Honoring the Sabbath (Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost)
Sermons on YouTube…
Reuben Levine was the retired rabbi who served a small, start-up Jewish congregation that met here at Prince of Peace many years ago. He also joined us regularly for the Route 28 Clergy lunches that included clergy from many of the congregations that are currently part of the Route 28 Interfaith Team.
During those lunches, we talked about all kinds of things that were going on in our religious communities and the local community around us. And it was during one of those lunches that somehow we got to talking about the significance of certain traditions in our congregations. Sometimes, our traditions are some of the most important things we share, which bind us together and give us strength. But at other times, they can also be a source of stress and conflict when people argue about the right way to continue the tradition.
And it was then that Reuben told us one of the stories I remember most from him. He told us:
There was a guy who moved into a city and decided to try out the local synagogue and see if it would be a good fit for him. So he attended for a few weeks, and afterwards he made an appointment to talk with the rabbi.
When he met with the rabbi, he said, “You know, rabbi, I really like this congregation and I think I want to join. But I do have a question that maybe you could answer. When I come to shabbat services, I notice that half the congregation stands for the reading of the Torah, and half stay seated. Is the tradition that we should stand for the reading of the Torah?”
And the rabbi replied, “No, no that’s not the tradition.”
“Ah, says the guy, then the tradition is that we should sit for the reading of the Torah?”
And the rabbi said, “No, no that’s not the tradition either.”
“But rabbi”, the guy said, “whenever the Torah is read the half that are standing and the half that are sitting all tell the others that they’re doing the tradition wrong!”
“Ah”, said the rabbi, “That’s the tradition!”
After that story, I realized that Jews and Lutherans have more in common than I thought!
But while in our day, there are lots of knock-down, drag-out fights that Christians have over all kinds of things, it’s absolutely inconceivable to most of us that a debate over “honoring the Sabbath” would cause a knock-down, drag-out fight. It’s just bizarre. Yet that’s what’s happening in today’s Gospel reading. And it’s not the only time that Jesus gets into trouble because of debates about what is or is not permissible on the Sabbath. In fact, it’s the most frequent subject of knock-down, drag-out fights between Jesus and the religious authorities.
Keeping the Sabbath was a big deal in Jesus’ day. It was a big deal to the religious authorities. It was a big deal to the common people. And, although we sometimes miss this, it was also a big deal to Jesus.
Keeping the sabbath – and how you kept sabbath – was important for a number of reasons. Sabbath was a way that Jews had kept and honored their faith when the Temple had been destroyed during the Babylonian exile, and that continued on after the exile was over. Sabbath was a weekly way of focusing on God instead of on yourself. And – sometimes missed by Christians as we read the Old Testament – neglecting the sabbath is (except for idolatry) the number one critique of the prophets (as it is in today’s first reading) …
So the tradition of keeping the sabbath was a big deal, because keeping the Sabbath wasn’t simply a matter of following a bunch of rules about what you could do or not do. Keeping the Sabbath was a big deal because keeping the Sabbath was about your identity as part of the people of God. When somebody asked a Jew in those days what it meant to be part of the people of God, their answer was, at least in part, “I keep the Sabbath.” And that was because keeping the Sabbath was about living in the covenant God gave to his people. It was about focusing on the goodness of God instead of on the routine tasks of everyday life. It was about entering into the joy of creation by participating in the rest that even God took when he finished creation. And it was about giving sabbath to others…
And in fact, the debates about keeping Sabbath were NOT unique to Jesus and the religious authorities in the synagogue that day. Actually, Jesus was participating in a long running tradition of debating what it meant to properly keep the Sabbath …
So in order to really understand today’s Gospel reading, or any time that Jesus gets into a debate about Sabbath, we need to understand that this is not a minor quibble about a particular rule. We can’t just read this as though Miss Manners had walked up to Jesus and told him he was gauche for using his dessert fork to eat his salad!
Instead, we have to see past the individual rule debates to understand that this is really a debate about what it means to live as people of God. Who are you as God’s people? Are you making time and space in your life to have a living relationship with God? And what is that relationship with God all about anyway?
These are the questions Jesus is really addressing through the Sabbath debates. And they’re questions that we shouldn’t pass over.
So what does it mean for us to live as God’s people? What does it mean to honor the sabbath in our lives? And how should others see us as people of God?
Jesus’ critique, after all, is NOT that the Sabbath and its rules are silly, old fashioned ideas that shouldn’t matter anymore. Jesus’ critique is always that people aren’t keeping the Sabbath well enough, because they’re focused on the wrong things, even if some of those things are good in and of themselves. And sometimes, they’re focused on themselves, but cloak their self-interest in piety… (as the leader of the synagogue may be doing when he tries to show how uber-religious he is…)
And if all “Sabbath” means to us is taking a break from work and going to church, that’s also not what Jesus has in mind, even though those are both good things to do.
Instead, Jesus’ call to honor the Sabbath is about remembering to live as God’s people. And in today’s story, it’s clear that living as God’s people and honoring sabbath is about:
- Being “unbound”, and helping others to be unbound – unbound from fear; unbound from the past; unbound from the lurking suspicion that God hasn’t quite really forgiven us for the stuff that nobody else has ever found out about. Part of living the sabbath is living as “unbound” people instead folks who fight over the “rules” because we’re not quite unbound from those fears…
- Praising God – as soon as the woman is unbound, she praises God; the problem Jesus has is that some folks ignore the praise of God in favor of fighting about the rules. Yet, praising God is a big part of the point of the sabbath! So part of honoring the sabbath is living as people who focus ourselves on the praise God, instead of getting too hung up on the individual rules of the tradition…
- Sharing freedom and praise with others – there were a lot of people in the synagogue that day who got with the program! As soon as the woman is unbound and praises God, they’re also unbound from their fear, and they start praising God, too! And after all, this is the point of sabbath – it’s about giving sabbath to others (“removing the yoke” as Isaiah reminds us in the first reading)… Honoring the sabbath is at least in part about doing what Jesus does – helping others be unbound so that they can give thanks and praise…
So even though many Christians may think Jesus doesn’t consider the Sabbath a big deal, Jesus actually shows us that the Sabbath is a bigger deal than some of his opponents thought it was. And Jesus calls us to honor the Sabbath not with fights over a bunch of rules, but by focusing on who we are as God’s people and what that means for our daily lives.
Every day – whether we call it the Sabbath or not – Jesus is unbinding us from our sins, our fears and our failures. Every day, Jesus is giving us the opportunity to praise God with our words and deeds. And every day, Jesus calls us to share Sabbath joy with others by helping them to be unbound and to join in praise and thanks to God.
Amen.