Second Sunday after
Pentecost (B—Proper 4)
June 3, 2018
Text: Mark 2:23-3:6
It is
the Sabbath Day, and the hungry disciples are picking heads of grain. And the Pharisees are bugged. “What’s up with this, Jesus? Would you take a look at Your disciples”… “why are they doing what is not lawful on
the Sabbath?” (Mark 2:24; ESV).
Well, first off, who says it isn’t lawful? We just read the Commandment in our Old
Testament lesson. Yes, it’s true, God
says to His people that on the Sabbath Day “you shall not do any work” (Deut. 5:14). The Children of Israel were not to go out and
gather manna. They were not to harvest
their fields or sheer the sheep. They
were not to send their servants out to work or make their oxen tread the grain. They were to take care of business the other
six days of the week. But the point of
the Law is clear in the text. “You were
a slave in Egypt, O Israelite. You know
what it means to have no rest, no day off, no relief from the taskmaster’s
whip. You are not to be that way. The LORD your God has called you out from
that. Man and beast need a day once a
week to be renewed. And you need a day
to worship, to meditate on my Words, to enjoy the Rest I alone can give. So the Seventh Day, the Sabbath Day, is to be
a holy day, a holiday. Take the day off. Take some time with your family. Take some time to immerse yourself in my holy
Word.” The Sabbath is not given to be a
burden, but a gift! Now, consider again
the disciples in the grain field. Which
is more restful? To be hungry or to be
satisfied? Is it not a labor to be
hungry? And I don’t know about you, but
I love to enjoy a good meal when it’s time to relax. Or consider the man with the withered hand in
the second part of our Holy Gospel. Is
it not a labor to suffer under a debilitating disease? And to be freed from that debilitating
disease, to be made whole, that is true rest, the Rest that only Jesus can
give.
Let’s
do a little Catechism review. What is
the Third Commandment? “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it
holy.
What does this mean? We
should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but
hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.”[1] How do we keep the Sabbath Day holy? How do we sanctify it? By hearing God’s Word. Going to Church, having our sins forgiven,
remembering our Baptism, listening to the Scriptures and the preaching, and
eating and drinking the Holy Supper of our Lord’s body and blood. Being fed by the Lord. Luther says, “God’s Word is the treasure that
sanctifies everything [1 timothy 4:5]… Whenever God’s Word is taught, preached,
heard, read, or meditated upon, then the person, day, and work are sanctified.”[2]
In
the Old Testament, the Sabbath Day was to be kept on the Seventh Day, Saturday. In addition to the gift of rest and God’s
Word, the Sabbath was to be an act of faith on the part of the people. God will take care of them and prosper them,
even if they don’t work this one day of the week. God Himself set the pattern. In six days God did His work of creating the
heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested from His work, not
because He was tired, but because He was setting up the pattern for His people,
and He was setting up a Commandment which finds its fullness in Jesus. Jesus follows the pattern. Of course, in His earthly ministry, He kept
the Sabbath on Saturday, resting and attending Synagogue. His righteous fulfillment of the Commandment
counts for us all, praise be to God, for we have not kept them Commandment,
outwardly or inwardly. But it’s more
than that. In Holy Week, Jesus does the
work of New Creation. He undoes the
damage of Adam’s fall and the curse of the Old Creation. He undoes it by dying on the cross, atoning
for Adam’s sin and ours, suffering the curse in our place. And on the seventh day, in a glorious repeat
of the First Creation, He rests! He
rests in the tomb. This is actually what
this has all been about from the very beginning. God rests from all His work on Holy
Saturday. Jesus rests, having completed
the sacrifice. For it is finished. And then, THEN, on the Eighth Day, the First
Day of the New Week and of the New Creation, Sunday, Jesus Christ rises from
the dead. Behold, He has made all things
new.
So
now, in the New Testament, every day is our Sabbath Day, for Jesus Christ
Himself is our Sabbath. He is our Rest. For now every day we rest in the forgiveness
of sins that is ours in Jesus. We rest
in His peace. He has reconciled us to
God our Father. We rest in His unending
life. Death is no longer our
oppressor. We rest in His freedom. We are no longer enslaved to sin and the
kingdom of the devil. We don’t have to
go around proving ourselves all the time.
We don’t have to justify ourselves anymore. Jesus has justified us, declared us
righteous, once and for all by virtue of His righteousness and death for our
sins. This is why He says to the
Pharisees, “The Sabbath was made for
man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).
