0:0 - Before we open God's Word, let's pray together.
0:3 - Lord God, you know us.
0:4 - You know us better than we know ourselves.
0:8 - You know your truth.
0:9 - You know your objective truth, and our versions of your truth are subjective.
0:15 - We have our own opinions, ideas and understandings.
0:19 - Some of those come from things we've learned, and some of them come from wounds that we hold.
0:24 - God, we ask that we are able to lay this all humbly at your feet as we seek to discern the word that you have for us, the truth that you have for us here this morning.
0:36 - God, we hope that we can apply it to our lives to make a difference here on this earth and in this life.
0:43 - Thank you that eternity begins today.
0:46 - Amen.
0:52 - We are continuing to move through the book of Luke, and we've been in it since Advent, really.
1:0 - And the nice thing about reading Luke as a story in and of itself is you can kind of see the narrative build in real time.
1:8 - Often we're kind of bouncing around scripture from story to story, but when you take a look at one story, you can kind of see the narrative arc build, just like if you were to read a novel.
1:19 - You can see how things develop, and there's been a few key themes that we've been noticing as we've been going along.
1:25 - One of them being the authority of Jesus.
1:28 - That's something that we're seeing questioned, challenged, established in our readings.
1:34 - Another thing we're seeing is this tension with the religious leaders.
1:38 - As it starts as fairly curious, I love the image that Rob gave us of them, arms crossed, sitting back, starting with maybe a posture of leaning in, but slowly moving to this position, and we're seeing that develop through that story.
1:53 - Both of those themes, the authority of Jesus and the tension with religious leaders, is key in our narrative this morning as we enter into Luke 6 verses 1 to 12.
2:6 - So I'll read it now and then we'll dive in.
2:12 - One Sabbath, Jesus was going through the grain fields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands and eating the kernels.
2:22 - Some of the Pharisees asked, why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?
2:28 - And Jesus answered them, have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry?
2:35 - He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat.
2:44 - And he also gave some to his companions.
2:47 - Then Jesus said to them, the son of man is Lord of the Sabbath.
2:54 - On another Sabbath, he went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled.
3:2 - The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath.
3:15 - But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, get up and stand in front of everyone.
3:22 - So he got up and stood there.
3:24 - Then Jesus said to them, I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil?
3:31 - To save life or to destroy it?
3:35 - He looked around at them and then said to the man, stretch out your hand.
3:39 - He did so and the hand was completely restored.
3:44 - But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus.
3:55 - This is the word of the Lord.
4:2 - All right.
4:3 - The theme of our text, we have two stories inside this narrative and the key theme is obviously and very clearly Sabbath.
4:11 - That's what unites these two little stories together, is this idea of Sabbath.
4:15 - Now, what is Sabbath?
4:17 - It's a word we kind of use, but we might use it interchangeably with Sunday.
4:22 - Sunday for us is Sabbath.
4:24 - For the Jews, it was Saturday for us.
4:26 - It's Sunday.
4:27 - That's something that changed from the last day of the week to the first day of the week.
4:32 - And we're gonna be looking at this in relation to our Sabbath, which we have on Sundays.
4:38 - And we can see that this is kind of a tense moment in the experience of Jesus with the religious leaders and kind of what's happening.
4:47 - And that's because this idea of Sabbath is central.
4:52 - Sabbath is central to the Jewish belief system, to Jewish faith.
4:58 - There's this really smart guy named Patrick Miller.
5:1 - He's a scholar, theologian.
5:3 - And he presents the idea that when looking at the 10 commandments, the fourth commandment is the Sabbath commandment to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.
5:12 - He says that it is the bridge, the connecting point between the first three and the last six.
5:18 - Now, Jesus himself said that the summary of the law and the prophets, everything we read and understand from the Old Testament is love God, love others.
5:29 - You can summarize everything taught in the OT with those two statements.
5:34 - And if you look at the 10 commandments, the first three commandments are about loving God.
5:41 - And the last six commandments are about loving others.
5:45 - So being in relationship and communion with God and being in relationship and communion with others.
