Sabbath and the radical as normal
Proper 4B | Mark 2:23-3:6
We are jumping back into Ordinary Time now. Which means we’re returning to the story we started in Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, before we got distracted with the Transfiguration, Lent, and Easter. So it’s kind of like the old network TV days when we had to remember what happened last season, which was four months ago.
So we’re about where we were when we left off. Jesus was baptized by John the Baptizer, then he called some disciples and then really got started. This was all in chapter one of Mark.
Now, there’s some interesting stuff we’ve skipped over at the end of chapter one and the first part of chapter two. Jesus goes on a preaching tour, cleanses a leper, and heals a paralytic. He then goes and hangs out with tax collectors, calling one of them named Levi to be a disciple.
What this does is draw some negative attention to Jesus. And it is all kind of predictable. From a certain point of view, we can say that Jesus provokes their outrage.
Provoked
He doesn’t just heal the leper, he forgives him. Which the rules-lawyers get all in a tizzy about because that’s a God thing, not a rabbi thing. He’s breaking the rules.
Then he breaks them again by hanging with the tax collectors. Those guys are off limits. So what does Jesus do? He’s like, I’ll take one of those guys for my team.
Then his critics pick out a problem with his teaching style. He doesn’t make any of them fast. Not like some hazing ritual, but as a valid part of discipline and discernment—part of their spiritual journey. And Jesus is like Dudes, I’m not going to be around long. These jokers are going to get plenty of fasting opportunities then.
In short, Jesus is poking them in ways he knows they will object to. And I think, for a lot of people today, this is actually a problem. We treat this as bad and uncharitable.
And yet there are many of us who recognize the uncomfortable truth: those benefiting from the status quo rarely fight to change it. And more often protect it. Even when the injustice of the status quo is exposed to them.
This is Civil Disobedience 101. And Jesus is revealing just how willing these people are to keep the boat from rocking.
Speaking of which, here’s a hot take for a Sunday morning:
Christians would rather obsess over a theological concept than honor the theological concept Jesus is obsessed with. And the concept at the root of the Hebrew Scriptures.
That’s what we did last week. Celebrate the Trinity. But what is at the very foundation of God’s faith in humanity?
Sabbath.
I don’t see a Sabbath Sunday on the liturgical calendar anywhere, do you? And our relationship to it historically has been strangely polarizing. Either we treat it like the Pharisees in the gospel this morning, passing blue laws and expecting everyone to come to church Sunday morning or we pretend it is optional.
What Jesus is teaching us here looks like neither of these. Because Sabbath is not about what we’re not allowed to do one day a week. It’s about the stuff nobody can make you do.
Sabbath frees the slave from the whims of a slave owner and starving from the greed of the farmer.
Sabbath is a foundational ethic of equality and being another’s neighbor.
This is why Sabbath is not merely rest. Nor is it merely setting aside time for devotion. It is an act of liberation. It is God’s act of civil disobedience against our selfish, abusive culture. And when I say “our” I mean every human culture throughout time that puts a monetary value on things people need to survive. Namely food, shelter, and clothes. Privatize water? Ha!
And because people do this, God has to come along and say You don’t get to let people starve to death. Or freeze to death. That one’s a deep cut, by the way. God’s like, I know you’re going to make it so people are homeless. But you’re not allowed to make them coatless.
Another Sabbath #1 hit: Farmers need to save some of the fields for the public to help themselves to.
Friends, Sabbath is God’s hottest take about humanity.
That we need to be reminded to take breaks. And give breaks to others.
Think about that. I once worked at a grocery store in which my coworkers literally dragged me off the register and forced me to take my break. We’re so oriented around not resting that we don’t trust each other’s actual rest time in a country in which we only use half of our time off!
God had to tell people thousands of years ago the equivalent of don’t check your work email from home! But it is hotter than that because he’s saying nobody should check their work email from home. It isn’t just that you need a break (and you do). We all need breaks. So cut it out!
Now take that and put it into everything.
Every one of those Ten Commandments involves Sabbath thinking. Because Sabbath isn’t vacation. It is rejection of exploitation. Does somebody have food while others are starving? Not for long! Trying to enjoy someone else’s life? Nope!
Sabbath is about freedom. And freedom bears the understanding that it requires equality to be freedom.
And Jesus gives Sabbath freedom a twist. It’s his own hot take.
Sabbath is about life.
His disciples have to eat, right? And what better time to heal that man’s withered hand? It is killing him.
Our view of Sabbath is as the exception to the rule. Which, given the way we operate, implies that the rule supports exploitation. We want to get the best deals we can out of every interaction. We think employers have a right to maximize production for the wage they pay. Let’s see how much we can get!
This norm, this rule, is sin. Sabbath isn’t the exception. It’s the rule. Because it reveals our normal for what it is.
Jesus’s multiple acts of civil disobedience reveal what an orientation toward life is. And we’re not Nicodemus, talking about birth canals here. We’re talking about the lives we live.
How joyful are our lives? How welcome do we feel by our neighbors? And how free do we feel from economic burdens? And we can keep going!
What gets in the way of living is not normal. It isn’t “how things go.”
We are made in the image of God for joy and wonder and creativity. God delights in surprise and inspiration! When we make things and share them—that is living. That little finger food at coffee hour—that is living. Big Sabbath Energy.
Making art, whether it be painting or weaving, cooking or baking, writing or singing, or even collecting the prettiest stones on the beach is the most radical act of faith any of us can do. And the second most radical? Helping your neighbor find an audience, starting with you.
This is Sabbath. Being truly alive. And making it so others might live, too.