"Sabbath for the Sake of Life." A sermon on Mark 2:23 - 3:6 from Littlefield Presbyterian Church

"Sabbath for the Sake of Life"

Mark 2:23 - 3:6; Deuteronomy 5:12-15

Mark’s Gospel moves at a fast pace. In the first chapter, Jesus is baptized, tempted, announces his ministry, calls his disciples, casts out an unclean spirit, heals many people, goes out preaching the gospel, and cleanses a leper. People are coming to him from all over.

            Then, we see the beginnings of controversy. When the scribes of the Pharisees see that he’s eating with sinners and tax collectors, they question his disciples about who Jesus is associating with. People question why Jesus’ disciples aren’t fasting.

            In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus is going through the grain fields, and his disciples begin to pluck heads of grain. The Pharisees say to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” 

             

            Jesus doesn’t deny the accusation. Instead, he appeals to a historical precedent, saying, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food?” He refers to a time when King David did something sacrilegious-- eating the bread of the Presence, that only priests were permitted to eat. This historical precedent doesn’t have anything to do with keeping the Sabbath, but seems to justify the idea that law gives way to need.

            At the synagogue, people were watching to see if Jesus would heal the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath, so they could frame a charge against him. Jesus asks, “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath, or to do evil?”  To save life or to kill?”

            Mark tells us that Jesus was deeply upset at their hard-heartedness, and looked around at them angrily. Then he healed the man’s hand. The Pharisees went out right away and began to plot with the Herodians against Jesus, trying to find a way to destroy him.

            Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for humankind-- not humankind for the Sabbath.”

            As theologian William Placher points out, Jesus wasn’t breaking with Judaism, but could have been quoting a number of rabbinic texts. The line of division here runs not between Christians and Jews-- but between those in any tradition who lose sight of the point of the laws.[1]

            This is where these stories reach beyond their original first-century context to speak to us all.

            My grandmother grew up in a time when many practicing Christians didn’t do non-essential work on Sundays. Their farm family would milk the cows and feed the livestock, but they wouldn’t have worked in the field or the garden. When she was older, Grammy decided that she could do fancy needlework on Sunday, because it was relaxing for her. But she wouldn’t mend clothes on Sunday, because that was real work.

            Some of us who are old enough probably remember a time when there were “Blue Laws” that set Sundays apart by limiting what was legal to do on Sundays. Stores were closed on Sundays, and a lot of gas stations, so you planned to buy your milk and bread and gas before Sunday came.  Movie theaters were closed on Sundays.  You weren’t supposed to play cards. In many states, you couldn’t buy liquor.

            There weren’t a lot of other things competing for our time on Sundays. I remember going to church on Sunday morning, and then packing a picnic into the car, or visiting relatives. Sunday evenings, we had youth group at church.

            For many people, the Blue Laws seemed restrictive and burdensome, and they eventually were discontinued.

            A lot has changed since that time. Some families are so stressed with working long hours that they’ll tell you Sunday is the only time they have to do the laundry or shop for groceries.  Others are busy with a round of various activities.

            I don’t think many of us would want to go back to a time when there were laws dictating what we can do on Sundays. But I think our scripture texts invite us to take a fresh look at keeping the Sabbath.

            As Walter Brueggemann wrote, “It is unfortunate that in U.S. society, largely out of a misunderstood Puritan heritage, Sabbath has gotten enmeshed in legalism and moralism and blue laws and life-denying practices that contradict the freedom-bestowing intention of Sabbath.”[2]

            Keeping the Sabbath was one of the Ten Commandments, and it was reinforced by the prophets and by Jewish teaching. It was one of the things that made Jews distinctive from their neighbors. It was a sign that they belonged to the true God, the Creator of the world, who had rested on the seventh day.

           

            “Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. You shall not do any work--you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slaves may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.  Therefore, the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.”[3]

            When Israel arrived at Mount Sinai after Moses led them out of slavery in Pharaoh’s Egypt, they were in the process of what Walter Brueggemann calls “regime change.”   The people needed to accept the new rules of governance, to commit themselves to “love God” and to “love neighbor.”

            The Ten Commandments begin with the Exodus from Egypt: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.[4]

            The people remembered that Egypt’s socioeconomic power was organized like a pyramid, with a work force producing wealth, all of which flowed upward to the power elite and eventually to Pharaoh.

            When they heard the commandment to observe the Sabbath, they would have remembered that there had been no Sabbath in Egypt, no rest from work for slaves, no rest for anybody in the Egyptian system, because frantic productivity drove the entire system. In the commandment to keep the Sabbath, YHWH abolishes the entire system of anxious production.

