Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today's Gospel lesson recounts the story of Jesus healing a sick man at the Pool of Beth-za'tha in Jerusalem on the Sabbath Day. Read the lesson here. Such an obvious breaking of Sabbath laws caused 'the Jews' (read religiously observant Jews, probably the Pharisees) to criticize Jesus. 'Who does this guy think he is?' they seem to be saying.

This story raises a long and complex question: what was the meaning of the Sabbath Day, and what is the relationship between the Jewish Sabbath and our own observance of The Lord's Day on Sunday?

There isn't space to do this topic justice here, but I will suggest a couple of theological lines of thought that have been influential for me, following the writings of liturgists like Mark Searle and Maxwell Johnson.

First, the Jewish Sabbath was not simply about keeping laws (do this; don't do that) on a particular day. It was about the whole pattern of work-and-rest in God's creative activity, of rest being the crowning result of that work, and of the notion that God's rest (and human participation in that rest) brings glory to God. The 'Jews' in the story forgot about these big stories, perhaps, or became too focused on the rules themselves.

Second, Christians have traditionally understood Jesus to be the subject of the 'Sabbath rest' that the author of the Letter to the Hebrews discusses (Heb. 4:9-11). In other words, Jesus' incarnation/death/resurrection ushers in a new age understood with Sabbath imagery: that of entering God's Sabbath rest, and of sharing the rest and freedom God has given us. Whereas the Sabbath Day had been the image of God's rest that would come, Sunday became (for early Christians) the image of the Sabbath rest that had arrived in Jesus.

Third, Christians have also traditionally understood the numeric significance of these days symbolically. The Sabbath Day was the Seventh Day of the week, the culmination of six days of labor, the image of God's deliverance and rest. But now, Christians began to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus on the First Day of the week, signifying that we now live in a new Christ-ian era. That First Day was also thought of as a natural progression from the initial Seventh Day as an Eighth Day, a day of 'new creation' which surpasses the old cycle of seven days. This is why folks entered the church (and still do today) by being baptized in or next to a font with eight sides: the Church is the entry point into God's new creation, the rest which the Sabbath helped the Jewish nation to imagine, and which the Lord's Day embodies for Christians.

Yours in Christ,
Justin