Rest and Remember

In Nomine Iesu
St. Mark 2:23-28
June 3, 2018
Proper 4B

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus~

The topic for today is the Third Commandment—which most of us learned a long time ago: Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy. And this is arguably the easiest of the Ten Commandments to keep. I mean, if I’m one of the Israelites, and I’m scanning through that list of Commandments for the first time, my initial reaction would be, “Well, at least there’s one I can keep. At least there’s one that doesn’t look too terribly difficult to carry out. At least there’s one that shouldn’t give me too much trouble.”

You heard Moses spell it out in today’s Old Testament reading from Deuteronomy. The forty years in the wilderness were coming to a close and Moses was catechizing a new crew of Hebrews to cross the Jordan and finally take possession of the Promised Land. He spelled out the importance of the Sabbath: Observe the Sabbath day, to 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. On it you shall not do any work. . . And you shall 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. What it all boiled down to was that, on the Sabbath, you needed to rest and remember. That’s all. Just rest and remember. Not run a marathon, or climb a mountain, or pray continuously from sunup to sundown. Just rest and remember.

But leave it to human beings to take the easiest, least burdensome commandment, and turn it into a weapon of mass destruction—a club for bashing and beating up anybody and everybody. That’s how messed up we are, spiritually speaking. God says, “Rest,” and we say, “Now what exactly do you mean by ‘rest?’” God says, “Don’t do any work,” and we say, “Do we have to rest? And what exactly do you mean by ‘work?’” God says, “Remember that you used to be slaves,” and we say, “My calendar is so full this week. I’ll just remember to remember some other time.”

By the time Jesus walked the earth with His disciples, the rabbis had constructed thirty-some categories of work—slicing and dicing “rest” to include things like not carrying, not burning, not writing or erasing or cooking. You can be sure that soccer and shopping and golfing and video games would eventually make it onto that list too. And also among those prohibited tasks: harvesting and threshing grain. It was verboten to cut or pluck any growing thing, including flowers and fruit. No mowing the lawn either.

Then, along comes Jesus and His disciples, walking through a grainfield on the Sabbath. As they were going, they plucked some heads

of grain and rubbed them between their hands—and right there, two Sabbath strikes against them, harvesting and threshing. And the Pharisees with their reams of Sabbath regulations were right there ready to pounce: “Look,” they exclaimed in horror, “Why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”

But says who? Whose laws were being broken? Man’s laws or God’s laws? God had simply said to rest and remember. It was the Pharisees who had gone above and beyond what God had commanded. They had evolved into the “Sabbath Police,” who could take a handful of grain on a Sabbath stroll, and turn it into a capital crime punishable by stoning. But then Jesus brought up that story of King David, how he and his companions ate the consecrated bread of the Presence which was lawful only for priests to eat. Yet they ate and lived to tell about it.

What’s it all mean? Jesus tells us: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” The Sabbath was God’s gift to Israel. No other nation had a god who said, “Hey, take a day off once a week.” In fact, the other nations thought the Israelites were a bunch of slackers, only working six days a week. The Lord’s free, chosen people had divine permission to rest and remember—to sample a slice of eternity at the end of every week. Who could say “no” to that? Sinful human beings, that’s who. The Sabbath was God’s gift to Israel, and the Israelites turned resting and remembering into a religion of works—a way to impress God and bribe God and measure themselves against one another. Hardly what the Lord had in mind.

Now, before we go any further, I need to remind you: The Sabbath—the seventh day of rest—was God’s gift to Old Testament Israel. There is no New Testament Sabbath. Sunday is not the new Sabbath day any more than Jesus is the new Moses. The early Christians wanted to be clear that the Law of Moses had all been fulfilled in Christ. So, instead of gathering on the seventh day of the week, they gathered for worship on the first day of the week—the Lord’s Day—the day when Jesus rose from the dead.

What does it all mean for us? Well, Luther nailed it in the catechism when he saw the true gift of the Third Commandment to be remembering and hearing and learning the Word of God. In fact, in the original German of Luther’s catechism he never mentions a “Sabbath day” at all. Instead, Luther writes that you shall keep the festival day holy—keep the feiertag heiligen—keep the holy day holy. No “Sabbath” talk at all.

The Word of God is what makes a holiday a holy day. Without the Word, it’s just a holiday—a day off, a chance to go to the beach, throw some steaks on the grill, cut the grass. But with the Word of God, any day can be a holy day—sanctified, made holy by the Word of God and prayer. Hearing and learning the Word is the heart and center of the Third Commandment.

Unfortunately, more and more Christians these days are finding that this “easiest” of all the commandments is just too much—too burdensome to keep. We all know baptized believers who have evolved into ABC Christians—anything but church. Sports, recreation, hobbies, family schedules, work schedules, busy calendars, running around from one activity to the next. God gives us over ten thousand minutes every week, but oh how we struggle just to set aside ninety of those ten thousand minutes to hear and hold sacred the Word of God—to gladly hear and learn it, and as we receive His gifts of forgiveness, life and salvation. It’s very simple: Faith is nourished by the Word. Without the Word, faith in Christ will wither and die. When people can’t make the time to hear the Words of eternal life, you have to wonder whether there’s any faith to be fed there at all.

And as for you . . . well, good on you! You made it here today. But you know how much your old Adam hates all this. He hates the notion of resting and remembering in Jesus. He hates it when you hear and learn the Word. He wants your faith to wither and die. And that’s why it’s such a chore to get to church, but so easy to go out for brunch. It’s your Old Adam. That’s why church seems so boring to you, but golf and concerts and movies seem so exciting. That’s why we don’t hear God’s Word “gladly,” but grudgingly. That’s why the children always act up and you never sleep well on Saturday night. Because here in the Divine Service you are encountering the Word of Life—the only thing that can save you from sin and death. And the devil hates it. And the world hates it. Your Old Adam hates it. And these will throw any and all distractions at you and will provide you with thousands of excuses not to receive what the Lord Jesus has died to win for you.

This is how messed up we are—so sinful and corrupted that we can’t even keep the “easiest” of the commandments. But Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath; and His commandment-keeping is perfect. Jesus kept the Sabbath. The traditions of men He broke. Man-made religious rules and regulations, He broke. But Jesus kept the Sabbath more purely and completely than any Jew who ever wandered the Promised Land. And Jesus did this for all of us—for the whole world, including the Jews and the Hebrews and every son of Shem. Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath. He created the Sabbath. Yet, He kept the Sabbath to pure perfection—as with every other commandment. And you get this pure perfection of His as a gift—by grace, through faith.

Jesus still offers rest for your weak and weary soul—not on a particular day of the week, but in Himself. “Come to me,” He once said, “all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” In His blood-bought forgiveness, you can find rest from your sin, rest from Satan’s accusations, rest from the unrealistic expectations of this world.

The Old Testament Sabbath—the God-ordained day of rest—reached its final fulfillment late on a Friday afternoon we call “good.” The Lord of the Sabbath had been reduced to a corpse on a cross. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus took Him down, wrapped His body in linens and spices, and laid Him to rest in the tomb, and closed the door. Back in Genesis, on the seventh day, God rested, having completed the work of creation. And on the seventh day of Holy Week—on the Jewish Sabbath—the Son of Man, the Son of God—He also rested—rested in His temporary tomb—having completed His work of your redemption—having completed the sacrifice of His own life for yours. He rested . . . but only to rise again.

One day you too will be laid to rest. You will be immediately with Christ, even as your body rests and waits for the day of resurrection. With faith in Jesus Christ, you can rest in peace. You can live in peace. You can die in peace. For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.