Sabbath? What Sabbath? 

Luke 13:10-17

Isaiah 58:9b-14

 

            I am going to start out today taking you on what the older ones here will view as a trip through memory lane, and the younger ones will view as ancient history.

 

            For those of you under the age of 20, imagine a world in which telephones are all attached to cords. In this imaginary world, the phone doesn’t go anywhere, and if you want to talk on a phone, you have to actually be in the room where the phone is. Stranger yet, if you want to call someone, you have to dial each number on a little rotary disk.

 

            Imagine a world in which television images appear in only black and white and shades of gray, that the largest screen possible is 24 inches, and that there are only three or four stations to choose from. Imagine that in order to get a clear picture you have to adjust the rabbit ears on top of the set, and that every time you want to change the channel, you have to actually get up off the couch and twist the knob.

 

            Imagine, if you can, a world in which recorded music is played only on a phonograph, or record player, which accesses the music through a needle that rides in the grooves of large vinyl discs to deliver a static-filled sound, and if you want to hear more than 6 songs in succession, you have to flip over the disc or get a new one.

 

            Imagine a world in which the only way to get the printed word on a paper is with a typewriter, where the only way to fix a typing mistake is to paint over it with some white goo and then retype over it when it dries; the only way to make a copy of your writing is to attach a piece of ink-coated paper known as carbon paper between layers of white paper to transfer the image as you type.

 

            Imagine a world in which all mathematical problems have to be worked out mentally, either in your head or on paper, unless you know how to use a complicated instrument called a slide rule. Imagine a world in which you have to purchase film for cameras in order to take a picture and then wait several days for some lab to develop it, where the only way check your spelling is to look it up in a book called a dictionary, where the best source of information is a quickly outdated set of books known as an encyclopedia. Imagine that the only place you can see a movie is in a theater, and that if you miss a touchdown in a televised football game, too bad, because there is no instant replay.

 

            For the younger ones in the room, it may be hard to imagine such a world. But it’s the world that most of us grew up in. For us older ones it may be hard to imagine that young people today have absolutely no experience with that world I described.

 

            Our world changes so often and so quickly that we seldom stop to think how different life is today from the world of 20 years ago.

 

            There is another huge societal change that has absolutely revolutionized our society without much notice being taken of it. Young people, I want you to try to imagine a world in which one day of the week is set aside to honor God. One day of the week that is a day of rest, when all normal activity stops, when the stores are closed, all obligations and commitments cease. One day of the week when the main emphasis is worship, the renewal of self and of family relationships, and on slowing down and experiencing the peace of God’s creation. Imagine, if you can, a society that actually obeys the Third Commandment, and remembers to keep the Sabbath holy.

 

             For the younger ones in the room, it may be hard to imagine such a world. For the older ones it may be hard to imagine that most young people today have absolutely no experience with the world I described.

 

            Today’s readings confront us with the meaning of that Third of the Ten Commandments: what does it mean to keep the Sabbath holy?

 

            The answers we get may be surprising, and they are not as simple as just cursing modern society and pining for the good old days.

 

            Today’s Gospel tells of a time when people took the Third Commandment very seriously indeed. In Jesus’ time, there were strict religious laws regulating what you could and could not do on the Sabbath. You were forbidden work and by work they meant any physical exertion. You were not to clean the house or cook. All meals for the Sabbath were to be prepared ahead of time, so that you did not work at preparing them on the Sabbath. You could use no water except that which was drawn from the well the day before. No business was to be done by anyone for any purpose. You were not to exert yourself in any way—not lift anything no matter how light.

 

            That was how you honored God. By making this day different, special. By backing away from the grind of life. By imitating the story of creation in which God was said to have taken time from the labors of creation to rest and enjoy it.

 

            This philosophy was followed by many devout people in early American history. There are surviving sects today, although they are increasingly rare, who maintain the same regimen.

 

            From the beginning, however, a flaw became evident in this admirable attempt to honor God and creation: The rules became more important than the God they were supposed to honor. The focus shifted from honoring God to the question: what is the precise meaning of “work?”

            If you serve this food that you prepared yesterday, isn’t that work? Even if it is all self-serve, isn’t serving yourself work? What about the 2-year old who cannot feed herself? Doesn’t someone have to feed her, and isn’t that work? What if an elderly person falls? Helping him to his feet is work. So should you do these things?

 

            As the people get wrapped up in dissecting the definition of work, the whole point of the Sabbath gets lost. The Sabbath is a time set aside to honor God and to get in tune with God’s creation by stepping back and resting our minds and bodies. How do you honor God and how do you rest from your labors by arguing over the definition of work?

            When you really get down to it, this “no work” rule is impossible to enforce. Just getting out of bed can be considered work (some days it’s more work than others.) Taking a walk in the woods and enjoying God’s creation would seem a good way to honor the Sabbath, until you consider that walking is work. How are you going get yourself to church without doing work? At the very least, you have to walk and that’s work.

 

            What it boils down to is that under the old Temple rules, the best way to honor God is by being an inert lump that sits all day without actually doing a thing; which, come to think of it, could explain the popularity of watching NFL football on Sunday.

 

            Jesus simply points out how silly this nitpicking is. The example he cites is animal care. Animals need to be looked after whether it’s the Sabbath or not. This reality was recognized even by the strictest Pharisees and so an exception was made.

