Sabbath Complications (4th Sunday after Epiphany; Luke 6:1-16; January 29, 2017)

Sabbath Complications

4th Sunday after Epiphany
Luke 6:1-16
January 29, 2017

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah,Iowa

In our reading are two awkward stories about Jesus and Sabbath-keeping, the practice of observing a day of rest on the seventh day of the week. They are awkward because they appear to validate our modern collective decision to do away with sabbath-keeping altogether.

In the first story, Jesus and his friends are walking through wheat fields. His disciples are hungry, so they pluck grains of wheat as they walk along, remove the husks by rubbing the grains between their hands, and eat it. I can't imagine that it was a very satisfying snack. It can't have been an efficient way to harvest and process grain. Besides, raw wheat isn't easy to digest. But maybe it was better than nothing.

But it was on the Sabbath. Crops could not be harvested on the Sabbath. Harvesting was work. There are six days for work. The sabbath isn't one of them.

Jesus' critics pointed out all of this out to the disciples. As an answer, Jesus reminded them that David had once stolen the bread from the Temple altar to feed his personal troops. Of course, David did a lot of things that are never outright condemned in the Bible. I'm not sure we should take that as permission.

The other Sabbath story concerns Jesus healing a man with a withered hand, literally a "dry" hand. Jesus was attending synagogue. The man with a useless hand was also there. Knowing that Jesus made a habit of healing on the Sabbath, his critics watched him closely. He did not disappoint them. Jesus had the man stand up, said some words about the purpose of the Sabbath, and healed the man's hand.

But, of course, healing was among the activities prohibited on the Sabbath. Jesus' critics can add another charge to his indictment.

So what is Jesus up to? And how do we read this text so that it leads to the saving of lives rather than their destruction?

Perhaps what Jesus is doing is loosening the Sabbath rules, making room for the demands of life and recognizing reality. You shouldn't harvest on the Sabbath. But what if you're really hungry and you don't have any food and you're walking through a wheat fields and the grain is ripe? Okay, well then you may pluck and eat a few hands full of grain.

But what if it's the Sabbath and you learn that tomorrow there will be a severe storm with possible hail and high winds that would flatten the stalks and ruin the harvest? Wouldn't it be best to get the crop in today? But isn't that a bit of a slippery slope? Doesn't that end with no Sabbath at all?

When Jesus met the man with the withered hand, instead of just healing him, he could have said, Come by my office tomorrow and I'll heal you then. But maybe healing is an “essential function.”

Even the days of Sunday "blue laws" we recognized that certain jobs are essential, Sabbath or not. Doctors, nurses, firefighters, and the police are examples. Farmers who keep dairy cattle can hardly say, "Sorry, ladies. I can't milk you until tomorrow, because it's the Sabbath."

But there is that slippery slope again. Where do the exemptions for essential services stop?

Maybe nowhere. After all, Jesus said that "the Human One is Lord of the Sabbath." Maybe Jesus intent was to do away with the Sabbath altogether. Maybe it should be the Nine Commandments, not Ten.

But Jesus seems to think that there is a reason for the Sabbath that might override some conventional ways of keeping Sabbath depending on the circumstances. The question that he throws at the critics whose Sabbath wish is to have some violation of the rules to pin on Jesus implies that the Sabbath is about saving life and doing good.

The Sabbath in the Hebrew Bible is more than one thing. In the first creation story in Genesis the Sabbath is God's last creative act, the culmination of creation. It is the rest that follows and rewards accomplishment. In Deuteronomy the Sabbath is placed with the Sabbath year for cultivated fields, orchards, and vineyards. They are taken out of production once every seven years. It is also placed with the Jubilee, the law that decreed that every seven times seven years slaves were freed and houses and fields would be returned to their original owners. This Sabbath returns a person or a thing to its original status; it makes things pristine once again; it's the button on your cell phone that resets it to the condition it was in when it left the factory.

It seems that this second notion of Sabbath is Jesus' motivation for healing--the man with the "dry" hand is re-created and returned to being an unblemished image of God. In this understanding, healing on the Sabbath is not only permitted but mandated. But where does that leave health care professionals?

At this point several approaches to (or avoidances of) Sabbath-keeping are on the table and frankly I find it pretty confusing. What rule are we supposed to follow, anyway?

Well, in the Methodist tradition the standard we judge by is whether an idea or a rule increases love for God and neighbor. When thinking about love I've found if helpful to sit for a little while at the feet of the medieval monk and mystic Bernard of Clairvaux. And, yes, this is the one for whom the St. Bernard breed of dog was named.

Bernard said that there are four kinds of love arranged in stages from lower to higher. In the first stage of love we love ourselves for our own sake. That is, we do whatever we want. In the second stage we love God for our sake. As Bernard frames it, we love God in order to seek heaven and avoid hell. In the third stage we love God for God's sake. I would have said that's about as high as we can hope to go, but Bernard's real contribution is to add the fourth stage in which we love ourselves for God's sake. That it, we love and cherish ourselves because we are precious to God and are unwilling to cause God harm or pain by self-neglect or self-damage.

Now I'm not sure if Bernard would authorize this next step, but I'm going to give a try.

In the first stage we do as we please about Sabbath-keeping. Of course, in practice, "doing what we please" generally translates into doing the things that are favored by our culture which is making an ideal out of the inhuman demand that life be lived 24/7. While we may ache for rest, we resent the notion that we should be rested.

In the second stage we love and keep the Sabbath for our own sake. It might be because keeping the Sabbath is a rule that we dare not break or because a doctor has told us that unless we get regular rest our next heart attack will be our last. In the second stage we worry a lot about the rules. And we get lost in worrying about what is and is not allowed on the Sabbath.

In the third stage we love and keep the Sabbath for its sake, because Sabbath is a delight. Concern for the rules fades. We don't have to be told that anxiously checking Facebook or Twitter is incompatible with Sabbath, because we know it won't work as soon as we try.

In the fourth stage we love and keep ourselves and our neighbor for Sabbath's sake. The restoration and redemption at the heart of the Sabbath require that we be redeemed and restored. The Sabbath is about healing, so healing is appropriate, healing for each other and healing for ourselves.

Does that work? I think it might. I'm not sure. You tell me.

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