The reading
Luke 6:1-16
One Sabbath while Jesus was going through the grain fields,
his disciples plucked some heads of grain, rubbed them in their hands, and ate
them. But some of the Pharisees said,
"Why are you doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?" Jesus
answered, "Have you not read what David did when he and his companions
were hungry? He entered the house of God
and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but
the priests to eat, and gave some to his companions?" Then he said to
them, "The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath." On another Sabbath he
entered the synagogue and taught, and there was a man there whose right hand
was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would
cure on the Sabbath, so that they might find an accusation against him. Even though he knew what they were thinking,
he said to the man who had the withered hand, "Come and stand here."
He got up and stood there. Then Jesus
said to them, "I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath,
to save life or to destroy it?"
After looking around at all of them, he said to him, "Stretch out
your hand." He did so, and his hand was restored. But they were filled with fury and discussed
with one another what they might do to Jesus. Now during those days he went out
to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples
and chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter,
and his brother Andrew, and James, and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of
Alphaeus, and Simon, who was called the Zealot,
and Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.
I grew up going to church.
My mother would bring my brother and I to worship every Sunday, we went
to religious education on Wednesday afternoons, did our sacraments, read the
bible, said our prayers and were raised to follow and respect the 10
commandments, to not steal, lie or hurt others.
The one we never heard much about was honoring the Sabbath. It did not mean a day of rest or of not
working, it pretty much meant Sunday was church in the morning and then just a
regular day. The only rules I can
remember even like keeping the Sabbath were my mom’s insistence that you do not
do laundry on your birthday, Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Sunday or
Thanksgiving. Even today, If I happen to mention “im just doing some laundry”
on one of those days, my mom will tell me “you can’t do that”.
As I prepared for this morning, I wondered does anyone here
at our church care about Sabbath observation.
I work through most Sundays, I barely blink when someone says “ I can’t
be at church Sunday, I have to go into work”, I do not view it as a sin and
most of the time simply say, “sorry we’ll miss you”, “you can read my sermon
online if you feel so inclined”, “is there anything you want us to pray about”
or “see you next week”.
I spent most of this week, thinking I knew what was going on
in this reading. It was a simple and
very clear example of a human and love focused Jesus confronting those letter
of the law type religious leaders, who were only concerned with keeping the
rules. The easiest, traditional view of
these stories imply that the Pharisees are only concerned with obeying the law
and that they did not care about people who are hungry or the man suffering
with the withered hand.
On Saturday morning, I happened across an article that
warned pastors preparing for today’s reading, wait a minute, not so fast. The author of the article is Wesley Allen, a
professor of preaching at Perkins Seminary. What first caught my attention is
that he opened the article by just going out and saying what I thought when I first
saw today’s reading, “barely anyone in our communities care about keeping the
Sabbath rest”. Allen goes on to remind
the reader that these debates with the Pharisees about the Sabbath were vital
to the life of Jesus community at the time. This conversation was a very big
deal. The Sabbath mattered then and it does now.
There were several different groups of religious leaders at
Jesus time, each with their own good and bad beliefs and practices. The Pharisees were the most similar to our
church today, sort of the liberal protestant group of their time. Allen writes
As other Jewish authorities
insisted that people needed priests and
the temple to mediate between them and God, the Pharisees democratized
religious experience, the Pharisees offered to people modes and means of
devotional practice that could be followed anywhere by anyone without direct
oversight or mediation by religious leaders. This means that we can assume the
challenges which the Gospel writers present them as having to Jesus’ actions
are sincere concerns about the welfare of the people and the shared ritual
practices available to them.
This leads to 2 conclusions:
1: that this was a debate within Jewish traditions where Jesus and the
Pharisees both saw the Sabbath as important but had different ways of
expressing and practicing it and
2, that doing good on the Sabbath was allowed
under the law, that works of healing and care for others were not prohibited.
I wanted to share two
stories about these conclusions.
One of the churches that share our space with us, the South
Indian Seventh Day Adventist congregation, do keep the Sabbath on Friday
evening to Saturday evening (the time established in the Old Testament and
still kept today by the Jewish people) I stopped in to join them for their
Christmas celebration (which they are sort of not supposed to have). I ended up in a relatively aggressive debate
with their pastor and another visiting Seventh Day Adventist minister about the
Sabbath (most of the churches that share the space with us and I get into it
from time to time). Our churches see things differently. In the
SDA tradition, keeping the Old Testament Sabbath is at the heart of their
understanding, a time of pause for rest and reflection on God’s love. For us, the Sabbath is now on Sunday. The
early church moved it to differentiate them from Judaism and because the
Sabbath marks the day that Christ rose from the dead, the central event of our
faith that we gather around each worship. After 20 minutes or so, we all had
about enough and I sarcastically or jokingly said “well I guess none of us are
converting the other today” and we realized, something else was happening. This conversation was a chance to learn,
listen, hear each other, and challenge assumptions. We
listened, we learned and we are able to simply leave it at we see things
differently. (It’s not a surprise that
different religious groups see things differently and its actually sort of
healthy to talk with people who don’t agree with us)
I grew up in Brooklyn right next to Borough Park, an area
with one of the world’s largest Orthodox Jewish communities. If I found myself
walking through the area on the Sabbath or a Holy Day, I would often get ran
down and stopped on the street with a simple question “are you Jewish”. I would
say “no” and then I knew what was next.
I would be asked to turn on some lights in a meeting room, turn on or off
a stove, light a few cigarettes, transfer money from one place to another, or
do some other task that was defined as work which Orthodox Jewish people were
prohibited to do on the Sabbath. I
always had two thoughts; first, this is ridiculous and silly and second, I had respect
for people who study scripture, shape, adjust and consider rules with new ways
of living and keep these traditions as their people have for many
generations.
We need more time like this, time to listen to each other
and time to ask what does remaining faithful to Christian practices mean and
look like for us today. We Also need more
Sabbath, time set aside to focus on God and remember we are loved. This was a long, rough week and I spent a lot
of time thinking, I need a break, I need some time off, I need help. Wednesday night, I got an email, which at
first was an annoying something else to do. I had enough sense to wait until I
had a few minutes and actually read it.
The message was really beautiful and important, something that really
helped me get through the week and remember what church is for. This is what we can and should be doing for
others.
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