What’s The Big Deal About Sabbath?

Our Sermon for Sunday, August 24, 2025   

So what’s the big deal about the Sabbath?  Please understand, I am not doubting it or questioning it’s authenticity or its strength.  But last week’s sermon was about how the very presence of Jesus does not bring peace but divisions to family, to the world…that felt bigger, more overwhelming.

            Not that something very significant is not happening here.  Nor is this the first time there has been a conflict over “Sabbath”.  Jesus is in the synagogue on a Sabbath morning.  This time, it is a woman who has been bent over because of her ailment for eighteen years.  Could be arthritis of the spine maybe?  Something with the sciatica?  When Jesus says that Satan has bound this woman for eighteen years, is he talking about some kind of actually demonic debilitation?  Or that the pain is so bad, Satan couldn’t do any worse? 

            In the light of Jesus’ healing, does it really matter?  The conflict is rather simple.  The leaders of the synagogue try to roust the congregation to condemn Jesus for when He did what He did.  The leaders have nothing against Jesus healing, in principle.  Just not on the Sabbath.  There are six other days in the week.  Why not one of them?  Have a disciple get the woman’s contact information, go find her on Sunday.  “Call my office, we’ll set something up.”

            Why are the leaders so gung ho about Jesus’ timing?  Consider the case law built up around the commandment we shared this morning.  ⁸ “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. ⁹ Six days you shall labor and do all your work. ¹⁰ But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. ¹¹ For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.

            “Case Law” means legal principles that evolve on a literal legal case by case basis.  Let me give you a modern example.  Elevators in conservative Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem are programmed, on the Sabbath, to move continually, opening and closing on every floor.  The reason?  Pushing a button causes a spark of electricity.  This is considered making fire.  This is a forbidden activity on Sabbath.  Kind of weird right?  At least from our point of view.

            Let me give you a Biblical example.  During the Exodus, God fed the people in the wilderness with manna.  Showed up every morning, melted away with the dew.  They gathered what they needed for the day.  They could gather more, but store it overnight and it got maggoty.  Maybe the earliest example of refrigeration issues.  Well, this happened Sunday to Thursday.  On Friday, they were ordered to gather double portions, enough for the Sabbath.  Because there Sabbath is the day of rest and God takes care of His people.  Kind of weird right?  At least from our point of view.

            This is the backdrop of our gospel conflict.  The leaders of the synagogue have the convoluted case law and Jesus is like, “I am freeing this woman of pain.”  Jesus has already had a direct confrontation with leaders in the synagogue about healing.  This time, the leaders go for rumor, innuendo, on the sly.  Get the congregation on their side.  Don’t speak to Jesus directly, just take it to everyone else. 

            Jesus’ response?  Drag it into the open.  Don’t leave rumors hidden in whispered crowds, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it to water? ¹⁶ And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?”   The leaders are treating this woman, debilitated by pain, as less important than their own domestic animals when it comes to Sabbath. 

            The story ends well, the people cheer for Jesus.  Or, to make it properly bible-ee, “When Jesus said this, all his opponents were put to shame, and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things being done by him.”

            It’s a great moment, don’t get me wrong.  Jesus is absolutely right.  Healing is his thing.  Miracles his stock and trade.  But Sabbath?  I went to Christian schools growing up.  I was the kid who put off doing his homework till Sunday because, you know, Sabbath, day of rest, can’t do it now.  Bible says so. 

Honestly, it is not hard to understand why Sabbath has lost the importance that the gospel attaches to it.  Saturday is the Sabbath of the Bible of Jesus, while we use Sunday.  There is no place in the Bible where there is an addendum to the Ten Commandments that says something like “And thou shalt shift the Sabbath to the First Day of the Week because this is the day that Jesus rose from the dead.”  But that’s exactly what we did.  Officially, we call it “the Lord’s Day” over and against and, frankly, alongside “Sabbath”. 

            I personally consider the proper theological stance to be one of expanding Sabbath to the whole weekend.  Yes, I am being tongue in cheek here, but the division of Saturday and Sunday runs deep.  There are Christians for whom our Sunday is Saturday, because there is no explicit shift in Scripture from one day to the other.

