The purpose of keeping Sabbath

Sermon delivered Sunday, August 21, 2016 (The Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 16, Year C (Track 2)), at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.

Sermon Text(s): Isaiah 58:9b-14, Luke 13:10-17



“Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” (Exodus 20:8)

So God commanded the people of Israel when he gave them the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. And pretty much since that moment, people have been arguing over what exactly it means to “remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” Does it mean not doing any work? If so, does that mean just not doing whatever it is we do for a living, or do other things count as “work” as well? Does it mean spending the day worshipping God? If so, does that mean doing only religious activities, and preferably those that are serious and dour, leaving no room for fun? When we attempt to figure out what is acceptable and what is unacceptable on the Sabbath, what things we can “get away with” doing and what things are forbidden, we’re pretty much missing the point of why God gave us the Sabbath in the first place, why God commanded us to honor the Sabbath.

The most basic purpose of observing the Sabbath is to give us a day of rest. The passage from Exodus where God gives the Ten Commandments to Moses says:

“Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. For six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.” (Exodus 20:8-11)

In this passage, keeping sabbath is linked to God’s own pattern of action and rest: we are to work for a certain number of days and then rest, just as God did at creation. The book of Genesis tells us that on that day that God rested, he stepped back and looked at his creation and observed that it was good. So although there is no explicit reason given in the commandment as to why the people should keep the Sabbath or what the purpose of it is, by linking it to the creation story, the message is that we are not only given a break to rest, but to take delight in our work and in the work of God around us. To step back from our busy life just long enough to appreciate what we have and what is all around us.

In the book of Deuteronomy, a different reason is given for keeping the Sabbath:

“Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.”– Then it goes on to repeat what is in Exodus about how nobody, not even the slaves or the livestock, is to do any work on the sabbath. But rather than a reference to the creation story, in Deuteronomy the commandment about Sabbath concludes with this line: “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.”

Here the day of rest is linked with the liberation of the people from slavery – a condition in which they likely had had very little rest. Every time they observed the Sabbath, it would be a reminder to them to be grateful for their liberation. So the Sabbath is to be not just a day of rest, but a time to be grateful for the freedom to take that rest, a time to celebrate liberation.

When Jesus heals on the Sabbath – as he does in today’s Gospel reading and in many other places throughout the Gospels – he gets flack from Jewish leaders who saw this as a violation of the rule to do no work on the Sabbath. But Jesus rebukes them with this comeback:

"You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?"

Without directly saying it, Jesus is alluding to that other reason for keeping Sabbath – to celebrate liberation. Notice the language Jesus uses: “Ought not this woman… be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” He’s reminding them of the connection between the Sabbath and the exodus from Egypt: “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.” Remember that part, guys? Being set free from bondage? Remember that that’s one of the reasons God established the Sabbath? So why should it be considered inappropriate to bring someone freedom from an ailment on the Sabbath day?

The ancient prophets had a lot to say about people who dishonored the Sabbath, and we have a glimpse of their critique in our Hebrew scripture passage today, from Isaiah:

“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; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth.”

The prophets chastise people who “pursue their own interests” on the Sabbath day, who dishonor the Sabbath for selfish reasons, like wanting to make more money by keeping their store open one more day. In an ironic twist, the adamancy of the religious leaders that Jesus clashes with who insist that he should not heal because no work should be done on the Sabbath becomes a perfect example of those who “pursue their own interests” on the Sabbath day, as these religious leaders seek to maintain the order of the social institution that benefits them.

Jesus’s healing on the Sabbath, although it breaks the technical letter of the law, is not an example of “pursuing your own interests” on the Sabbath day. Jesus’s actions are not done out of a selfish desire to do whatever he wants on the Sabbath, disregarding God’s commandments. His act of healing is an unselfish act, an act in which he gives of himself to someone else, an act that honors the Sabbath by bringing someone freedom from bondage, echoing the action of God in bringing the people out of slavery in Egypt that prompted the establishment of the Sabbath day in the first place.

