One Sabbath he [Jesus] was going
through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to
pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, “Look, why are they
doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” And he said to them, “Have you never
read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were
with him: how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high
priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but
the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?” And he said
to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of
Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:23-28 ESV).
Some years ago, when Mary and I lived in Tennessee, one of my neighbors let me know that he did not want my dog stepping on his grass when I walked the dog around the block. He went into a long discussion of why my dog using his grass as a convenient spot I did not want to make him angry, so I made sure to pull the dog off the grass and onto the road whenever we walked past his house. I felt no joy in keeping my neighbor satisfied; I just did it out of a sense of obligation.
There are many things we do in life just
to satisfy an obligation or to avoid someone’s anger. We might even think that
practicing spiritual disciplines such as prayer, confession, meditation,
fasting, and Sabbath keeping would somehow reduce God’s wrath toward us. But
that’s not the point of spiritual disciplines. We do them gladly out of thanks
to God.
Jesus faced people who accused him of
violating the Sabbath because he and his disciples picked and ate grain on that
day. Those people looked on the Sabbath law as an obligation, and they tried to
point out that Jesus and his disciples were not keeping the Sabbath
requirements and were thus making God angry. Jesus’ response shows us that
Sabbath was meant not to be an obligation but a gift. The gift of Sabbath is to
renew and transform us by calling us to set aside time from normal routines to
bask in the joy of God’s presence. These are things we get to do, not have to
do.
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