Rest and Remember

 Jesu Juva

St. Mark 2:23-28                                                  

June 2, 2024

Proper 4B                  

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        The Third Commandment is front and center this morning:  Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy.  This is arguably the easiest of the Ten Commandments to keep.  It’s all about resting, remembering, and hearing God’s Word.  How hard can it be? 

        In today’s Old Testament reading Moses was catechizing a new crew of Hebrews about to take possession of the Promised Land.  He spells out the significance of the Sabbath:  Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. . . .  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 does this mean?  It’s simple!  Rest and remember on the Sabbath.  That’s all.  Just rest and remember.  Not run a marathon, or climb a mountain, or fast from sunup to sundown.  Just rest and remember.

        But leave it to human beings to take the simplest commandment, and turn it into a weapon of mass destruction—a Billy club for beating up anybody who appears to slack off on the Sabbath.  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?’” 

        By the time Jesus walked the earth with His disciples, the rabbis had constructed thirty-some categories of work. “Rest” had been carefully defined to include things like not carrying, not burning, not writing or erasing or cooking.  And also among those prohibited tasks: harvesting and threshing grain.  It was verboten to cut or pluck any growing thing, including flowers and fruit.  And don’t even think about mowing the lawn.

        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:  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 whose laws were being broken?  God’s laws or man’s laws?  God had simply said to rest and remember. But the Pharisees had evolved into the “Sabbath Gestapo.” They 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 it, 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 heaven at the end of every week.  Who could say “no” to that?  Sinful human beings, that’s who.  The Sabbath was God’s gift, but 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, I need to remind you:  The Sabbath—strictly speaking—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.

        So what’s it all mean for us? Well, Luther nailed it in the catechism when he saw the true gift of the Third Commandment to be hearing and learning the Word of God.  We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.  Nothing there about the “Sabbath.”

        The Word of God can make any day a holy day.  Without the Word and worship, our weekends are just days off, a chance to go to go up north, 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.

        But even this easy, elementary commandment is just too much—too burdensome to keep.  Baptized believers are rapidly evolving into ABC Christians—anything but church. Sports, recreation, vacation, 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 a fraction of those ten thousand minutes to gladly hear and hold sacred the Word of God.  It’s so 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 your old Adam hates all of 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, but golf and concerts and movies seem so exciting.  This is why we don’t hear God’s Word “gladly,” but grudgingly.  This is why we find it so easy to stay up late 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.  And your Old Adam hates it.  And this unholy trinity will throw any and all distractions at you.  This unholy trinity will supply 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, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  In His blood-bought forgiveness, you can find rest—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 the Friday we call “good.”  The Lord of the Sabbath had been reduced to a corpse on a cross.  His broken body was taken down, wrapped in linens, and laid to rest in the tomb.  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.  Jesus rested . . . but only to rise again.

        One day you too will be “laid to rest.”  That’s such a great euphemism.  Your soul will be immediately with Christ. But your body will be laid to rest.  Your body will rest and await the day of resurrection.  With faith in Jesus Christ, you can rest in peace.  You can die and live 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.