Do you know what people need who have been enslaved for years and forced to work non-stop out in fields and in stone quarries?
As Moses scrambled over the rocks on his journey up Mount Sinai, God looked down below Moses to the base of the mountain where the mass of people rescued from Egypt were gathered. A close look at them revealed them to be a broken and run down people who had obviously been forced to work under years and years of slavery. God looked down on God’s own people and decided that they needed something very special.
God still looks down upon his people, and, in fact, is looking down upon you today, and sees that you too need something very special.
God looks at you and says: “You need a gift. It is a special gift. It is a gift that will heal your pains, allow time for protective scars to form, and restore you to life. I give you, O weary and tired people of God, a day of rest.” God gives God’s people the gift of rest on the Sabbath so that we might truly live once again.
For God, rest is not a luxury item. Rest is not something only the rich get to enjoy when they finally amass enough wealth and employees to deserve it. Though the rich would love to add one more day of production to their employee’s work day in order to squeeze out just a little more product in order to gain a little more revenue, God sees the world differently.
The world was not created so that a few might rest comfortably under the work of the many. The world was created as a gift to all who came into existence.
Your life is a gift. You are a gift. And, you deserve to rest.
When God inscribed the prescription of rest to a tired world on those stone tablets given to Moses, God included people that might have been surprising to the rich of the world. God demanded that these must also be allowed to rest: “the resident alien in your towns,” as well as “your male and female slaves” that they “may rest as well as you.” Even the animals get the gift of rest!
I wonder, in today’s world, where those who are struggling at the bottom of society are encouraged by those at the top to take on a third job in order to make ends meet, if God looks down at them as God did the Israelite people under slavery, and says, “You deserve some rest.”
I wonder, in today’s world, where you are allowed only two months tops to grieve the loss of someone who tended your wounds and hugged your soul to healing, if God looks down and says, “You deserve some rest.”
I wonder, in today’s world, where children are taken from their mother’s arms at the nation's border, are kept locked up as if they did something wrong, cry their nights away, lonely, and are forced to face judges by themselves, if God looks down at them through a rain of tears and say, “You deserve some rest.”
And, I sure do hope that God looks down kindly upon mothers and fathers who have not been able to get a full night’s sleep for over four years due to little children waking up in the middle of the night. I sure do hope that the promise of Jesus where he says: “I will give you rest,” is a promise that actually does come true, some day, very soon preferably. Maybe?
The Sabbath is a gift of God directly for all who need their lives restored.
One day there were 13 men traveling through a field. They were hungry, so 12 of them gleaned some grains from the edges of the field (as they were allowed to do), and they ate.
They needed nourishment. They needed energy for the days ahead. They needed their lives restored in the most basic of ways.
Just as an $8 pizza tastes like a slice of heaven after a long week of backpacking living on trail mix and packets of oatmeal, so too the grains must have tasted heavenly in the mouths of those who were traveling. There was only one problem, it was the Sabbath.
The Pharisees of that town, pointing to the disciples making their way in the field, asked Jesus, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”
So, here’s the thing. Since the Sabbath is a gift of rest for everyone from our heavenly Father; what do we to those who refuse to observe it?
For those Pharisees, this is not just a question about those lowly people who pluck grains of wheat. It starts with them though. If we let them decide to work of the Sabbath, then will employers be allowed, in the same way, to demand that we work on our day of rest? Are those in power allowed to make us slave away on the Sabbath so that they may eat their luxurious meals? It is a slippery slope you see.
What do we do to those who refuse to observe the Sabbath rest?
Later that day, Jesus entered the Synagogue and saw a guy with a withered hand. The Pharisees were watching closely to see if Jesus would do a little bit of work. Of course, Jesus being the type of man that Jesus was, healed the man.
Now, you must understand that Jesus could have healed the man, who presumably had the withered hand for years, on any of the other six days of the week. In this instance, Jesus blatantly works on the Sabbath. Jesus blatantly, in the eyes of all who would judge his actions, heals the man on the Sabbath day of rest.
What do we do to those who refuse to observe the Sabbath rest?
The Hebrew Bible says that we should put them to death, but as one who has missed a few Sabbaths in my lifetime, I am not sure that we need to go that far. After-all, refusing to rest seems to offer its own type of death. It is the slow death of fatigue and stress that never finds relief. Those who refuse to observe the Sabbath rest punish themselves, no external death sentence is required.
But, here is the thing, Jesus was not refusing to observe the Sabbath rest when he allowed hungry people to eat and healed a deformed man from his pain and struggle.
Do you remember the God who was looking down from heaven upon the people who were tired from their lives of slavery? Do you remember the God who gave a gift of rest to a tired people? Do you remember the God who showed mercy? Well, that God did not go anywhere.
That God saw the hungry disciples, and gave them grains of wheat to nourish them on a day of hunger. That God saw the man with the withered hand and gave him relief on a day intended for healing and life.
“The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath,” Jesus declares.
The Sabbath is more than a day of rest, it is a day of healing and wholeness. It is a day devoted to restoring all creation to a place of vibrant life.
All those years ago, Jesus started a Sabbath movement that we have somehow let wane, but it need not be forgotten any longer. Jesus started a movement that saw the Sabbath not only as a day of rest, but more as a day of giving life!
I encourage you to be a part of this newly enlivened movement. I encourage you to give life wherever you see that it is needed on the Sabbath.
This is what I mean: if there is someone you know who is sad and suffering, this is the day (the Sabbath day) that you give them a call of love. This is a day of giving life after-all!
If your neighbor is literally hungry, this is the day to literally feed them. This is a day of giving after-all!
We are a Sabbath people who follow the king of the Sabbath. We are a people who not only rest on the Sabbath, but also give life, just as our savior Jesus Christ did for us. Go out and be a person of the Sabbath.
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