4. OBSERVE SABBATH

The Ten Commandments as Grace and Law

Exodus 20:8-11; Deuteronomy 5:12-15; Mark 2:23-28

The Ten Commandments, God's means for ordering our relationship with God and with our neighbor, were probably only one or two Hebrew words each in their original form, the rest of the words around them probably being later additions to explain their meaning in different times and living situations.

Some of you have mentioned to me that you learned the Commandments in slightly different ways. I said last week that some groups number them differently. First, if you have a Jewish background you probably learned that the first commandment is what we have called the "Prologue:" "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." In Jewish tradition, the second commandment includes both "You shall have no other gods," and "You shall not make for yourself an idol." The rest follow as we have learned them.

If you have a Catholic or Lutheran background you probably learned that the first commandment combined what we have learned as the first two: no other gods and no idols. That means that they have only nine commandments, right? No. They follow the text of the commandments found in the fifth chapter of Deuteronomy and see in the commandment about coveting two commandments where we see only one: first, a prohibition against coveting your neighbor's wife, and a second, a prohibition against coveting your neighbor's property. We will talk more about that distinction when we consider the last commandment on November 4th.

If God gave the Ten Commandments today I am sure they would be printed with numbers and hanging indents so that there wouldn't be any mistaking which commandment was which number. But they were given in ancient times to a pre-literate people who didn't have much time for the luxury of things like hanging indents. Even so, the Ten Commandments are clear, both in their version in Exodus 20 and in Deuteronomy 5.

I can understand why, in the Jewish tradition, the first commandment might be considered those words at the very beginning: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." While this is certainly not a "Do" or "Do not" commandment, it is a reminder of what I have said each week: the Ten Commandments are as much about "grace" as about "law." Having those words as the first commandment is a reminder that the commandments are about grace: God's saving love that goes before the law. The commandments are not "rules" made up to make our lives miserable. They are the framework for meaningful life as children of the God who created us. They are given by a God who has loved and cared for us before when could do anything on our own. We obey the commandments out of gratitude. The converse is also true: disobeying the commandments are acts of ingratitude for all that God has done for us.

The first three commandments make clear the terms for our relationship to God: First, we are to be loyal to this God, and no others. Second, we are not to try to remake this God over in our image. Third, we are to take care how and for what purposes we invoke the name of this God. I want to suggest that the fourth commandment is just as much a part of the terms of our relationship with God as are the first three.

The fourth commandment is stated in positive, not prohibitive, terms: "Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy." In the ancient world before this time, no society had a day of rest. They had occasional and set festivals during the year, but no day of the week when they were to rest. Perhaps that is why this commandment is stated in positive terms. Most of the commandments are set in the negative, or prohibitive, terms presumably because their intention was to “set limits.” But if people had no concept of what a day of rest was because there had never been one before, then it would have been difficult to cast the commandment in prohibitive terms. "Sabbath" in Hebrew literally means "ceasing." On one day of the week people were to "cease" from work, and that included children, servants, and even animals.

There are two rationale offered to explain this commandment. The first is offered in Exodus 20:8: God needs rest, and as children created in God's image, we do too. The text reminds us that God created the world in six days and on the seventh day rested. This is a remarkable image, that even God needs rest. The message is clear: if even God needs to be refreshed by rest, how much more do we need it?

The second rationale for the commandment is found in the version in Deuteronomy 5: "Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day." (5:15) As slaves in Egypt, the people did not have the luxury of taking a day off. They were forced to work every day. Not only did that use up their bodies, but it also hindered them from remembering who they were. Now a free people, they are to cease from work one day a week, not only so they can be physically and mentally refreshed, but also so they can "remember" who God is and who they are.

Observance of the Sabbath is a public statement about this community's loyalty to God. I think that is why it is listed with the other commandments defining the terms of a relationship with God. Keeping the Sabbath "holy" (which means to "set apart for God's use") means to take this day in time and "set it apart" for both rest and remembering —“remembering” is what we do when we worship. Observance of the Sabbath includes two things: rest and worship.

