Sabbath

What is the Sabbath?

In the Christian West we mark Sunday as being the Sabbath. For the Jews the Sabbath is Saturday. Did the Sabbath change? The way I understand it is that the Sabbath is represented by the last day of the week (Saturday) to reflect Yahweh resting on the seventh day of Creation. Christians moved the holy day to Sunday to mark the celebration of Christ's resurrection, but I'm not sure they actually moved the Sabbath. Correct me if I'm wrong here.

Yesterday morning in Bible study we looked at John 5. There is the story of Jesus healing the invalid at the pool on the Sabbath and then a long exposition by Jesus about who he is, testimonies, and how they need to believe God, who sent Jesus, which the scriptures clearly point to.

Here is what caught my attention this morning:

So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath (healing the invalid), the Jews (the word used here specifies that the 'Jews' are Judeans) persecuted him. Jesus said to them, "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working." For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.

I think Jesus is challenging the Jews idea of the Sabbath here and hopefully our ideas of the Sabbath as well. We typically think of Sabbath as the day of rest. Which is not incorrect; it is the day of rest for Jews, Christians, and Muslims (although all 3 practice on different days, in different ways). But what does it mean to rest? I think the first place we would normally look would be Genesis 2 or perhaps the 10 commandments . It does clearly say there in both Exodus and Deuteronomy that the Jews were to do no work. God did all his work during the first 6 days and then rested, and so shall they. A (perhaps major) difference between the two texts is that in Deuteronomy, Moses adds this: 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.

So we can see the Sabbath as a day set aside to reflect on the story of the people of God. We are not to work, we are to rest in creation as God rests and remember what God did at the Exodus. But I'm not so sure that works when we play the Jesus card.

Jesus didn't have to heal the man on the Sabbath. He had been sick for 38 years and one more day wouldn't have hurt him. But it looks like Jesus deliberately chooses this day(or at least the day chose him). And Jesus doesn't even do any work he simply tells the man to pick up his mat (which is considered work). After this, Jesus' statement about the father working is meant to set a new standard for people to go by. The Sabbath is most certainly not outdated, or useless anymore, but needs a tune-up. It needs to be recreated itself.

First, there are a few other sayings of Jesus that are important here:

-It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:12)
-The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27)
-Now if a child can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing the whole man on the Sabbath? (John 7:23)
-The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 2:28 and parallels)

I'm sure there are more and I definitely don't want to take any of these out of context, but I think they are important to understand the 'new' Sabbath.

If we keep in mind the big picture story of Creation, Fall, and Redemption, maybe we can make sense of the Sabbath. In the beginning, God created the world. The world he created 'fell', and Sin is now alive and well. Soon after that God begins his work of redeeming the world and restoring the world to its original glory. Jesus is the climax of the restoration, the victory of God over evil, and the beginning of the new creation.

It's this last point that I want to focus on: new creation. God is making all things new! That sounds like work to me but a very specific kind of work. We see it revealed in Jesus: 'My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working' is a redefinition of work and sabbath, i think. God is working on restoring the creation and redeeming it. We are in a different part of the story from when the Sabbath was given but not a new story, as Tom Wright would say. So what does that do to Sabbath rest? Again, I think it redefines it.

"The heart of it seems to be Jesus' belief that Israel's god was then and there in the process of launching the new creation. And somehow this new creation was superseding the old one. Its timescale was taking precedence. God was healing the sorry, sick old world, and though there might come a time for rest (when Jesus' own work was finished, maybe: see John 19.28-30), at the moment it was time for the work of new creation to go forward." - Tom Wright

So, just like these ramblings, there is work to be done. Not work so we can earn our way into heaven, but work because if we believe in the one who was sent from God (or Paul for that matter) we know that we can be participants (in fact we are invited!) in the new creation. Jesus' ministry opens with a reading from Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

Let us make this our mission statement as Jesus made it his. There is work to be done. There are poor yet to be preached the good news, there are prisoners yet to be set free, there are blind people whose sight is yet to be recovered, there are people yet to be released from oppression. If we want sabbath rest, let us rest in the fact that God is working on making all things new. Let us work with him and rest in the new creation and not settle for anything less.