The Sabbath Principle; Holy Time towards Love, Mercy and Justice

14 Pentecost, Cp16,August 25, 2013   

Jer. 1:4-10   Psalm 71:1-6

Hebrews 12:18-19,22-29  Luke 13:10-17

Lectionary Link

 In the history of time, the history of a religious Sabbath has been wide and varied in observance and practice.  Perhaps some remember the practice of the so called “blue laws” where certain items could not be sold on the Lord’s Day.  I remember in Texas the irony of not being able to buy a baby’s bottle from a grocery store on Sunday but buying beer was permitted.  The logic of such blue laws was sometimes inscrutable, or perhaps it merely depended upon the lobbyists who could exert the most influence upon those writing the laws.

  We could look at the rules of Sabbath as being used to force the society to give a place for religious institutions.  The Sabbath rules have been influential to maintain the religious perspective in societies.  We can observe today how in the United States the Sabbath is no longer an obligation which is given as much legal and social support as it has been given in the past.  With the proliferation of team sports for youth, worship times are facing stiff competition for participation in the form of attendance.  If given a choice, youth sports is seen as more vital for a child’s immediate well-being than attending a religious service.

  In the Gospels, Jesus is often presented as being in conflict with religious leaders regarding the practice of the Sabbath.  In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is quoted as saying, “Humanity is not made for the Sabbath; Sabbath is made for humanity.”  This would suggest to us that the notion of Sabbath has a degree of flexibility to it in how it is understood and practiced by humanity.

  If the Sabbath is practiced as being incompatible with health, safety and justice, then the Sabbath may actually lose its spiritual value.  Jesus was confronting people who were making the Sabbath legalistically impractical for human life.

  What would we say if fire personnel refused to put out fires on Sunday?  Or police refused to fight crime on Sunday?  Or doctors and nurses refused to care for patients and handle emergencies on Sunday?  We would say the practice of Sabbath is of no value if it actually hinders health, safety and welfare.

  If I practice racial discrimination and prejudice, but say, “Well, I do go to church every Sunday,” what good does going to church do me?  Well, I might say, “At least it keeps me from murder and that’s worth something, isn’t it.”

  It reminds one of the commercial where the accidental amateur is pretending to be a surgeon and when asked if he is a doctor, he replies, “No, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.”

  Are you kind, and love your neighbor as yourself?  No, but I did go to church last Sunday.  Just going to church does not stand in as a substitute for practicing love and justice.

  The religious leaders were upset that Jesus healed a woman on the Sabbath.  Such healing was regarded as work to them and so he was violating the Sabbath.  Jesus pointed out their selective and inconsistent thinking about the Sabbath.  If they watered their livestock on the Sabbath, why would they object to someone being made well on the Sabbath?

  Jesus confronted their motive for how they practiced the Sabbath.

  It might be beneficial for us to consider some reflections upon the Sabbath.   In the history of humanity, we have a history of how time can be differentiated by the various activities that we do during the passing of time.  Our bodies dictate how we have to spend some of our time; we get tired and we have to sleep.  In fact, sleep time or rest time takes up more than a third of all of the time of our lives.  Our bodies tell us we must eat and drink and do other activities for body maintenance.  And we must designate time for eating and drinking and doing body maintenance.

  The rest of the use of our waking time might be called discretionary time; most of our discretionary time gets accounted for in the division of labor standards set by our cultural setting for people at different ages of life.  We divide discretionary time into work and play.  A major calling in life for each person is to discover how best to use discretionary time to achieve what one regards to be most important in life.

  In the history of humanity one can find a special category of designated time for the gods or for the One God of Israel, or for the Trinitarian God of Christianity.  Time for the divine has been found in perhaps every culture.  In the biblical tradition we find that God spends six out of seven days of the divine time creating but on one day, God rests from creation.  From this ancient story of God resting after creation, we can find the justification for rest.  After all if God rests, we cannot be any better than God and we should rest too.

  So then tabernacle, temple, synagogue, church and mosque become the institutional places to express the religious rest time that is called worship.  Worship time may not really be the rest of sleep.  It is the rest of doing something towards the horizon of human experience so that we may be able to endure human experience.

  Institutional religions can literalize and legalize Sabbath rest and worship to a list of do’s and dont’s.  But to literalize a Sabbath rest only invites exceptions.  Someone must feed the babies and the children; someone must take care of the farm animals.  There are many expressions of human need that do not come to a halt just because it is the Sabbath or because it is Sunday.  On Monday in the grocery store, I am often asked by the cashier if I enjoyed my Sunday day off.  To which I reply, “I worked.”  And certainly the religious leaders of the synagogue knew that they had to work at teaching and prayer on the Sabbath.

  The Gospel invitation of Jesus is for us to be authentic about the Sabbath principle without being literal or legalistic about any particular practice of the Sabbath.

  To be authentic about the Sabbath principle, we need to ask ourselves some questions?  Does my practice of the Sabbath promote the actual practice of justice, love and mercy in my life?  Does my practice of the Sabbath help me to overcome my prejudices in life?

  Yes, I do like to see as many people in church on Sunday  as I can even if for the selfish purpose of soothing the preacher’s insecurity about his ministry being relevant to enough people to keep the Episcopal Church parish enterprise alive and well.

  But it could be today we need to express authenticity in the Sabbath principle in a variety of ways.  I would like to persuade us to give 24 hours a week in a God-ward direction in our lives as a way to deliver us from the pride of mere humanism.  Of that twenty four hours, eight hours are given as sleep.  So you get religious Sabbath credit for holy sleep.  Go and ahead designate at least one night of sleep as worship to God.  So that leaves you 16 hours to spread out in a movable and cumulative way through the other 112 hours of being awake.  16 hours can be woven into your schedule; yes you can include Sunday worship, private prayers and meditation, Bible reading, devotional reading, spontaneous prayers, prayers during commuting, prayers during a walk or work out, prayers while playing golf, works of outreach and mercy.

  Find at least sixteen waking hours a week to work on love, mercy and justice for yourself and for others.  When we seek God, we are seeking to rest from pride of mere human work and accept the accompanying source of grace from somewhere else, even from the one whom we address as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  We literally try to rest from our egos so that we are receptive and open to change in our lives toward authentic love, justice and mercy.

  If you and I are honest we could spend sixteen hours a week in giving thanksgiving for the gift of our lives as we know them.

  So today, let us embrace the Sabbath principle; we reach toward God in resting from both human pride and failure.  We ask for grace to practice in a more excellent way, justice, love and mercy.  And when we fail in willful ways, we don’t excuse ourselves by saying, “afterall, I did go to church on Sunday;” rather we humbly ask that all of our Sabbath time will help us accept forgiveness for failure at love and justice, and recommit ourselves to being better at love and justice tomorrow than we are today.

  The Gospel of Jesus Christ invites us to integrate the Sabbath principle into our lives and to make our Sabbbath time authentic with the practice of love, mercy and justice.  Amen.