St John & St Mark Church Bury

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The Sabbath

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The Sabbath

2 June 2024

Series: Trinity

Topic: Neighbour, Sabbath

Book: Deuteronomy, Mark

The Sabbath

Ian Banks

You’ve probably heard the old joke about the Vicar who was convinced one of his parishioners had stolen his bicycle. So, he decided to preach on the 10 commandments and hoped that when he got to ‘thou shall not steal’ that the individual concerned would feel suitably convicted. But he got as far as ‘thou shalt not commit adultery’ – and remembered where he’d left his bike…

Well, we’ve only got the one commandment today. It’s not the one about stealing or adultery. It’s the one where God invents the weekend… which we later improved on by making it a day longer…

And, by some happy coincidence, the Gospel reading is about the same commandment and people already out to get Jesus, even though we’re only near the start of Mark’s Gospel. The dispute with the Pharisees is centred on what you should or shouldn’t do on the sabbath.

Meant well

Let’s be clear. The Pharisees are often painted as the bad guys, but they were sincere, religious people. They meant well. They took their biblical commitments and values very seriously. They built their houses near one another so that they could share meals and visit on the Sabbath, which restricted how far one had to walk. Right in front of their houses they built stone pools of natural, flowing water to restore ritual purity. And during meals, Pharisees symbolically measured a tenth of their meal and set it aside as belonging to God.

But despite their sincerity, the Gospel presents them as having a narrower view of the sabbath than Jesus did. The disagreement with Jesus is not because Jesus flouts the commandment about keeping the day holy or because he thinks that it’s trivial. It’s just that he has a different perspective of what sabbath observance actually means.

On notice

And that should put us on notice from the start. If nothing else, our verses point out how quickly an institution or group of people, who have come together for all the right reasons, can appear to become an end in itself. However noble our motives, we can come across as being hard-of-heart and insensitive to the needs of those outside our circle, without us even noticing. We can seem to be out of touch with, or stifling the concerns of, those who might threaten our stability with their different viewpoints.

In our Gospel verses, the Pharisees seem to take Jesus’ behaviour as deliberately neglecting, or, at the very least, bending the mandate that we read earlier in Deuteronomy to observe the sabbath and keep it holy.

So, it’s worth just going back and dwelling on our passage from the OT. What point is the author of our Gospel trying to make here?

Two types of laws

Our verses from Deuteronomy are amongst a re-telling of the 10 Commandments. I was wondering about a small test at this point just to check how many of the 10 you could remember and to see which ones you stumbled on – or which ones you were sure that the person sat next to you would stumble on! But it’s my first time here and I thought I’d go gentle on you.

If you take time to think about them, the 10 Commandments are a mix of two types of laws: laws which are directed towards God and laws directed towards our neighbour. Love of God is inextricably tied with love of neighbour. There is no separation between one’s religious duties to God from one’s moral commitments of being a member of a community.

In the Commandments, the Hebrew uses the singular rather than the plural of the word ‘you’. God gives every person dignity by now directly addressing each one of these former slaves as individual human beings rather than some amorphous, nameless group as they would have been in Egypt.

Context

If you look at Deuteronomy 5 when you get home, you’ll see that ‘You shall not murder’; ‘Neither shall you commit adultery’; ‘Neither shall you steal’; ‘Neither shall you bear false witness against your neighbour’ etc apparently require no further explanation or context from God.

But, in contrast, when it comes to ‘Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy’ it needs to be fleshed out a bit. Rather than a single, short, sentence, all four verses from our reading today together form the commandment. We’re given a rationale, a reason, for the instruction. And it might surprise you that observing the sabbath day is not about worship. Instead, it’s about justice. It’s about doing the right thing.

Here we have a people recently released from slavery about to get a day off! And they’re to keep that day forever in remembrance of their enslavement in Egypt. You can imagine, can’t you? A day off!? I’ll happily always obey that commandment – not so sure about the rest, God, but you get my vote on that one!

The first labour law

It’s the first employment law, the first labour law, in the Bible. Extended to male and female, free and slave, citizens and aliens, human and animal. Which basically means everyone. We each should rest because God thinks that’s the just, right thing to do – and we should each make sure that others rest too. It marked a radical departure from the ancient world around them. God invents the weekend. Just the one day, I grant you, but better than nothing.

Depending on how old (or young) you are, it was as recent (or as long ago) as 1994 when the UK Sunday Trading Act was brought in, allowing shops to open but with restricted times. One of the reasons given was that it enabled more people at the lower end of the economic spectrum to get the opportunity to work in a time of higher unemployment.

That was very laudable. But now most Sunday workers have to work, whether they like it or not, because their contracts don’t give them the choice. The working poor can work every day – and now they have to. They have a job but maybe it doesn’t come with a living wage. Perhaps they have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet. Really, it’s just a different form of slavery…

For justice

The Pharisees way of living was based around the rules enforcing that no work should be done. They were there for good reason – but Jesus goes back to the reason why those rules were put in place. The commandment was given for justice, for giving life, of doing the right thing for all people. The healing of the withered hand was less about restoring something lost, and more about giving the man back his dignity, his ability to provide for his family. It’s a resurrection of sorts, on another Sunday. Because every Sunday is Easter Sunday. Jesus gives the man life, liberation – and as a ‘thank-you’ the authorities plot to destroy him…

And much of the Lectionary weeks that follow this one, develop that theme in their choices of Gospel readings from Mark. Jesus gives life – and meets resistance from the powerful who are unbalanced by what he’s doing.

Keeping the sabbath holy

For many of us, Sunday has become a day when we catch-up with all the things we didn’t do during the other days. Or, with people able to work from home and on-line, it can be a day much like any other.

Keeping the Sabbath holy is not just about going to church, important as that is. But it’s just a beginning not an end. The heart of the sabbath is about making room for God in our lives. Putting things down so that we give space to recognise the divine in what we do. To stop and enjoy the world, just as God enjoyed creation. To give life and justice to others.

The commandment to keep the sabbath is a remembrance that God is a god who hates slavery. It obliged the rich to recognize the humanity of the slave.

Love of God and neighbour

So, what should that mean for us today? It should make us think, in our own behaviours on a Sunday, how do we use the day and in what ways are we affecting those who have to work? If love of God is inextricably tied with love of neighbour, then how are we demonstrating that?

Back in Genesis, the first thing to be made holy in the story of creation was not a place or an object, not a mountain or a spring or an altar – but time: ‘And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy’.

How do you spend your seventh days? Are they a day of holiness and rest? A day of justice, of life, of doing the right thing? Or do you labour – or do you oblige your neighbour to labour – just like every other day? By your actions, by my actions, can people see that our love of God is inextricably tied with our love of neighbour? If not, then let’s do something about it. Amen

‘The Sabbath’ was delivered by Ian Banks at St James, Bury, on 2nd June 2024. It was based on Deuteronomy 5:12-15 and Mark 2:23-3:6.

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