Proper 4, Year B, Track 2
Deuteronomy 5:12-15
Psalm 81:1-10
2 Corinthians 4:5-12
Mark 2:23-3:6
"I’d like to begin today by inviting us to turn to page 317 in our Book of Common Prayer. This is the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, which we say on occasion when we observe a Rite I Eucharist. We won’t say the whole Decalogue today, but I invite you now to turn the page to 318 and to say with me the commandment concerning the Sabbath. “Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.” Or, in contemporary language, “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” I think we could all quote that line in our sleep. But how many of us remember that what we read in the Decalogue is a summary of scripture which omits why we are instructed to do this?
“Well that’s easy,” you might say. We observe the Sabbath because on the seventh day of creation, God rested. In Genesis 2 we read, “On the sixth day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.” When God gives the Ten Commandments to Moses in Exodus 20—which is the account from which our Book of Common Prayer’s Decalogue is derived—God says, “Remember the Sabbath day and 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; you shall not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.”
But wait a minute, that’s not what today’s reading from Deuteronomy says, is it? The passage starts nearly identically: “Observe the sabbath day and 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; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you.” All of that is almost word-for-word what we read in Exodus 20. But then we see a large divergence: “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; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.” There is no reference at all to God resting on the seventh day of creation. So which rationale is correct? Do we remember the sabbath as a day of rest because God rested on the seventh day, or do we observe the sabbath because God liberated the Jewish people from their Egyptian overlords?
The answer is that both reasons for observing the sabbath—rest and liberation—are true. These commandments were initially given to the people of Israel, who are in a very different place, literally and figuratively, in the Exodus account versus the Deuteronomy account. We also see two different instructional words used: “Remember” in Exodus and “observe” in Deuteronomy. These are translations of Hebrew words with similar but distinct meanings. “Remember,” from the word zakar, is an instruction to keep something in mind. “Observe” in this instance comes from shamar, which also means “to keep,” to incorporate as a routine part of one’s life.
In Exodus, by the time Moses comes down from the mountain with the tablets bearing the Ten Commandments, we can piece together from dates earlier in the story that the Israelites had been in the wilderness for about 5-7 months, a band of tired refugees on the verge of giving up. God had promised them a new home, but it still seemed so distant. In Genesis, God rested on the seventh day of creation not because he needed it. God does not tire, but we do, and so he offers us this example and this reminder that taking time for rest and refreshment is essential to keep us from burning ourselves out while doing God’s work in the world.
By the time of the Deuteronomy account, however, the Israelites had been in the wilderness for forty years. A whole generation of children had been born and grown up outside of Egypt, without having experienced the oppression and yearning for freedom that drove their forebears across the Red Sea. Now, on the verge of entering the promised land they had sought out for decades, Moses reminds them of the commandments that God had given them at the outset of their long journey. The Sabbath, however, takes on a new dimension as Israel enters a new chapter in its story. It is no longer simply a day for remembering the importance of rest and spiritual centering. It is now also the day to observe, to remember, and memorialize their realized liberation. It is also the same for us. As the people of Israel were liberated from the oppression of Egypt, so we all have been liberated from the oppression of death and separation from God.
These twin themes of rest and liberation are joyfully expressed by the psalmist today in Psalm 81. “I heard an unfamiliar voice saying, ‘I eased his shoulder from the burden; his hands were set free from bearing the load.’” They are also expressed by Jesus’ actions in our Gospel reading from Mark, as we see Jesus seemingly break the Sabbath commandment. In the first part of the passage, when the Pharisees point out that Jesus is breaking the law by traveling and gleaning in the wheat fields, Jesus responds with an example from scripture, specifically 1 Samuel 21. He recounts how David at the time was fleeing from Saul, who was seeking to kill him. David takes refuge in the temple and eats the consecrated bread reserved for the high priest. By allowing this, the high priest sustains David’s life. In the second part of the Mark reading, Jesus heals the man with the withered hand. This would not be considered “work” according to Jewish law, but it reaffirms Jesus’ mission to fulfill the spirit of the commandment, which he shares earlier in the reading: “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath.” That is, the Sabbath is not an arbitrary punitive obligation imposed on us. It is a gift given to us to make us whole, which we should receive in the spirit in which it was given.
Just as Moses restates the Sabbath commandment in Deuteronomy to reflect the spirit of liberation, Jesus also in a sense gives us a new version of the commandment in Matthew 12. “Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Jesus, whose resurrection is the focal point of our Christian Sabbath, invites us to himself for wholeness, refreshment, and liberation. Let our embracement of all those things be how we keep our Sabbath holy, now and always. Amen."