5:50 - And this fourth commandment, this commandment of resting in relationship with God, of taking time and setting it apart, it speaks to the first three but also to the last six.
6:5 - It's foundational.
6:6 - It's a bridge.
6:6 - And so the religious leaders know this, that Sabbath is absolutely essential to everything that is taught and believed, which is why they're watching Jesus so closely on the Sabbath.
6:19 - And as Reverend Rovaga was teaching us a little while ago about how this is an oral tradition, this is, he talked about when words reach the lips of children, how meaningful that is, because this is how things are passed down the generation.
6:33 - So they're watching because the way that Jesus operates and lives affects the oral tradition of how things are understood and what they mean.
6:42 - So that kind of brings us into the context of this story.
6:46 - Now, what I'd like to do this morning is kind of take a look at our two narratives and maybe pull a few pieces of information we can learn from it, and then say, okay, so what, what did it mean for them and what does it mean for us?
6:58 - So the first story, I'll be honest with you, and this happens a lot to me, frankly.
7:5 - I often end up with more questions than answers.
7:7 - When I'm studying a text.
7:10 - It's the first thing I do when I start working through a text, is I just list out all of my questions.
7:17 - From, you know, deep theological questions to very simple ones that might not matter so much.
7:23 - But I just list them all out, and I start trying to find the tension and the themes.
7:27 - And this first story absolutely left me with way more questions than answers.
7:33 - When I started getting into, you know, Jesus is using the story of David as a proof text to say why he's able to do what he does.
7:41 - I mean, there's a lot going on here.
7:45 - Arguably, what David did was wrong back in those days.
7:49 - And there's some, the text also says, was it the show bread that he was taking, or was it bread that was swapped out with other bread like his?
7:58 - Anyways, I had to let that go, because it was just so complex, as I was trying to understand how to take anything from the story.
8:10 - And this happens to me all the time.
8:12 - It's just sometimes I'm like, how am I supposed to bring something if I'm struggling to understand it myself?
8:19 - So what I often do is just kind of, it's like, okay, that's for learning for another time.
8:23 - So but there is things to learn from this story.
8:28 - There are things that I was able to latch on to and grab on to and that I found helpful.
8:33 - One of the things that happens in this story, so Jesus is walking with his disciples and they're walking through this field and they're grabbing a bit of grain and they're crushing it and they're eating it, right?
8:44 - And the religious leaders say, well, why are you doing this?
8:47 - So I think we have to ask ourselves, well, what is the question here?
8:50 - Or what is the issue that's being raised?
8:54 - Is it illegal to eat on the Sabbath?
8:57 - Well, no, the Jews were allowed to eat on the Sabbath.
9:2 - The issue was gleaning.
9:7 - Gleaning is kind of like when you're going through the fields, it's almost like the leftover process.
9:12 - Like after a field is harvest, you can go through and you can collect grain, maybe to feed yourself, you can't feed the masses with it, but maybe you can feed yourself or your family.
9:21 - And gleaning, it's work, right?
9:24 - It's something you do, it's part of the harvest process.
9:28 - And so gleaning was determined to be wrong on the Sabbath because it is work and the Sabbath commandment is to not work.
9:38 - And here the disciples are moving from one place to the next and they're hungry and they're simply taking this grain off and they're eating it.
9:47 - So the first thing to notice is we've talked about this in the past as Jesus' intention with the religious leaders.
9:54 - The commandment that's being violated is not Levitical law.
9:59 - It is not something you find in the old, it does not say in the Old Testament somewhere that the disciples in Jesus cannot do this.
10:6 - They cannot glean from the fields.
10:10 - This is more of that oral tradition of fencing of the law.
10:16 - Fencing of the law, which is kind of them saying, well, what exactly does it mean to not work?
10:21 - We need to define this process and understand it so that we can kind of hold each other accountable, that we can live in community and so that we don't end up sliding down that slippery slope into the deep end of, you know, finding ourselves in a tough spot.
10:36 - So this is how they determined no work, no harvesting, no gleaning.
10:42 - So Jesus is walking through the fields and they're taking a bit of food and they say, but notice they don't flat out say this is wrong.
