Groundhog Day versus the Seventh Day

On the Sabbath, He passed through the grainfields. His disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them. But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”

Jesus answered them, “Haven’t you read what David and those who were with him did when he was hungry – how he entered the house of God, and took and ate the sacred bread, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat? He even gave some to those who were with him.” Then He told them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” – Luke 6:1-5

I used to work in a financial services company as “director of centralized MIS” which sounds pretty impressive until you find out that in the finance sector the janitors are listed as associate vice presidents. But I was the lead programmer for my group so I had contact with a great cross section of the company. At the time, I think corporate leaders saw finance as the next big way to get some wins and make more money. Young guys with new MBA’s and last names well known in the corporate worlds of manufacturing and transportation found some ground floor experience with us.

One such fellow was actually a local who bought his suits at Neiman-Marcus, but not on what we paid him. I suppose he had been living wildly up to the point he was placed in our risk management unit, but he came from a good family and the Spirit of God was beginning to get hold of him. He asked me some questions now and then related to Christianity, and he started going to church regularly. He and his administrative assistant came to my cube one day and asked me to help them out. They were trying to list the Ten Commandments but were coming up with only six or seven. I quickly helped them get to nine then hung up myself. I had to mentally go through the list like saying the alphabet before I hit the one I was missing – ‘Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy’.

“I guess I skipped that one,” I offered, “because I really never pay much attention to it. Thanks for reminding me.”

We worked long days back then, usually at least fifty hours a week, often closer to sixty, but I never worked on Sundays. Today, I work more like a minimum of sixty, and I often get hotline calls on Sunday, sometimes even while I’m at church. Of course, Sunday is not the Sabbath, but I used to wonder if I wasn’t missing something about the idea of the Sabbath. Certainly the Lord wants us to take time to focus exclusively on Him, not because He is narcissistic, but that we might learn who we are and what we are doing here. A “day of rest” is an opportunity to reset, to check the map and see where we are, and if we are headed in the right direction.

Jesus was not an advocate of antinomianism. He says, elsewhere, that He came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. What He makes clear in this passage is that there is merely “keeping” the Law, and then there is fulfilling it. Reading through the gospel accounts, it would seem that the Lord was often accused of being a Sabbath-breaker. What did He do to warrant such an indictment? He made people whole.

I suppose no one bothered to question why the Lord had established the Sabbath rules in the first place. They just kept the rules, sometimes grudgingly, as it cut into trade and profits. They forgot or never understood what Jesus told them – the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Nothing could have been more appropriate to keeping the Sabbath holy or more illustrative of the very meaning of the Sabbath than Jesus healing, breaking the chains, and setting the captives free. Those who criticized Jesus only kept the Sabbath they did not “keep it holy”. There is a world of difference between the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, and the sniveling fear of punishment which is only bondage. It can be a sad truth that God will meet our expectations. In the Parable of the Talents, the one-talent man accused his master of being a hard man, so, to him, the master was harsh and demanding. But that is not God’s desire toward us.

He wants to free us from the mundane, fleshly thinking, and the gerbil wheel of day-to-day existence. Sometimes it can seem like we are all living “Groundhog Day”. Keeping the Sabbath, or better yet, setting aside a time every day to meet with the Lord, is a spiritual discipline. It is giving your most precious possession, your time, to Him. To take time with the Father for way too many of us is an act of faith. “Quiet time? Man, I’ve got stuff that needs to be done yesterday. The only ‘quiet time’ I have is sleep – if that.”

Still, I need to take that step of faith to entrust some of my time to God, to remind myself that this mad race back to the starting line is not my real destiny.