Everybody Get a Sabbath

Sermon 6-3-2018

Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and from our Lord and savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Welcome to the Sundays after Pentecost! … yeah, I admit, it’s not the most exciting of the season of the church year… it’s not refreshingly contemplative like Lent. It’s not festive and joyful like the season of Easter.  It’s not hopeful and expectant like Advent.  The time after Pentecost is the Long Green Season of the church, and it just seems to go ON AND ON AND ON… all the way until we get to Christ the King Sunday after Thanksgiving. Needless to say it’s the longest liturgical season we have….

But not to worry. We have a few blips of “special” to dot the liturgical landscape for us from now until then – Reformation Sunday in October for example. For now, we are back in the Gospel of Mark after a really long time in John, which is good because this is THE year of Mark’s Gospel, which is the snappy, fast moving, tweetable gospel with a very grumpy Jesus. Here we see, right from chapter 2, Jesus is making the rule-makers and the rule-keepers of his day angry by messing up their little world of regulations created from commands that actually comes from God, which we know as the Ten Commandments.

Our reading from Deuteronomy describes God’s full explanation of the 3^rd commandment – honor the sabbath day and keep it holy. God says that “Six days you shall… work. But the seventh day… you shall not do any work.” Not you, not your husband or wife, not your kids or your farm animals or your pets or the immigrant in your towns, not your slaves. The Israelites were to remember that THEY were once slaves in the land of Egypt, forced to work day and night without rest… until God sent Moses to free them and lead them to the promised land.

In the 3^rd commandment, God reminds us that God is about liberation. God hates slavery and bondage of any kind.  THAT is why God invented the Sabbath day… which, by the way, means that the Sabbath was the first ever labor law. God invented the first half of the weekend… not too shabby.

Fast forward a few thousand years…and we humans have done what we humans do best – make what is simple and life-giving into something overly complicated and difficult! What began as a safeguard of life and liberation became compartmentalized and regimented. If we are not allowed to work… then what constitutes WORK? It’s an excellent question… is plowing a field work? Definitely! What about preparing and cooking a meal? Usually, that’s work, right? … Doing laundry? That is definitely work…but what about driving a car? Pushing an elevator button? Flipping on a light switch?

Which begs the question…. At what point does avoiding work become WORK? It seems easy for those of us in the Christian faith to pass judgement on our Jewish brothers and sisters on some of the customs around the sabbath that I’m sure some of us have witnessed. But before we congratulate ourselves on our so-called liberation from Old Testament Laws, we should remember that we Christians were the ones who instituted things like Blue Laws...  and are the reason I can’t get a chicken sandwich from Chick Fill -A on Sundays, even in airports. And one of my pastor colleagues admitted at our weekly text study that it really bothers him when his neighbor mows the grass on Sunday, because when and where he grew up such things just weren’t done.

Many of us can remember a time like that. But it seems to be less and less our current reality. More and more opportunities crowd into our Sundays. Church is no longer the only building that is open on Sunday morning. On Sundays we are FREE – free to shop, free to cook, free to work, free to eat out, free to see a show, free to play sports… so much freedom! We are free to do so much! …or are we? Does THIS kind of freedom really free us?

We seem to be stuck between too many rules about how to rest so that resting is hard work, and too much freedom and choice so that we don’t get any rest at all. Neither of these options are actually life-giving. And that is EXACTLY what the sabbath was designed to do for us: to be a source of life for all of God’s people.

At the end of the book of Deuteronomy, God tells God’s people that we have two choices before us – the path of death and the path of life.  It’s pretty obvious that God wants us to choose life. And the point of Shabbat – sabbath – is a means for us to choose life, and to have life abundantly.

You are free to choose where to spend your Sunday morning, and you have chosen to spend it here. Congratulations – and also, I’m sorry…. you are rewarded by hearing the words of crabby Jesus, challenging people like us – people like the Pharisees - who like to have ways of living clearly laid out.

I just love the trick question that Jesus asks the Pharisees. He doesn’t ask if it is lawful to do an act of good work on a day where work is not supposed to be allowed. He instead asks – what is better to do on the sabbath, something good or something bad? of course, the “RIGHT” answer is to DO NO WORK on the sabbath. Except for the little fact that the RIGHT answer is totally WRONG. Somewhere along the way we forgot that God is not about rules; God is about people and relationships and love.

What if the Sabbath was not about NOT working… but instead was about making room for God to work? What if the sabbath wasn’t just about what we SHOULD NOT do… but instead be about what we CAN and SHOULD BE doing for others?

I am especially thinking about those who cannot afford to rest, who cannot afford to take a sabbath or a day off on Sunday because they need to work long hours or multiple jobs to both feed their families and pay the rent. What is it that brings life-giving joy for those whom a day off TODAY is not always an option?

Today is the day where we take a break from thinking that the priorities of the world make the rules. And sometimes we need to be reminded relieve other people from the “rules” we impose on them.

People are hungry and need to be fed TODAY. Single parents are working three jobs without a living wage, who need justice TODAY. The earth needs a break from our addiction to fossil fuels TODAY. Our children need a respite from the incessant treadmill of higher and better achievement TODAY. New mothers need the right to rest their bodies and care for their brand-new babies and not lose their jobs TODAY. People of color need relief from the constant worry from people’s suspicions and prejudice… TODAY.

I once heard a story of a church who raised money to give a needy family a nice refrigerator, since this family could not afford one. But this family decided to take the money and go on a really awesome family trip instead. The church was understandably upset – after all, who wouldn’t be excited about a new fridge? wouldn’t the quality of life of this family greatly improve? Wouldn’t the family save money?

Now I won’t say if this family was right or wrong, but really, after all, doesn’t every family deserve the opportunity to spend time together and to build memories that will last their entire lives? What is more important – improved food quality? Or improved family quality? What if – totally hypothetically –this trip revived their bond as a family? What if the children grew up treasuring this memory of renewal and grew up inspired to give back to others?

As Jesus might ask, is it better to give a family nothing or to let them spend their money on something life-giving that we might not have chosen for them?

Everyone needs sabbath. And everyone deserves sabbath. That is why today is so special. Today is the Lord’s Day. Today is the day we remember that God created us and gives us everything that we have. Today is the day that we remember that Jesus died and rose again so that we may have life and have it abundantly. Today is the day we receive Jesus’s body and blood to keep us sustained for the ongoing work of justice for all of God’s children.

We cannot do it all the works of God’s justice in one day. And that is why the Sabbath, the Lord’s Day, comes to us every seven days. Every seven days, a chance to be reminded of who made ALL our days. Every seven days, a chance to be renewed again, and to work to renew others. Thanks be to God. Amen.