“On Sabbath Keeping”
Mark 2:23-28
6/14/09
The past two Sundays have been holidays in the
Church year. First there was Pentecost Sunday when we celebrated
the sending of the Holy Spirit to do His work of delivering Jesus to
us. Then there was Holy Trinity Sunday when we celebrated the
work of the Triune God by which the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit achieved our salvation. But today is simply called the 2nd
Sunday after Pentecost. Nothing in particular is being celebrated
today (apart from the fact that every Sunday is a celebration of our
Lord’s work on the cross and His resurrection from the
dead). But this Sunday is the first of many such Sundays to come
in this six-month season of Pentecost when few major Church holidays
occur. And the season begins with a text from the Gospel
according to St. Mark that has to do with the Sabbath. So,
we’ve celebrated the gift of the Holy Spirit, we’ve
celebrated the persons of the Holy Trinity, and now we’re talking
about the Sabbath. It doesn’t seem to fit. Why should
a lesson on this subject follow such great celebrations? Why
should we begin the long season of Pentecost with a text on the
Sabbath, especially when the Church doesn’t even celebrate this
day anymore? I’m going to hold off on answering that
question until the end of the sermon.
First, let’s talk about the text itself from
the Gospel, which might clue us in as to why it has been put where it
is in the lectionary. In the beginning, God gave Adam and Eve
work to do. Work wasn’t a bad thing. It wasn’t
the result of sin. Even before the Fall Adam was commanded to
tend the garden. After the Fall, however, work got much harder
and man needed rest from his work once in a while. For the people
of Israel God had set aside a specific day for this rest - the seventh
day, or the Sabbath, the day when God Himself rested from His work of
creation. The commandment read: “Remember the Sabbath
day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your
work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On
it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your
male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the
sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made
heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the
seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made
it holy.” So, on this day God’s people were to rest;
they were to do no work. But that was only half of the
commandment. Even the pagans took off work once in a while; it
didn’t mean they were celebrating the Sabbath. In addition
to being a day off of work, the Sabbath was also a holy day, a day that
the LORD had sanctified, or put aside for a special purpose, and that
purpose was for the preaching and hearing of His Word. Like our
Sundays today, the Sabbath was the day of worship for the people of
Israel. From James in the book of Acts we are told that the
writings of Moses were read every Sabbath in the synagogues, and from
Paul we’re told that the Prophets also were read every Sabbath
day. And so Luther writes in the Small Catechism that the third
commandment is kept, when “we fear and love God, so that we do
not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear
and learn it.” Regular work was to be set aside on the
Sabbath to hear the Word of God.
The problem, however, in Jesus’ day was that
the religious leaders (the Pharisees) had focused on keeping the one
part of this commandment (that of doing no work) to the exclusion of
keeping the more important part (that of hearing the Word of
God). Oh, yes, the words might have gone into their ears, but
their hearts were hardened against it. Here it’s clear that
they even placed their own traditions above God’s Word. The
reason why they were so upset at Jesus is that according to them His
disciples were breaking the commandment by picking heads of grain to
eat as they walked along the fields. This picking constituted
work. To the Pharisees it was a kind of reaping and
threshing. They couldn’t have cared less about the
disciples and the fact that they were hungry. In their case, the
Law trumped love. Their motivation for enforcing the commandment
was not for the sake of the disciples, but for the sake of making sure
that the letter of the Law was followed regardless of their need.
Jesus, on the other hand, as the Lord of the Law,
shows the true spirit of the Law when He explains that man wasn’t
made for the Sabbath, but that the Sabbath was made for man. God
isn’t like these Pharisees. He doesn’t give us His
laws in order to make us slaves, but in order to protect His gifts to
us. It’s because He loves us and wants us to love one
another that He has given us the 10 commandments, and the third
commandment is an example of this. God doesn’t want mere
external obedience to this command, whether that means simply taking
off work or simply going through the motions of looking
religious. He wants His people to rest from their regular work,
so that they might gather together to hear the Word about His love for
them in Christ and to be fed on His Son’s body and blood.
God’s love for us is what should motivate us to keep the third
commandment, and it should be our motivation for instructing others to
keep it as well. With Jesus love trumps the Law.
