Sabbath: What the Prophets Have To Say

Old Testament Reading
“Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.  ² Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God.  ³ “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers.  ⁴ Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.  ⁵ Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?  ⁶ Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?  ⁷ Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?  ⁸ Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.  ⁹ Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,  ¹⁰ if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.  ¹¹ The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.  ¹² Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.  ¹³ 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 interests, or pursuing your own affairs;  ¹⁴ 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, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” – Isaiah 58:1-14

Gospel Reading
Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand.  ² They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him.  ³ And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.”  ⁴ Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent.  ⁵ He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.  ⁶ The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him. – Mark 3:1-6

Jesus heals the man with the withered hand

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This week we continue our series on the Sabbath and what it means to keep the Sabbath.  This is a subject that’s very close to my heart because I’ve discovered over the past few years there is a great blessing, and a sense of emotional and spiritual stability, in keeping the Sabbath.

With the crazy schedules many of us keep, sometimes we have to observe the Sabbath on a Tuesday or a Friday instead of the weekend, and that’s OK. The important thing is to find one day a week in which we do no work, and spend that day with God and with family and friends, or even alone sometimes, recharging our batteries and enjoying all the gifts God has so richly given us.

So far in our Sabbath series we’ve seen in the book of Genesis how God made the world in six days and rested on the seventh day and therefore declared the seventh day holy. Whether you interpret creation as six literal days or six thousand thousand years is beside the point – the point is God rested on the seventh.  And God taught people to do the same in memory of what God had done.

God wrote this command into the Ten Commandments: “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy.” This is Commandment Number Three.  And God said on the Sabbath everyone is supposed to rest: God’s people, the children of God’s people, anyone who works for God’s people, any animals belonging to God’s people, and any foreigners who are living in the same land as God’s people. Everyone is to rest and enjoy the gifts God has given.

This week we move into what the Psalms and Prophets have to say about the Sabbath. As we soon discover, there’s a problem: the people refuse to rest.  This is true in spite of the promises and warnings the prophets give down through the years.  For example, God says through Isaiah:

“…all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant —  ⁷ these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer…” (Is. 56:6b-7a)

God says through Jeremiah:

“Thus says the LORD: For the sake of your lives, take care that you do not bear a burden on the sabbath day…” (Jer 17:21)

God speaks through the prophet Amos, talking about a people who can’t wait for Sabbath to be over so they can start selling things at high prices and cheating the poor. God says:

“Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land,  ⁵ saying, “When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, ⁶ buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.” ⁷ The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.” (Amos 8:4-7)

All through the Old Testament prophets are reminding the people over and over that the Sabbath must be observed in order for society to be just and fair.

I tripped over something amazing on Google this week. It’s an article about Yom Kippur and the Sabbath by Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, a leader in Conservative branch of Judaism. (I’ve edited a good bit for time and space but recommend the entire article. [words in square brackets are my notes]) She writes:

“The obligation to observe Shabbat [that is, Sabbath] demands that every person and animal, merely by virtue of being alive, be entitled to a day every week to experience rest, plenty and safety. This was a radical vision… in the time of Isaiah [here she refers to the passage from Isaiah at the top of this article] It is an equally far-reaching concept today. The vast majority of the world’s people are too poor and too oppressed to… take a day off from work. Even in our own communities, there are many who can’t afford a day of rest.  The genius of Jewish tradition is that… Shabbat is an obligation, which – in order to be fulfilled – requires an entirely different social structure. […] In Jewish thinking, a day of rest is not a human right derived from an abstract notion…  Rather, it is a religious obligation, emanating from a concrete notion of what we are required to do for each other…”

In other words, in order to keep the Sabbath, society needs to be fair. Last week I mentioned that if you’ve heard of the saying ‘no justice, no peace’ – what God’s word says is ‘no Sabbath, no justice’. Rabbi Schonfeld’s words are what I meant by that. She wraps up her thoughts by saying:

“In order to practice… Shabbat, a panoply of ethical social systems must be put in place. That is why Shabbat is described… as… a taste of the world to come…”

In this imperfect world Sabbath will never happen perfectly. But it’s a vision to bear in mind as we celebrate the Sabbath and look forward to God’s kingdom and the joy that will be ours.

If anyone’s wondering why a Christian priest is quoting a Jewish rabbi: the Old Testament is the holy book of the Jewish people, and they’ve been practicing Sabbath a lot longer than we have! Besides, Jesus was a Jewish rabbi…

And if all this sounds a bit ‘heavy’ and feels kind of foreign, let me bring us back to familiar territory. Our second scripture reading is from the Gospel of Mark, and it tells the story of what happened when Jesus healed someone on the Sabbath.  You remember how the story goes: Jesus was teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and a man came in who had a withered hand. In those days most people made their living working with their hands, so this man would have suffered not just a hand that didn’t work… he would have been limited in the work he could do, and therefore his life was limited.

The religious authorities – who had just gotten done scolding Jesus’ disciples for picking wheat and eating it on the Sabbath – were watching to see if Jesus would heal on the Sabbath. They were stuck on keeping the letter of the law (“do no work”) and completely missed the spirit of the law: justice and mercy.

Remember what Rabbi Schonfeld said about the connection between Sabbath and justice: that on the Sabbath “everyone is entitled to rest, plenty, and safety.” Is this man with the withered hand going to receive ‘rest, plenty and safety’ from Jesus or from the religious authorities?

Jesus calls the man forward. And he looks over at the religious experts and he says:

“Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath, or to do harm? To save life, or to kill?”

And they looked at him in silence.

Jesus looked at them in anger and in grief: these were the men who were supposed to be teaching God’s people – by their word and example – what God is like. And their hearts were hard as stone, unmoved by the man’s pain.

But Jesus was moved. And he said to the man, “stretch out your hand.” And he did, and the hand was made whole.

And the apostle Mark tells us, “The Pharisees went out immediately and conspired with the Herodians… how to destroy Jesus.”

It’s like Jesus said: “what is lawful on the Sabbath? To heal or to kill?” The law that tells us “don’t work on the Sabbath” teaches us that showing mercy is the highest form of obedience.

Today on this Sabbath day there are people who are giving up their Sabbath in order to heal: our medical workers, our emergency responders. They’re not resting: but Jesus says what they are doing is fulfilling the law. (May God grant them the opportunity to rest in the near future.)

In the meantime the rest of us can observe the Sabbath. We can set aside one day a week to remember God’s creation and enjoy God’s rest. We can thank God that even in the middle of this strange time we are richly blessed, and we can enjoy God’s “rest, plenty and safety.”

This is the heart of the Sabbath and a taste of God’s kingdom to come. AMEN