10:49 - They say, why are you doing this?
10:50 - They want to hear Jesus thinking behind it.
10:53 - Jesus gives the example of David, which is very complex and hard for me to get my head around exactly what he's saying with that.
10:59 - But then he says something to summarize it.
11:3 - He says, what verse is this?
11:9 - Chapter 6, there it is, verse 5.
11:15 - Then Jesus said to them, the son of man is Lord of the Sabbath.
11:21 - The son of man is Lord of the Sabbath.
11:23 - Now, what is Jesus saying here?
11:27 - This is another narrative that we're gonna see built through the Book of Luke.
11:31 - This is the second time that Jesus is referring to the son of man, and he refers to the son of man 24 times in the Book of Luke.
11:40 - So this will continue to happen.
11:42 - We should pay attention to this as we continue to move through the Book.
11:46 - Now, what is Jesus saying?
11:49 - What does the son of man mean?
11:52 - Well, when we look in the Old Testament, we can look at a book, say like Ezekiel.
11:56 - Ezekiel is a prophet.
11:59 - He's someone that God speaks to, and then Ezekiel passes on this speaking from God to him through to the people.
12:5 - That's what a prophet does.
12:7 - And as Ezekiel is receiving visions and insight from God, God speaks to him.
12:14 - And God calls Ezekiel over and over again, 93 times in the book, he calls Ezekiel the son of man.
12:25 - Now, what does this mean?
12:28 - Basically, what it means in the context of Ezekiel is that Ezekiel was a man.
12:34 - He was human.
12:36 - He was separate from God.
12:38 - He was not some kind of Messiah or some kind of special person beyond just a human being.
12:47 - And God continually calls him that to highlight the distinction of this holy, righteous, sovereign God and this human messenger that is being sent.
13:0 - Okay.
13:1 - So to say the son of man can be understood as being simply human.
13:7 - But then the son of man is used again in Daniel chapter 7.
13:13 - Now Daniel, we know about Daniel, right?
13:15 - He's this, he dreams dreams, and he receives, he understands dreams, he receives visions from God, and he is able to understand what those things mean.
13:26 - And so the book of Daniel has some apocalyptic literature in it.
13:31 - Apocalyptic literature that basically means end times, like looking forward to what is to come.
13:36 - And in Daniel chapter 7, Daniel has a vision and a dream.
13:41 - And he talks of the one who is like the son of man, who will come to rescue and save the world.
13:52 - It's end times and it's looking towards the Messiah.
13:56 - Okay, so you have 93 references to the son of man as just a human, and then you have this really important reference in Daniel chapter 7 to the one who is like the son of man, who will save all people.
14:9 - So Jesus uses this term with these religious leaders who know these texts inside out and backwards, and he says the son of man has authority.
14:20 - Now, if you're the religious leaders, you can wonder about how to interpret what it is that Jesus is saying.
14:29 - What is he saying?
14:30 - Is he just saying, well, Sabbath laws that are created, the fencing of the law, is open to interpretation, and the son of man, humanity, has the authority to interpret the laws in different ways.
14:47 - So a charitable view from the religious leaders' perspective is to say, Jesus is just claiming that he, like us, is a human being that is open to interpret Sabbath laws.
14:59 - That's the end of the text.
15:2 - Or there could be a hint, like is Jesus talking about the Messiah here?
15:6 - And they're probably wondering this.
15:8 - And you can see how this tension is building in the narrative.
15:10 - But that's where the story ends.
15:12 - Jesus asks the question, we don't get an answer, there's no conflict, and we move on to the second story.
15:19 - You can see how that tension is just built right into the narrative, and it just leaves it flat.
15:24 - And then it says, on another Sabbath.
15:27 - And so we get a second story with more fencing of the law.
15:29 - It's a healing narrative now.
15:32 - Jesus is healing, which also, there was rules about healing on the Sabbath, believe it or not.
15:40 - A lot of times for healings, they would be preparing some kind of medicine, or an oil, or a balm, or something.
15:47 - And so that required kneading and pressing, and maybe boiling of some water.
