Mark 2: 23 – 3: 6 Keeping the Sabbath
It’s easy to mock the Pharisees or criticize them for their strict rules for keeping Sabbath. Yet it was not they who invented the Sabbath. That came from the hand of God on Mount Sinai. Keeping the Sabbath is at the heart of the Mosaic Law. Keeping the Sabbath serves two purposes – for one it sanctifies one day completely to God in the hope that that will sanctify the rest of the week. It also gives everyone a day off. The Pharisees made rules to help people keep the Sabbath. The result was that everyone, even the slaves, got the day off. Rules are good. Rules can be badly used, or badly applied. Rules can take over, but rules applied with charity are the mark of a good, caring, well run society. As monks we should know that!
Think of our own life, with its rules. Try explaining them to someone who doesn’t understand the life. You will see a look of complete bafflement appear on their faces. Why should anyone choose to live a life like that? An unfriendly person can make mincemeat of our rules. No money. No sex. No freedom. How can anyone be happy with that? No talking in corridors, no talking at night. Can’t go shopping without permission. And then all those strange rules about eating together, or going to church four times every day, or getting up so early. No one could want to lead a life like that unless they are mad. Or perhaps they are suffering from a form of group abuse, persuaded that God wants this when of course he doesn’t. In the sixteenth century reformers delivered monks and nuns from this terrible life they had been forced to live. The trouble was that most of them didn’t want to be delivered. They liked the life.
So it is with the Sabbath. The rules may seem crazy to us, but I remember a young Jew telling me how wonderful the Sabbath was. It was a day of rest when he had time and space to study the scriptures and get to know this God who loved him. And one of the signs of love was that God had given them the Sabbath.
We Christians should know this. We value our Sundays. It is a day of rest. It is also a day to celebrate the Rising of Christ from the dead. It is, of course, really difficult for anyone outside a monastery to keep a proper Christian Sunday these days, with shops open, work to be done, kids to be taken to sport or activities. Our society really could do with a few of the Pharisees rules. It might make people a bit more sane!
But to come back to our Gospel – the point Jesus is making is not that rules are bad, but compassion is good. Rules support life; they should not control it. The Sabbath is made for man, not mad for the Sabbath. It’s good to do good on a Sunday. The only question is, what is good? We can take a person to A & E on a Sunday if he needs it. I won’t pontificate on what I think is wrong to do on a Sunday but we do have to think about it. In the end that is what life with God is about – thinking about things. We can’t simply live by rules. We have to consider what the Holy Spirit is telling us. Learning to listen to the Holy Spirit properly is a life time’s work. We never get to the end of it. That may sound burdensome. It needn’t be. If we see every challenge, every question about what we do on a Sunday as a chance to think about God, that could really make it exciting. If we take that into daily life and see that we are constantly making choices for or against God then life becomes filled with the Spirit. We meet him on every corner. Is that good or bad? Is that a burden or a joy? How we answer that question shows a lot about how we really think of God. I suppose all that seems rather obvious. It’s a cliché that we find God in daily life, if we look. Yet it is a cliché because it’s true. Keeping Sunday properly reminds us of this and reminds us of the wonderful God we are looking for. As St Paul reminds us in today’s epistle: “It is God who said, ‘let light shine out of darkness’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” That should give any of enough to think of on this lovely sunny Sunday. Amen