Jesus said: “The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath.”

Mark 2:27

“Observe the Sabbath day,” we are told in Deuteronomy 5:12, “and keep it holy.” But what does that mean? In today’s gospel reading (Mark 2:23-3:6), we see that Jesus and the Pharisees do not agree about this basic commandment. A controversy over keeping the Sabbath emerges. 

Controversies about the Sabbath have been around for a very long time. Some of you will remember some controversies in our lifetime over “blue laws,” laws designed to help promote the observance of the Sabbath. 

Not too many years ago, I remember a young music director at a church I served in South Carolina who was affected by these blue laws. He was not the most organized person in the world, and one Sunday morning he woke up and realized that he did not have any clean clothes to wear to church. He drove over to Walmart to buy a new shirt, but was disappointed to discover that Walmart was only allowed to sell groceries on Sunday mornings. He ended up having to come to church with a very dirty, wrinkled shirt. Let’s just say that it took a while for him to live that one down. 🙂 

Blue laws are fading away, of course. Even in South Carolina, you can now buy a new shirt at Walmart on a Sunday morning. 

But even though blue laws are fading away, the importance of the Sabbath is not. You might even argue that the Sabbath is more important than ever. In this fast-paced, 24/7 world, where it is harder than ever not to bring work home, more and more people find themselves longing for a day of rest, for a Sabbath day. 

Maybe it is time to reconsider this practice. Not as a law, but as a gift. The gift of Sabbath, of a day of rest. 

The Sabbath Is Made for Us

In our gospel reading today, we find Jesus and his disciples in the midst of a Sabbath controversy. The Pharisees are upset because Jesus and his followers are not observing their “blue laws,” their rules and regulations about observing the Sabbath. The disciples were hungry, and they were plucking some heads of grain on the Sabbath, which was against the rules. 

Jesus responded with his well-known statement, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.” Don’t you love that statement? Jesus is reminding us here of the gift of Sabbath, the gift of rest. 

Rest is woven intro creation. There is evening and morning; there is night and day; there is work and rest. After six days of creation, God himself rested. And teaches us to do the same. 

The Sabbath was made for us, because we need to rest. And sometimes we need to be told to rest, even commanded to. If you think about physical rest, sometimes our bodies tell us to rest, even command it. The Sabbath is about spiritual rest. 

Observing the Sabbath is a commandment that God expects us to observe, to be sure. But God’s commandments are always good for us; always something that we need. And that is certainly true of this one. We need Sabbath rest; we need spiritual rest. The Sabbath was made for us. 

So, today I want to remember with you what this commandment is all about. And why it is so very important to us. And as always, we can learn a lot about this commandment by looking at Jesus. 

The Habit of Keeping Sabbath

Jesus grew up observing the Sabbath. He grew up in a good, faithful, Jewish home. And that meant that he grew up going to the synagogue with his family every sabbath, just as all faithful Jews of his time would have done. It was his custom, or his habit. It was how he and his family honored God’s commandment to “observe the Sabbath day, and keep it holy” (Deuteronomy 5:12). 

So, when it was the Sabbath Day, there was never a question for Jesus of whether or not he would go to the synagogue to worship God. Of course he would. 

Even in today’s gospel reading, we are told that when the Sabbath arrived, Jesus entered the synagogue to worship God. It was what Jesus always did. It was his habit. 

When you think about it, habits are very important to us, because they take some of the decision-making off our plate, which reduces decision fatigue. Decision fatigue is described as “the deterioration of our ability to make good decisions after a long session of decision making.” 

Good habits help us make good decisions, because they really aren’t decisions at all. We don’t have to decide every morning whether or not to brush our teeth, for example. It is a habit. 

For people of faith, it is hard to come up with a more important habit than that of going to church on the Sabbath day. But if it’s not a habit, then we have to decide to do it, every time. And there are always lots of other things we could be doing on a Sunday morning these days! We can catch up on our shopping, or on yardwork, or on sleep. 

As a pastor, I don’t have much of a choice about going to church, but you do. And if it’s not a habit, there are all sorts of things that will help make the decision harder for you. Maybe that’s why God made it a commandment. Not just because it’s good for us, but so that it would become a habit. 

The 17th century poet John Dryden once said that “we first make our habits, and then our habits make us.” And I believe that this is true of the habit of worship, of remembering the sabbath day,and keeping it holy. This is a habit that we make as followers of Jesus, but then this habit makes us. 

The Sabbath was made for us, Jesus said. It is not just something that is pleasing to God; it is also vital to nurturing our faith. And it is essential to forming and sustaining the community that Jesus himself founded, the community that we call the church. 

But let me offer one more reason why this habit, of keeping the Sabbath, is so very important. And that is that this habit offers us something that is hard to find anywhere else, and that is rest for our souls. 

Rest for Our Soul

Keeping a weekly Sabbath does offer us rest for our bodies; but more importantly, it offers rest for our souls. The truth is that no matter how well-rested we might be physically, we will still be restless until our souls rest in God. That is how God wired us. To be restless until we rest in God. 

So, one day a week, we come here to remember that our souls need rest, too. We come here to be reminded that God is in charge, not us. We come here to feed our faith, and to remember our hope, and to rest in the love of our Creator. Rest for our souls. A gift that we receive by keeping this commandment to observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy. 

Learning Sacred Rhythms from Jesus

But I want to go back to Jesus one more time, to learn from him a little more about how to find rest for our souls. Jesus kept the Sabbath, as I already pointed out. But Jesus did more than that to find rest for his soul. He also lived his life in what might be called as “sacred rhythm.” 

Go back one chapter in Mark’s Gospel and you find a great example of this. I want to read this story to you, and invite you to listen for the rhythms of life that Jesus is modeling for us. Beginning in verse 29, we read: 

“As soon as [Jesus and his disciples] left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them. 

That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed by demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons, and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. 

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, ‘Everyone is searching for you.’ He answered, ‘Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came out to do.’ And he went throughout all Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.” (Mark 1:29-39)

Jesus goes to the synagogue to worship and rest. He leaves the synagogue to heal and cast out demons. Then he goes by himself to a deserted place to pray. Then he leaves there to go throughout the region proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons. Rest, work. Worship, serve. Pray, teach. 

There is a sacred rhythm to his life that we can learn. A rhythm of daily prayer and weekly worship. A rhythm which offers us rest, not just for our bodies, but for our souls. This was simply the way Jesus lived. 

Closing – Finding Our Own Sacred Rhythm

How about us? What does your sacred rhythm look like? Obviously, you and I are not Jesus. In fact, we are all different. We are created differently, wired differently. But we all need rest. That is how we are wired. Rest for our bodies, and rest for our souls. 

And what our scripture readings remind us today is simply that one of the very best ways to find rest for our souls is by keeping the holy rhythm of the Sabbath. I might just paraphrase that quote about habits by saying that we first keep the Sabbath, and then the Sabbath keeps us. It becomes a life-giving habit that offers us regular rest for our souls. 

In a very famous book on Sabbath by the Jewish theologian, Abraham Joshua Heschel, he wrote that: 

“Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else.” 

The Sabbath was made for us. It is God’s gift to us. It is the way in which we remember that the world has our hands, but our souls belong to God. May we be faithful in caring for the seed of eternity that has been planted in each and every one of our souls. To the glory of God. Amen.