Mark 2:23-3:6 (2nd Sunday after Pentecost/Proper4—Series B)
“Sabbath Gift”
Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, Enfield, CT
June 2, 2024
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our text is the Holy Gospel recorded in Mark 2 and 3:
23And it happened that He was going along through the grainfields, and His disciples began to make a way while picking the heads of grain. 24And the Pharisees said to Him, “See! Why do they do on the Sabbath that which is not lawful?” 25And He said to them, “Have you never read what David did when a need arose and he himself got hungry, and those with him, 26how he entered into the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest and he ate the bread of the presence which it is not lawful to eat, except for the priests, and he also gave it to those who were with him?” 27And He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. 28As a result, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath! 3:1And He entered again into the synagogue. And a man was there with a withered hand. 2And they were watching Him closely to see if He would heal him on the Sabbath, in order that they might bring charges against Him. 3And He said to the man with the withered hand, “Rise into the middle of the group.” 4And He said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save a life or to kill it?” And they remained silent. 5And looking around at them with anger, grieving at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out and his hand was restored. 6And after the Pharisees had gone out, immediately, with the Herodians, began to give counsel against Him, how they should destroy Him.
They had it wrong. The Pharisees were wise in their own eyes (Rom. 11:25). The Sabbath was seen as part of the duty necessary for retaining the favor of God. If you do Sabbath properly, God will favor you with His love. If you do not, you are a lawbreaker, unclean, and unworthy of God.
But doesn’t God say in the commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy”? Absolutely! Then isn’t it true that failure to do that “remembering” is breaking God’s commandment? Yes. So how did the Pharisees get it wrong? That’s really at the heart of today’s Gospel text. The Pharisees got the Sabbath wrong because they came to see keeping Sabbath as their work to keep favor with the Lord. The Sabbath, they understood, was made for them to remember, observe, and keep to the letter of the Law so that God knew just how faithful and law-abiding they were. That would please God and so merit them favor with Him, as opposed to the law-breaking “tax collectors and sinners,” all the unclean and unwashed who did not follow all the rules about the Sabbath, like Jesus’ disciples.
But the accusation against the disciples was unfounded. They were not “harvesting grain” on the Sabbath Day. Rather, they were merely getting a snack, which God had not forbidden, even on the Sabbath. We read in Deuteronomy 23:25, “If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain” (Deuteronomy 23:25 ESV). A hungry person—a traveler or a neighbor—was permitted by law to enter a vineyard or grain field of an owner and eat to his or her satisfaction. But the hungry traveler didn’t have the right to package and carry out grapes or use tools to harvest grain. The law allowed snacking until satisfied. The love and generosity of owners would be evident as they gladly accepted this law. Respect for the owner would also be apparent when the hungry restricted themselves to taking care of their immediate needs. The hungry one could be satisfied in his or her moment of need.
But the Pharisees wouldn’t see it that way. The disciples were violating the sanctity of the Sabbath by their “harvesting.” Clearly, they were doing forbidden work Clearly, to the Pharisees, people were made for the Sabbath, made in order to keep the Sabbath, so that one could show God how truly pious and righteous he or she is.
Do you understand the problem? When we as humans take the things of God and turn them into the things of man, we distort God’s good and perfect intentions. Humans add or subtract “regulations” to explain how one should or should not act before God—things that the Lord never said in His Word. And so it was that the Pharisees added to God’s Word 613 laws (365 thou shalt nots and 248 thou shalts). In our world today, people seem more frequently to subtract from God’s Word and His commandments. “Oh, you don’t have to worry about THAT anymore. That’s old fashioned. One can lead whatever kind of life that meets with one’s wants and desires.” “Don’t worry about the other person. You matter most! Take care of yourself first.”
And what about the Sabbath? Do we “get it right”? Do we sometimes make it about ourselves and think, “If I go to church today, I’m keeping the Sabbath. That will certainly give me points with God”? Perhaps we view Sabbath keeping as checking off another box in God’s “things-for-us-to-do” list. “Yes. I can check off keeping the Third Commandment this week. Go me!” If we are thinking like this, then we are not getting Sabbath right. We’ve made it into a means to win God’s favor. We’ve made it about ourselves and something we do. But mankind was not made for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for mankind!
When? In the beginning, long before God put the Third Commandment in writing on Mt. Sinai at the time of Israel’s exodus from slavery in Egypt. Consider with me Genesis 1, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’. . . And it was so.And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation” (Genesis 1:27-2:3 ESV).
