“The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.” Mark 2:27

In our Gospel text for this Sunday we have two sabbath stories, and isn’t this an example of God’s perfect timing, that we have this Gospel on the first Sunday in June, as we are moving into the summer schedule at St. John’s and in our own lives? It may be reassuring for us to hear that even Jesus’ disciples and faithful Jewish leaders in the first century needed some clarity on what it looks like to obey God’s commandment to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

Very few of us find it possible to set aside a whole day every week to “do nothing” but perhaps the Sabbath is not about doing nothing. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel offered that, “If you work with your hands, sabbath with your mind. If you work with your mind, sabbath with your hands.” This is a good rule of thumb, but what if we need something more specific? What work is permissible and what work is not? And could we imagine how actually setting aside a day each week might radically transform our lives and the world?

What we do or don’t do regarding the Sabbath is the point of conflict in the two stories we hear in Mark this week. In the first story, Jesus’ disciples pick grain on the Sabbath. The Pharisees question this, but Jesus suggests that if David’s men could eat consecrated bread from the temple when they were hungry, then his disciples could bend the rules about harvesting on the Sabbath to satisfy their needs. For Jesus to affirm that some laws could and should be altered to meet basic human need, and also to connect himself to David in this way, was a challenge to the Jewish leaders. Altering law to meet human need can often be a point of conflict in society.

In the second story Jesus enters the synagogue on the Sabbath, and the leaders watch to see if he will heal a man with a withered hand. Will Jesus again disregard the rules about work on the Sabbath? Jesus does exactly that, reasoning that he is saving the man’s life, and work that saves a life is permitted on the Sabbath. Jesus does not abolish the commandment about the Sabbath, but he does challenge all rules about how it is to be kept. What work might we need to do to save life, whether that be in our community, our parish, our family, or even our own life? What work can safely be set aside for a day each week?

The Sabbath is God’s gift of rest to us. It shouldn’t produce anxiety about whether we are doing it right, rather it should be a time for joy and renewal. What would it look like in your life to take a day each week to let go of the need to be available, to be plugged in, to be “on call” for anything but the gift of rest that God has for us?

We serve the Lord of the Sabbath, a God who invites us to a grace-filled rhythm of life, so that we can be our best selves as we live into God’s dream for all creation.