“The Sunday-Monday Connection” - Work and the Sabbath

Texts: Deuteronomy 5:12-15, Mark 1:21-34

Jeanette Mathews

Jesus and the Sabbath

But none of these stories were important to the writer of the gospel of Mark. Here in the first chapter we are already hearing of his adult ministry. Already he is teaching with authority, healing the sick, calling disciples, casting out demons. And already he is causing a stir. His fame is already growing, even the demons are spreading the word about who he really was. No humble beginnings in this gospel. He’s right into it. And according to what we just read, he started work on a Sabbath!

As this gospel story unfolds we are told that not everyone is supportive of this man’s mission in life. In fact, he meets some pretty stiff opposition. And do you remember the main problem the scribes and Pharisees had with him? Basically it was his attitude to the Sabbath.

The Sabbath Law in the Old Testament

We read one version of the Sabbath law, as it appears in the Deuteronomic rendering of the 10 commandments. Here is an expanded version of the law from Exodus:

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day knew their bibles, and they rightly believed that this was an important commandment. It was a sign of the covenant between God and the Israelites. It was applicable to everyone in the community. It even held the sanction of punishment by death if it was not observed properly. And over the centuries much time has been spent interpreting it. Already in Jesus’ day there were regulations surrounding the Sabbath that were intended to “put a fence around the law” to ensure that it was never broken. In the first few centuries after Christ legal discussions about these issues were recorded in the Talmud. There we can find 39 categories of activities which must not be performed on the Sabbath. Each of these categories has been divided into 39 parts, making a total of 1521 Sabbath rules. Questions such as how far a man is permitted to walk, or what constitutes a burden which must not be carried, or whether an egg laid on the Sabbath is fit for consumption - these questions are discussed at length. And while we might find this hard to understand or even are tempted to ridicule these excesses, the motivation behind these laws is a good one. The rabbis did not want their people to break even one of the laws in the Torah, and so they made it as difficult as possible by creating injunctions and regulations to protect the central command. Our own legal system isn’t all that different - we are still expected to stop at a red traffic light even if it is the middle of the night and there are no other cars on the road. The central law is that we must not harm another person when we drive, and red lights are one way to ensure that.

But fortunately we don’t have to concern ourselves with the 1521 Sabbath rules. But nor do we find them in the Old Testament. So what was the original intention of these Sabbath laws? Where did they come from?

Thinking about the Meaning of the Sabbath Law

The first mention of it is of course in Genesis, at the beginning of chapter 2. It is the end point of the first creation story:

This isn’t, however, the earliest historical reference to the sabbath in the Old Testament. We know that the first creation account in Genesis was written while Israel were in exile, in the 6th century BC. In exile the observance of the Sabbath became very important for the Israelites. Together with circumcision it formed their identity. They no longer had their temple, and their sacrificial cult was not possible. But the keeping of the Sabbath was a means by which they could differ from those around them. There is a saying amongst Jews that says “Even more than the Jews have kept the Sabbath, has the Sabbath kept the Jews.” So it is natural that the sabbath would have been emphasised when the creation story was written down during the exile.

The fact that it is the fourth and longest of the 10 commandments indicates that it had been part of their way of life for much longer. But no-one is reallyl sure when or why it originated. It was unique to Israel. While it was clearly understood as sacred time, there was no connection to a festival or even in general to cultic activity such as sacrifice. It was, quite simply, a time of rest from work, and as such a time to focus on and remember their covenant with God.

The Connection between Work and Sabbath

I have been using the opportunities I have had to preach in recent months to reflect on God and work. My intention has been to find images of God at work in the bible, and by spending some time reflecting on these to rehabilitate our own daily work as including a spiritual dimension. So we have considered God as gardener, as weaver, as builder, as the owner of a vineyard, as a burden bearer and as musician.

So why now am I focusing on the Sabbath? Haven’t I been saying that we need to use all of life to worship God? Didn’t Jesus do away with the Sabbath restrictions? Isn’t there so much more in life that needs to be considered than just church and worship on Sunday - our Sabbath day?

I want to finish this series with a focus on the Sabbath because I think that the bible shows us that the principle of the Sabbath needs to be held together with work. The Sabbath completed God’s work of creation. God pronounced creation good at the end of each day of creative work. But it only became completed with the day of rest. Jurgan Moltmann in his book “God in Creation” claims that the Sabbath is what allows us to see “nature” as “creation”: nature is fruitful, it has seasons and rhythms, but there is no natural Sabbath. (This was brought home to me shortly after we moved to a dairy farm: somebody had to do the milking every Sunday. The cows didn’t even take a break for any holiday or holy day - even Christmas Day!) And yet when we step aside from the rhythm of life to celebrate the Sabbath it is then that we are able to especially perceive the world as God’s creation - it is only in the rest that we are able to appreciate, or in other words, worship.

