How many of you growing up were told there were things that you couldn t do on Sunday?

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Buck Holt
5 years ago
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1 Sermon on Mark 2: 23 3: 6 John Wayne vs God Okay, let s start today with a short survey. How many of you growing up were told there were things that you couldn t do on Sunday? And how many of you ever got into trouble for doing something you weren t meant to do on Sunday? And here s the most important question how many of you thought (or said) that it was all terribly unfair? How many of you ever asked why it was you couldn t do certain things on a Sunday? How many of you were satisfied with the answer? All of us who have grown up in the church have been caught out at some point I imagine. There was always some (of course well meaning) religious law enforcer with a badge just waiting to trip you up: You can t do that play cricket, spend money, make too much noise, watch television, run around with your friends on a Sunday. It s sacrilege. Sunday is God s day, not yours. You kids are completely out of control these days, this wouldn t have been tolerated in my day in Christian love. As one brought up in the church at the tail end of this culture, I still feel the pangs of guilt when Joe says after church every so often can we have fish and chips today? But, but, but it s Sunday I say in my head oh the bitter shame and sorrow! Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labour 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 for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath Day and made it holy. Exodus 20: 8-11, the fourth of the Ten Commandments. And interestingly, the one given the most commentary in the list. 1

2 There s an extended reflection on what the Sabbath is and why it s important to keep it holy for the Lord. It s a day of rest, a day away from labour and activity. A day to worship God and be still. A day to be at peace with God and one another. For just as God rested on the 7 th day, thereby making it holy, so should we. Practising the Sabbath, or shabbat, a Hebrew word which literally means, to rest or cease, corresponds to God s own pattern of being and creating. I m sure most of you remember a time when the whole of society was shaped around the importance of keeping Sunday, the Christian Sabbath day, holy, quiet, prayerful. Shops wouldn t open, people would be mostly at home, not many cars on the road. Perhaps that was the last really noticeable vestige of Christianity s hold over the wider society, of what we might call Christendom the time when the Christian faith, and therefore the church, held sway over the whole culture, its shape, its practices, its morality. This all seems a bit much these days though doesn t it? Sabbath keeping is a thing of the past nowadays. At best a quaint tradition of not much use anymore. At worst the moralistic remnant of an overbearing church. Either way, God is off the agenda, just like the Sabbath. Or as Lillian Daniel suggests, people are more likely to claim spiritual enlightenment through a long cup of coffee and divine communion with the New York Times. I actually read an article in a Christian publication recently that suggested we simply need to get used to the fact that attendance at church once or twice a month is the new normal. There are brunches to be had. 2

3 Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon trace the day everything changed to a moment in Greenville South Carolina. In defiance of the state s time honoured blue laws [which dated incidentally from 1692, banning certain activities on a Sunday, and are still in large part officially the law by the way], the Fox Theatre opened on a Sunday. (Cue dramatic disaster music). Seven of us, the authors go on (maybe we could call them the magnificent seven), regular attenders of the Methodist Youth Fellowship at Buncombe Street Church made a pact to enter the front door of the church, be seen, then quietly slip out the back door and join John Wayne at the Fox. That evening has come to represent a watershed in the history of Christendom South Carolina style. The Fox Theatre went head to head with the church over who would provide the world view for the young. That night in 1963 the Fox won the opening skirmish. So, it was John Wayne at the Fox, rather than the MYF. And in one way or another this battle has been going on ever since. And the church is not winning. Whether it s movie cinemas, sport, shopping, the western world has a new god and his name is consuming. Against this backdrop we read this strange Gospel text for today and wonder what to make of it. The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath, so the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath, Jesus says as he rebukes the Pharisees. The Pharisees were a loose knit group in the Judaism of Jesus day, who sought, in Tom Wright s words to, purify Israel through intensified observance of the Jewish law. They were the law keepers who oversaw religious practice. 3

4 So when some Pharisees see the disciples picking grain on the Sabbath, presumably out of hunger, they object. This is unlawful behaviour on the Sabbath, they say with a grumble. There were long and involved commentaries on what it meant to keep the Sabbath holy, the do s and don ts, and while what the disciples were doing was actually not against the religious law, still it was apparently too close to the wind. Similarly, Jesus gets in trouble for healing a man on the Sabbath in the very next episode. Someone once said there are three kinds of people in this world: the law makers, the law breakers, and the law keepers. You might be wondering which one you are? We all like a bit of a law breaker don t we? Perhaps that s why as a society we chose John Wayne, the Fox, the shops over the Sabbath. We ve all seen those westerns with the law man who stretches (if not breaks) the rules in order to see the dastardly outlaw brought to justice. We feel right about it in our bones. The transgression has a higher purpose and we approve. We side with Jesus as he sticks it to the legalists. Of course the disciples should be able to pick the grain. Of course he should heal the injured man in the synagogue. Perhaps this text tells us the wider culture is right. Why should we be bound by these strange and apparently restrictive rules about the Sabbath? We might ditch the MYF for John Wayne down at the Fox as well. 4