15:52 - And you couldn't do those things on the Sabbath.
15:54 - So therefore you couldn't heal on the Sabbath.
15:58 - Now, Jesus doesn't do any of those things.
16:0 - He simply has the person stand up and he heals them.
16:3 - Now, interestingly, the chapter before, Jesus heals someone and says, don't tell anyone, but news about him spreads.
16:10 - But in this story, Jesus says, he sees the religious leaders and then he says, stand up front, because I'm gonna heal you in front of everyone.
16:19 - So now he's leaning into the tension just a little bit more.
16:24 - He's making it public.
16:27 - And so now these leaders are furious that Jesus is breaking these secondary Sabbath laws, and they're furious.
16:35 - And it says now, they're not wondering about how they feel about him.
16:40 - The text says, they're basically trying to figure out what they want to do to Jesus.
16:47 - Things have gotten serious between the religious leaders and Jesus.
16:51 - The tension is, it's almost at a boiling point here already in chapter six.
16:58 - All right, so now what is the big picture question that we should be looking at or learning from this story here this morning?
17:6 - We have the authority of Jesus.
17:8 - We have the interpretation of Sabbath laws.
17:12 - And what's going on here?
17:14 - Well, one reading of things, a surface reading, our understanding of what we're seeing is you have the legalism of the religious leaders, who are defining these very specific rules.
17:27 - And then you have Jesus, who's redefining it in the heart of the law and defining in and through himself as the Messiah.
17:34 - And he's changing things.
17:37 - So we could say, legalism is dangerous for those who are religious leaders.
17:45 - And we need to be careful about that.
17:48 - And then we could just transpose that to ourselves and they don't be legalistic.
17:53 - I think that's a good lesson.
17:57 - I think it was a really good lesson for the church 30, 40 years ago.
18:5 - I think it was something that we struggled with as a community in the past.
18:9 - I think we had issues with making hard and fast rules to try to protect against the slippery slope, preventing us from falling to a place that was unhealthy.
18:22 - And we would do that at the cost of relationship with each other, relationship with God, and it was a dangerous thing.
18:30 - I think that's why many of the sermons we've heard on this text in the past, at least the ones that I've heard, have been about legalism and talking about making sure we don't set these hard and fast rules that actually do the opposite of what they're meant to be or meant to do.
18:46 - But I think, as I was studying and praying about this this week, transferring this story to us, I don't know that that's such a struggle for us in the same way anymore as it was 30 or 40 years ago.
19:1 - In fact, sometimes I wonder, have we gone too far in the opposite direction?
19:11 - Do we not have any rules anymore?
19:16 - Do we not hold on to guiding principles that challenge us to have some standards that hold us in place?
19:29 - That's something to wonder about.
19:32 - And I don't know if that's something I want to boldly say right here and right now, that that is the case.
19:38 - I think it's a good thing for us to wrestle with and wonder about.
19:45 - I think if you look at the text, though, at what Jesus says, if we go beyond the matter of legalism and where the religious leaders found themselves and exactly where we find ourselves, Jesus asked this question.
19:58 - I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil?
20:6 - To save life or to destroy it?
20:10 - Jesus' question goes beyond legalism and asks the question about what is the purpose of Sabbath?
20:20 - And so I think the question for us appropriately, as we look at our own Sabbath practices, is what is Sabbath for you?
20:32 - What does Sabbath look like for you in your family and in your community?
20:39 - What are you focused on?
20:43 - Are you focused on resting so that you can work again Monday morning?
20:49 - What does that serve?
20:50 - That serves work.
20:52 - That's resting to serve work.
20:56 - Are you resting from your work so that you can pour into relationships with family and friends?
21:7 - What does that serve?
21:9 - That serves relationship with family and friends.
21:14 - Now, I'm not saying that those things aren't good and important, but the heart of Sabbath is about relationship with the creator of heaven and earth and resting in that relationship and in his presence.
21:31 - If we look back and read from Exodus, let's see, I should have had it cued up.
21:43 - Just want to read the actual commandment from Exodus 20.
21:51 - I almost got it.
