Sabbath Legalism or the Rest Principle?

2 Pentecost, B proper 4  June 2, 2024
Deuteronomy 5:12-15  Psalm 81:1-10
2 Corinthians 4:5-12  Mark 2:23-3:6

Lectionary Link

A very good law or principle of life can be denigrated to mere legalism depending on how it is applied.

The appointed Gospel for today presents the encounter of Jesus with his opponents about his disciples and his violation of the Sabbath rule.

His disciples plucked grains of wheat while walking in the fields on the Sabbath and his opponents regarded his healing of an man in the synagogue to be work which violated the Sabbath law.

This presentation of the Sabbath controversy reveals that holy things can be used wrongly.   We call the Bible, a holy book, but how often has this holy book been used to justified some horrendous human behaviors in the history of the use of the Bible as the holy book of Christian churches?

Let us look at how a great principle of Sabbath could be diminished in such a way.

First, the great principle can be reduced to legalistic minutiae to indicate one's party loyalty to the leaders who want to control the behaviors of their members.  When a law is made into a party loyalty test and not the practice of what is actually good for people, then the great principle becomes violated.

What is the great principle of the Sabbath?  It is the rest principle of life.  Every living organism needs rest.  Rest is a needed phase in the sustenance of good and healthy life.  For creatures, rest happens involuntarily if, not chosen.  People fall asleep whether they want to or not.  Animals fall asleep.  Agricultural practice indicates that natural soil needs rest and periods of lying fallow to retain productive growth.  Rest is a principle of life.

The ancient wisdom writers of Hebrew Scriptures indicated that the rest principle derives from the rest of God, who rested on the seventh after the six days of working at creation.  If rest is a divine practice, it is also a required human practice.

We might also note that the rest of God is but a switch in the phases of the divine in creation.  What about the work of the sustaining omnipresence of God in the creative order?

A couple of observations about the Sabbath law in the Ten Commandments?  If rest is necessary and happens in involuntary ways, why does it have to be a religious commandment from upon high?

I would suspect that people with wealth and power who had slaves, servants and workers, would not provide adequate rest to those who worked for them.  Therefore there had to be a divine legislation of a required minimum rest for everyone.  This rest injunction was an important social, political, and public health requirement.

People with wealth and power may not be lazy, but they do have the freedom to rest and take leisure when they want to.  They also have the power to control the work schedules of their workers, even to require seven day a week labor requirements.  Hence, the divine injunction for a mandatory day of rest for everyone would give the force of religion behind any attempt to overwork or abuse in an extreme way the working class of people.  A day of rest would give women and children in households the freedom of rest as well.  I don't think that we should underestimate the social importance of the rest requirement both in ancient times and how it has had continuing influence in the attaining of humane treatment of workers.

Labor practices of the forty hour work week, child labor legislation, overtime pay, paid vacations, and other humane practices for the work force derive from this great rest principle of the Sabbath.

Those who tended toward legalism and the need to micro-manage the loyalties of their communities ended up defying common sense and arguing about what would or would not be work on the Sabbath.  We can list common sense things which need to be done on the Sabbath, holy days, and "rest" days.

Fires have to be put out, soldiers and police have to engage in their safety work, doctors, nurses, medical workers have to tend to the sick, mothers nurse and feed, people have to eat, and liturgical leaders have to put in their busiest days.  It is rather futile to try to create micro-religious legislation for each person in society since the rest principle will always need to be individually applied, but still the Sabbath requirement can and should have high regard for us and for our societies.

What is the Gospel for us today regarding the Sabbath?

It should be a general requirement for all humanity.  Why?  Rest is like water and air for human life and animal life.  It is needed and required.  Because of the human tendency to personally violate the rest requirement, and worse, to force others to be required to do so, the Rest Principle of the Sabbath needs laws with teeth to guarantee the access to periods of rest of the general populace.

We need to practice rest for our environment, like good practices for the rest of our land so that it can support us in ways that doesn't destroy it.

Each of us needs to integrate the great rest practice into our lives with various strategies appropriate to the circumstances of our age, health, and vocations within our communities.  Rest is a health requirement of our lives; it is a salvation requirement of our lives, and if we accept it for our own lives, we need to grant it to others as well.

Finally, rest is a Christ-promised spiritual reality for us to embrace.  Jesus said, "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, ....and you will find rest for your soul."  Rest is not just a physical health issue, it is a spiritual relationship.  It is a recognition of an inner place of peace and solace that is an available place of retreat for us no matter what we are experiencing in our life situations.

May God grant to us the rest of Christ, and let us go forth with commitment to the great Rest Principle of life which derives from God who is the great rest provider of life.  Let us bring the rest principle to the people and places of our lives today.  Amen.