Sermon. Jesus and the Sabbath, Revisited

Sermon. 21 August 2016, St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford.

Trinity 13 (Year C)

Isaiah 58.9b-end; Luke 13.10-17

I've been away for some time, and am very glad indeed to be back. I thought I might begin here by reverting to type (as they say), and asking a question. 

Here it is: Was Jesus right to heal someone on the Sabbath...?

It would be surprising if we were to think that Jesus was wrong to heal on the Sabbath. This is true for at least two reasons.

First, as Christians, we are not used to thinking of Jesus being wrong about anything. But this is more interesting than it looks. It's not so simple. It is true that Christian teaching is that in Christian faith, Jesus is highly exalted. He is divine, is uniquely the Son of Gd, is Gd the Son. But, even though Jesus can be and is called 'Gd', he is still always as human as we are. Human like us in all things save sin alone. But then it follows that Jesus, like every other human being, had limited knowledge of the world about him. Some of his ideas may have been wrong. Some of his ideas will have been wrong, in the sense of mistaken, just like some of ours are. I am not being unfaithful in saying this. Jesus did not sin. Any imperfect knowledge on Jesus' part does not refer to his moral compass, and did not lead to sin. But we can still say (still have to say) that some of his ways of thinking about the world will have been wrong.

A second reason we are unlikely to think that Jesus was wrong to heal on the Sabbath is that there is something of an ingrained way of thinking about Jesus in the gospels. You know: that pattern which sets the Jewish religious authorities as one monolith, one thing, on one side of a spiritual struggle, as the baddies, and Jesus on the other side, as the single goody. And you may remember that one of my themes is to question that. Indeed, let me be blunt: to undermine that.

So about Jesus healing on the Sabbath we are used to hearing something like this: the Judaism of Jesus' day was boring, cold, authoritarian, and concerned with rules and more rules and more and more rules, relating to all aspects of everyday life, including the Sabbath. This because they thought Gd was distant, or angry, or both. Jesus (so this pattern of thinking goes) came to free us from all that, and restore a sense that what counts is a warm and loving relationship with Gd. So the idea that Jesus in his love shocked the cold, legalistic Jewish religious establishment by doing the loving thing, and healing on the Sabbath fits this pattern well. Brothers and sisters, I say: it is not like this.

***

It has to be worth asking: was it ever against Jewish Law to heal someone on the Sabbath? It is not clear that it ever was. The commandment in the Torah, in the Books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible, states that you are forbidden from working on the Sabbath. But it is not at all spelled out what counts as work. 

The later Jewish book, the Mishnah, does spell out in great detail what counts as work. Simply put, it is anything that counts as 'creating' anything. Or more specifically it's any act that was involved in the building of the tabernacle or temple. This of course rules out quite a lot. You cannot really carry things about any distance, for example. But! But it is vital to note that this later document, the Mishnah, is much later than Jesus and than the completed gospels; it was finalised about the year 200 CE.

What this means is that in Jesus's own day it wasn't at all clear what the 'Jewish Law' in all its details was. We really must find a way to give up the idea that there was one monolithic Jewish establishment which Jesus and his followers stood over against. There were different factions; there was different ideas; there were, some would say, different Judaisms. So the only answer to the question: 'was it against Jewish Law to heal someone on the Sabbath in Jesus's day?' is: 'it would depend who you asked'. So, you see, the synagogue leader who thought it was not lawful to heal on the Sabbath was not giving an effective ruling, or quoting from a law book that everyone agreed on. He was speaking for himself.

For what it's worth, when later Judaism - the Judaism of the rabbis as we know or think of them - did spell things out, then there is no ban at all on healing on the Sabbath, if 'healing' means prayer, or declaration of healing, or even laying on of hands.

In any event, it is important to be clear what the rules about the Sabbath – whether there be few or many – are all about. We know that Jesus says that the Sabbath was made for humankind not humankind for the Sabbath. But/and/but that idea is also expressed by the rabbis [e.g. b.Yoma 85b]. It is not a challenge to the Jewish way of thinking; it is very much at home in Judaism. We do not refrain from working because work is a bad thing. Not at all. Rather we stop working in order to enjoy and relish rest and recreation.

Jewish friends put it to me like this: it's like having Christmas Day once a week!

That's not in terms of presents (which you don't really get – sorry about that). But in most other ways. You eat, eat a lot, and good, rich food. You gather as a family; family members have to commit to gathering as one. You also invite guests; that is both an honour and something of an expectation. And, most importantly of all, you spend time together. 

You chat. You may chat about the Scripture readings of the day, or the rabbi's sermon (if you went to synagogue – not all that important in the great scheme of things). You may chat about issues of the day, or your more personal concerns. The point is that the conversation flows, and is 'discursive'. This means it has twists and turns. So you stand every chance of hearing new ideas, and thinking about old ideas in new ways. But even if you don't, through spending what we now – and rightly – call 'quality time' with one another, you deepen your friendships, with friends, and also within the family.

Once you have a sense of this, you might then be able to see too how there do have to be some rules. It is perfectly true that we all might have our own personal views about what counts as rest, and what counts as work. But if you want your family to share the same rest and recreation, you'll have to agree on some ground-rules. And it's the same (or more so) if you are to agree as a community. Think about it. To go back to the analogy: we could not keep Christmas Day as a society unless we agreed on the date, and agreed that at least most things will be closed.

To say it again: the rules are all there so that the Sabbath can be what the prophecy of Isaiah in today's reading calls a 'delight'. The Jewish liturgy in turn says that the Sabbath is 'orah ve-simchah', a light and a delight, and 'Shabbat menuchah', a Sabbath of rest'. And Jewish worship and mysticism goes further. The mystics say that the Sabbath is the Bride of the Jewish people. You turn to greet Her as Queen as she 'comes in' on a Friday evening. It is so much the jewel of Judaism that it has been said 'the Sabbath has kept the Jews more than the Jews have kept the Sabbath'. Another idea is that a Jewish person receives a second soul each Shabbat. All of these ideas are different ways of insisting that Gd is close, and comes close to us, not only when we 'work', but also when we 'rest'. Being at rest, being most naturally and uncomplicatedly ourselves, means we can enjoy a special closeness with Gd. 

So I say that if you ever get the chance to experience a Jewish Sabbath, to feel its specialness, sacredness and recreational, re-creational power, my advice is: grasp it! (Just leave your mobile phone at home.)

Today's gospel says that after the healing, Jesus's opponents were 'put to shame'. It isn't clear why they were so ashamed. There are different ideas about this. But, in any event, it might be said that, today, where we are, Christians might be put to shame by the way our Jewish friends keep the Sabbath. Delightfully but also seriously. Seriously, but also delightfully.

So, yes, I commend to you the light and the joy of the Jewish Shabbat. In saying this, I don't think I am suggesting that we as a church join the Lord's Day Observance Society or anything like that. I fear that Christian Sabbath-keeping as that has often been understood can tend to mean just the rules about the things you are forbidden from doing. That school of thought that imagines the commandment says: 'Six days shalt thou labour and on the seventh day... thou shalt have no fun either'. No. Anything but that. But, heaven knows, in our '24-7' commercialised, consumerist world, we surely do need to protect a sense of Sabbath rest as our birthright. We are worth our Sabbath rest. For we – all human beings – we are more than producers, and we are more than consumers. We are all children of Gd. Like the woman in the gospel today, we are called to think of ourselves too as sons and daughters of Abraham, made for rest, recreation, fullness of fun, and healing. Amen.