Tough Answers—The Sabbath Question: Deut. 5:12-15; Matt.2:23-3:6
There’s an old saying—“No good deed goes unpunished.” Our Gospel lesson today takes this quite literally. A friend of mine prepared a meal for her and her husband’s extended family. They were all invited that Sunday afternoon to a delicious pot roast. It was the first time her family had been invited to her home because they were difficult at times. Her husband’s family ate heartily and enjoyed her wonderful cooking. I can attest that she’s a good cook. Her own family scowled and secretly ordered Papa John’s pizza behind her back because they didn’t like “that kind” of food…meaning good.
Many of us are familiar with the idea of taking a Sabbath. In our common understanding, it’s a set, scheduled time of rest, recharge, and a time to be holy with God—to refresh that relationship. We talk about Sabbath in terms of time; for example, I take 5:00 PM Friday to Noon-ish Saturday for Sabbath. I don’t answer calls, work on things, or make myself busy. I rest, recharge, and take a time of faith renewal in some way. But, I want to stretch that idea of Sabbath for us today beyond just time. You should be someone’s Sabbath—be the space, the presence, and the person who helps them deepen their faith and refresh their relationship with God.
In the Gospel today we read where Jesus violated the human-made Sabbath rules of his day to be a literal Sabbath to those in need. First the religious leaders criticize Jesus’s disciples for picking grain heads off the grain to eat on the Sabbath. Their rules were such that it was expected you would starve instead of doing one iota of work to get food. Next, they criticized Jesus for healing someone suffering on the Sabbath. Their rules were such that it was better for you to let others or yourself suffer miserably than do any work at all to be healed. That is no Sabbath at all. It is fake human rule pretending to be an actual holy command from God, but their rules caused actual pain and suffering at a time that was designed to be refreshing and renewing of one’s relationship to God. That’s not respect. That’s not faith. That’s awful, and I daresay sinful.
I have to confess that this passage irks me so much. The pharisees choose suffering over love, over help, over kindness. They chose to be hard-hearted because it preserved their power and control over the people. Jesus threw that in their faces. The Gospel points out that they had hard hearts to the suffering of those around them. Instead of celebrating that Jesus gave life, healing, and hope back to this man with a deformity, Jesus’s compassion help pushed them to plot to kill him. The worst part of it is that they had a choice, and they chose violence and meanness.
In spiritual direction, they talk a lot about things that can be fixed and things that cannot. My own director said that in any struggle you have 5 things at play: the circumstance, your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, and the result. Of all five of those things, the only one you CANNOT control is the circumstance. Life will hand you some difficult circumstances, and you may go through trying times. But what you can control are the rest of those five. You can control how you think about a circumstance and how you feel. You can analyze why you feel so angry and upset, whether that’s the right feeling or not, and whether you’re looking at it from a good perspective, a Christ-like perspective.
You can control how you respond—your action. If someone offends, you can choose the action of forgiveness, of preserving your own sense of love and life, your own personal peace. And if you manage and control your thoughts, feelings, and actions in a healthy and faithful way, you can have a result that is to your benefit even if the circumstance is horrible. Focus on what you can change—focus on creating the result of Sabbath and peace in circumstances that may be challenging or difficult.
The Pharisees may not have liked that Jesus challenged them. He upended their notions of Sabbath, of what was proper, the good order and decency of things, and he instead focused on what was beautiful in life…being a person in whom people could rest, hope, and love. It’s the place where people experienced the presence of God in the form of this person Jesus. When they touched the hem of his garment they found divine healing, but they also simply touched a robe and tunic. When they listened to his teaching, they heard the voice of God, but they saw a humble man who would soon be killed by the angry religious leaders. Jesus broke the legalized rules of Sabbath to be a living Sabbath to those in need.
We need more people in this world whose lives and presence are like that of Jesus. The Sabbath was important because when the Hebrew people were in Egypt, they were worked all day as slaves with no hope, no comfort, no real life, only oppression and suffering. And in Jesus’s day it was no different. They may not have been in Egypt, but they were enslaved to their rules, their control, their power, and the oppressive theocracy they had built in Judea under the permission of the Roman Empire, whose oppression ran even deeper. In Jesus’s day, there was a legalized time of no work, but there was no real Sabbath.
In many ways, we find ourselves in the same kind of world. We are oppressed by a constant political climate, worry, wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, and so many more bad circumstances. We look for human answers. If we elect this person or that person, it will help. If we follow this policy or that policy, things will be fine. If we do this diplomacy, or that military answer, tensions will cool. But unfortunately, you cannot find a Sabbath peace and rest in a human answer to life’s problems. You must look to the holy. Jesus’s loving, gentle presence quietly rebuked the politics and power of the Pharisees and offered a presence of love and healing to the man whose hand was deformed and indeed everyone he met.
Jesus challenged them even before he healed the man. Don’t miss the power of his words. He’s basically saying, that if their Sabbath rules don’t permit good works, then they have made the Sabbath a day where only evil is legally allowed to work in the world because it was illegal to do something good for another. In a very real way, they had made rules that empowered evil deeds on the Sabbath because law-abiding, good people were barred from doing anything at all. And the worst part is their hearts were too hardened to care. The result was that Jesus called out their hypocrisy, healed the man of his deformity, and did what was good, right, and holy on the Sabbath. In return, the religious leaders decided to kill Jesus.
Growing up in church, my grandfather sometimes led singing. He had a pretty good tenor voice, and knew the old, old hymns very well. One of his favorites was a hymn called “Let My Life Be a Light.” You won’t really find it in any hymnal except the old, shaped note hymnals from pre-1950. Part of the second verse says, “Guide my footsteps aright through the dark, stormy night, give me peace, give me joy, give me love. Let my life be a light shining out through the night, may I help struggling ones to the fold; spreading cheer everywhere to the sad and the lone, let my life be a light to some soul.” It’s really the prayer we need, isn’t it?
Disappointments and difficult circumstances can often be a part of life. My friend learned this from her tactless and crass family coming to dinner only to ruin it. We don’t always have control of the circumstance, but we can always control how it affects us and how we respond. And we can choose a place of Sabbath and rest in our lives. Yes, Sabbath is scheduling out a time for personal rest and refreshing of faith, but it is also a lived practice. Whatever you do in life, don’t be the Pharisee people encounter. Be the Sabbath that shows the love of Christ and practices peace and comfort in a world that so desperately needs it.
Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/344874001686362