            As Brueggemann says, “there are limits to how much and how long slaves must produce bricks. There are limits to how much Pharaoh can store and consume and administer. The limit is set by the weekly work pause that breaks the production cycle. And those who participate in the Sabbath break the anxiety cycle. They are invited to awareness that life does not consist in frantic production and consumption that reduces everyone else to threat and competitor.”  As the Sabbath permits a waning of anxiety, so energy is redeployed to the neighborhood.”[5]

            “The odd insistence of the God of Sinai is to counter anxious productivity with committed neighborliness.”  This creates a culture of security and respect and dignity. [6]

            The commandment to observe the Sabbath, to carve out a time of rest for the community, can be transformative.  It’s no wonder, then, that Jesus invited his disciples out of the system of anxiety: “I tell you, don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”[7]

           

            The good news is that Jesus offers us an antidote to anxiety. The antidote is abundance, the outpouring of generosity of the creator God.

             

            We need the Sabbath for our own personal well-being    and for the abundant life of our neighbors. If we keep the Sabbath, we don’t get to overlook neighbors whose lives are being threatened on a daily basis. If we keep the Sabbath, we don’t get to ignore how the lives of neighbors are being stripped of their dignity and worth. 

            God invites us to Sabbath rest because it is life-oriented and life-giving, and because it can create a Sabbath-shaped way of looking at all of life.

            When we come to the Table, we hear again Jesus’ story of abundance. We who follow Jesus have decided that this story is true. The four great verbs: he took, he blessed, he broke, he gave.  This is the true story of our lives.

            So, come to the Table to be fed by Christ.  Taste his bread and drink his wine.  Know that God is good! Amen!

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

June 3, 2018

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[1]William Placher, Mark: Belief, A Theological Commentary on the Bible.  Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.  Kindle Edition.

[2] Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath As Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now. Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.  Kindle Edition.

[3] Deuteronomy 5:12-15

[4] Exodus 20:2

[5] Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath As Resistance. Kindle Edition (28%)

[6] Brueggemann, Sabbath Resistance.

[7] Matthew 6:25-31

"Commandments of Freedom." A Sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church on the Third Sunday in Lent.

"Commandments of Freedom"

Exodus 20:1-17; John 2:13-20

In 2001, Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore had a Ten Commandments monument installed in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building, without the knowledge of the other justices. This resulted in a legal battle over establishment of a particular religion in a government building and eventually to his being removed from office over his refusal to comply to the federal court injunction. Eventually, the monument was placed in a storage room, and later it was taken on a flatbed trailer on tour by a group called “America for Jesus.”. There was controversy between a those who thought that was a good idea and those who saw it as worshiping a graven image, a form of idolatry.

            What I hadn’t thought a lot about at the time is how much this monument weighed:   5,280 pounds. That’s just over 500 pounds per commandment.[1]

            As Tom Long suggests, in the popular religious consciousness, the Ten Commandments have come to represent, for some, weights and heavy obligations.  Most people in our society would have a hard time naming all ten commandments, but they may still think that the Ten Commandments are about finger-wagging “thou shalt not’s.” For some others, the commandments are heavy yokes placed on the necks of a rebellious society. As Tom suggests, a two-and-a-half-ton rock sitting on the bed of a truck is a perfect symbol of this.[2]

            The gods of ancient Babylon were heavy idols that had to be carted around. The prophet Isaiah was referring to them when he said, “These things you carry are loaded as burdens on weary animals.”

           

            Those who see the Ten Commandments as a series of burdensome rules overlook something essential.  The Ten Commandments begin not by an order to obey a set of rules, but by an announcement of freedom.  “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”[3]

            This was God’s direct address to the people of Israel: “God spoke all these words.”  “Words” -- not commandments.  So, it is really more accurate to speak of them as “the Decalogue” -- the ten words.

            “Because the Lord is your God,” the Decalogue affirms, “you are free not to need any other gods.  You are free:  free to rest on the seventh day…free from the tyranny of lifeless idols… free from stealing and covetousness as ways to establish yourself.  

            The Decalogue begins with the good news of what the liberating God has done and then describes the life of freedom that God desires for people.

           

            “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Although this introductory sentence of freedom and redemption is often left out of printed versions of the Ten Commandments, in Judaism it is recognized as the first word. 

            “You shall have no other gods before me” is the second word.[4] Idolatry is the focus in this second word. Idolatry commonly refers to worshipping graven images, such as the golden calf.[5]  Idolatry, the worship of “other gods” could include any person place, or thing that we hold to be more important than God. These other gods could also be money, property, fame, power-- anything in which we place our ultimate loyalty and trust or worship. So, this second word is a call to love and trust in God above all things. This is the grounding for all other commandments or “words.”

