313 To Keep It Holy

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “To Keep It Holy” originally shared on May 29, 2024. It was the 313^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   What the people of God should and shouldn’t do on the sabbath can’t be more relevant to revitalizing the Church in our time. Today, we’re going to find out why.

   This coming Sunday, churches all over the world will be hearing two stories about Jesus’ teaching about what the religious Law says about sabbath behavior, the day of rest, the day that Christians call Sunday.

   Do you ever think about that? Probably not. Or not much.

   But it is central to the revitalization of the Church, and it begins with the Law.

   The 10 Commandments are the core of the religious Law.

   The first three are about our relationship with God, and the final seven are about our relationship with one another. Our relationship with one another springs from our relationship with God.

   The third commandment is first seen in Genesis 20:8-11,

8 Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 10 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.

   The sabbath day is holy because God consecrated it. That is, God made it holy.

   The Early Christians made Sunday, instead of Saturday, our sabbath to make it clear that they were different from Jews, to demonstrate freedom from the Law, and because it was the day on which Jesus rose from the dead, the first day of the week. But they didn’t change the concept of the sabbath as a holy day.

   Is our Sunday a holy day today? How is it made holy? How do we keep it holy?

   In Jesus’ day, the Pharisees, a group of laymen (only men could be Pharisees) were experts on the religious Law. They defined the sabbath on the basis of rest, not on making it holy. It had been defined by some of them down to how many steps a person could take and not be considered to be working.

   But they were missing the point of the Law. One of the primary purposes of the Law is to show us that no one keeps it well enough to be saved, that we need a savior.

   Jesus said, in Matthew 5:17-20,

17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

   We can’t be saved by keeping the Law. We need a savior, and we have one in Jesus Christ.

   We can’t be perfect, but we can be perfectly forgiven in Jesus Christ.

   We can’t make the sabbath holy, but we can keep it holy through a living relationship with our Savior Jesus Christ.

   We see that on display in the Gospel reading for this coming Sunday, Mark 2:23 – 3:6.

   The first story is about who the sabbath is for, in Mark 2:23-28,

23 One sabbath he was going through the grainfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. 24 The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” 25 And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? 26 He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.” 27 Then he said to them, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; 28 so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”

   Jesus is the arbiter over how to keep the sabbath because Jesus is God. A living relationship with Jesus, our Savior, is what makes the sabbath holy.

   The second story is about what the sabbath is for, in Mark 3:1-6,

3 Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. 2 They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. 3 And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.” 4 Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. 5 He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. 6 The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

   Jesus shows us what the sabbath is for by modeling what God’s intention is for human beings. Living in response to the gift of God in Jesus Christ is what makes the sabbath holy.

   Jesus performs a miracle on the sabbath, the day of rest, and the Pharisees were offended by it. Jesus’ miracles were not suspensions of the laws of nature. They were acts that pointed back to the wholeness of the world that God created, and forward to the new heaven and the new earth that is to come. Jesus points to God, who makes us holy.

   What does the sabbath mean if not that it is holy?

   Martin Luther, the 16^th century Church reformer defined the Third Commandment in this way:

What is the third Commandment?

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

What does this mean for us?

We are to fear (“fear” means “respect”) and love God so that we do not neglect his Word and the preaching of it, but regard it as holy and gladly hear and learn it.

   Not much about rest there. The focus is on the Word and the preaching of it. Why?

   It’s not surprising to Lutherans, or to Protestants in general.

   When one of my best friends, who was also going to become a Lutheran pastor, was dating (and later married) a devout Roman Catholic young woman, they would alternate going to each other’s churches.

   He said that the first thing he noticed that was different was the way people rationalized being late.

   He said that when Roman Catholics were late, they would say, “Well, I was late. But I got there in time for the Eucharist (Holy Communion).

   And when Lutherans were late, they would say, “Well, I was late. But I got there in time for the sermon!

   But both the word and the sacraments are central to keeping the sabbath day holy because both are from God and are the means by which God is made present for us.

   What does that have to do with revitalizing the Church?

