L.D. 38, Matthew 12:1-14 "The Day of Love" Scott Hoezee

If anyone would like to write a book that will sell a lot of copies, I can suggest a topic. This would be a book that would work the same side of the street as Dr. Phil. The book would appeal to medicine, the natural sciences, psychology, and sociology to build a case that in order to maintain good health, human beings regularly need a day off, a Sabbath's rest if you will. You could argue that humans seem hard-wired such that our brains and bodies need time to get away from it all so as to rejuvenate. In our harried, frantic culture where even young children seem worn to a frazzle due to hyper-busy schedules, a book like that would surely strike a nerve and catch on.

Of course, you'll have plenty of competition. There are already dozens of books in print that deal with some aspect of Sabbath rest. For the most part, though, they tend to be almost "How-To" manuals. Some authors promote Jewish-like Sabbath rituals that include lighting candles at sunset on Saturday followed by other suggestions that bear striking resemblance to psycho-therapeutic relaxation techniques.

Hence, advertisements for such books promise that this is the book that will help you "experience wholeness and joy again." Indeed, a survey of books on Amazon.com revealed that when it comes to books on Sabbath, certain words pop up almost every time: rest, renewal, delight, wholeness, enrichment. The subtitles for these books include "the antidote for the overworked," "release from your busy life," "a touch of heaven." Perhaps my favorite title was a Jewish book: Oh No! It's Sabbath Again and I'm Not Ready: A Homemaker's Guide to Making Friday the Easiest Day of the Week.

Probably, though, I myself would not write a book like any of those. I would probably write a book that dealt with this topic the way Lord's Day 38 presents it. And I would predict that my book would tank quite resoundingly as a result! Because the books that catch on seem to make the Sabbath all about you. This will improve your life, your mental state, your energy level. Lord's Day 38, however, seems to be more about God. Sabbath is a time to worship God, to listen to sermons, to give money away to the poor. What's more, the Lord's day is a once-a-week reminder that what Sabbath rest is mostly all about is repenting of sin and vowing to live a more holy life every day.

Worship, prayer, repentance from sin: if you wanted to generate a list of non-starters in contemporary society, you could hardly do better than this. Many people would rather go to work than get hit up-side the head about sin. Having to sit through a sermon sounds like the precise opposite of a relaxing activity to many. True, some manage to combine listening to a sermon with taking a nap, but most prefer naptime to involve sofas and pillows.

So what is the Sabbath really? True, we Christians observe Sabbath on the first day of the week, not the last as our Jewish friends do. But the principle is the same. So what is Sabbath? To answer that, let's begin with Matthew 12. As we have noted together before, probably no single area of Israelite/Jewish life became more legalistically ensnared in rules than did the Sabbath day. The fourth commandment as originally presented in Exodus 20 had exactly one stipulation: no work. But somehow, in the centuries that followed, that rule about not working became embroidered and embellished in ways that stagger the mind. Scholars tell us that Jewish theologians came up with not less than thirty-nine sub-classifications of different types of work with the total number of rules governing Sabbath behavior mounting up into the hundreds.

In other words, the Sabbath became a rather tense and nervous day. With more rules than the average person could keep track of, you sensed that it was easier to break the Sabbath than keep it. To put it mildly, such a tense atmosphere was not what God had in mind when he wove Sabbath into the very tapestry of creation. As Eugene Peterson once pointed out, in the Genesis 1 account, Adam and Eve were created last and at the end of the sixth day. That means that humanity's first full day of existence was none other than the Sabbath day! Humanity began with a day of rest.

That says a lot about God's grace and a lot about what we were made to be as people in God's image. If you had to guess, though, probably you'd have to say that Adam and Eve did not spend that first Sabbath day memorizing some long list of rules that God handed to them the night before. Sabbath was a chance to soak up the beauty of creation. That's why Adam and Eve no more needed a command to keep the Sabbath day than an eight-year-old needs to be ordered to eat the hot fudge sundae you just put in front of him. There are some treats in life that you simply dive into without needing to be told!

The gospel of John tells us that in the beginning the very Word of God who later became flesh created all that exists. Jesus as the divine Son of God had the Creator's perspective on this world and so on also the nature of the Sabbath. Maybe that is why he so frequently demonstrated a disregard for the rules that had cluttered up the Sabbath.

