PENTECOST XI (Proper 16, 2019)

Sabbath -- Nataliaa Goncharova (1912)

• Isaiah 58:9b-14 
• Psalm 103:1-8  • 
• Hebrews 12:18-29  • 
• Luke 13:10-17
• The readings for this Sunday seem to be in some tension. The passage from Isaiah tells us to “refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day”. In the episode recorded in the Gospel, the leader of the synagogue aims to uphold this teaching. He tells the crowd who are, we might say, pursuing their medical interests: "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day." Yet he says this as an explicit criticism of Jesus, who has just cured a woman of an ailment that for eighteen years had kept her bent over and unable to stand up straight. So whom should we follow – Isaiah or Jesus.

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The Sunday Scene . - Maurice Prendergast (1907)

This dispute about the sabbath between Jesus and traditionalist Jews is a recurrent one in the Gospels. In Mark, Jesus roundly declares “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath”, thereby seeming to overturn the fourth Commandment given to Moses. At the same time, he tells his hearers in several places that he has come to fulfill, not to abolish, “the Law and the prophets”. This is confusing. Are we to observe the sabbath or not?
   There have been places where Christians have embraced, and enforced, very strict Sabbatarianism, Scotland being especially notable for this in times past. To many people, such a regime made Sundays oppressive and claustrophobic. However, in throwing off the yoke, as contemporary Scotland has done, things have swung in the opposite direction, leaving very little difference between Sunday and the other days of the week. This is a cause for some regret; a communal ‘day of rest’ has generally proved a good thing.
      But that does not get to the heart of the matter. Rather the point is to see the observation of the sabbath differently, not as an externally imposed set of rules, but as an internally motivated response to God. Part of that response lies in willingly setting aside time that we could use for our own purposes, and devoting it to God instead – in worship, prayer and service. Many otherwise sincere Christians have become casual about this. Their church going proves secondary to other calls on their time, and without really meaning to, they become guilty of “trampling the Sabbath”. The “Sabbath is made for man” to use in the right way.

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