            The Ten Words we heard in today’s lesson were not new for Israel, but they were a good listing for their time and situation, when the newly liberated people of Israel were wandering around in the wilderness, learning how to be free people.   The Ten Words were adapted at different times and places. That’s why when we compare the Ten Commandments in Exodus and the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy, we see some differences that reflect some changes, such as a changing role for women in the culture.

            “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” The Ten Words had been given to the people to celebrate and maintain their emancipation from Egypt and the Pharaoh.

            In the Pharaoh, the ruler of ancient Egypt, was a brutal concentration of power and wealth.  Walter Brueggemann has often pointed out how every time a “Pharaoh” turns up in history, it turns out that this empire is propelled by a sense of not having enough, a system designed to accumulate more and more--more money, more power, more land, more food, more cheap labor for the ruler.[6].  

            When Pharaohs--or tyrannical emperors or kings or dictators-- rise up in history, they act in violence against vulnerable, disadvantaged people. The Exodus from Egypt and the celebration of Passover is a powerful demonstration of how God broke in to liberate the people from their oppression, and to give them a life of freedom. 

            But it becomes clear that we don’t always know what to do with freedom.  There were times in the wilderness when the people of Israel when they grumbled and wished they could go back to slavery in Egypt.

            So, Brueggemann says the Ten Commandments “are nothing less than strategies for staying emancipated in the new life that the God of Sinai governs.” These strategies are urgent, he says, because Pharaoh, in a variety of forms, always wants to coerce us back into Pharaoh’s domain of exploitation.

            This new strategy for living as free people is to honor God to the exclusion of every other idol…to honor God’s name and God’s purpose for our lives.  I love and am challenged by the way Brueggemann points to the scripture’s truth, as he says this strategy for freedom means to “refuse every other ultimate loyalty, every idolatry in our lives among all the ‘isms’ including racism, sexism, and nationalism. It means not to worship stuff, not stuff that is rare, precious, attractive, beautiful or empowering. It means not to recruit God’s name for our pet projects of religion, morality, economics or politics, because the only God is no party to our proximate causes.”

            The season of Lent calls us to a reality check.  Moses, through the Ten Commandments, or Ten Words, at Sinai, declared new possibilities for a life of freedom, outside the oppression, anxiety, fearfulness, and scarcity under Pharaoh-- a new life that honors God’s holiness, that loves the neighbor in concrete ways, and that honors the Sabbath and makes time to be holy.

            Lent invites us to look honestly at the ways in which we have failed at living freely. We’ve heard Pharaoh say, “Be very afraid,” and lived anxious lives. We’ve believed what those in power tell us about scarcity, so we’re afraid we won’t have enough and accept that the poor can’t have what they need for lives of dignity. We hurry to try to keep even, and are over-extended and exhausted.

            The season of Lent is a time for us to ponder the gospel life to which Jesus calls us: an alternative life that is unafraid…a life of abundance Jesus showed us when he multiplied loaves and fishes to feed the multitudes. Jesus calls us to a life of healing and forgiveness and generosity to neighbors.

             The season of Lent reminds re-presents the outrage Jesus demonstrated at what he saw in the Temple and how he challenged the status quo. It reminds us how determined the empire and the keepers of the status quo were to maintain their power and privilege and control, to the point of executing Jesus on the cross where his followers and other would see him being tortured.

            “You destroy this temple… in three days I will raise it up.” Even the disciples couldn’t understand Jesus’ words until after the resurrection.  The story of Jesus doesn’t end at the cross.  Only after the resurrection can we reflect on what the cross of Jesus means for a life of faith.

            In these last weeks of Lent, we are invited to ponder what the apostle Paul wrote: “The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”[7]  

            The powers of this world will tell us that it is foolish to think we have enough to feed a crowd… and that it is a sign of weakness to practice mercy, justice, and faithfulness. But we can trust that God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

            Thanks be to God!

            Amen!

            .

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[1] Thomas G. Long, “Dancing the Decalogue,” in “Living by the Word,” in The Christian Century.

[2] Tom Long, in “Dancing with the Decalogue.”

[3] Exodus 20:2

[4] Rolf Jacobson, Commentary on Exodus 19:1-6 and Exodus 20:1-17. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2113

[5] Bull worship was common in some cultures in the ancient world, including Egypt. The golden calf is first mentioned in Exodus 32:4

[6] Walter Brueggemann, “Strategies for Staying Emancipated.”  http://day1.org/8145-walter_brueggemann_strategies_for_staying_emancipated

[7] 1 Corinthians 1:18-25