Such was the case with David and his traveling
companions. On their way they became hungry and there was nothing
on hand but the special bread, or the bread of the presence, that was
placed in the tabernacle on a weekly basis. This bread was holy
bread, a bread that only the priests were allowed to eat. That
was God’s command, not man’s. But even that Law had
to give way to love in order that David and his men be strengthened on
their journey so that they wouldn’t faint on the way. Now,
if God’s laws must give way to the law of love, how much more
should the laws and traditions of men? In doing this for His
hungry disciples Jesus shows that He is Lord over His laws. He
shows that His laws were given for the sake of love and that therefore
love is the fulfillment of the Law. Where love is not the goal of
the keeping of the commandments, the commandments are not truly kept
even if they are kept outwardly.
The Sabbath cannot be kept apart from love.
That day wasn’t given by God to be a burden to His O.T. people
any more than going to church on Sundays is to be a burden to His N.T.
people today. But because by nature we do not love God as we
should, we have not kept this commandment out of love for Him, but have
turned it into something that we do in order to try to make ourselves
holy. This kind of worship God doesn’t accept, because it
does away with His work for us in Jesus. Worship was never meant
to be a work we do for God, but a gift to us from God, who wants us to
be refreshed not only in our bodies but also in our souls. The
former comes by way of earthly food and rest from physical labor; the
latter comes by way of the spiritual food of God’s Word and the
rest He gives us in Christ from our trying to work our way into heaven
by our obedience. The trouble is that while most of us are good
at being lazy and can easily rest from work, we’ve all failed at
enjoying the rest that God gives us through His Word. If not on
Sundays, then during the rest of the week, we often despise preaching
and His Word and do not gladly hear and learn it. At the same
time, like these Pharisees, we often maintain an outward show of
righteousness, going to church regularly, even when we don’t want
to be there, aren’t really listening, or just want to be
seen. And we’ve looked down on those who aren’t as
faithful attenders as we are. Like the Pharisees, we too have a
tendency to turn God’s gift of worship into a work of ours and in
the past have failed to really enjoy or pass on to others the rest God
wants to give us out of His love for us.
But this again is why Jesus is Lord of the
Sabbath. By rights we should be punished and condemned by the Law
for breaking it. God would be justified in pouring out His wrath
upon us, because we have spurned His love and His gifts. But here
again His love trumps His Law as He sends His Son to do for us what we
cannot do, and He fulfills all the demands of the Law Himself, then
suffers the punishment of the cross for our breaking those
demands. With the Sabbath God points you to Jesus. In Him
you have rest for your souls in the forgiveness of your sins - your
sins against the third commandment as well as all the others. For
the sake of His perfect obedience and His sacrificial death on the
cross you don’t have to work for your salvation. Jesus did
all the work for you, so that you might rest.
The way this rest is delivered to you is first of
all by way of your Baptism when you were placed into Christ.
United with Him in His death and resurrection through this bath you
entered into His rest. When God looks at you clothed with Christ
as you are now He sees you as if you yourself had perfectly kept all
His commandments, including that of remembering the Sabbath day to keep
it holy. Now, every day for you in Jesus is a Sabbath rest.
Christians are no longer required to keep one day holy over all the
others. Every day is a holy day for you in Jesus. The way
they are kept holy, however, is when we give ourselves over to the
hearing of God’s Word. Every day becomes a day of worship
when we listen to God’s Word and are directed through that Word
to Jesus in order to hear what He has done for our salvation.
That’s why Sunday is the day of worship for Christians, because
it was on this day that our Lord rose again from His rest in the tomb
after doing all that was required to achieve eternal rest for us.
So, now we can answer the question as to why we
should begin the Pentecost season with a lesson on the Sabbath, and
that is because this season is about delivering the rest that Jesus has
achieved for you. Pentecost is known as the season of growth in
the Christian life as the Holy Spirit works through your Baptism,
God’s Word, and the Holy Supper to deliver Jesus and His rest to
you. And this rest you can have even when you go to work in your
various vocations where you are actively serving your neighbor out of
love. You don’t do these things in order to earn
God’s favor; you can rest from that kind of work. You do
your works of love for your neighbor’s sake, not for your
own. The Sabbath rest is kept by trusting in the One who has done
all the work for you with regard to your salvation - Jesus
Christ. Today He feeds you who hunger and thirst for
righteousness on the wheat that is His body and on the wine that is His
blood, so that you might be satisfied and find rest for your
souls. Don’t let work (or anything else for that matter)
keep you from receiving that rest that God wants to give you in Jesus
through His Word. Continue to hear, read, mark, learn, and
inwardly digest the Word, that you might always be on the receiving end
of God’s love for you in Christ and enjoy His rest now and
forever. Amen.