JESUS, THE SABBATH BUSTER? 1 SAMUEL 3:1-10 10 MARK 2:23-3:6 3:6 JUNE 2, 2018 TOM WHARTENBY SUNDAY SUNDAY,, AT TALLADEGA! I can still hear the radio blasting that out during the week. When Mary Elizabeth and I lived in Huntsville Alabama, auto racing of all kinds reigned supreme. And if not at Talladega, there were always local drag races on SUNDAY! Of course, now there is much much more on SUNDAY. We have the NFL countdown starting in the morning hours followed by Football all day and late into Sunday Night We have the final round of all the professional golf and Tennis tournaments We have professional baseball and basketball And then there s always the local AAU sports tournaments and various and sundry other events scheduled for our young people and their families. All on Sunday! 1
Do you suppose this is what Jesus intended when he made his famous and oft quoted remark, The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath? Let s take a look at what happened just before Jesus made those famous remarks. Perhaps that will shed light on how Jesus understood his own aphorism. ONE SABBATH DAY JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES WERE ON THE GO. As usual, they were hungry. Torah had provided for the hunger of travelling Israelites. One was permitted to pluck a bit of grain as one travelled through a field. Allowing others to you re your grain was one of Torah s examples of how one loved his neighbor. Grain-plucking was not, however, permitted on the Sabbath when long journeys themselves were forbidden. Jesus rises to the defense of his disciples as a good teacher should do. He does it, however, in a strange way. He mentions David doing something that is not remotely similar to what the disciples were doing. Jesus seems more interested in connecting himself to King David then in defending his followers to the Scribes. What s up? 2
IN THE NEXT SCENE JESUS SEEMS TO BE BAITING HIS ENEMIES. Jesus went to the synagogue as he always did on the Sabbath. He sees a man there who has a withered hand. He asks the Law-guardians whether or not it is legal to do good on the Sabbath. They refuse to answer him. Jesus becomes furious-the only time in Scripture this emotion is attributed to him. He heals the man anyway. Now he could have waited until sundown and healed him; the disease was not life-threatening. Did Jesus just lose his cool? Was he sticking it to the man as we used to say back in the tumultuous 60 s? Or was there something else going on entirely? Actually, several things are going on here. One clue is to be found in his assertion that The Son of Man is Lord, even of the Sabbath. THESE EVENTS POINT FIRST AND FOREMOST TO WHO JESUS IS. That s the great question in Mark s Gospel. When the disciples almost drowned in the storm at sea and Jesus rose up and calmed the storm, they cried out, Who then is this that even 3
the wind and the waves obey him? In the very center of the Gospel Jesus asks the twelve, Who do you say that I am? These two stories give partial and preliminary answers to that question. Jesus is of the lineage of David. In fact he is the long-awaited Messiah, the long-promised King. He has rights even greater than those David had. He is also the Son of Man foretold by Daniel. As such he is the Lord of the Sabbath and consequently has the right to rewrite the Sabbath s rules and specify its proper rites. Jesus architectonic principle in all of this is that The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. That is to say, it was a gift from God meant to set man free to be truly human, not a burden meant to bind him in chains. AS THE COMING KING, JESUS IS POINTING ING TO A NEW AGE WITH A NEW WAY OF LIVING. The piety of the new age is to be shaped by the law of love. Compassion for those who are hurting in one way or another is to be a principal guide to what is right and what is wrong. It should always be lawful to do good on the day set aside to worship God. This is so because the God whom Jesus reveals is a God of Love, pure compassion, He. This God is not a God who makes up 4
burdensome rules and then watches silently for rule-breakers, ready to say Gotcha and rain down fire and brimstone from heaven on the offender. Jesus God is the God of Gifts not the God of Burdens, the God of Grace not the God of Guilt. JESUS GOD WILL NOT BE CONFINED BY HUMAN RULES. Jesus God will not be boxed in by our limited human perception of Him. He is the Living God, the Creator of Worlds. He will show mercy to whom he will show mercy. As He once shouted out in a soliloquy given us by Hosea, My compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger, for I am God and not man. And what angers God is lack of compassion, not exhibitions of it. Hence the anger of Jesus in this episode at those who preferred observing nice neat rules to acts of kindness and compassion. Someone once wrote that the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ stands over all human attempts to define God. Jesus tells the Pharisees of all ages that we simply cannot make God into anything and anyone we want Him to be. As God once told Moses, I AM WHO I AM. 5
ALL OF US HERE THIS MORNING BELIEVE THAT THESE STORIES ARE SCRIPTURE. That means that this is God s living word, a word which God is speaking to us this morning here in Galax Virginia. But we aren t likely to be picking grain on the Sabbath or trying to cure a man with a withered hand. So what claim do these stories make on us? What behaviors do they lead us to do? These stories reveal who Jesus is and demand that we bow before him as our Lord. He and he alone has the right to reveal to us who God is, and what God wants from us on the Sabbath or any other day for that matter. They reveal that the God whom Jesus made known is a God of compassion not a God of never-changing absolute rules of behavior. He is certainly not a dormant God subject to and restricted by our rules of piety and righteous living. These stories reveal that on all days it is right and proper to act in ways which show compassion for those in need of it. And conversely it is never right to act in ways which fail to do so. Surely it is a travesty to refuse to act compassionately because of a rule protecting the sanctity of the Lord s Day. 6
And finally, they reveal that the Sabbath, or in our case, The Lord s Day is God s gift to us and for us. SO, HOW SHOULD WE USE OUR GIFT? Jesus pointed to taking care of our needs: the disciples needed something to eat. We might also need a day on which we relax, feed our souls, and refrain from our customary work so that we can enjoy the good things of life. Jesus also engaged in an act of compassion on the Sabbath. When he said the Sabbath was made for us he surely did not mean that we should use the gift selfishly. The Sabbath rest gives us an opportunity to hear and obey our God. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves, and hence doing something for someone else comes to mind. It seems to me that our culture has abused this gift and in so doing has driven out another aspect of using the Sabbath gift. Luke tells us that Jesus was in the synagogue every Sabbath Day. He surely never intended us to skip worship to watch football. Let us always remember that Genesis 1 asserts that we were created to worship God. God gives us a day free of the demands of work to do so. In days gone by perhaps work was the principal reason people did not have time to worship. That was one reason for the Blue Laws. In 7
our time perhaps it is sports and other leisure time activities that pull us out of the sanctuary. GOD HAS GIVEN US A GIFT: One day in seven to rest from those things which weary and worry us. One day on seven in which we can focus on God s compassion for us and ways in which we in turn can show that compassion to others. And one day in seven on which we remind ourselves that Jesus is our Lord and Savior and that he has set us free to be all that we can be. Jesus did not come to bust the Sabbath, but rather to set it free from the burdensome restrictions placed on it by human beings. SUNDAY! The Lord s Day, the Lord s gift to us all. This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it! 8