1st Sunday of Ordinary Time
A sermon by Beth Sawatzky on Deuteronomy 5:12-15 and Mark 2:23-36.
Today is a very special day, because it is the first day of Ordinary Time. Through Advent into Christmas and Epiphany, through Lent, Easter, and Pentecost we have rehearsed the total foundation and character of our shared faith, our shared hope in Jesus Christ. But ordinary time is where the substance of that faith really happens. It’s not in the wedding, but the long years after that marriage really happens. Just like parenting happens in the years that follow a birth or adoption, or friendship—thick, stick to your ribs, soul food friendship--is what happens in the years of faithfulness after the happenstance that brings people together.
Faith, like love, is partly something we have, something we feel, but mostly…it’s something we do. And mostly, we do it in Ordinary Time. In ordinary time under ordinary conditions is where we really do the work of keeping faith with all those pedestrian habits that make up discipleship. Those habits of thought, word, and deed, that make our lives an ongoing proclamation that Christ lives, and the kingdom of Heaven is here and now, despite circumstantial evidence to the contrary.
As we read today, one of the crucial habits we are called to practise in order to give Ordinary Time that stubbornly luminous resurrection character—is keeping Sabbath.
The institution and the discipline of Holy Sabbath serves innumerable functions but I’ll suggest there are four main ones:
1. Keeping sabbath keeps us from being exploited, from the tyranny of labour without cease.
2. The Sabbath invites us into contemplative gratitude and a responsive celebration that incarnates the hope in which we rejoice.
3. Observing sabbath in a thorough way keeps us, in turn, from exploiting others – because Sabbath habits create Sabbath perspective, transforming us through the renewing of our minds. Sabbath reminds us, if we let it, that all those we might be tempted to call “others,” are indeed our kin, equally loved and protected by God.
4. Through rest, contemplation, and celebration, Sabbath restores us—body and soul. It fits us with strength and wisdom for the ongoing work of Ordinary Time, serving Christ in the now and not yet.
***
Sabbath-keeping is one of the Ten Commandments that was handed town to Israel through the covenant God made with Moses on Mount Sinai, after God delivered them out of slavery in Egypt. And that is really important, because the structure of the Mosaic covenant is actually patterned according to the norms of Conquest Treaties typical to this part of the Middle East at the time. It reflects the usual way a King would lay out terms with a nation he had overtaken from another ruler. Only instead of one king laying out terms with a people he means to appropriate, this is Yahweh laying out terms with people that he had a previous, different covenant with (the Abrahamic covenant), who he has rescued from slavery under another ruled (that would be Pharoah) and whom he now wishes to make his own again, in perpetuity.
We should all be hearing very strong overtones here, in this very Jewish story, of what Jesus will do later when He brings about the new covenant that makes room for us—i.e. Gentiles—to be incorporated into the family of God’s people.
So, in this type of treaty--the one the Mosaic Covenant imitates--the typical scenario is that one king declares total authority over a people group including any of their standing authorities—these standing authorities, like a minor king or chieftain would, under the treaty, become vassal-kings.
The basic structure of the treaty would then lay out the new world order (so to speak) and it did this in—well, three basic move, but only the first two are relevant for today:
1 First) The one offering the treaty would name himself as Sovereign and recite the ways he (and sometimes his forebears) had rescued or protected the vassal king(s) and subjects now being taken under his wing. [You could call this ‘spinning a narrative.’]
2 Second) The Soverign lays out his expectations of the vassal state, with demands that fall into two categories,
a) Exclusive and total loyalty to the sovereign. (Here in Deuteronomy, that’s your first three commandments: no other God besides me, no idols or graven images, and you must keep the Lord’s name absolutely sacred)
b) Rules governing the relationships between vassal states. (E.g. no raiding each other’s territory.)
In his book Covenant Economics, Richard Horsely notes that the commandment to observe the Sabbath technically falls into both these categories—exclusive loyalty to the Sovereign and right relationships between the vassals. Structurally, it sits right at the pivot point between Declaring Sovereignty and spelling out how that sovereignty is to be acknowledged—and elaborating how God’s subjects are to conduct themselves in relation to one another. So even though “Keep the Sabbath” is technically the 4th of 10 commandments…it’s kind of the second. Which should up it’s importance a bit, I think, in our minds.
