Isaiah 58.9-14; Hebrews 12.18-29; Luke 13.10-17

Of all the Ten Commandments, there are only two which do not begin with a prohibition – honour your father and mother, and the one we’re thinking about today – keep the sabbath holy. It’s a positive commandment. Doing this is something that is meant to bring a positive benefit.

We see from our Gospel reading that Jesus and the leader of the synagogue differed as to what keeping the sabbath, and there are other clashes between Jewish leaders and Jesus over what was permissible on the sabbath day. In Matthew 12, Jesus’s disciples are hungry and pick grain to eat, causing the Pharisees to complain that they were breaking the Sabbath rules.

The same story in Mark is retold with Jesus declaring that the sabbath was made for humankind not humankind for the sabbath – in other words, the sabbath was not meant to make life difficult for people but to be a blessing for them.

Later that day the discussion as to what is lawful on the sabbath continues in the synagogue and leads to Jesus’s healing a man with a withered hand. This story is told in all the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, and leads to conspiracy plots about how Jesus might be destroyed.

Challenging the interpretation of the sabbath challenges the grip of the religious leaders, and causes them to feel that their power is being threatened by Jesus.

There are other stories of Jesus healing on the sabbath – John 5 tells the tale of the man who had been sick for 38 years who waited each day by the pool at the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem in the hope that he could reach the waters first one day and be healed – tradition had it that at certain seasons an angel stirred up the water and the first person to enter it would receive healing. There’s today’s Gospel reading and Luke tells also of a man healed of dropsy on the sabbath.

We know from biblical accounts that Jesus went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, and often was found teaching there. He would share the sabbath meal with people, including Pharisees, but it was also a chance or him to point out some of the absurdities of the sabbath regulations – you would pull your animals out of hole, if they fell in, you allow them to have food and water, you will release them from their ties so that they might reach water, but you won’t allow a woman bound by infirmity for 18 years to be freed.

Jesus was a Jew, and there is no sense that he is saying sweep away the sabbath altogether. We’ve already mentioned his own synagogue attendance. But he saw the sabbath as something that should be a blessing not a curse.

Let’s look back to the roots of this day, set apart by the Jewish people. It was certainly one of the things that set them apart from the peoples among whom they lived, and the idea of a holy day is something that has become part of Muslim and Christian religions too.

Exodus 20, where we find the first record of the 10 Commandments, tells us that the sabbath should be kept holy because God worked for six days when creating the world and the rested on the seventh. The sabbath day is to be a day of rest, and a day dedicated to God.

Even before we reach the 10 Commandments in the book of Exodus, we see this working in practice. Manna and quails are given six days a week for feeding the people of Israel in the wilderness, but on the sixth day they were allowed to collect twice as much so that they would be able to rest on the seventh day and not go out collecting food.

In the list of the commandments in Deuteronomy, the commandment is connected with the Israelite’s liberation from Egypt; it’s a day of commemoration, a day to remember what God had done for his people. And a day on which slaves and servants could also rest from their labours. The root of the word sabbath comes from the Hebrew word to cease, to stop.

As we read through the Old Testament, we see that whether the sabbath was being kept strictly or not seemed to reflect Israel’s spiritual temperature at any point. When the Israelites were spiritually healthy, they kept sabbath; when they wandered from God, the sabbath was something that went too.

Jeremiah mentions failing to keep sabbath as one reason why they ended up in exile. Amos has stern words for those desperate for the sabbath to be over so that they can start buying and selling again.

By the time of Jesus, the sabbath regulations of what was and was not allowed had become complex, and keeping sabbath could be a considerable burden.

That is what Jesus was against – making a day that should have been a day of rest and blessing into a heavy burden. As a day of blessing from God, it was perfectly acceptable to heal on the sabbath.

St Paul spends much of his letters explaining that being a Christian means freedom from having to keep the law, but the early Jewish Christians continued to keep sabbath – of course on a Saturday. Christians also took to meeting on a Sunday and over time, it was Sunday that became known as the sabbath for followers of Jesus.

Often people today think of the sabbath as something negative – a day when they are not allowed to do things, and certainly throughout history that has been the case. The Puritans were particularly strict about what could and couldn’t happen on the day of rest.

But, because people have distorted the sabbath principle in the past, there is no reason to ditch it completely. If it was introduced as a day of blessing, then it probably still has value for us today as well.

At best the sabbath day is two things – it’s a day of rest – a day to recover and restore one’s energies, a day of re-creation, reminding us of God’s original creation; and it’s a day for God – a day on which to remember all that God has done for us. It’s a day on which to change your focus, away from the daily routine of life and work and to fix your eyes on God. It’s a time to receive from God.

Of course, the prophets were very keen to point out to the Iraelites that keeping festivals and sabbaths was of little point, if the rest of their lives were not holy and in tune with God’s laws.

I’ve recently read a book written by the principal of Belfast Bible College, David Shepherd. As a child, he had experienced a traditional sabbath day of rest, but over the years he had lost this from his life. So he took six months to try and rediscover sabbath. The book is a diary of his sabbath days over the six months, and his reflections on his experience.

He didn’t always find it easy to keep a sabbath day; it wasn’t always easy to work out what he would allow himself to do and what he shouldn’t do, but overall, his search to regain some kind of sabbath day was a positive experience. It gave him space to receive from God, to share hospitality with other people, to rest and receive.

We all need time to stop and rest. We all need time set aside for God. A sabbath day is one way of ensuring that this happens. It’s perhaps not surprising that the phrase work-life balance has been so much in evidence as our lives have become busier. People are beginning to realise that we need time away from work, time to recover.

But it’s not always simple to work out what is work and what’s not – or how, if we are to keep sabbath, whether other should be affected. Some people find it acceptable to buy a newspaper on a Sunday and read it because that’s part of their rest – others don’t because that means someone else is working to sell it to them.

What about Monday’s papers? They have to be written and printed on a Sunday. I’ve never heard of anyone refusing to read them because of this, though they might not buy a paper on a Sunday.

My biggest concern about how Sunday trading has gone is that when it was introduced, we were told that people would have the choice about whether they worked or not. For many, that is no longer the case. Most large retail organisations will only give someone a job, if they accept that it means working on Sundays.

Going out for Sunday lunch might free you from having to cook and wash-up, but it won’t free up the people who run the restaurant. How do you decide?

What will be acceptable for some will not work for others. I can’t stand here and tell you never to work on a Sunday – after all, it’s a working day for me. And some jobs on a Sunday are important – nurses, doctors, care workers – if a sabbath day means someone would come to harm, if others stopped working because it was Sunday, surely that can’t be right?

But I hope I can stand here and ask you to reflect on what sabbath means for you and to look at your life and see whether you have both time for rest and refreshment and time set aside for God.

In our culture, time for rest, hospitality and for God is sadly missing. We could all benefit from taking time out from our frenetic lives to rest, to receive from God, to be re-created and to give thanks and remember all that God has done for us.