The holiness of the sabbath

A Reflection for Saturday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

Find today’s readings here.

The holiness of the Sabbath is a fundamental feature of Israel’s religion. The belief that every seventh day belongs to God, and that “resting with God on the seventh day” is one of the highest forms of worship, is one of the great innovations of Israel’s religious imagination. Israel has a God who rests, and all creation must rest with God as a fundamental act of worship. 

This rest had a historical consequence as well. In the Exodus, God delivered Israel from slavery. Every time Israel observed Sabbath rest, the nation reminded itself that because of God’s mercy, it was no longer enslaved. Sabbath rest is a way to thank God for that act of mercy and to keep alive an appreciation for the freedom that God won for Israel at the Red Sea. 

In Jesus’ day, Sabbath rest was also an act of resistance. The Romans, who had conquered Israel several decades before Jesus’ birth, expected their subject peoples to work hard and pay taxes. They also expected their subject peoples to conform over time to Roman customs and practices. This slow assimilation was so effective that in places like France and Spain almost all trace of pre-Roman culture was wiped out. As one generation succeeded another, people “Romanized,” adopting Latin names, worshipping Roman gods, counting time and seasons according to Roman practices, and eventually forgetting that they were anything but subjects of a vast empire. 

This cultural corrosion was underway in Israel during Jesus’ day, and many Jews feared that their own nation would be swallowed up. One group that resisted Roman assimilation was the Pharisees, whose name comes from Aramaic and Hebrew words meaning “separated” or “set apart.” Their name entailed a political claim; the Pharisees struggled to maintain their distinctive culture in the face of foreign opposition. Among many distinctive traditions, three stood out as “separating” Israel from other nations. Purity laws (including kosher laws), Sabbath regulations, and the importance of the Jerusalem temple served as a basis for cultural resistance against Roman assimilation.

These three sets of traditions are also the setting for some of the greatest controversies between Jesus’ followers and their fellow Jews. Many feared that if Romans saw Jews working even at trivial tasks on the Sabbath that they would start to demand greater toil from their Jewish tenants and servants. Moreover, any labor whatsoever on the Sabbath compromised the great act of worship that “resting with God” represented. Thus, it was a consequential act for the disciples (or anyone for that matter) to shell grain on the Sabbath. It alienated Israel from God and assimilated it into the practices of foreign nations. 

Although Jesus was a product of this environment, he was resistant to its logic. Evidence suggests that he was a profoundly observant Jew. Pharisees often ate with him, which they would not have done if his own practice did not live up to their expectations. However, Jesus did not treat purity and kosher laws, Sabbath regulations or the Jerusalem temple with the same anxious reverence as did the Pharisees. 

The Gospels tell us that Jesus saw these traditions as pathways of divine wisdom, ways for God to educate humanity in righteousness and for humans to come to understand the mind of God. They were transient institutions that existed to help people develop the “mindset of the Kingdom,” a way of understanding that all things were under God’s sovereignty and therefore all things could be symbols of divine grace and freedom. The Son of Man was “Lord of the Sabbath.” He and his followers could take or leave the traditions of the Sabbath without leaving behind the freedom it celebrated or the worship it entailed. 

Jesus cautions us repeatedly against the behavior of the Pharisees. It is important to note that these are not just warnings about others but warnings about ourselves. Humans everywhere and in every time have a tendency to worship elements of religion instead of the God these elements are supposed to serve. We can turn those human-made things into causes for division or into things that actually alienate us from God. In my own lifetime as a Jesuit, I have been a culture and social justice warrior, a liturgy “nazi” and someone who “overidentifies with the apostolate.” In each case, I found myself substituting a human-made element of the faith for an actual relationship with God. If today’s readings challenge us in any way, perhaps it is to rummage through our hearts and remind ourselves that the “Son of Man is Lord” of the things we might hold dear but which also might hold us back from a true relationship with God.

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