Matthew 12 is one of several gospel texts that show Sabbath controversies between Jesus and the Pharisees. But Jesus' approach here is more subtle than direct. First, the disciples grab some food for themselves, thus violating one of those thirty-nine forms of forbidden work. When the religious authorities call Jesus on this, his initial answer seems to be little more than, "Well, David did it once!" That is the kind of answer you'd half expect to hear from a little kid, not the Lord Jesus. We've all heard it from our children. "Jimmy, what are you doing eating the cookie before supper!?" "Well, Molly had one!"

If Jesus wants to tell the Pharisees that they are all wet by enforcing all their many, many laws, why doesn't he just say so? He then goes on to point to another thing that likewise seems slightly beside the point at first glance. "The priests work on the Sabbath day but God doesn't condemn them." Again, if your teenager took a part-time job that required working from 8-4 every Sunday, you'd likely protest this and would not be much moved if your teen replied, "Rev. Hoezee works every Sunday, so why can't I?" Jesus' answers seem child-like in their simplicity. But maybe that is because such answers fit these Pharisees who are, in Jesus' eyes anyway, being downright childish.

So finally in verses 7 and 8 Jesus comes to the heart of it all. God desires mercy, not sacrifice. This is a quote from the prophet Hosea but the idea behind that line was the linch-pin in all the ancient prophets. Prophets like Hosea and Amos assailed Israel for keeping up pious appearances like coming to the Temple to offer up sacrifices even though the rest of their lives were a spiritual and moral mess. They abused the poor, shoved aside widows, ignored orphans, and pretty much did whatever they wanted six days a week. Yet somehow they figured so long as they put in an appearance at the Temple come the Sabbath day, God would give them a wink and a nod and so let them then go on their merry way.

That hypocrisy made the Sabbath and its worship a sham. But Jesus mentions that particular verse in this context for another reason. The mercy God desires always aims at bringing joy. Mercy is fueled by love and compassion. But the moment we become more interested in externals, in outward appearances--and above all the moment we become more interested in rules than in people--then we kill the core of everything God desires for us.

People who are hyper-enthused about rules sooner or later lose sight of individuals. Only the rules matter and so those who violate the rules will be punished without question. Probably some of us know how that attitude makes you feel. Just listen to how even a child talks if she has a teacher who comes across as very strict. Maybe you as a parent will tell the child, "You don't need to be afraid of your teacher." But the child may wisely shoot back, "Yes I do--he doesn't care about me, just the rules." Whether the child is right about that in a given situation, she is on to something in terms of what happens to those who become obsessed with the rules: sooner or later they really do stop caring about people.

Jesus knew that, too, as is swiftly demonstrated in the next test that the Pharisees throw his way. Here is a man in God's house with a withered hand. But the Pharisees don't see the man, they don't see the precious child of God who has suffered for so long and whose heart bears the scars of that suffering. All they see is a hand. One of the many terrible things that happens in pornography is that people are reduced to body parts. Persons don't matter, personalities don't matter, just the parts matter. So in the Temple that day the Pharisees were like grim pornographers: the person to whom the withered hand belonged had disappeared. He got lost from view behind a mountain of rules. They could just as well as have thrown a blanket over him so that only his withered hand protruded.

Jesus saw the man. So he healed him. These blind Pharisees still didn't get it, so Jesus further shamed them by saying, "It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath." He was speaking their language in putting it just that way but Jesus meant it to shame them for their silliness. His saying that it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath is a little like having someone ask you, "Would it be OK if I donated $1 million for tsunami relief?" only to have you reply, "Yes, I think there is a law on the books somewhere that says it is legal to be generous." That's ridiculous! It's like seeing someone trip and fall in the atrium after church some Sunday and coming up to her and saying, "I think it's legal for me to help you back up to your feet so that's what I'm going to do."

How silly. How ludicrous. The Pharisees were not even aware of it. "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?" they asked with oceans of seriousness. But that's like asking if it's legal to rescue a drowning child from the neighbor's backyard swimming pool.