21:58 - The fourth commandment, remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
22:2 - Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.
22:10 - On it you shall not do any work, neither you nor your son or daughter nor your male or female servant nor your animals nor your foreign residents in your towns.
22:19 - For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth the sea and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.
22:26 - Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
22:32 - How do we celebrate Sabbath?
22:35 - How do you intentionally rest in relationship with God?
22:40 - How do you look at the first three commandments of loving God and being in relationship with him, but also how are you anchored in your ability to carry out the next six commandments, which are all about community, all about how we function in society?
22:58 - What does that look like for you?
23:1 - Walter Brueggemann writes a book called Sabbath as Resistance.
23:5 - And he makes the argument that Sabbath itself functions as a way to work against all of these other idols and things in our life that take over, that take us away from God.
23:20 - Resting in Sabbath can be resistance to anxiety, resistance to worry.
23:30 - If we're able to sit and rest in relationship with God, giving him our concerns and trusting him, it gives us the opportunity to see that he does care for us, help us, and that the relationship with him is first and foremost, setting aside the things that cause us a lot of fear or worry.
23:51 - Same with work, like working too much.
23:54 - Same with the vices that we have, same with whatever it is that we've placed a very, very high priority on.
24:0 - Sabbath is intentionally resisting those things in relationship with God.
24:8 - All right, that's a bit of a different take than what you get from the story itself, right?
24:13 - That's not speaking about legalism, and it might be calling us, because of who we are and where we are in community and in this world, to being a little bit more intentional about what rest looks like.
24:24 - And so I started thinking, is there a story in scripture where we see Jesus actually illustrate this?
24:30 - I was trying to find an example of how Jesus might, where there is an easier transfer of this kind of message to the teachings of Jesus.
24:41 - I was reminded of a story, it's not actually a Sabbath story or a Sabbath lesson, but it gets at the heart of what is important in being expressed here.
24:50 - So Jack, if you could pull up the next scripture text here.
24:54 - This is a story, Luke chapter 10, and this is a very common story that we all know.
24:59 - Well, we don't all know, but a bunch of us would know this quite well.
25:5 - As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.
25:12 - And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said.
25:20 - But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had been made.
25:25 - She came to him and said, Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself?
25:29 - Tell her to help me.
25:31 - Martha, Martha, the Lord answered.
25:35 - You are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed or indeed only one.
25:43 - Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.
25:50 - I think these words of Jesus help us to understand the purpose and priority of relationship with God and what Sabbath is intended to look like.
26:0 - Now, is it possible to be Mary all the time?
26:7 - I mean, stuff still has to get done, right?
26:12 - But we should be asking ourselves, are we too often functioning like Martha?
26:18 - Are we distanced?
26:20 - You can see what happens there, right?
26:23 - Martha doesn't only have, she comes to Jesus and wants him to do something.
26:31 - She's exhorting him to do something for her, which puts a bit of a challenge in that relationship.
26:37 - But she's also trying to get Jesus to coerce Mary, which puts a challenge in that relationship.
26:45 - So loving God and loving others are both in conflict in this narrative because of the way that Martha is operating.
26:55 - I invite you this week to spend some time prayerfully considering what is your Sabbath habits and do they line up with the heart of what Sabbath is?
27:10 - Looking beyond resting or working, playing or praying.
27:16 - And ask yourself exactly where you find yourself in this.
27:20 - Let's pray together this morning.
27:26 - Lord God, we're thankful for your word and your truth that helps us to uncover and understand things that we don't just figure out on our own.
27:35 - Thank you, God, that you have invited us, commanded us to rest.
27:43 - And not just to stop doing, but to simply be with you.
27:49 - Help us all to discern what that looks like in our own callings and contexts.
27:54 - Help us to honestly look in the mirror this week and spend some time really reflecting on how well we're doing that.
28:3 - Because God, we know that if you have truth and good news for us, it is for our flourishing and the flourishing of this world.
28:11 - You call us to these things because they are good for us, and they are good for you.
28:17 - Help us to let go of our own ideas and understandings and to submit ourself to your word and your truth, in your name.
28:25 - Amen.