"The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27)

Let’s start with a game this morning. Simon says, “put up your right hand”. Simon says, “put up your left hand.” Put it down. Most of you are good at that. I just have one question: who is this Simon? What gives him the right to tell you what to do? Who does he think he is? Why Simon? No point in asking is there? It’s just a game. Rules of games generally don’t have reasons behind them - they’re just there to allow you to take part in the game. Other rules are more important for safety reasons: don’t drive through a red light, don’t walk on the railway line but these are details in amore basic rule: don’t do stupidly dangerous things.

So let’s take a simple rule: don’t work on the Sabbath. If you read the Old Testament, though, there are a whole bunch of clarifications or extensions of that rule and there are bound to be. Why? Because over the centuries situations arose that required details about what ‘work’ means. What if my ox falls in a ditch? What happens if my son falls and injures himself? What if a fire breaks out in my house? So over time the Jewish law codes grew and expanded to accommodate new sub-rules to that basic rule: don’t work on the Sabbath. In a sense, then, what Jesus does in these two stories carries on that age-old tradition of asking, “what if?” What if people are hungry as they go through a grainfield. If they pick a few ears is that really work? If someone heals someone else is that really work?”

What Jesus does is to get back to basics and ask what is the rule of the sabbath all about. What’s it for? He reminds us that the sabbath is made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath. It’s not an oppressive dictum from God to oppress humanity but a gift from God to set us free. I’m not sure the Church has always gone out of its way to make that clear. In fact sometimes we’ve done our own job of expanding on the Sabbath rule. Back in the seventeenth century, during the time of the puritans and the more strict presbyterians, elders would prowl the street peering in at peoples’ windows to make sure they were piously reading their Bibles and not chatting or - Heaven forfend - enjoying themselves. “You’ll sit at home and study the scriptures! Those are the rules! And cancel Christmas!”

OK That’s a bit of a parody. But even up until fairly recently, in some places in Scotland, they would chain up the swings in playparks because, apparently, the rules say that kids can’t have fun on a Sunday. More seriously back in 2002 two young girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, were murdered in a place called Soham. It happened on a Sunday and a journalist and strict sabbatarian on the Herald lost his job for writing an article saying that if they had been at home studying the scriptures they would have been safe. The Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath. I’m not sure where the humanity was in that article. Or the chains on the swings.

That’s what happens when we forget to ask, what is the rule for? Why should we do no work on the Sabbath? Jesus said that the Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath. It’s not an oppressive dictum from God to oppress humanity but a blessing from God to set us free. Back in the day when this rule was first set down life would have been an endless round of toil. People worked to live and lived to work. In Jesus’s time if you didn’t get employed to work in someone’s field you didn’t get the daily wage and the daily wage was just enough to keep you and yur family going for a day. It would be easy to think you were just a machine to work and earn.

Is it different now? In some ways. But it’s still easy to get into the mindset that we are cogs in a wheel whose purpose is to work and to earn and to buy nice things; to be defined by our jobs or our income, or the value of our houses or our possessions. The Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath. Notice too, in Deuteronomy, it insists that this rule is for slaves, servants, resident foreigners as much as for free Jews. Why? Because they are human. Which begs the question, what does it mean to be human?

We are more than flesh and blood. We are more than labourers in the field. We are more than cogs in a machine. We have a spiritual dimension to us, a dimension that responds to that whisper on the wind, that voiceless call from another room, that is the song of God sung for his children, calling us to him, calling us to remember who we are. We are children of God, made in the image of God. We are here to be beautiful and to beautify God’s world. We are here to be loving and to reflect God’s love in the world. We are here to be just and fair and true in a world that is often none of those.

There’s an old hymn called “Take Time To Be Holy”. That is the song of the Sabbath: take time to be holy. Take time to rejoice in the love of God; a love in which you are so precious that he gave his Son to bring you home to him. Take time to be truly you. Not the thousands of things that can crowd your life, but you. If Sabbath rules let you do that, then great. If coming to church does that then great for the sabbath is made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath.

Lord may we hear your Sabbath song in our hearts and come close to you and listen as you call us your children and send us forth to be light to the world and salt to the earth

Preached at Baxter Hall Eastriggs and at Annan Old Parish Church

Complete Service