Keeping the Sabbath Holy
AM Psalm 72 • PM Psalm 119:73-96
Jer. 3:6-18 • Rom. 1:28-2:11 • John 5:1-18
When I was growing up in small-town West Virginia, one of my assigned household duties was lawn care. From the time I was in my early double digits, I was charged with mowing, trimming, and edging the yard, which I faithfully did all summer long—and which I could do any day of the week except Sunday. My dear late mother, who was born in 1915 and lived for 94 years, worshipped as a devout Methodist her entire life and disapproved of doing chores on Sunday, especially ones that would be visible to the neighbors. To her, Sunday was the Sabbath, and on that day one is supposed to rest.
In today’s reading from the Gospel of John, Jesus is caught by the Jewish leaders performing a miracle on the Sabbath. He healed an invalid, who had been lying by the pool of Bethsaida for 38 years, and urged him to pick up his mat and walk to the pool. Jesus, of course, knew the law and the prophets thoroughly, and the exhortation from Exodus 20:8-11 not to work on the Sabbath would have been thoroughly ingrained in him. So when the Jewish leaders queried the newly healed man about why he was breaking the Sabbath by carrying his own mat, he related the story of his healing to the authorities, inadvertently squealing on Jesus. Jesus’ response to the leaders who, in turn, accused him of violating the Sabbath law, got him in double trouble: Since his father worked on the Sabbath, Jesus averred, so could he. The Jewish leaders flipped out: Not only was this Galilean peasant thumbing his nose at the Sabbath, but he was also claiming equal status with God.
I imagine the days are past when well-intentioned people like my mother would lie low and not do any productive work on Sundays. We live in a world where many people work considerably more than the traditional forty hours a week and frequently see Sunday as just another day in the labor calendar. This fact leads me to wonder: What does it mean to keep the Sabbath holy in our times? If one attends church on Sunday morning, can that person then go right back to work after services are over? Is keeping the Sabbath holy now just a matter of having a bit of contemplative, quiet time on a Sunday? Following Jesus’ line of thinking in John 5:1-18, what would it mean for us to consider the Sabbath as the day when we especially do, and reflect upon, God’s work for us?
Written by David Jolliffe
At St. Paul’s, David sings in the choir, helps to coordinate the Tippy McMichael Lecture Series, and, with his wife Gwynne Gertz, distributes meals to a “safe camp” for homeless folks in South Fayetteville.