Then he said to them, “The sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the sabbath…” (Mark 2:27a)
The
late restauranteur Truett Cathy wanted to honor the Lord. That’s why you can’t
go to Chick-fil-A on a Sunday. Mr. Cathy was a pretty devout old dude. He
believed Sunday was the Lord’s Day, and good folks should see it as a day to
rest, go to church, and hang out with family. He maintained closing his
fast-food restaurants on Sunday would honor God and the Third Commandment[i] and would bring blessings
to his fried chicken sandwich enterprise. Personally, I think we’re drifting a
bit into the choppy waters of superstition whenever we think something we
do will influence God, but Mr. Cathy just might’ve been on to something. Even
though the great gurus of finance have guesstimated Chick-fil-A loses about
1.2 billion dollars every year by the Sunday closures, the chain still
looks remarkably profitable. What’s more, Chick-fil-A employees always know
they’ll get Sunday off, and this turns out to be good for morale[ii].
Resting
from our labor is really what the sabbath should be about, don’t you think? Our
First Lesson for Pentecost 2, Year B in the RCL (Deuteronomy 5:12-15) spells
this out pretty clearly. In the Exodus version of the 10 Commandments, the
rationale is if God rested on the seventh day of creation, we should take a
break too. The Deuteronomy version is a little more socially aware. This author
invokes the cultural consciousness of the Jewish people. It says, in effect, “Hey,
you guys! When you were slaves in Egypt you didn’t get a day off. It sucked,
didn’t it? Therefore, you shouldn’t make anybody work on the sabbath.
Give your workers and your critters and yourselves time to rest, renew, hear
God’s word and think about it, and maybe share a meal. It’ll be good for you.”
Jesus,
in our Gospel text (Mark 2:23-3:6) is right when he tells the Pharisees the
sabbath is for our benefit, not God’s. We don’t do God any favors when we stop
our work, fellowship with our community, and get renewed by the Good News of
God’s love. All of that is to benefit us.
The
Pharisees, of course, shouldn’t always be labeled as the bad guys. After all,
they were just trying to be righteous. Unfortunately, they often tried so hard
to be right they ended up being wrong. You can’t hold anything against a really
righteous person unless he spends his time saying he’s more righteous than you
are. The Pharisees’ sin wasn’t their defense of the sabbath laws and customs.
It was the way they used those laws and customs to aggrandize themselves and
bludgeon those who disagreed with them. They kept to the letter of the law but
violated its intent.
The
day set aside for religious observance should be a day of gladness, not one of
oppression. I can’t help but think of those old Puritans in colonial New
England who forbade anything but worship on a Sunday. In 1671 the Massachusetts
Bay Colony Charter included this delightful little statute:
“That whosoever shall profane the Lords-day, by doing
unnecessary servile work, by unnecessary travailing, or by sports and
recreations, he or they that so transgress, shall forfeit for every such
default forty shillings, or be publickly whipt: But if it clearly appear that
the sin was profoundly, Presumptuously and with a high hand committed, against
the known Command and Authority of the blessed God, such a person therein
despising and reproaching the Lord, shall be put to death or grievously
punished at the Judgement of the Court.”[iii]
(When
I was a vicar up in New York I couldn’t buy a six-pack of non-alcoholic beer until
after 1pm on a Sunday—and I thought that was severe!)
Jesus
teaches us that there are really only two laws: love God and love everyone else[iv]. Compassion, forgiveness,
and mercy are what God is about. If the law gets in the way of those things,
exceptions have to be made. He even notes how the Jews’ great hero David
violated temple law so he could feed his hungry men (v.25-26). In that case
physical need outweighed religious ritual.[v]
Martin
Luther wasn’t all that strict in his interpretation of the sabbath law in the Small
Catechism:
“We are to fear and love God, so that we do not
despise preaching or God’s word, but instead keep that word holy and gladly
hear it and learn it.”
You’ll
notice Luther says nothing about specific sabbath practice. For him, keeping the
sabbath is just about being refreshed in the word of God. It’s kind of like
refilling our spiritual gas tank with scripture. I think that’s best done in
the fellowship of a Christian community, but if your boss makes you work on
Sunday or you’re an elderly shut-in or you’re sick or something, there are
other ways you can satisfy this.
Righteousness
shouldn’t be easy. The Pharisees of this world would love it if everything were
just black or white. Unfortunately, our faith forces us to dance around with
all the different shades of grey, always asking if the letter of the law is upholding
or violating its spirit. We know, for example, that it’s wrong to kill another,
and abortion is, technically speaking, ending a life. It’s always a bad choice.
But is it always the worst choice? We know immigration laws exist to
prevent crime and chaos. Does this mean, however, that we are free to ignore
the thousands of our fellow human beings who are fleeing crime, oppression, and
hunger? We know it’s only right to pay the debts we owe. Yet is it wrong to
forgive certain types of indebtedness so the debtor can live a life free from the
rapacious jaws of poverty?
To
be a Christian is always to be engaged with the law and the mercy of Jesus. Fortunately
for us, that same law blesses us with a day of rest in which we can ponder all these
issues—even if it means we can’t get a good chicken sandwich.
[i] “Remember
the sabbath day and keep it holy.” (Exodus 20:8-11). I’m using the numbering system
used by Martin Luther in his Catechism. Hey! I’m a Lutheran, okay?
[ii]
Yes. I know. Cathy’s son Dan, who is now head of the chain, has been criticized
by LGBTQ+ supporters for his anti-same-gender marriage statements made in 2012.
He also was a heavy donor to anti-LGBTQ organizations. Since 2012 Chick-fil-A
as a corporate entity has begun divesting donations to such organizations and
specifically states its hiring policy does not discriminate on the basis of
sexual orientation. I’m not trying to hold the Cathy family up as paragons of
Christian virtue as I vehemently disagree with their stance on LGBTQ rights. I’m
only using Chick-fil-A as an example of sabbath observance.
[iii]
You can look this up on Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritan_Sabbatarianism.
Pretty wild, huh?
[iv]
See Mark 12:28-31)
[v] See 1 Samuel 21:1-6. Fun fact: Either Jesus or Mark is mistaken when he refers
to Abiathar as the High Priest. The High Priest was actually Abiathar’s dad,
Ahimelech, King Saul got bent out of shape because Ahimelech aided David, so he
had him and the other priests slaughtered. Abiathar escaped and became David’s
army chaplain.
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