Jesus had much to say about Sabbath keeping because there were so many rules about keeping the Sabbath. These rules went far beyond the requirements of Exodus 31. There the Lord insists that keeping the Sabbath is a sign between God and His people throughout the generations and a means by which and the acknowledgment of God’s sanctifying work among us. It had become a rigid and overbearing duty placed upon the people of God that became also its own focus and not a means to resting in the Lord.
I wish sometimes that we were in that position today. We are not. There are few Sabbath keepers today and the rules once rigid have become as flexible as we want them to be. The reality is that on the Sabbath, we do what we want. If we want to go to Church, we do. If we don’t, we don’t. If we want to get groceries, we do. If we don’t, we don’t. If we want to go out to eat, we do. If we don’t, we don’t. If we want to work on the yard, we do. If we don’t, we don’t. If we want to catch up on our occupational work, we do. If we don’t, we don’t. Do you get the pattern? The Sabbath is not much about the Lord for us but for different reasons than it was not much about the Lord in Jesus’ day. In both cases, we have missed the point.
The first reminder here is that the Sabbath is not optional anymore than it is optional to us to if we want to murder or lie or fornicate or commit adultery. The Sabbath is not a suggestion to us anymore than it is mere suggestion that you should not covet or deceive or defame. These are commands. The Sabbath is a command. You shall remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. The Pharisees got it wrong because they messed up what it means to keep it holy. We mess up because we have no Sabbath at all. Both are the problem.
Jesus insists that the Sabbath, like every other commandment, is given to us not to punish us or steal our joy but to bless us and fill our joy. This is as true for a life in which marriage is honored and children and life and reputation and possessions as it is for a life in which God is honored as the Lord of creation and the God of our salvation. We are as guilty as the Pharisees in missing this as we are guilty of refusing to let God be the focus of the Sabbath. The commandments were given for our good whether we can keep them or not. Even the Sabbath Day! Yes, the holy obligation of hearing the Word preached and receiving from the Lord’s altar the body and blood of Jesus are command that come with blessing attached.
When our Lord’s disciples were chastened by the Pharisees for harvesting grain for food on the Sabbath, they presumed that the Lord of the Sabbath disregarded the earthly needs of His people and instead commanded them to go without in order to serve the commandments. It was the same when Jesus healed on the Sabbath. When our Lord refuses to bend to the Pharisees’ view of the Sabbath, He was not suggesting that the rules do not matter. Rather, Jesus was defining the rules by God’s gracious and merciful intent – to provide for the bodily and spiritual needs of His people. God strengthens us body and soul. We do not get to choose between body and soul because He did not choose between them.
The Pharisees would have insisted that it is a choice and your own needs are secondary to the command of God to observe the Sabbath. Jesus insists that it is not a choice and that the Sabbath is gift for the soul as much as food and shelter are gifts for the body. But that is clearly not our problem today. We do not have religious leaders insisting that we must not cook or travel or conduct business on the Lord’s day. We have a world in which none of the days are the Lord’s and all of them belong to us to do as we choose and see fit.
The Sabbath is fulfilled in Christ, by His death and resurrection. This fulfillment was never meant to release us from any duty or delight to the Word and Sacraments of the Lord but rather so that God might fill all our days and not just one. Luther’s catechism clearly hits this by focusing not on the day or the lack of work but the direction of the worship day and our lives upon the preaching of God’s Word. Our problem today is not restrictions laid upon us that prevent us from seeing Christ in the Sabbath as it was with the Pharisees but just the opposite. We have abused our freedom to do anything and everything on the Lord’s Day except value and make central the preaching of His Word and the reception of His Holy Sacraments.
While we can blame the world for scheduling school and sports events on Sundays and stores for doing business and the like, they are not the problem. They are the symptom. The problem lies in our hearts. Do we love the Lord’s Word and value His gifts so that these means of grace command the full attention of our hearts, minds, and lives OR do we find worship to be an intrusion upon our day and resist the whole idea that our time and our lives are in God’s hands? Today no one would complain that the disciples harvested or Jesus healed on the Sabbath but we all find plenty of reasons why we don’t feel like or want to be in Church.
The rules of the Sabbath have not changed. Jesus did not release us from those rules. He opened up the Sabbath so that it could be what it was always supposed to be – the reflection of God’s people upon God’s mercy as they hear the Word of the Lord and joyfully respond with faith. The end of the Sabbath does not come at the end of Sunday any more than it came at the end of Saturday in the Old Testament. The end of the Sabbath comes when everything is about Jesus and we are gathered around Him on high, around the Lamb upon His throne, joined with the saints who went before, praising His goodness, and being filled with His mercies in the Marriage Feast of the Lamb without end.
If we do not connect what happens here with what will happen at the end of all things, then the Sabbath will always be about rules we do not want to keep and time we reserve for ourselves instead of for God. But once we connect this Word preached today and this altar where today we receive the foretaste of the eternal, then the Sabbath is revealed for what God had always intended. Then it has its focus not on rules or on us but on Christ. That is what it means for Him to be Lord of the Sabbath. He is where He has promised to be, in Word and Sacrament, bestowing what He has promised to give, in forgiveness, life, and salvation – and we are where we need to be, joyfully hearing, eating, and drinking that Christ may live in us and we in Him – now and to everlasting life. Amen.
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