A Symbol of Our Salvation

1 Samuel 16:1-13; 2 Corinthians 4:5-12; Mark 2:23-3:6

Today is a very busy day for a lot of important people. All over the area, graduates and their families are having graduation exercises and open houses. And, in our own church, earlier this morning, we gathered here to honor our own graduates.

And, believe me, it is no easy thing to prepare for activities such as an open house or a breakfast for graduates. Chairs and tables have to be borrowed from some willing donor. And then they have to be set up, either in the graduate's house, or back yard. Then, the house has to be readied, the food prepared, the place decorated. It's not an easy job! But, then, when the guests arrive, they have to be greeted, served cake, ice cream, punch, peanuts, and other such things.

And even when the party's over the job isn't over, because the mess has got to be cleaned up, the tables and chairs have to be returned to the place you borrowed them from, and everything has to be put away.

Now, in Jesus' day, the very thought of having a party on the Lord's Day was unheard of. No one would have even suggested such a thing. It was considered unlawful. No respectful religious person would have done any work on the Sabbath. And this included doing such things as travelling more than a mile, cooking, lighting a fire, buying, or selling anything. In fact, by Jesus' day the rules about the Sabbath were held so strictly that if someone even picked an apple off a tree for a Sabbath snack they were considered to be sinners. Or, if someone helped their neighbor pull their donkey out of a hole on the Sabbath, they were considered to have errored. Or, if a physician even set a broken arm or a leg on the Sabbath, he was considered to be a law breaker. Many of the people of Jesus' day believed that there was hardly anything that couldn't wait for the day after the Sabbath.

But, Jesus had problems with this sort of thinking. He believed that the Lord's Day had been created, not for the purpose of keeping a bunch of laws and rules and regulations, not for the purpose of showing who was a sinner and who was a saint. Rather, Jesus believed that the purpose of the Sabbath was to provide a time for the people of God to get closer to one another and closer to God. Jesus believed that the purpose of the Sabbath was a time for a person to get the opportunity to meet his or her neighbor. As far as Jesus was concerned, the Sabbath was created to create community and to give people the awareness of the community around them.

And, certainly, that's what we do when we have Church and Sunday School. We gather together on the Lord's Day to get closer to God, to get closer to our neighbors, to enhance community life, to foster a heightened sense of neighborliness and community identity.

And, although there are some Christians gathered in churches not too far away from here who would disagree with me, I believe that events such as graduation exercises and receptions fulfill much of the same kind of thing within our community. Indeed, they are something that even Jesus would, no doubt, suggest that the Sabbath was made for. For as he struggled with the self righteous attitudes of his own day he said, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."

In other words, Jesus believed that one day out of seven should be used by a community to pay attention to God, to its members, and to its fellowship. It should be a day when persons can relax with each other, enjoy each other's company, and rest, together, in fellowship with God and with each other.

But, on the other hand, there are times when I wish our community was a little more mindful of the need for a Sabbath, and other such days. Last Monday, Memorial Day, I was in the parade. It was wonderful to see the children, and the bands, and the firetrucks, and all of the people, young and old, lining the streets. But, there weren't as many as there should have been. A day which had been set aside by our government for communities to gather together to remember their fallen soldiers was being used, instead, by many people as simply a chance to stay in bed a little longer, have a picnic, and sit in front of the television. And when I got to the cemetery I was surprised to see that from a city with over 3,000 people, only about 30 or 40 people, in addition to the participants in the parade, showed up to witness the services there. And I had to wonder where everybody was. I had to wonder what could have been more important somewhere else.

After the parade, I found out. We'd run out of milk at home, so I drove out to M-21 and found the parking lot at K-Mart and Kessels almost jammed with cars. I found it difficult to drive by the entrance of K-Mart because of all the people walking back and forth between the parking lot and the store entrance. I had the answer to my question. What was more important than showing up for the parade, and for the services at the cemetery? K-Mart. Shopping. Buying.

And I began to feel guilty going into Kessels to buy my milk because I realized that my being there meant that I was part of the problem. And I began to feel sorry for the people who were working there, who had to work that day, on a national holiday, because there were so many people in the area who really don't care what day it was. And as I drove back into town I noticed that there was one store that wasn't open. Brady's.