This exchange between Jesus and the religious leaders is a perfect illustration of what the apostle Paul observed in his second letter to the Corinthians: “the letter kills, but the spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). Jesus is observing the spirit behind the law of keeping Sabbath, even if he is not strictly obeying the letter of the law. But the religious leaders who are so focused on the letter of the law – “no work should be done on the Sabbath, ever, not for any reason!” – lose sight of the spirit of the law. They become focused on obeying the law for the law’s sake rather than for the reason the law was given in the first place – to bring freedom and new life. Jesus calls out the religious leaders who are so upset that he has healed this woman, and yet despite their insistence that no work be done on the Sabbath ever, they still untie their animals and take them to drink on the Sabbath day, which, if we’re using that strict interpretation of the law, would be considered work. So, he challenges them, you’re willing to make an exception to keep your own animals alive, but not to serve and care for a woman who is suffering?

Living on the West Coast in 21st century America, we’re perhaps in an opposite situation from Jesus’s audience in today’s Gospel reading. Sabbath laws prohibiting work on a certain day are so far from our consciousness here that this passage likely has little relevance to us in that regard. We get that “the letter kills,” and so as a society, we’ve largely thrown out the letter, seeing religious observance as burdensome and restrictive. But what we’ve forgotten as we’ve done so is that excessive work also kills. A constant stream of information input coming at from our phones, our tablets, our televisions, the internet – 24 hours a day – that also kills.

Our problem is not so much being overly restricted about what we can’t do on the Sabbath, but having absolutely no restrictions about what we can do on the Sabbath! Running from one event to another, from one meeting to another, being too busy to do anything – our hectic lives never slow down anymore, not even over the weekends. There is no social pressure – from the society or from the church, anymore – at least, not the Episcopal Church! – to refrain from any action on any particular day of the week, and so it is left to each one of us, individually, to impose healthy restrictions on ourselves, and oftentimes it is easier to obey external laws than it is to set up internal ones for our own good. As a result, many of us today have no concept of what it means to “remember the Sabbath day,” to follow the wisdom of the ancients in listening to God’s commandment to just STOP, already. To remember that there is value in doing nothing, in resting, in just being.

Donna Schaper, a Baptist minister in New York City who has written extensively on the Sabbath, says, “When we do not keep sabbath, our life is a list.”

“When we do not keep sabbath, our life is a list.”

Lists are good. They keep us going and help us get things done by keeping us accountable. But if we don’t ever take a break, if we don’t ever just stop and rest, our entire life becomes one long to-do list.

This is the flip side of keeping Sabbath too strictly – not keeping it at all. And in both scenarios, actually, life becomes a list – either a list of “dos” and “don’ts,” a list of rules and regulations, or a list of “to-dos,” a list of things for which there will never be enough time, shutting out any time for ourselves or for God.

What might it look like to take charge of our own Sabbaths and stay true to the spirit of God’s command to “honor the Sabbath and keep it holy”? What kinds of things might you do to reclaim that Sabbath time, that rest time, on whatever day of the week works best for you?

If you have any preconceived notions about what it means to keep Sabbath, throw them out and ask yourself this question: “What brings me life? What rejuvenates me? What reminds me to be grateful for God’s grace and mercy in my life and motivates me to work for the liberation of others?”

Whatever your answers to those questions, make intentional time during your week to do those things, without worrying about whether you are “working” on the Sabbath or not, or whether you are being “productive” or not. Worrying too much about either the religious commandment to not do any work on the Sabbath or about the unspoken secular commandment that we must be productive and “get things done” 24 hours a day leads to the same result: a life in which true spiritual joy and connection is squelched. The letter kills, but the spirit gives life. Honor God by making time in your schedule for what brings you life and what motivates you to bring life to others. In doing so, you are “remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy.”