On the sixth day, God created man and woman, and He placed them into the Garden of Eden. He gave Adam and Eve the charge to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over all of creation. They were to care for the perfect creation that the Lord God has made. And then, what does God do? He gives them the next day off! On the seventh day, the Lord stopped His work of creation. It was all complete and very good! And God set apart the seventh day as a day of rest for whom? For God? No. The Lord God Almighty does not need rest. The seventh day was set apart and blessed as a rest day for His creation! The Sabbath is a gift given at creation to all of creation, but especially God’s human creatures, the crown and joy of His creative work. So, what Jesus said to the Pharisees is literally true—the Sabbath WAS made for people, and not people for the Sabbath.
The Sabbath is an act of God’s undeserved kindness toward people so that they might live in tune with God as the Giver of all good things. To keep Sabbath means that we delight in the creation that God has given to us. It means to celebrate the Giver as we live in tune with Him as the receivers of His great gift to us. The problem comes in when we humans turn God’s gift into something that it is not—a work to do before God to earn His favor, a list of rules in which you cannot do this or that.
The people of Israel followed the pattern of Sabbath keeping when God told them to gather the gift of manna for six days, with a double amount on day six that would be enough for day seven. There would be no gift of manna on the seventh day, and thus no work of gathering. This was to lead Israel to trust in the Lord’s generous provision. This seventh day, this Sabbath, would allow for worship-filled reflection on God’s loving care without the distraction of labor for the necessities of life.
God’s gift of Sabbath is still given to you this day. God provides you, as an act of His loving-kindness, the opportunity to reflect on His loving care without the distraction of the daily routine of work. God calls you to come into His presence with thanksgiving, and to enter His courts with praise (Psalm 100:4). Why? Because He has given you the Sabbath to delight in Him, to celebrate Him as the Giver of creation and new creation. “For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath!”
God has given us more than one day in seven in which to live in tune with Him and to delight in His gifts. The Lord has given to us an eternal Sabbath, a forever rest in His Son, Jesus Christ. The Sabbath, from the very beginning, was never about our work or our obligation. It was always about God’s gifts, especially to remind us in our fallen condition that there is eternal rest for us from the power of sin and death. And that rest is found in the Lord of the Sabbath Himself, God’s Son, Jesus.
In His earthly ministry, Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament Scriptures in their entirety, including the Third Commandment, on our behalf. In today’s Gospel, we again see Jesus in the synagogue on the Sabbath day, where He made the day holy by hearing, preaching, discussing the Word, and by performing holy work—healing! For the times we have failed to live in tune with God as Giver and we as the receivers, for the moments we have turned His law into works in a vain attempt for Him to favor us, Jesus’ perfect righteousness is credited to us. He fulfilled the Sabbath law for us so that we might receive the freedom of the children of God to receive the Sabbath as a gift, as a time away from the regular grind, as a worship-filled reflection of the Lord’s grace and mercy to us in Jesus who grants us Sabbath rest now in the forgiveness of sins and then in a new creation forever.
The greatest rest and rescue for you and me came through the work of Jesus for all people on the cross. There, Jesus paid for our sins of works-righteousness, for turning the commandments into “get into heaven” cards to gain the favor of God. On the cross, Jesus suffered to pay in full our failures to keep Sabbath because we failed to celebrate the Giver of creation and to delight in His gifts to us, especially the gift of saving faith through His Word that delivers to us the forgiveness of our sins. Isn’t it wondrous that on the sixth day of the week, Jesus, the Son of God, completed our redemption with His dying on the cross and once again rested on the seventh day from His work of salvation as He was laid in a tomb? “It is finished!” He cried as He gave up His spirit. Dead and buried for us. Risen again for us. Ascended into heaven for us! Forgiveness of sins and eternal life won for us sinners so that now we might live the life of faith in Him as Savior keeping Sabbath as His gift, looking forward to living forever in the promised eternal, forever rest of a new creation. For it is in the new creation that we will live in resurrected and glorified body and soul completely in tune with God as the Creator and Giver of all the blessings of this life, and the eternal salvation rest that we will enjoy in His presence!
By the power and grace of God the Holy Spirit, continue to delight in the Lord’s creation as His beloved children. Enjoy the Sabbath rest given to you by Christ, even as you now come before His presence in Word and Supper, to receive His gifts of the forgiveness of sins and the life everlasting. As you delight and rejoice in the Lord, the Giver of all the things you need to support this body and life, you celebrate the guarantee of your resurrection life in His new creation, Sabbath rest forevermore. Amen.
Lutheran Church of our Redeemer 