You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out thence with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. So Moses spoke to the people Israel as they prepared to enter the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey. They are to remember their origin as the Lord’s liberated people and weekly bring it to mind that they were once enslaved as aliens in a hostile land. They are to remember the Lord who liberated them with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. This is the true meaning of keeping the Sabbath just as in our Christian worship we remember the night in which Jesus was betrayed. In this weekly remembrance our Exodus from the wicked Egypt of this world we are renewed in the deliverance to the fresh clean air of faith in the liberating God who rescues us from the depraved and depraving powers of sin and death and devil. This is our Holy Spirit Sabbath keeping.
In our text today we have an important insight into how to read the letter of the Bible spiritually, that is, in accordance with the Holy Spirit’s intention in the text. That does not mean we disregard what the letters say, but using our critical intelligence we discern the intention of the author who is not finally the human writer but the Holy Spirit who employs the human writer for God’s saving purpose. In our Lutheran tradition, this is the very reason why theology matters: we read the Bible theologically when we discern from it the word of God for us today. This is not a blind search. We are given the key that unlocks the Bible by the same Holy Spirit. We know this key as the saving purpose of God in Jesus Christ. So we gain this insight into reading Scripture theologically from the very way Jesus disputed legalistic literalism to read the Sabbath commandment spiritually.
In the time of Jesus the point of Sabbath keeping was reduced into a rigorous abstention from any kind of labor, as if one honored the liberating Lord by sheer immobility. Some Pharisees had the idea that the Messiah would not come until all Israel kept the Sabbath perfectly for a number of successive weeks. God would come to liberate again only if perfect obedience triggered the day of the Lord. So we hear the controversy stories today from the beginning of Mark’s gospel. Jesus is confronted by such Pharisees. We might get the impression from the Gospels that the Pharisees were really bad guys. They were not. They were upright and clean living, the kind of folks you’d like as neighbors. But rather than honoring in spirit and in truth the meaning of the Sabbath as the remembrance of the Lord who looked with favor upon despised and suffering slaves and came to their rescue, they made a rigorously detailed refrain from labor on the seventh day into an observable measure of holiness. This preoccupation with a religious work or performance, as if to force God’s hand, obscured the real thrust of Sabbath keeping, as Moses had explained: you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, or your manservant, or your maidservant, or your ox, or your ass, or any of your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your manservant and your maidservant may rest as well as you. See, the point of Sabbath keeping is not a woodenly literal imitation of a behavior conditioned by its ancient circumstances but rather that the liberating work of God should continue to ripple through the chain of social relationships all the way down to the lowliest people, even also livestock. So Jesus concludes with the spiritual interpretation of Moses’s commandment: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” And he adds, “So the Son of man is lord even of the Sabbath."
Some Pharisees could’ve gone along with Jesus up until the last point. There were Pharisees who understood the law spiritually in this way. They knew that under the creator’s blessing we work to live; we do not live to work. We are to remember and imitate, therefore, not the literal behavior of past legal text like Moses speaking to subsistence farmers in a primitive economy, but we are to remember and imitate the mind, the mentality, the purpose and intention of the lawgiver like Moses. What is lawful is what comports in all changing circumstances with the double love commandment, that above all we love the Lord our maker and liberating Redeemer. And in and under that chief love we are to love and set free in turn all of his suffering creatures in our reach. Note well: what angers Jesus on account of the love of the liberating God of Israel for the poor in power is the hardhearted lovelessness and spiritual blindness of some who could not affirm true honoring of the Sabbath by doing the truly good work of protecting and healing life. And we should take to heart Jesus’s anger. It provides the true sense of the inescapable biblical theme of the wrath of God. As theologian Paul Tillich famously taught: “The God of love must be against what is against love.”
As I said, some Pharisees could have gone along with Jesus up until his final statement asserting his own authority to render the true sense of the law of Moses, namely, as the very law of the living God our Creator and Redeemer whose purposes life and its blessing. “So the Son of man is lord even of the Sabbath." In their ears this word of Jesus about his authority to render the true sense of Scripture as word of God was blasphemy. He acted not as one rabbi among others engaging in debate about the law but as Lord of the law who clarifies its true intention. Who, then, is this fellow who sets himself up over the law as its Lord? Foreshadowing Jesus’s ultimate, fate Mark reports in the end of the episode how the Pharisees went out, and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him. See the point: in living this life of healing and forgiveness for our sakes, Jesus from the beginning of Mark’s gospel narrative is on the path to his cross. In the end he will die for us because in this way he has lived for us, cutting through the fog of religious works by which human beings would manipulate God and clarifying the truly good works of obedience to God’s liberating intentions and not in his words only but in his life deed and holy passion.
But let us then humbly reflect: don’t these Pharisees have a point? By what right do we Christians elevate Jesus to the divine role we ascribe to him when we invoke his authority, fulfilling but also superseding the many words of Moses and the prophets to become the one word of God which we are to hear and obey in life and in death? Is it not idolatry, even blasphemy to pray to Jesus and to expect him to become present as he has promised and the breaking of our bread at the Eucharist? This is far more than mere human remembrance but a divine re-presentation of a human being into our midst, not as an equal or brother but as the liberating Lord not only of Scripture or Sabbath but of our very selves. How dare we? Not to mention, as we celebrated last Sunday, making a dogma with --to the Pharisees’ mind-- the unheard of proposition of the Trinity of God, the second member of which was born of the Virgin Mary and crucified under Pontius Pilate? Dear Christian, how dare you?
The apostle Paul dares to, indeed, he insists upon this daring proposition and indeed immediately spells out the ethical conditions of its truthful proclamation. For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. There is no hesitancy at all here about the asserting the divine and liberating authority of Jesus Christ as Lord. For it is the God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. Yet as the proclaimer of it, Paul knows that his only authority is as a servant of the proclamation. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. He represents himself as the earthen vessel; some commentators believe this is a reference to the old-fashioned chamber pot. Treasure in a chamber pot! What an image! Be that as it may, Paul not only distinguishes but insists upon the distinction as integral to the truth of the proclamation. This means that you can test Paul to see whether his human behavior and speech truly corresponds to the treasure which is Jesus Christ as saving Lord.
Does Paul pass this test of judging his speech and behavior in accordance with the crucified but risen and vindicated life of Jesus which he proclaims? That is a question which every baptized Christian is to ask of their preachers, if indeed their only authority is to preach not themselves but Jesus Christ as Lord. In the remarkably poignant passage which follows, Paul spells out his discipleship, his own biographical credentials as an authentic proclaimer of the crucified Lord. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. Here Paul thinks of the floggings he has received, the imprisonments he has endured, the shipwrecks he has suffered, the betrayals by fellow preachers, the defections of some of the congregations he has founded. He has not talked the talk only of Jesus Christ as Lord, he has walked this talk. It is a profound point however for all Christians in their discipleship. To say that Jesus Christ is my liberating Lord is true and necessary yet it entails not a mere lip service but true life service doing truly good works of liberating love. So Paul can truly conclude his authentication to the Corinthians: So death is at work in us, but life in you. True pastors understand Paul sense here very well.
The word of God is true and valid as spoken to be sure, even if it is ethically betrayed by its preacher, as Jesus remain true despite his betrayal by Judas. But we understand what obedience and what betrayal is today by our Scriptures which give us the tools to read the Scripture spiritually as God the Holy Spirit intends by the key which is Jesus Christ crucified and risen for us and our salvation. This treasure is given to every baptized Christian in order to be used in life, if only we bear in mind that we remain the earthen vessels, not the treasure it bears.