Sermon: Second Sunday after Pentecost, Mark 2:23-3:6

June 2, 2024 
Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church
Pastor Jonathan Linman

One of the greatest things God did was to rest on the seventh day of creation. Because that’s what became the foundation for the Sabbath, a day of rest for all of us. Keeping the Sabbath was among the Ten Commandments. Here again is what we heard in today’s reading from Deuteronomy: “Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. 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…” (Deuteronomy 5:12-14a) How lovely!

But how many of us truly honor and keep a full day of rest? I confess: not me. Given what I’ve been through with my stress-related illness of the past several weeks, I would do well to become more serious about taking genuine sabbath time. But it’s a challenge. Even retirees confess to me that they are busier in retirement than when they worked fulltime. We live in a society that makes it virtually impossible to keep a true day of rest. 

We pay a heavy price for all of this. Reports of burn-out among people abound. Americans routinely don’t get enough sleep. Even our vacations, if we’re privileged to have them or take them, are often filled with non-stop activity such that we need a vacation from vacation when we get home. All of this takes its toll on our well-being.

Here’s a wrinkle that gets in the way of keeping Sabbath: in our sinfulness and finitude, we humans tend to turn a gift of grace and freedom into another opportunity to make more rules and regulations. We turn grace into the law. We turn sabbath into work. That’s what’s going on in today’s gospel reading when the religious leaders, the Pharisees, accuse Jesus of breaking the Sabbath rules when they see his disciples plucking grain from the fields to eat and when Jesus heals the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath. They are so preoccupied with all the Sabbath rules that they themselves seem not to be observing the Sabbath as a time for rest from such busy-mindedness.

But leave it to Jesus who, as usual, turns things upside down as we see in today’s gospel reading, especially when Jesus concluded his discourse with this punch line: “The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath.” 

Jesus sets the record straight in seeking to reintroduce the true meaning of Sabbath rest. In essence he’s breaking Sabbath rules in order to more genuinely keep the Sabbath, thus restoring the gift of grace that the Sabbath is. In this way, Jesus becomes for us Lord even of the Sabbath (cf. Mark 2:28).

Jesus especially demonstrates his lordship even of the Sabbath by rising from the dead after three days of rest in death in the grave. Because it’s Jesus’ death and resurrection which establishes, embodies, and conveys the gift of grace that saves us and gives us life. 

Which is to say, our Lutheran understanding of justification by grace effective through faith is the ultimate expression of the spirit of Sabbath. Because of God’s lavish grace, mercy, and love, we can rest from the performance anxiety of working hard 24/7 to try to prove our worth to God. God lovingly saves us by grace as a gift which we need only receive with confidence and accept in gratitude. No work or works involved! Embraced by such grace, now we breathe a sigh of relief and can truly rest! 

Here’s what else the gift of Sabbath grace does as revealed in today’s readings: in today’s first lesson, notice how the Sabbath is a gift given to all – even slaves, and even the resident aliens who are not chosen people of the covenant. Sabbath rest is given even to animals, beasts of burden like oxen, donkeys and other livestock. (cf. Deuteronomy 5:14) That’s quite counter-cultural and amazingly generous!

In the gospel reading, Jesus makes it clear that the Sabbath makes way for people to be fed on that holy day – and even to eat the bread of the Presence from the holy of holies. Which is what we do at this table – we eat the bread of the Presence of the living Christ! (cf. Mark 2:23-26)

Moreover, Sabbath opens the horizons to be healed, to pursue the good and to save life, as Jesus made clear in healing the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath. (cf. Mark 3:5)

And ultimately, the grace of Sabbath disrupts our routines to open up new horizons of sacred encounter with God, to hear deeply in leisure God’s holy word and to dwell with that word without busy preoccupations. Thus, Sabbath occasions our hearing the gospel, the good news of Christ – which is what Martin Luther understood to be the essential purpose of the Sabbath: a cessation of usual work-a-day life for the sake of hearing the gospel. Thus, Sabbath is a time for “light [to] shine out of darkness,” as Christ “[shines] in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:6) Friends, this is what we’re doing right now on this Lord’s Day of Sabbath rest.

Thus, these our Sabbath Sundays renew and restore our faith, our trust in God amidst our cruciform lives in the busy demands of our weary world. Because of the gift of Sabbath, we can say with Paul in the confidence of faith: 

“We are afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed.” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9)

Oh, what a gift Sabbath rest in the glow of the glory of the risen Christ is for our restless, relentlessly workaholic world. Don’t you think that if more people were more rested in our nation, we wouldn’t be at each other’s throats so often?

Well, our calling is indeed to offer this gift of Sabbath rest to this world that God created in six eternal days, who then rested on the seventh day. True neighbor love is to give the gift of sabbath, to cut people some slack – ourselves first, to be sure, but also to give to others in word and deed the gift of rest. 

In the coming week, I therefore invite you to explore the ways practically speaking in which you give yourselves the gift of Sabbath and how you give that gift to others. 

But for now, enjoy your Sabbath rest here in this place, at this sacred hour. And come, eat the bread of the Presence. Amen.