            But instead of running down that rabbit hole, I would observe instead that the seriousness with which Sabbath was taken in the time of Jesus has been reduced to almost nothing in our present day and age.  There are some blue laws-no shopping on Sunday (but no requirement to go to church instead)-still in effect in Bergen County, but North Jersey was always kind of weird.

            Thus the question of why Sabbath is a big deal, if it isn’t salvation level stuff, is it?  What’s the big deal?  It is a big deal because Jesus faces off a number of times with the leadership over the issue of the interpretation of Sabbath.  I understand that, but I am not seeing, well, its relevance to our lives today.  I struggled with this question.  And I can tell you, when the Holy Spirit finally opens things up, it can be really annoying.   

            In this case, it was a mental note to look at the passage again, but this time from the point of view of ‘What in this passage connects most closely to our experience on the Lord’s Day? (on Sunday)’  Especially in light of this being our healing service.  So verse 13, “¹³ When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.”  That has never happened to me in a healing service, I have never been graced with God’s power to bring a miracle nor has anyone ever starting dancing in praise from a burden lifted.  If that happens this morning, someone got smelling salts?  Because if I am laying on hands, I am quite certain I will faint on the spot. 

The piece that connects most directly is “and she began praising God”.  There is not simply a link to our healing service but a connection from Jesus’ Sabbath to our Lord’s Day, praising the Lord in song and voice and prayer.    

            Could Jesus have healed her on any of the other six days that are not Sabbath?  Of course He could have.  And for how many others, isn’t that exactly what he has done?  But on this Sabbath, this is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice with a woman healed, a woman who can now stand straight in her community, let us all raise our hands and praise the Lord.    

            Because God set this day aside for humanity.  That’s what Jesus says.  Sabbath is made for the needs of humanity, we were not made for the “needs” of Sabbath.  And we have set this Sabbath aside for the liturgy of healing.  We take all that we believe in the power, wisdom, might, love, and grace of God, offered to us in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the centerpiece of all that He has done for us, affirmed in our hearts by the indwelling Holy Spirit that moves alongside our own hearts and sprits; we take all that overwhelming, omnipotent power of the Almighty, and we concentrate it for a special time to this spot front and center of the church.

            Today, and for each healing service, we invite people to take that extra step, you have prayed, you’ve texted your prayer buddies (and we have some available if you need them, see me after church), you have opened a concern to the whole community with prayers added to our prayer list in the News of Heaven and Earth, and yet there in more, in the here and now, in the moment, you and God and one humble pastor who talks too much and still does not completely believe that God wants me as an intermediary…for Jesus…

            That’s the big deal about the Sabbath.  God knows how busy we are, and God started at creation by writing His name in our calendars and saying “This time is for us.”  All that busyness, for life, for our families, for our work in Jesus, for our work in the world, God has taken one day out of seven and said, “This is for us.”  Then comes the hard part, our response.  Us taking the gift of God and living into it.  This in a world of sin and brokenness that actively tries to undercut every moment.

            On this day, we are required to pause (but how many of us do?)  We have time to praise.  We have time carved out for us by God’s command that is, like everything Jesus had gone, is FOR US.  This is the time where, each first Sunday, we share the Lord’s Supper, because this sacrament is given us by Jesus and is central to who we are.  Each fourth Sunday, we share a liturgy of healing, because we are a broken and sinful people who the Lord continues to put back together in the love of Christ.  But that is SO important, that we focus Sabbath-time, God-given time, to make it happen. 

            So, in this season of summer, we look forward to a new program year, there is more coming.  How shall we make intentional intergenerational ministry, for all ages in our church family?  In a world where Christians seem to spend more time talking about what we DO NOT, how do we build the certainty in explaining what actually makes us servants of the Living God?  There is a plan that God has for us to uncover.  And we have the gift of Sabbath, the day to take a breath, to praise the Lord, to worship Jesus, to lay aside busyness for blessedness.  Lay aside the whole arc of salvation and all that entails for me, for us-the church, for our presbytery, for our communities, for our goals, plans, ministries, next steps, what shall we do, when shall we do it…and for a day simply to exist in the grace, in the love, in the wonder, of being children of the Living God?

            That’s why the Sabbath is a big deal.

Amen.

Peace,

pastor pete