The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath
This is the concluding summary, the main point Jesus makes
in our Gospel reading today. He,
himself, is Lord of the Sabbath.
The Sabbath Day, of course, is the day of rest. God set the pattern, after 6 days of doing
all the work of creation, he rested on the 7th. He thus set aside the Sabbath Day as holy,
and later in the Mosaic law, clearly taught the people that this day is to be
kept holy also by them as a day of rest.
We all know it as the 3rd Commandment.
But leave it to man to take a good gift of God and get it
all fouled up. Rather than seeing the
Sabbath as a gift, a blessing, a time to be refreshed not only by physical rest
but also by gathering to hear God’s word… the ancient Jews had loaded it down
with legalism, prescribing all sorts of strictures on just what could and
couldn’t be done on the Sabbath.
Modern Jews have done the same – Rabbinical literature
speaks of thirty-nine archetypal categories of labor prohibited on Shabbat:
The Mishnah lists them as follows:
sowing, plowing, reaping, binding (of sheaves),
threshing, winnowing, separating fit from unfit crops, grinding, sifting,
kneading, baking, shearing wool, washing it, beating it, dyeing it, spinning
it, weaving it, making two loops, weaving two threads, separating two threads,
tying, untying, sewing two stitches, tearing in order to sew two stitches,
trapping a deer, slaughtering it, flaying its skin, salting its flesh, curing
its hide, scraping its hide, cutting it up, writing two letters, erasing two letters
in order to write two letters, building, tearing down, extinguishing a flame,
kindling a flame, beating with a hammer, and moving from one domain to another.
All of these man-made extensions of a divine law, that
really missed the point.
To Jesus’ opponents, it was as if man was made for the
Sabbath. That we were created to follow
these laws as if servants or slaves to the law.
But just the opposite is true.
The Sabbath was made for man.
It’s one of the ten commandments, sure.
But even the commandments are made for man, not as oppressive taskmasters,
but as an expression of God’s will for our good.
If you have no other gods but the true God, you will be
blessed. If you hallow God’s name, keep
the Sabbath, honor your parents and refrain from murder, adultery, theft,
gossip and coveting – you will be blessed.
Just as good parents give rules and guidelines to their children – not
arbitrarily, but for their good – so does our loving Father establish his law
with us, for our good.
Luther, in the Small Catechism, rightly interprets the 3rd
commandment for us – it’s not about a certain day and avoiding work. It’s about hearing God’s word!
What does this mean?
We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and his
word, but hold it sacred, gladly hear and learn it.
The problem, of course, is that we don’t keep the law. We profane the Sabbath day, and we despise
preaching and his word. We act as if the
outward act of coming to church earns us some divine brownie points, or at
least proves that we are good people. Sometimes
we think of church as an obligation, rather than a joy. We say, “I have to go to church” not, “I get
to go to church.” We’re not all that
different at times from the Jews who had twisted the Sabbath all around.
Jesus uses an Old Testament story to debunk their legalistic
approach. Even King David “broke the
Sabbath” by your reckoning. He
did far worse than you see my disciples doing.
He and his men took the bread from the Holy Place, in the
Tabernacle. The bread that was only for
the priests!
No, one might say that the disciples were doing exactly what
the Sabbath was meant for. They were with
Jesus. They were being fed by Jesus, the
Bread of Life.
The Lord of the Sabbath sets the parameters of the
Sabbath. And while he did command his
people to observe it as a holy day in the Old Covenant, it’s clear that already
in the early church the Christians began worshipping, not on Saturday, but on
Sunday. This they called, “The Lord’s
Day”. Sunday, the day of
resurrection. Sunday, the day in which
Christ’s Sabbath rest in the tomb was done, and he rose to bring life and
immortality to life for us all. Ever
since the church has been worshipping on Sundays – not as a law – but in honor
and remembrance of the resurrection.
Christ is Lord of the Sabbath. Christ, in a way, even is our Sabbath
rest. He gives us rest from all our work
of trying to please God, as if we could, by our own righteousness. Rest.
Be at peace. He’s done it all for
you. He offers that rest freely, as he
says in Matthew 11, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest.” His yoke is easy. His burden is light. Faith looks to Jesus to do the heavy lifting,
and he shoulders the burden well for us all.
He carries his cross, endures it, dies upon it, and by that death brings
us true and lasting comfort, hope, peace, and rest.
In Christ, we rest in peace, even in the grave. Paul often speaks of the Christian’s death as
a sleep. A slumber from which we will
rise when the dead in Christ rise to meet him on the last day. One of our hymns puts it this way:
Teach me to live, that I may dread
the grave as little as my bed.
Teach me to die, that so I may
rise glorious at the judgment
day.
Now, of course, we do need regular, physical rest. It’s part of the design of God’s
creation. We need times of sleep, times
of refreshment, even a vacation, times to take a break between all the
busy-ness of this fevered life. And we
sin even when it comes to such rest, don’t we?
Falling off on one side or the other – either sinful laziness, which
wants to work little and rest too much, or else sinful neglect of rest, in
which we work and work to the neglect of family, of downtime, and of balance in
our lives.
But thanks be to God for the forgiveness we have in Christ,
for this, and for every other sin.
Thanks be to God he’s not playing “gotcha” with our sins, for we all
would have been gotten long ago. Rather,
he delights to give us sabbath rest in the person of his Son, our Lord Jesus
Christ – the Lord of the Sabbath.
God gives us daily bread, and yet man does not live by bread
alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. He gives us fathers, and yet he is our
heavenly Father. So also he gives us
rest – times of refreshment for the body – and even more, for the soul. The blessings of our Lord Jesus Christ who
came with good gifts for poor sinners, who has done the work of salvation for
us, and who gives us perfect, lasting, peaceful rest in him.
In Jesus’ Name.
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