restored. Because Jesus is doing the work of restoring creation and us to what we were made for! 

Jesus is the sabbath keeper. And to keep Sabbath is to give it to God. 

In our theological tradition we have said that right sabbath observance is to give ourselves to worship (which of course would make sense because we are celebrating what God has done in his creation and recreation) and necessity. Maybe the best way to think about it is what would a day look like that reflects what God has done in Christ’s resurrection? What would a day look like that fights against slavery and our cultures incessant demands on us that draw us from God? What would a day look like that celebrates resurrection? 

The Pharisees go out and they counsel with their enemies because they find Jesus too lax on their laws. They will go to whatever lengths to kill him because he threatens them. And he threatens them by giving life.  

Sabbath breakers, sabbath keepers.  

Let me get back to SNL as a way of ending. So, in this unbelievably hilarious skit there is some serious social commentary going on.  

After George Washington declares what we all know, that nobody knows how many liters are in a gallon, Kenan Thompsons character, who, of course, is black, because Kenan Thompson is black, says “And sir, in this new county, what plans are there for people of color such as I?” 

“Distance will be measured in inches, feet, a yard and a mile,” George Washington replies. “So 12 inches to a foot” “Twelve feet to a yard” (one of his soldiers chimes in). “If only it were that simple. Three feet to a yard.” “And how many yards to a mile? “Nobody knows.”  

But numerous times in both of these skits Kenen’s character asks about people like him, enslaved people of color. And we all hear, and we all hear correctly, the plight of the African American voice in the midst of such random and arbitrary dictates like there being 5,280 feet to a mile!! And we know the fact that that awful history is because so many religious people in their pursuit of power justified such action with the Bible and yet failed to heed the good law of God! Some of you will notice how I haven’t given instruction - a list of dos and don’ts in this sermon. That is intentional. That so often, even in its good intentions, enslaves when applied to sabbath ideas. 

But, friends, Jesus is not George Washington, he is not Thomas Jefferson. As good as those men were, he is not a slave owner, he is a slaver deliverer! He longs for your sabbath to be life-giving because it is the celebration of creation and recreation. 

Friends, we would all do well to ask how to keep sabbath well. Please have these conversations with your friends, with your children, with your spouses. 

But know that the best laws are only reflection of the lawgiver. If how you keep it does not celebrate and creation and recreation, you have missed the whole point. Let’s reflect Jesus and his great work on the cross and the empty tomb in all that we do and say and think. Amen.

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