This commandment and the texts we read about it today raise two important questions. The first is, "Why was the punishment for not observing the Sabbath so severe -- the penalty was death?" We might have asked why the penalties for breaking any of the commandments were so severe. I don't have a good answer to that question, except to acknowledge that bridging the thousands of years that separate an ancient nomadic people and our post-modern world is very difficult. What is clear in the meaning of the commandments for us, however, is that observance of the Sabbath was as important as the rest of the commandments. It was not, as some might think, a kind of "optional extra" commandment to do or not do as one chose. The observance of the Sabbath was regarded as a critical public statement of one's loyalty to God. How important is observing Sabbath for you?

The second question raised is "Why do Christians observe Sunday instead of Saturday as Sabbath?" Jesus and the earliest Christians observed the Sabbath on Saturday, just as the rest of their Jewish brothers and sisters. In the first three centuries after the resurrection, when Gentiles became more numerous in the church, relations between Christians and Jews became more strained, and the two faith communities separated. Increasingly, for Christians the focus of Sabbath observance moved to Sunday, the day when Christ had been raised from the dead. Sunday was not formally made "the Sabbath" for Christians until the fourth century, and then it was to emphasize the separation between Judaism and Christianity.

Where is Jesus in the observance of Sabbath? In the passage we read today from the Gospel of Mark, Jesus’ disciples are accused of violating the Sabbath because they were plucking heads of grain as they walked through a field on the Sabbath. Now we might debate about whether this was a violation of the fourth commandment, but in Jesus’ day there was no question. Within the 603 other rabbinic laws in the first five books of the Bible and the thousands of accepted interpretations that had come down through the centuries with the same force of law as the commandments there were provisions making it clear that this was a Sabbath violation. On several other occasions, Jesus healed on the Sabbath, which was also a violation. He apparently did so purposefully. Jesus rejected the narrow legalistic interpretation of the Law. To the charge against his disciples, he said, "The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath." (Mark 2:27) While the Sunday observance is a painful reminder of the separation between Jews and Christians, I have a hard time imagining that God cares much about whether the Sabbath is observed on Saturday, Sunday or any other particular day of the week. But I think God does care about whether or not we observe Sabbath.

In his book, The Gifts of the Jews, Thomas Cahill writes of the fourth commandment: "The Sabbath is surely one of the simplest and sanest recommendations any god has ever made; and those who live without such septimanal punctuation are emptier and less resourceful."[1]

You probably know that here in the Alaska Missionary Conference there is an annual retreat for the clergy and other professional church workers every January or February. The Oregon Idaho Annual Conference has a similar retreat except that it is in October. A couple of years ago, the theme was “Sabbath” and the question was how were we who are clergy doing in observing Sabbath ourselves? Since for clergy Sundays are “work days,” when do we observe Sabbath? There is the old joke, which sometimes is not really a joke, offered by some who are not clergy, “Well, since you only work one day a week, observing Sabbath on one of the other days of the week shouldn’t be so difficult.” The truth is, of course, that clergy are as prone to overwork as any other persons. One of the speakers at the retreat observed that some church members actually like it when the pastor works seven days a week because it justifies their working seven days a week. If that is the case, when we clergy don’t take breaks, it not only harms our lives but we set a bad example for those we are supposed to lead.

One of the pastors at the retreat spoke of how he had fallen into the trap of thinking that he had to work seven days a week. Then, he said, he bought a new car. I think he said that it was the first “new” car he had ever purchased. He read the owner’s manual and he read the instructions about how you are supposed to change the oil every three thousand miles. If this regimen is strictly followed, said the manual, the car will run better and last longer. He began to think about this in terms of his own failure to observe Sabbath in his personal life. He held up the Bible and said that this “owner’s manual” said that we should take strict care to observe Sabbath, not because it was a rule, but because when we observe it we will “run better and “last longer.”

The first commandment calls us to declare our loyalty to God. The second commandment warns against remaking God in our own image. The third commandment warns us to take care about how we use God’s name. The fourth commandment calls us to “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.” This could have been relegated to a lesser position, perhaps in the “top 25 or 50” commandments, but here it is in the “top ten.” Deep down, I think we know why: we need the Sabbath to keep our relationships to God alive and healthy, and we need the Sabbath so that we will “run better” and “last longer.” The question is this: can we recognize that need and decide to accept God’s gracious provision of Sabbath?


[1] Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way everyone Thinks and Feels (Nan A. Talese / Anchor Books: New York, 1998) p. 144.