Sabbath (Mark 2:23-28)
Written by Pastor Kuder   
Grace Mercy and peace be to you from our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.

If one were to look back at the twentieth century and look at the formation of several types of groups and organizations, one would find a good deal of secret police groups and organizations being formed.  The Soviet Union had the KGB.  East Germany had the Stasi.  And here in America we had the formation of the CIA.

You had all of these groups and more, trying to route out some sort of perceived form of evil.  Now, while most of the countries will tell you that there was a real need for these groups and I’m not going to debate that … what was seen among many people, was a certain level of fear of these groups.  And to some degree this was a real legitimate fear.

In the forties and fifties, here in America we saw the creation of McCarthyism.  McCarthyism was and is the politically motivated practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence.  And Senator McCarthy used this against people from all different backgrounds.  And it almost seemed as if no one was safe.

So why is this important for us today?  Well, after reading today’s Gospel reading from Mark chapter 2, as well as elsewhere, it would seem as if the Pharisees saw themselves as a type of secret police.  However, the reality was that they weren’t any type of secret police and in fact, they weren’t even an official party.  They were more of a religious and political pressure group than anything else.

And here’s Jesus, an up and coming religious leader, challenging their way of life.  So the Pharisees being who they were, are going to call Jesus on anything that they can possibly find that they think is even remotely wrong.  And here like so many other times, they are once again, trying to accuse Him of doing what they see as work being done on the Sabbath.

So what does Jesus do?  Well, Jesus being Jesus, He has exactly the right words to stop them in their tracks.  He says to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

Now we’re going to stop there for a minute … and jump back.  We’re going to jump back to the creation story in Genesis.

Now, I’m not going to recount the whole creation story but if you think about the order of the creation, things get progressively more complex as God continues with His creating till He gets to the sixth day … and God creates us.

Now, when God creates us, He does things a bit different.  He doesn’t speak us into existence like He does with the rest of creation.  He says amongst Himself, “let us make man in our own image.”  And again He doesn’t speak us into existence but rather, He gets down on His hands and knees and he forms us out of the dust of the earth.  But He is finished there yet.  Scripture tells us that He breathed into the mans nostrils the breath of life.

You see, with that breath of life, He is breathing spirit into us.  He is making us in His own image.  He is making us different.  By doing this He separated us from the rest of creation.  We are the pinnacle of God’s creation.  We are the high point of God’s creation.

So after God gets done creating us, He takes a look at everything and sees that it’s all good.   And that ends the sixth day. … And then we get to the seventh day.  And what does He do?  He rests.

So why does he do this?  Well … He is setting a precedent.  He is setting the order of things for us.  And in a sense, He’s modeling a work week.  He knew and knows how we work.  How we function.  I mean, He created us didn’t He?

In some societies today your worth is defined by how much you produce.  Seven days a week, how much can you produce how much can we get out of you.  But that’s not how God created us.  He didn’t create us to be machines.  He said, OK, work six days but on the seventh day, worship, play, rest, do something to fill your soul.

But let’s jump back to Mark’s Gospel again.  In today’s reading we find the Pharisees complaining to Jesus because of the perceived work that they felt Jesus’ disciples were doing.  They were claiming that they weren’t following the Sabbath.  But in fact, all they were worried about was the outside appearance.  And in fact we too sometimes fall into that same trap.

Luther in his Large Catechism says this, “To offer ordinary people a Christian interpretation of what God requires in this commandment, we point out that we keep holy days not for the sake of intelligent and well informed Christians, for these have no need of them. We keep them, first, for the sake of bodily need.”  God knew that we need to take a break.

He goes on, “Secondly and most especially, we keep holy days so that people may have time and opportunity, which otherwise would not be available, to participate in public worship, that is, that they may assemble to hear and discuss God’s Word and then praise God with song and prayer.”

But here’s the thing.  Some of us at times have this tendency to want to compartmentalize when and where all of this is supposed to be happening.  What happens is ever so slightly we start to emphasize certain things.  And in the process deemphasize other things.  And in the process we start to see the Sabbath as only occurring in a certain place or during a certain hour or two.  And once again, that’s not how God designed us.

Our loving God, who knew that His one and only Son had do die and on the third day rise from the dead, also knew and knows that we need to take a break one day out of our normal work week to recharge our batteries.  To fill our souls.  To make sure that we take at least one day out of our normal week to spend praising and rejoicing with and to Him.

Years ago, Grace Chafer once wrote a story about two men who were in the midst of a competition.  She wrote, “One man challenged another to an all-day wood chopping contest. The challenger worked very hard, stopping only for a brief lunch break. The other man had a leisurely lunch and took several breaks during the day. At the end of the day, the challenger was surprised and annoyed to find that the other fellow had chopped substantially more wood than he had. "I don't get it," he said. "Every time I checked, you were taking a rest, yet you chopped more wood than I did." "But you didn't notice," said the winning woodsman, "that I was sharpening my ax when I sat down to rest.”

And this is what God does for us.  This is why He calls us to honor the Sabbath.  That special day that He created for us.  Not so we could show off or do our quote unquote churchly duty … but rather, so that we could truly be a part of His creation the way He intended us to be.

And it is in His name that we pray.

-Amen
 

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