   Some posts on Facebook recently have talked about the reasons for the current decline of the Church. Some of them include the influence of sports (especially youth sports), the indifference of the young, falling birthrates, scandals, calcification of churches that preserve an institution, the rise of self-centeredness, and many more.

   But there were also posts that pointed to churches that are not in decline, especially among young people. Sone of them include Roman Catholic churches that offer the Latin Mass, Eastern Orthodox churches that offer a sense of transcendence, otherworldliness, and authenticity with roots in the ancient Church, churches that expect a lengthy period of catechesis (teaching in discipleship) before full membership, churches that offer more than a social service experience using religious language, churches that focus on virtues like patience, truth, beauty, and morality that are revealed in Jesus Christ, churches that model and point to a genuinely transformational experience and have the infrastructure to help that take place, and churches that recognize differences but stay united by focusing on Jesus.

   That is, churches that focus on the Holy, including on keeping the sabbath day holy.

   Some congregations both on the Right and on the Left, grow because some people don’t want to think too much. The world is too complicated. They just want to be told by some authority figure.

   I’m not sure that that’s anything more than growth in numbers. But I’ll not judge them or what God can do through them.

   What counts is not numbers, but people engaged in a living relationship with the one, true, living, Holy God. That is the focus of our worship and about how we spend our sabbath, how we are encountered by the Holy.

   The sabbath is for us. So now what will we do with it?

   Soren Kirkegaard, the Lutheran philosopher and theologian once said that many people attend worship services, but they don’t worship. They treat worship as if they have gone to a play and then they evaluate it as entertainment.

   Worship, instead, is prayer, praise and thanksgiving, all directed toward God.

   Kierkegaard said that the question to ask after a worship service is not, “What did I get out of that?” but “How did I do?” Not to please ourselves, but to worship in response to what God has already done for us.

   Were the disciples happy that they could feed themselves on the sabbath. Sure, but there have been many followers of Jesus who have been hungry.

   Was the man with a withered hand happy that Jesus healed him on the sabbath. Sure, but there have been many followers of Jesus who have not been healed.

   Follows of Jesus are the servants of God and of humanity who seek to feed others and who work for the healing of the world and of others because of Jesus.

   And what do we offer? Not a social club, not a building that needs maintenance, not someone’s personal legacy to be propped-up. We point to Jesus and a better life, an eternal one.

   Jesus is our Savior! He has come to set us free from sin, death, and from all the forces that defy God. And he did it on the cross.

   What do we actually have to offer the world that the world can’t get elsewhere and better?

   Except Jesus?

   Does our worship offer majesty and transcendence? Are we serious about what happens at worship, and throughout the day, and in response to the living God that we encounter there?

   I saw a story this week about a Roman Catholic advocacy group that set up an Artificial Intelligence generated image of a “priest” to answer common questions. “Father Justin” who claimed to be based in Assisi, Italy, still needs from fine-tuning, apparently, as it overstepped on several issues, including one where he advised that it was perfectly OK to baptize a child with Gatorade. He was soon downgraded, pending some improvements.

   Now, baptizing someone with Gatorade in an emergency with no water available is perfectly acceptable.

   It’s the trivialization of Baptism that’s the problem, and our world jumps at every opportunity to trivialize.

   The sabbath is God’s gift to us. It is holy. And everything in it is to be kept holy for our benefit. It is given so that we can rejoice in life with the joy that comes only from God and can therefore never be taken away from us.

   Do you know somebody who is experiencing anything but holiness today, who perhaps thinks that they are unworthy of holiness, who is sick of sin, even if they aren’t using those words? This week, I invite you to talk with them about healing. Invite them to open their hearts, their lives, their true selves to Jesus in the fulness of His holiness.

   For in Him is the power to be made new. To be made worthy. To become, by God’s work and by God’s grace, a fit place for the one true holy God to live.

   In Jesus is the transformational power to be made whole and to be made happy forever.

   The life of the Church and its revitalization comes from God.

   Our common relationship with Jesus is what makes and what keeps the sabbath holy.