Pentecost
2
“It’s a Heart Thing!”
Text: Mark
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and
from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
It’s
easy to criticize the Pharisees that we heard about in the Holy Gospel this
evening. For they were, don’t you think,
a bit overzealous in their
application of God’s Law? For in their
enthusiasm to keep the Sabbath Day, and make sure every else did also, they had
(over the years) searched the Scriptures and in their consideration and
deliberation on them came up with 39 specific kinds of work you either could or
could not do on the Sabbath. All very exact and precise . . . including a prohibition on picking
heads of grain. For the people
had questions about exactly what you could or could not do, and what was work
and what was not, and the Pharisees wanted to have answers for them. They had good intentions.
But this kind of thinking on the part of the Pharisees
and of the people shows a major flaw in their regard of the Sabbath Day. For the
questions about what exactly you can or cannot do, or what is work and what is
not, is reminiscent of the questions of children who want to know – for example
– exactly how much dinner do I have
to eat to get dessert? Exactly how clean do I have to clean my
room? When you said don’t hit my sister,
you didn’t say I couldn’t poke
her! And parents get exasperated over
those kinds of questions, don’t you? But
not because of the loopholes children come up with – for really, we can
even sometimes admire their ingenuity! .
. . No, we get exasperated because while
the children are questioning the exact
externals and minutiae of the
rules, that’s not why we made the rules in the
first place. Its not really the externals we’re after, it’s the heart. We want to teach them love and respect and
care and honor and humility and gratitude.
And when those things are demonstrated, the room doesn’t have to be all
the way clean, or the dinner all the way eaten, does it?
And
so you know how Jesus felt when He and His disciples were confronted by the
Pharisees that day. For
while the Pharisees were concerned about the exact externals and the minutiae
of the rules, that’s not why God said “Remember the Sabbath by keeping it holy.” It
isn’t really the externals He is after, its our
hearts. For He
wants us to fear, love, and trust in Him above all things. He wants us to look to Him for everything
that we need. He wants us to live by
faith in Him and His Word. He wants us
to want to spend time with Him in His Word, and in His House. It’s a
heart thing.
And
so questions regarding how much do we have to do to keep the Sabbath Day, or
questions about loopholes, reveal the problems that exist in our hearts. “Do I have
to go to church today?” reveals a heart problem. “How
often do I have to go to church?” reveals a heart problem. “Do I
have to go to church on vacation?” reveals a heart problem. And
those are heart problems we all have.
. . . And “keeping the Sabbath
Day” is also not just a matter of going to church and not working. The person who comes to church but pays no
attention is no different than the person who skips church to play golf. The person who comes to church but falls
asleep is no different than the person who is at home and sleeping. The person who comes to church and thinks
himself superior because of it is no different than the person who stays at
home and thinks that all the people who go to church are hypocrites. And
those are heart problems we all have.
It’s a heart thing.
And
so God commanded and established a Sabbath Day to work on our hearts. For what did God say in the Old Testament
reading from Deuteronomy?
"
'Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the
Lord your God commanded you. Six days
you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to
the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your
daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey
or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well
as you.”
Fine, but why? Why does God
want that? Too often we stop there and
forget the rest of it, and so it becomes merely an external thing. But God continues and tells us why He
wants this – and it’s a heart thing:
“You shall remember
that you were a slave in the
It is a
day to remember. Not just to rest, but to remember. To remember that without God, they were
slaves. They were not a people, they
were possessions. They had no land, no
future, no nothing.
And God brought them out. God
rescued them. They didn’t even want to
go! And once they left, they kept wanting to go back!
They had nothing, but God in His love and mercy and compassion chose
them and gave them everything. Remember this, God says. Remember His love, remember His promises. . . . And
to cause them to remember, God at the
same time also established the worship, the Divine Service, of the Tabernacle
and the
And to
illustrate this to the Pharisees, Jesus uses the extraordinary example of David
and Abiathar the High Priest. And what happened
is this: David was on the run from Saul,
who wanted to kill him. And he had
nothing. He was hungry. He was tired.
He was struggling and desperate.
Yet he was God’s anointed one.
The one whom God had chosen to be king after Saul! . . .
So as he flees, he comes to the house of the Lord, and he asks for
something to eat. But the only food
there is the bread of the presence in the Tabernacle, which was only for the
priests to eat. And they were to eat it
only in the holy place. There were specific
rules for its making, and changing, and consumption. And Abiathar gives it to him. . . . So,
Jesus asks the Pharisees, did David sin?
Did Abiathar sin? Would it have
been better to let David and his men die in order to keep the Sabbath
laws? Should God have struck down David
and Abiathar for breaking His law? . .
. No answer is given, for none is
needed. The Sabbath, the Tabernacle, the
sacrifices, the Divine Service, were made for man, not
man for the Sabbath.
And so too for us today with our heart problems.
We do not keep the Sabbath simply by showing up at the right place at
the right time. We do God no favors by
being here. Rather, He is here for us.
God
the Father is here to
take care of His children – to speak to our hearts and work in our hearts, that
we remember Him and His love for us. God the Son is here to take care of His
brothers and sisters – to feed us with His body and blood, to give us His life,
to renew our hearts, that we remember Him and His deeds for us. And God the Holy Spirit is here to gather and take care of His Church – to
unite us in the truth, to give us the forgiveness of our sins, to raise our
hearts, that we remember Him and His promises to us. It’s a heart thing!
And so
we gather here in this place, not because we have to, not to keep the law, but
so that God can keep us. We gather to
remember, that just like the people of
For the
Sabbath, or worship, or the Divine Service, is not about rules, or limits, or
loopholes, or minimum daily requirements . . . it’s about God being here for you.
So come, God says, God commands.
But come not as an obligation, and come not like the Pharisees, who with
their objections did not see in Jesus God here for them. No, come to the House of the Lord like David
came to the House of the Lord. Come in
need, and hungry, and struggling, and desperate, and repentant, and with
nothing to call your own. Come and, like
David, be fed by God and live. Eat the
bread from the altar of God, the bread of the presence, the real presence, the
true body and blood of your Saviour, given and shed for you. For here is God for you. God incarnate for you, God who died on the
cross for you, God who rose from the dead for you, God
who lives for you. God come to you in
His Word and Sacrament. “Do this,”
Jesus said, “in remembrance of
me.”
In remembrance. That’s what the
Sabbath is all about. Hearing and
remembering and believing;
believing and receiving forgiveness and new life; and living that new life. A new life in faith, in
trust, in hope, and in confidence.
A new life with a new heart. Until the day comes when our Lord will call
us out of this world, this Sabbath, to live in His presence forever, in a
Sabbath that will never end!
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit. Amen.
Now
the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in
Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.