So what does our Lord teach us about Sabbath? Well, contrary to all those books to which I referred earlier, Sabbath is not firstly all about you, your needs, or your ability to recharge your own batteries. Yes, we human beings need the very refreshment, rest, rejuvenation, and wholeness that all those books talk about. Those authors are not wrong to urge us to strike good and healthy balances in our lives. Nor are they wrong to say that ultimately Sabbath has something to do with that. But remember what I said earlier: Adam and Eve's first full day of life was Sabbath. But they didn't need to rejuvenate their weary souls--they hadn't done a lick of work yet! They had nothing to rest from that first Sabbath day. So Sabbath must be about more than kicking back after a hard week of work.

Listen: Sabbath is about enjoying God, enjoying God's creation, and enjoying other people as the images of God in our midst. That's why the Catechism begins by talking about worship. We come to church to take the focus off of ourselves and put it properly onto God, God's people, and the poor for whom we take offerings. It's a time to find out how the sick and elderly of the congregation are doing and to pray for them. It's a time to learn a little something more about all the many and wonderful things God teaches in the Bible.

But Q&A 103 deepens and broadens Sabbath when it says there should be a little Sabbath in our hearts every day in the sense that we aim ourselves toward God and toward others by repenting of sin. Most sin is essentially selfish blindness, putting your wants ahead of God's designs and ahead of other people's needs, too. Sabbath living on a Wednesday afternoon or a Friday morning means that you take care of others first, not worrying about yourself because if other people do the same, they will take care of you anyway.

Lord's Day 38 ends by looking forward to what it calls "the eternal Sabbath." How that phrase sounds to you says a lot about your experience with Sabbath. Not a few people would hear the prospect of an "eternal Sabbath" and groan. If eternity is sitting in church and then following a bunch of very strict rules the rest of the time, lots of people would say you can just keep your eternal Sabbath, thank you very much. Certainly many of the Jews in Jesus' day didn't want every day to be the Sabbath because the tension would have killed them. There is no joy or delight in any of life, including on the Sabbath, if rules eclipse all else. In Matthew 12:14 Jesus' encounter with the Pharisees ends on a note of murder. In the original Greek, the last word of verse 14 is "kill."

It's only appropriate, of course, since they had turned the Sabbath into a deadly, deadening day anyway. The rules had become so important that even God dropped out of sight, not to mention other people. Once upon a time, somewhere way, way back, the people who cooked up all those ancillary rules had the best of intentions. The same was true of the rules some of our parents and grandparents followed. I learned the hard way in my first church that if you poke fun of the rules of yesteryear, you will hurt someone's feelings. After a sermon in which I lampooned some Sabbath excesses of our own tradition, a man tearfully reminded me that although he agreed that those rules were arbitrary, he still loved the grandma who meant well in enforcing them. True enough.

But it's in the nature of rules to take on a life of their own. Sooner or later they have a way of sapping joy and making people and their needs disappear from sight. That's why Jesus wants us to begin with God, with creation, and with each other. Jesus wants us to begin with love. The fourth commandment does not make it a rule that you must go to church on the Lord's day. Likewise I can't make it a rule that you come here once or twice a Sunday. I can't make that a rule because it would be like passing a law to order you to love your spouse. It can't be done. You either love someone or you don't.

Coming to worship on Sunday is about loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. If someone has to force you to come to church, you are unlikely to offer up anything resembling true worship, and there certainly won't be any delight in it for you. If I have to order you to be kind to the people around you on a Sunday or any other day, your outward behavior may or may not change but it wouldn't matter: your heart won't be in the right place because you don't love God or his imagebearers to begin with.

The human race started its existence on a Sabbath as a reminder of the very reason for which God created us in the first place: he made us in love, for love. When love for God and for one another sets the Sabbath tone, there won't be any question whether or not you will come to church nor will there be any question how you will treat the people you meet once you get here (nor, for that matter, how you will treat people the rest of the week as well). But where that love is lacking, no amount of rules in the world will bring love to life.

In the end, on that Sabbath day long ago, the Pharisees went out and planned to kill Jesus. They hatched a murder plot. On the Sabbath, no less. I wonder why they didn't ask themselves if that was lawful to do on the Sabbath? Asking that never occurred to them, though, and I suspect we know why. As the apostle Paul so well put it, "If I have a faith that can move mountains but have not love, I am nothing." So true, and never more so than on the Sabbath day. Amen.