            Yet healing a person was work and so was not allowed. If Jesus conformed to the Pharisees’ rules of the Sabbath, he could not heal this desperate woman. He would not be allowed to ease her suffering. Jesus wants to know, “What part of this bureaucratic nightmare honors God?” How does it honor God to ignore a neighbor in pain and misery? Is not the best way to honor God loving your neighbor as yourself, to be doing exactly what God wants us to do with our lives?

 

            In this incident in Luke, Jesus laments the fact that the Third Commandment has been changed from “Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy,” into a new commandment, “Remember our rules to keep them holy.” Jesus shows us that remembering the Sabbath is meant to be an attitude, not a code of rules.

 

            But that leaves us with a dilemma. In 1972, the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team hired a new coach who was determined to show his team that there was a new sheriff in town. In his first meeting with the team, he went on a long and loud rant proclaiming how this team was going to be disciplined--it was his way or the highway. He was going to run a tight ship, he was going to lay down the law, and they had better follow his rules to the letter or they would find themselves cut from the team so fast they wouldn’t know what hit them. There would be no exceptions, no excuses.

 

            He then proceeded to start in on his rules, the first one being “no smoking in the locker room.” One of the better players raised his hand and said, “Coach, I have been smoking in the locker room for years. I find that it settles me down before a game and helps me to get into the frame of mind that I need to perform at my best.”

 

            There was a long, awkward silence. When the coach spoke again, there was a noticeable crack in his tough-guy façade. “Okay,” he said. “I guess I’ll let that go.”

 

            Those who were in the room for that exchange said the coach lost his team right then and there, and never regained their respect. If you stake your whole career on an absolutely unbreakable set of rules and then break one at the first opportunity, your credibility is shot. The 76ers went on to set a record for futility that has never been equaled in pro basketball, winning only 9 games and losing 73.

 

            Doesn’t it seem like the same thing has happened with the commandment to honor the Sabbath Day? That law is carved out in stone, one of the pillars of the Judeo-Christian faith. Absolutely unyielding. No ifs, ands, or buts. A host of rules laid out as to how to follow that law. No commerce, no stores open. No work of any kind. No school events, no community events. No meetings. Nothing to get in the way of worship and rest. No exceptions.

 

            But then someone raises their hand and says, “I run a nursing home, where many of the patients require skilled care. We have to provide for them, and that means some people need to come into work.”

 

            Oooh, excellent point! Good reason.Yeah, we have to make an exception there. But no others.

            Sorry, once that huge concrete dam that we built protecting the Sabbath against work was breeched, it was all over. The gap grew bigger and bigger as more exceptions were made. More and more water poured through until the whole dam fell apart. The commandment to honor the Sabbath was swept away until very little trace of it remains.

 

            For most people now, the Sabbath is just day two of the weekend, really no different from Saturday. The Sabbath is a day to sleep late. It’s a day to schedule tournaments, practices, and meetings. It’s another day of business as usual down at the mall. Convenience and profits take priority over God. Church attendance is optional.            Even for churchgoers, the Sabbath has eroded. In scheduling worship times, it’s astounding how many people actually talk about “getting church out of the way so that I can get on with my day”, and they use those very words. We honor the Sabbath by getting it out of the way so we can get on with our day?

 

            What’s the way out of our dilemma? How do we truly remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy? Should we fight to return to the blue laws of American yesteryear?

 

            No, because that’s sort of what helped create the problem we have today. Here in the U.S. we built a dam around “no work on Sunday” and then found that it didn’t hold. There were too many flaws in the dam, too many legitimate reasons why the rule wouldn’t work, and once the dam was cracked, the entire structure shattered, the whole concept of honoring the Sabbath was swept aside. Like the Pharisees, we found that we were busy honoring rules and codes and restrictions and not honoring God, and when the rules proved unenforceable, there was nothing left to honor. We had left God out of the equation.

 

            How do we return to the place of honoring the Sabbath?

 

            I grew up in St. Louis Park, a Minneapolis suburb that was roughly 40% Jewish at the time. One day, as Christmas approached, there was a notice printed in the local newspaper. A group of Jews offered to work Christmas Eve and Christmas Day shifts for any Christian store clerk who wanted those days off. They asked nothing in return; they said that they simply wanted to make it possible for those to whom these were holy days to honor God on those special occasions.

           

            The offer so moved the Christian community that it reciprocated; and there were offers to work the shift of any Jewish store clerk on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashannah.

 

            It is perhaps the best example I have seen of honoring the Sabbath. Rules were not the focus. What happened was totally outside any regulation or law or ordinance. What happened was that our Jewish neighbors understood what the Third Commandment is all about. That the Sabbath is about honoring God and our need to back off and rest and get in touch with God’s creation. And that you do not honor God by loving systems more than people, that you honor God by loving the neighbor as yourself, you honor God by fostering an environment that allows people to take time out from the usual schedule to walk with God.

 

            In their actions, the people of St. Louis Park showed that they took seriously these words from Isaiah:

 

            If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day,

            If you call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable, if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own affairs,

            Then you shall take delight in the Lord and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;

            I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor, Jacob.

 

            It’s the Sabbath that’s important, not the rules. Remember the Sabbath and you will ride upon the heights of the earth!