Okay, so the context of this Mosaic covenant is hugely, glaringly, the deliverance of God’s people from slavery. And for that reason, the function of Sabbath as a protection for God’s people against exploitation—against the dehumanizing tyranny of endless labour—this is probably the function that gets most attention.
Mostly, when I read commentaries on why the Sabbath is important, the core emphasis tends to be on the very last bit of the 4th commandment: Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.
Every sabbath is a reminder of our liberation through God’s love. Through sabbath we remember that unlike Pharoah, and unlike ourselves when we walk in shadow--Yahweh puts image bearers first, and image second. Creation first, Creator second.
For this reason, Sabbath is also a sacred feast—a mini-Easter every week! Through fellowship and feasting, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, by taking “whole-hearted joy in the good gifts of this physical life,” Christians “acknowledge [Christ] as the true giver of all good gifts; and beyond this, as the true Gift; the true Bread of life itself.”
Christine Pohl, in her book Living into Community, elaborates, saying that “Gratitude and thanksgiving,” such as the Sabbath feast moves us to practise, “help to make all of the other practices [of discipleship] more beautiful. When gratitude shapes our lives, fidelity is more likely to be joy-filled, truth is life-giving, and hospitality is offered with generosity and joy.”
At bottom, our sabbath feasts model and incarnate-- throughout Ordinary Time--the Kingdom of Heaven at hand, right now. They are celebrations in which we respond to our liberation with joy, gratitude, and generosity to others, declaring “it is for freedom that we have been set free!”
Our gospel tonight shows us how Christ taught his followers to understand this about the Sabbath, underlining that it was—above all--a celebration of mercy. However solemn the commandment to keep sabbath might be, Sabbath observance should never become fearful, performative, or legalistic to the point that it becomes oppressive. What an irony that would be!
“The sabbath was made for people,” Jesus says, “not people for the sabbath.”
It is for freedom that we have been set free. Indeed, it is for freedom that all creation has been set free.
Look again at who the Sabbath serves, as we see it described here in Deuteronomy?
The Israelites, yes, but also their servants, and foreigners in their territory, and their animals, and by extension the land. What does this teach us? That the good news has to be good news for everyone.
Deuteronomy chapter 6: 6, 10-12, just after the ten commandments are listed:
These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. […] When the Lord your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you—a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, 11 houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—then when you eat and are satisfied, 12 be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
In other words, I have made it so that as long as you abide in me, you will never again be slaves to any one or anything. I have also made it so that as long as you abide in me, you will never become the slavers.
In the most beautiful paradox ever, our Sabbath feasts are where we celebrate sumptuously, but they are also by nature an occasion where we practise the kind of restraint on our consumption that ensures we do not exploit others. Not our human cousins, nor our kin the animals, the plants, entire ecosystems…
Sabbath may be the most important discipleship practise we have when it comes to creation care. Because sabbath is the cradle out of which we grow our capacity to see, to love, and to serve Christ as manifest in ALL those creatures we might otherwise regard as other. All those creatures that, due to our dimness of vision, we tend to think of as unconnected to us. “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt,” Yahweh says. And when you go over to that land of wells you did not dig, and vineyards and orchards you did not plant, be careful that you do not forget the Lord. Who made the vine keepers, and the vines, and the soil that birthed them both, and who loves all with surpassing love.
Lastly, Sabbath rest and celebration is a discipline that fits us for the long haul of our work as disciples—being “Christ with skin on” as I’ve heard it said. Jean Vanier said “celebration is a sign of the resurrection which gives us strength to carry the cross of each day.” And whatever you may think of Jean Vanier at this point, that is a fact. United Church minister Joyce Hollyday tells a memorable story about a church worker who served refugees in Latin America. At a certain point, one of the refugees called that church worker out with these words: “You’re not serious about our struggle. Only people who expect to go back to North America in a year work the way you do. You cannot be serious about the struggle unless you play and celebrate and do those things that make it possible to give a lifetime to it.”
Ralph Heintzman describes a certain mindset as regarding time that he considers essential to the human faculty of reverence. He writes, “A conviction that past, present, and future are and should be united in the present proceeds from an ability to see and value the connectedness of things.” Is that ability to see things as connected, not disconnected, that he calls one of the essential virtues of reverence. And I think it’s exactly that ability to see all things as connected, all points in time as connected, that really robust Sabbath practise can grow in us.
May we seek the grace to seek that growth—to surrender deeply to Sabbath wisdom—practising it faithfully until Christ returns to show us how it’s really done.
Amen.
