Matthew 12--Sabbath

One thing that overwhelms me each time I try to write about my daily reading is the amount of content in the chapters in Matthew. There are so many powerful stories that are full of meaning, but where is the time to talk about all of them?

Matthew 12, though, has two stories about Sabbath, so Sabbath I shall write about. In the first story here, Jesus is walking through some wheat fields. The talmidim (disciples) get hungry, so they started picking heads of wheat and eating them. A Pharisee (who I guess was following Jesus as well) accuses Jesus’s talmidim of violating Sabbath. Rebuking the man with Scripture, Jesus tells of a time when David and his warriors also violated Sabbath. Quoting Hosea 6:6, Jesus reprimands the Pharisee, reminding him that God desires compassion (or mercy) over sacrifice. This story then closes with Jesus boldly claiming that “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” (Matt. 12:1-8)

This idea carries over directly into the next story (seemingly on the same Sabbath) when Jesus is in a synagogue and he shows compassion on a man who has a withered hand. Some there, who were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, ask Jesus if healing is permitted on the Sabbath. Jesus cuts directly to the heart of the issue with his response—he points out that if a sheep fell in a pit on the Sabbath that any one of them would help it out, and that when he heals someone, he is doing something more important than that because a man is more valuable than a sheep.

Jesus heals the man’s hand and the Pharisees begin to plot how to get rid of Jesus.

With Jesus attitude toward the Sabbath in these stories, as well as many others, one could get the impression that Sabbath is not important to Jesus. It would be easy to read this and say, “Get ‘em, Jesus! I don’t have to keep the Sabbath!” However, I don’t think that is what Jesus is saying at all.

Mark records these two stories in the same order (Mark 2:23-3:6), but he records an additional point that Jesus made: “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 2:27-28, ESV).

This agrees with a rabbinic tradition that God didn’t just rest on the seventh day of creation, that he created rest. Rest isn’t something that naturally happens. God had to make room for it. And apparently, he made it for us. If he made it for us, then I would say that means we need it. The fact that it had to be made by God means that we, too, must make room for it.

Don’t think I’m advocating we keep Sabbath in exactly the same way Israel did. Obviously, in Jesus time at least, many had a misunderstanding of the purpose of the Sabbath, so it was abused and used to bind people. I think observing Sabbath, which was created for us, is intended to be a freeing action, and I firmly believe that observing Sabbath has a place in the Kingdom.

I’m also not saying that we should bind Sabbath only to Saturdays or to whole-day observance. We need to make room for being still in our lives. If that is one day a week, that’s great. If it’s a hour or two every day, that’s great too. My point is, we have to make time to be still.

At its heart, I feel like Sabbath is an act of faith. It’s an act of faith where we, as observers, are saying, “We didn’t create the world, and it can go on without us for now.” God is ultimately in control, and he made Sabbath for us.

As always, your comments are welcome. I might revise this a bit tonight... we'll see. :)