5 Maybe this is the reasonable thing to do for people in our era in general, throwing off the hangover of a legalistic and overbearing church? Sabbath out, sleep well in? That would be, however, a simplistic view. And indeed a mistake. Jesus isn t rejecting the Sabbath. Rather he s taking a different interpretation. He s looking through a different lens. He s not throwing the baby out with the bathwater and neither should we. Jesus indeed affirms the Sabbath, just not a punitive enforcing of it, especially not when it is being used to point fingers at others to catch people out. Like a religious speed gun just waiting for unsuspecting motorists to come around the corner 10 ks over the moral speed limit. The law keepers seem a little zealous in their wish to see the disciples brought to heel. But how can feeding the hungry or healing the sick possibly be unlawful on the day that the old law marks out as the Lord s day, holy, and dedicated to God? Some might say such acts of grace and love on the day of the Lord could not be more apt on the Lord s holy day, the day when we remember God s might acts of creation and resurrection. So if we can all agree what an unhelpful theology of the Sabbath looks like, how might we re-understand it in a way which brings insight and connection with God? Well, perhaps these strange texts about Sabbath keeping are our best clue. Perhaps the legalistic approach is what we re really reacting against the Pharisees of our youth or otherwise who imposed a moral law on us we found stifling and judgemental: ie, not the thing itself, but the way it has been enacted? Jesus comes at it from a different angle which perhaps we could call a kingdom perspective. He declares that the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. 5

6 That is the one who makes God known, the crucified and resurrected one, the life that is the heart of God s love to us is Lord of the Sabbath. The one who ushers in the reign of God. Look at the Sabbath through this life, so illuminated with the light of God it illuminates everything else, and we will see it in a whole new light: not as a restrictive imposition, but as a gift of God. Not a dry moral duty, but as an expansive time of prayerfulness in the Kingdom. Not as a guilt inducing laundry list or moral do s and don ts, but as entry into the joy of faith in Jesus. A time to be present before God in rest, in peace, in worship, in prayer. On our knees and with spirit s bowed. You never know, Sabbath keeping might just turn out to be good for us. I was reading an article the other day which noted a certain preacher s description of heaven as the place where every day is a Sunday. Where everyday is Sabbath. Every day is the day of resurrection, ow the power of resurrection, of God s new life in Jesus. Forever. And in today s world, as it turns out, being a Sabbath people, keeping a time reserved for God is itself a counter-cultural way to be. It s a way of saying actually, despite the strictures of previous incarnations, it is in being a Sabbath people, rather than down at the Fox Theatre with John Wayne, that we will come to see our lives as of ultimate worth and grace. Of their ultimate purpose and meaning. With a waiting place in God s own heart reserved for us. When we find rest for our souls, as we rest in God s own time. Walter Brueggemann wrote a book called, Sabbath as Resistance. 6

7 He describes in it how in our consumer driven world, where everything pays homage to the almighty dollar, where personal worth is often understood by what we can produce, leading us to frantic busy-ness all the time, where personal preference is regarded as the holy grail of our existence, how being a people who take time with God actually speaks to a more holy way. That by being a Sabbath people in the Kingdom, we resist the prevailing attractions of our day. It turns out the people of faith become those who break the rules of a world which says the Fox theatre is where it s really at, by keeping the Sabbath. By entering into the joy of the Lord set before us in Jesus who was happy to heal, feed, laugh, and to be with others on the Sabbath, because those things are of God, and the Sabbath is God s time. Bringing health, love, and laughter, to life now and ever after, for the good of us all. we sang just before. The Sabbath, here and now, points us to eternity where every day is a Sunday. Someone was once asked why they come to church every Sunday, to get me through to the next Sunday, came the instant reply. To recharge the prayer batteries, and reconnect our spirits with God s, and to have our minds and hearts and lives re-directed towards heaven. A long time ago, at the turn of the 5 th century, St Augustine wrote his Confessions. It is one of the great spiritual works of the faith, really an elongated prayer through which Augustine opens up his life in forensic honesty to God. In the closing of the book he offers some words on the Sabbath which say far more wonderfully and powerfully what the Sabbath is and is for than I could muster: they help us reflect not only on why keeping the Sabbath is a way of the Kingdom, but God s way of framing our lives for which he made us: They form a prayer, so I invite you to be at rest, and at peace, as we pray together: Silence Augustine s prayer. 7

Radical Minimum: a weekly time set aside for rest and worship.

Book: Verse pg. # Book: Verse pg. # Radical Minimum: a weekly time set aside for rest and worship. For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day shall be your holy day, a day of sabbath rest