Love is our Baseline: Keep Sabbath

​Sabbath: a gift that God has given us which we are well aware of, but a gift we choose to ignore.  Sabbath seems to be a quaint notion--- a lovely idea that we’ve simply got no time for (which is a bit ironic because Sabbath is the gift of time). It is a law, a command from God, that we continue to set aside, somehow convincing ourselves that Sabbath just doesn’t fit in with our way of life today.  In fact, in the book Crazy Talk: A Not-So-Stuffy Dictionary of Theological Terms, Sabbath is defined as “A special day of resting that we think we are bigger than, even though God is not.”

Yep, God took Sabbath---God worked hard for six days, doing the work of Creation, the work of giving, saving and restoring life, but then God rested—rested in the good work of salvation already completed. And then God commanded that we do the same—that we take Sabbath---calling us to stop, every seven days, from the hustle and bustle, the running around of our lives and just stop---and rest in the salvation work already done.  We are to rest in God---for 24 hours---every seventh day.

Today we hear that this command for keeping Sabbath is established for the sake of humanity---because we need it. We need it if we are going to be the people God has called us to be, if we are going to do the work we are called to do as citizens of the Kingdom and co-workers in God’s ongoing salvation work.
Sabbath, after all, is making space and time for God to work in our lives. Space and time for God to empower and equip us to do the creative, life-giving, healing work of salvation. Keeping Sabbath forms and shapes us so that we can choose to save life, rather than take it. Because, Beloved, the truth is that every day we are confronted with choice after choice of whether we will live in ways that save life or that take life; these are choices that affect us, other folks around us, and even folks halfway around the world whom we will never know.

For example, when I go to the store or the farmer’s market, I can choose a fair-trade coffee that is grown and produced in such a manner that I know the actual farmer and workers will get their fair share for their labor or I can choose a coffee (that is often cheaper) where the corporation is going to make a big profit off the backs of the laborers. If it is a struggle for me to afford the more expensive coffee, I might even have to make the choice to drink less coffee so that I can afford to buy the fair-trade coffee.  In a very real sense, my choice can help to prevent poverty or to cause poverty. Enrich or impoverish.

Another example from day to day life: I can choose to bike or walk to a nearby meeting—which also means I have to choose to build in more time for traveling---using less gas and less fossil fuels, also causing less pollution in the air, thereby taking care of this fragile earth our island home---choosing to save the life of the planet instead of taking from it for my convenience's sake.

It’s these simple, everyday choices: deciding how I will use my consumer power, choosing how I will affect the environment, selecting how I will respond to people in my conversations and interactions, determining for whom to vote as we choose legislators who make laws about how we live together on this planet earth---these everyday choices are how we practice and live into resurrection.

Beloved, as Christians, as Jesus followers, we are people called to make these everyday choices by utilizing the same baseline that Jesus uses. A baseline, after all, is simply the minimum standard, the starting point of a decision, and it is made clear in Scripture and in today’s Gospel story that Jesus’ baseline is love—it is saving life rather than taking it. And, unlike the Pharisees in today’s story, Jesus refuses to parse out where and when the baseline comes into play. For Jesus, Love—the giving, saving, and healing of life—is always the starting point, the minimum, the baseline of how one is to choose.

This refusal to parse out when the baseline will serve his comfort or provide him more control means that for Jesus saving life, being love, always wins over any other choice. So yes, this Christian life calls us to protect the life of the unborn child, but then we must also protect and care for the life of the child at the border, and the child beyond the border. It means yes we honor and value the lives of the soldiers who serve, but we must honor and value those same lives after they have served and refuse to accept the outrageous situation we have before us of over 40,000 veterans who are homeless on any given night. This baseline of love means that yes, we support our sisters and brothers in Israel, but we are also called to love and support our Palestinian brothers and sisters with no less fervor.

For Jesus, and for us, there is no parsing out of which life has more worth and more value. All lives are valuable and worthy---all lives are redeemable; Beloved, remember, this Jesus is the One who turned to the sinner on the cross next to him and invited him to a seat at God’s banquet table. All of us are saints with a past and sinners with a future---there is no parsing out of greater worth here.

And Beloved, because Jesus rests in God’s love, making space and time for God to work in and through his human life, because Jesus keeps Sabbath, Jesus can see and hear where God is at work in the world, this work of salvation, and Jesus is ready and equipped to join in that work---even when the rules and the customs of the world around him demand a different response.

​Sabbath is both a gift from God and a gift to God. Sabbath is established for us because we need it; if we are going to live into this life of Jesus we entered at Baptism and reaffirmed in Confirmation, this Way we pray and preach week in and week out--then we need to keep Sabbath. The world around us does not have this love of Jesus as its baseline; our American culture and society does not have this love of Jesus as its baseline; our great Western civilization does not have this love of Jesus as its baseline. But the Kingdom does. Our truest identity does. This Jesus movement does.  Beloved: let us live into our promise. Keep Sabbath and live into the Kingdom. Keep Sabbath and let heart be changed. Keep Sabbath and change the world, not only for ourselves but for all others.  Beloved, let us keep Sabbath.