As we read in Deuteronomy, there is another dimension to the Sabbath. It was not only to be a time of rest, but also a time of remembrance. In the Exodus version of the 10 commandments the reason for observing the Sabbath is in the fact that God rested after creation. But I chose the rendering in Deuteronomy. Remember the reason there? Deut 5:15 says “remember... remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.”

When it puts the Sabbath law together with the Exodus remembrance, Deuteronomy combines two important images of freedom in the Old Testament. The story of the Exodus is a story of freedom from slavery and freedom from the domination of oppressive forces. The Sabbath attests to an inner freedom: the result of quiet rest. The Exodus was remembered because it tells us of a God who acts in history. The Sabbath celebrated a God who is, for whom there is no history. Deuteronomy holds these images together.

Because the God who commands Sabbath observance is also the God who saved his people from oppression, the rest of God at the completion of creation is not a justification shutting ourselves off from the world, but an invitation to enter fully into God’s good creation.

Sabbath and New Creation

The principles of rest and worship on the Sabbath have been taken up by Christianity’s setting aside of Sunday for these same reasons. And there is a link with creation for us too. Sunday, the day of Jesus’ resurrection, was understood by the early Christians to be the first day of the new creation. Over time it came to have particular importance as the day for worship. Of course the first Christian community continued to follow the Jewish practice of meeting in the synagogue and observing the Sabbath. But gradually Sunday became the preferred day because it celebrated the new creation.

Sunday isn’t for us the rest at the end of a week of work. It is the start of a new week - begun in the hope of the resurrection and in anticipation of God’s Kingdom.

Taking time off to rest and worship was not denying the rest of life. It was anticipating fullness of life. This is why the writer of Hebrews can speak of a “sabbath rest” that we are still awaiting. The Sabbath always points beyond itself. It points to God’s blessing. It points to the memory of God’s salvation. It points to God’s justice. In the Old Testament the weekly sabbath anticipates the Sabbath year - the year of fallow for the land. And the sabbath years anticipate the Jubilee - the Sabbath of sabbaths. The fiftieth year after 7 sabbath years, when debts will be released, captives set free, when all will be restored to their created state. When the original sabbath is relived. This is why Jesus at the beginning of his ministry was understood to inaugurate the Jubilee year. Luke has Jesus proclaiming “this is the year of the lord’s favour” - the beginning of the restoration of creation. The eyes of the blind will be opened. The ears of the deaf unstopped. Captives will be released, the oppressed will go free. Jesus was not doing away with the Sabbath. He was claiming that the Sabbath, God’s rest, God’s blessing, could touch the whole of life. God’s restoration needs to happen here and now, so that creation is as it was meant to be. When Jesus healed the sick on the sabbath, he was restoring God’s good creation as it was intended to be. And that resulted in service and in worship.

By keeping Sabbath, in our context today by meeting together regularly to worship, we have a disciplined reminder of who it is that created us, and how it is that creation was intended. It is a time to remember what God has done, and a time to anticipate what God will do. When we stop work to rest, we have opportunities to see what otherwise might be missed. To smell roses. To see flowers growing through cracks in the concrete. To celebrate creation.

Have you read Alice Walker’s novel “The Colour Purple”? Celie, the central character, is a poor black girl who is abused and oppressed by her father and husband. But her life changes when she meets Shug Avery: a tough and worldly nightclub singer. Shug helps Celie to discover another way of seeing the world. The name of the novel comes from a discussion that Shug and Celie are having about God and life and the world. Shug says to Celie “God gets really cranky” (well actually she uses a stronger word than that) “God gets really cranky when we miss the colour purple in a field.” God’s creation is so beautiful and varied that we too ought to respond with praise and worship, not indifference.

Sabbath, Sunday, the day of resurrection, the day of new creation, is the day when we can discover the colour purple in our lives. It can be a day that adds richness, beauty, and colour to our everyday existence. It is not a time to opt out of life and escape into an other-worldliness, but a time to opt in to the depth of life.

God is a worker, and God has made us to be workers to ensure that creation continues to be lived and maintained. But we have a God-given time and space to cease from work and discover the colour purple in the Mondays and all the other weekdays of our life. Let us faithfully take these opportunities and allow them to draw us deeper into life in all its fullness. Amen.


JM