Sabbath Day, Eternal Rest

Matthew 12:1-14It was probably my second year in Bible college when it finally hit me. Keeping theSabbath is one of the Ten Commandments. It is right up there with theft, murder andadultery. It was as though I was confronted with this for the first time in my life. I knewthat we didn’t plant or harvest on Sunday but we still fed the cattle, went to restaurantsand played hockey. And so what was my response to this moral crisis? I needed to findout what I should NOT be doing on Sunday. And this seems to have been our dilemmafor centuries now. In the book of Numbers a poor guy is struck dead for gathering stickson the Sabbath. In Jeremiah and Nehemiah the prophets warn the people not to do business on the Sabbath.The Jewish communities before and after Jesus continued to wrestle with the question. Inthe Dead Sea Scrolls we find various parameters on keeping the Sabbath. They talked of banning any foolish talk on the Sabbath, not opening any closed jars and standing tooclose to Gentile. Then in later Jewish literature Sabbath commands abound. TheMishnah is just a small sample of early Jewish regulations with pages and pages of seemingly obscure practices such as making sure you do not leave an egg close to hotwater or buried in the sand on a hot day so that it will not cook and break the Sabbathcommand against preparing food.The point of all these traditions is that Sabbath is both extremely important and also,apparently, difficult to fully understand and follow. When we reach the story of Jesushealing on the Sabbath and the Pharisees reaction it is easy for us to write off the Phariseeas fanatical. Give the guys a break they just picked a few heads of grain for a snack.And I mean come on, you can’t fault a guy for healing on the Sabbath. But do we have

2anything better to replace this type of legalism? We would do well to follow the wordsof Jeremiah and Nehemiah who closed the gates of Jerusalem on Sabbath so that no business would occur. Not only do we shop on Sundays but we live in a global economythat does not even rest at night. Business occurs 24 hours a day. What are we to do if wedesire to honour the Sabbath, keep it holy but also avoid excessive legalism?First let’s clear up our notion of what the Law regarding the Sabbath and the Law ingeneral was intended to achieve. We continue to view the biblical Law as this moral high bar that is impossible to achieve. I think most of us can agree that we cannot live out thelaw (or even the Ten Commandments) perfectly. However, this does not mean that theLaw itself is what we should aspire to as our moral goal. The law actually was never theideal for God. As hard as it may be to believe, the biblical law functioned normally asthe lowest common denominator of behaviour. Look for instance at the most famous OldTestament law in Exodus 21 where it says that if there is serious injury in a conflict thenthe repayment must be in kind, an eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth and a life for a life.This is often our image of the harshness of the Old Testament. This passage however,was

not

to be understood as the ideal way to resolve conflict. Rather, it was to be the

limit

of actions. If someone took the life of your son you were not able to demand the lifeof the murderer’s entire family. This was the minimum requirement that a society shouldfunction at. And as the prophets, wisdom writers and later Jesus remind us the laws andrituals themselves were never the goal of God’s plan. It is like the command in Leviticusthat farmers not to go over their field a second time at harvest so that the poor can surviveon what is left behind. This is a good law and a good social service to have in place.However, compare this to the banquet feast in the Gospels that Jesus talks about where all

3those lingering in the streets are invited. This image is slightly different than whatLeviticus calls us to. The law attempts to maintain the minimum health of thecommunity while God’s intention is a gracious and abundant communion with God andwith our neighbour. So when it comes to the Sabbath we are not called to create andmaintain an exhaustive list of laws stating what we can and cannot do on Sunday. To dothis is to believe that practicing the law can actually fulfill God’s intention.So what is it that Jesus adds to the discussion on Sabbath? Was it simply that hisdisciples picked some grain and Jesus said that was okay because they were hungry?Then he healed a man just so that the Pharisees would look really bad if they condemnedhim? How does that help us? It is our tendency to try and extract principles so that wecan create new laws. So the lesson is that if we are hungry or in need we can work on theSabbath or if we can help someone else it is okay to work. In the end reading passagesthis way often results in lowered view of Sabbath. Sabbath is something we apply as wefeel needed. I imagine this is where many of us are at today. We know that Sabbath isgood but we try to fit it in when it is convenient. As long as we are not doing somethingto bad or too strenuous we are okay. And I am sure most of us also suspect that we aredoing the Sabbath as disservice by reading Jesus this way. Our passage today is notabout the necessity of certain things to be performed on the Sabbath. I am certain thedisciples could have waited to find some acceptable food and Jesus could have waiteduntil the Sabbath was over to heal the man. Rather Jesus performed these two specificactions deliberately on the Sabbath.