My friends, welcome to this Sunday in Ordinary time. The seasons of Lent and Easter are past, as well as the festivals of Pentecost and Trinity Sunday. So, it’s fitting that Jesus and his disciples, too, are just trying to have an ordinary Sabbath.
The Sabbath is important for all three Abrahamic faiths—for Jews, Muslims, and Christians. We all agree that God commands us to observe a day of rest. Jews and Muslims observe sabbath on Saturday, the seventh day of the week: “sabbath” means “seventh.” This is according to the commandment as we read it in the book of Deuteronomy:
“‘Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you… Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” ~Deuteronomy 6:12, 15
In Jesus’ day, according to one scholar,
From sundown on Friday until Saturday’s sunset, Jews encouraged one another to enjoy a day of delight (Nehemiah 8:9–12; Isaiah 58:13–14), worshiping the Lord (Isaiah 66:23; Ezekiel 46:3), laying aside ordinary work (Amos 8:5), and fighting only in self-defense (1 Maccabees 2:29–41).[i]
Yes, you heard that right. Sabbath is supposed to be a day of delight. A day of joy, rejoicing in God and in the goodness of life and love. And this has not changed for Jews. These are still the tenets that keep the day holy, a day set apart…
Image: Healing Mural, Hospital Teodoro Maldonado Carbo, Guayaquil, Ecuador, 1970, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57939 [retrieved May 25, 2024]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mural_en_el_Hospital_Teodoro_Maldonado_Carbo.jpg.