The Sabbath is not meant to be a new burden, but a joyous gift from God
to man. Don’t you need a rest? Aren’t you always craving a day off or a
vacation? Why? You need Sabbath! We all know this instinctively. Jesus gives it. Here and now.
In His Word. In the
Sacrament. In Himself. Peace.
Be at rest. Be in Jesus.
This
is also why He says, “the Son of Man is
Lord of the Sabbath” (v. 28). It is
the Lord who defines the Sabbath and what it means for us. The Pharisees do not. Church leaders do not. All the manmade laws that grew up around the
observance of the Sabbath among the Jews were meant to be a hedge around the
Law to keep us from transgressing it outwardly.
But the great irony is that in making the Sabbath into a burden, they broke the very Sabbath they were trying
to protect. They made the Sabbath,
not Rest, but a work! They made
salvation dependent on the traditions of men.
They have no such authority. In
so doing, they make themselves gods. It
is not the case, beloved, that the New Testament Church or the Pope or even the
Apostles changed the Sabbath from
Saturday to Sunday. Man cannot change
the Word of God. Nor did Jesus change
it, incidentally, though He certainly has the authority to do so if He wants. Sunday is not the Sabbath. Not in the Old Testament sense. But that’s just the point. Now that Jesus is our Sabbath, in the New
Testament, every day is our Sabbath.
Saturday is our Sabbath. So is
Sunday. Even Monday. And every day in between. For Jesus has brought us into the New Order
of things, the New Creation.
Why,
then, do we worship on Sunday, if Sunday is not the new Sabbath? Actually, we don’t have to. Nowhere in the Bible is Sunday prescribed,
though it is called “the Lord’s Day” in the New Testament and very quickly
becomes the primary day of worship.
Why? Because Jesus Christ rose
from the dead on Sunday. Thus Sunday is
a very good day to hold the Divine Service and gather around the risen Lord
Jesus in His Word and Supper. The
earliest Christians, incidentally, worshipped every day. After all, every day is the Sabbath, so… But maybe it’s not practical for us to come
to Church every day, so we need to set aside at least one day of the week when
we know there will be preaching and Sacrament and Christian fellowship. We could do it on Tuesdays. That would not be a sin. But better, we do it on Sunday as a custom of
commemorating our Lord’s resurrection, for every Sunday is a little Easter for
the Christian Church.
And
what is the Commandment for us? How
should the Christian regard the Third Commandment? Go to Church.
If you had to sum up the command in a few simple words, it would be
this. Go to Church. And pay attention. God is speaking. Listen up.
I was just writing out some graduation cards to a couple of my kids from
Michigan whom I confirmed many years ago.
Well, what do you say? I’m more
or less against most of the things we say to kids at graduation (“Reach for the
stars.” “Follow your heart.” “Live your dreams.” It makes me sick to my stomach). So I wrote that I was proud of them, which I
am. They’re good kids. And then I wrote, “Don’t forget to go to
Church!” A nice little Law thought from
their old pastor.
It is
the Law in the sense that, if you don’t want to go to Church, tough! Get out of bed and go. You don’t have anything more important to be
doing. But when you get right down to
it, commanding you to go to Church is like commanding your kids to come open
Christmas presents. Look, all of this
that we’re doing here this morning, is receiving one continuous line of gift
after gift from Jesus. And these aren’t
just underwear and socks kind of gifts.
These are the real thing. Kingdom
gifts. Forgiveness of sins. Eternal life.
Heaven. Resurrection. The Father’s House. Joy.
Peace. Abundance. The New Creation. All things.
God only has to command us to come receive these things because we’re so
dense. We’re absolute blockheads, as
Luther would say.
I
don’t really care if you go home and mow your lawn this afternoon, though some
Christians would be absolutely scandalized by it. (I say, do it for their sake.) That’s not the point of the Sabbath. The point of the Sabbath, as is the point of
everything in theology, is Jesus. Jesus
rested the rest of death, that you might have the rest of life. The risen Jesus gives you the Rest that is
Himself. He feeds you and He makes you
whole. We’re not worried about the
picking of grain on this day or any day.
It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.
Jesus does it for you. And like
King David, your High Priest, Jesus, the Son of David, gives you the Bread of
the Presence to eat. He gives you the
Bread of Life, that is Himself. Come to
His Table. Take a load off. And rest.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
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