the sabbath - 2nd week tuesday 2018

What is God’s purpose in establishing the Sabbath?  What is it for?  This is an important reflex which Jesus is teaching us every time we encounter a law or a regulation and are asked to interpret. Why was it established?  What is it for?

Probably in the time of Jesus the strictness in which Sabbath laws were interpreted went into the extreme to the point of rigidity thus creating this controversy of what to do and what not to do on a Sabbath.  In our day and age however, more and more the Sabbath as a day of rest has lost its meaning and importance.  Nowadays people continue to work on Sunday and many of this work are not even necessary.

The observance of the Sabbath is something tied to the experience of the Jewish people when they were finally freed from the slavery of Egypt. Slaves cannot take a day off; only free people can. So every time they observe the Sabbath the Jewish people would remember that it was the Lord who liberated them from slavery, they were after all liberated slaves themselves, they knew how it was to be enslaved and so in the observance of the Sabbath they would also ensure that no one in their community not even animals will have to work on a Sabbath. And that was how the Sabbath came to be practiced, and why there was such strictness.  At one time they were slaves, at one time they were not free, then by the grace of God freedom was restored.  The Sabbath was a reminder that they had been freed from slavery, and being freed they too must ensure that no one in their community not even animals have to work on a Sabbath.

There are people around us enslaved in so many ways by labor even to this day, thus they have to work even on the Sabbath – some by necessity, some by choice, some because of poverty for they have to work lest they and their family cannot eat.  It is the duty of the Christian community that those who are enslaved economically may not have to work on the Lord’s day in order to fulfill a necessity.  This is where the strictness of the Sabbath came from and where the rule of compassion is made be prevalent, to do good on the Sabbath so that all can enjoy the benefits of rest, so that none will go hungry despite the rest from work.

The Sabbath was made for man, it is a day in the week where in freedom man can worship God.  It is a day in a week where in freedom man can live his life free of labor and still enjoy the fruits of the earth.