What is a Sabbath? There is a simple answer about a date on the calendar. But that is not how Luther’s Small Catechism defines it. Neither do I think that is how the Jesus talks about the Sabbath. That’s where this meditation starts, but it is really about the Old Testament reading for the day and Elijah’s journey. It is about the contrast between the Power and the Glory and The things that were made for man. It is about the regular Sabbaths and those that we desperately need. It is about how we receive the Bread of Life for the Journey that is too much for us.
Biblical Text: Mark 2:23-3:6 (and Deuteronomy 5:12-15)
So this Sunday in the Church year is the one that starts the Long Green season. The festival season, which stretched from Advent through Trinity Sunday (Christmas to Pentecost), is over and another word for this is Ordinary Time. And the first lessons given are interesting as they are on the Sabbath Day. By this time the Easter attendance bump is long past, and most pastors are hoping the Summer lows are not too low. The Festival season gives people extra reasons to attend. The long green season – made longer this year because the moveable feast of Easter was so early – is more like the Christian life. It has its high moments, but most of it is lived in the plain. Which is why I think starting it with a reminder of what the Sabbath is, is a sharp choice.
And as Lutherans we also have a sharp law-gospel distinction to proclaim – completely in tune with Jesus in the gospel lesson – about the Sabbath. In the law the Sabbath is simply about rest. It only demands that nobody in your authority do any normal work. The gospel purpose of that law is that we might draw near to the Lord. And in the promises of Jesus there are a multitude of ways that we can so draw near. The law itself is good and wise, but it doesn’t save. You could spend you day of rest just sitting and check the box. Salvation rests in drawing near to God.
The sermon develops those thoughts through a reflection on how work expands to fill the time, old blue laws, and a meditation about what I think is the Spiritual sickness of the day. It is not that we don’t want a Sabbath, but that our people collectively don’t want this Lord of the Sabbath. And so we get the heavy yoke of the work of the Devil, the World and our own flesh.
Preaching on John is always interesting. The wedding at Cana is one of those texts that you just can’t drain it all. 180 gallons of good wine will do that. This sermon has three movements. The first is doctrinal. The wedding at Cana reminds us how much God loves and blesses marriage. The second is personal. Mary is the picture of Faith. The interaction of Jesus and his mother is a picture of the test of faith. And what God gives through that test. The last movement is what the church used to call a spiritual or mystical reading. Why six stone jars, why water to brim, and what about the wine? This one goes in the keeper file.
The year preaching on the Gospel according to Mark is one of the most interesting. Mark’s gospel has the most cryptic and odd parts. It is no wonder that the current reigning academic model puts Mark as the earliest. It makes sense that some thing like today’s parable or last Sunday’s visit by Mary would be smoothed out later. It makes sense, but I’m not personally convinced. Of the four gospels Mark simply seems to have a sense of the absurd. How crazy and paradoxical and wonderful at the same time life and the God of life actually is. This sermon attempts to ponder the odder of the seed parables. “The earth produces by itself.” It invites you to think of it as a parable of the work of the Spirit. God doesn’t seem to know what he is doing – “he sleeps and rise night and day”, “he scatters everywhere” – but the plants grow and produce a harvest. The Kingdom of God can be absurd that way, but it is God’s work. And he grants us the growth.
In the course of my lifetime I’m not sure if there is a word that went from being in general use to almost obsolete more than Sabbath. It might be hard to imagine if you didn’t live through it, but the great deliberative bodies of our nation once spent great amounts of time thinking about a Sabbath and its meaning. Today I’d bet that the vast majority of folks wouldn’t even recognize the word. It is in the 3rd commandment. Lots of the controversies around Jesus are because of it. What is a Christian supposed to do? That is what this sermon is about. What is a Sabbath anyway? And if we are supposed to keep it holy, how do we do that? It is so easy, and yet awfully hard. It is all about the gospel, and yet we so often want a law. But as Jesus says, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So we need to understand how to receive it as a gift, not work to secure it. We have a Sabbath rest, even if we don’t know it. This is about knowing it, and living it.
One of the things I think is constant in our experience is a desire for the transcendent. I’ll use as a quick definition of the transcendent something that is larger that we are. Augustine recognized this in his phrase “we are restless until we find our rest in you”. The biblical text is the Transfiguration, a direct experience of the transcendent and the reaction of Peter. What the sermon attempts to do is first demonstrate that we aren’t any different. We long for transcendence and we cling desperately to its signs. It does this primarily by looking at pop music which in my head expresses openly our common longings. The second step is to point out what actually happens on the mountaintop. Jesus is left alone and the voice says listen to him. Instead of clinging to the fleeting signs of transcendence, we have the reality, Jesus Christ. And his words tells us where we can find him. We are restless until we find our rest in him.
The hymn of the day captured in the recording points at one of those places we see face to face: Lutheran Service Book 631 – Here, O My Lord, I See Thee Face to Face. All the words and some history of the hymn are here. Here is the LSB link which has an extra verse and is set to an interesting/different hymn tune compared to the most standard.
