Third Sunday After Pentecost
Ezekiel 31:1-14
Psalm 92
2 Corinthians 5:1-10
Mark 4:26-34
We are in the third week after Pentecost. As Rev. Bill said last week, this season until Advent can be called Trinitytide or Ordinary time. The Trinity is eternal and ever with us, so I prefer Ordinary Time. While Ordinary Time may refer to the ordinal numbers we will use to count off 26 weeks to Advent, I hear in “ordinary” as in the day-to-day common to all of us because this liturgical season aligns with where we are on the biblical clock. We, here in the 21st century A.D., are somewhere between Pentecost in 30something A.D. and Jesus’s return in the future. We live in what sometimes feels like the doldrums of Christian life, nearly 2,000 years after the resurrection and wondering when Jesus will come back.
I think I’ve told you that my favorite season is Advent (it probably won’t be the last time). Why Advent? Because it is when – as liturgical Christians – we can unabashedly call out for Jesus to return for us. We can with awe, deep reverence, and delight, contemplate the consummation of all things, life in the next age, and the resurrection made completely manifest in our now aching bodies.
Today’s psalm, a mere three weeks into Ordinary Time, gives us a glimpse into the next age. We’ll look at how the sabbath gives us opportunity year-round to not only contemplate but celebrate life in the next age where fellowship with God is restored as in the Garden.
Psalm 92 is the only psalm designated in the biblical text for a specific day of the week. There are various traditions on the origin of this psalm and why it’s associated with the sabbath. Some attribute it to Moses, as he is the one who received the commandment to keep the sabbath holy. Others go back to the Garden of Eden, surmising Adam and Eve wrote it, either after they survived their first night of unannounced darkness and found the LORD’s faithfulness in the sabbath sunrise or, perhaps, in light of God’s mercy after they ate from the forbidden tree.
No matter who penned it, this psalm was part of the sabbath liturgy in the temple and continues to be used in Jewish homes and synagogues for sabbath worship. It is a psalm of praise for God’s redemptive faithfulness. Even as some put its origins as far back as the Garden of Eden, traditionally it is considered a look forward to the age to come, making sabbath observance in the present time a glimpse of the rest, delight, and divine fellowship of eternity.
The psalmist opens by praising the act of praising the LORD. Our praises, our verbal worship proclaim to those around us that God’s love is sure, that he is faithful. The psalmist is made glad by the work of God’s hands – that is God’s redemptive work, his salvation – from his promise that the Seed of the Woman would defeat the serpent to the Exodus, and for us on this side of history, to the cross and to the long-anticipated new heavens and earth.
God’s works are great! God’s thoughts, his plans of salvation were not anything Adam and Eve could have conceived, nor Abraham, nor David – though he seems to have had glimpses. The Prophets also only get glimpses they could not fully decipher. We have the benefit of hindsight to see more fully God’s redemptive plan in his coming down clothed in mortal flesh to offer himself as the sacrifice that not just covers but washes away our sin.
Still, here in Ordinary Time, we continue to wait for completion. We, also, cannot fully see or grasp how all Israel will be saved, how all the nations will praise God’s name, how the heavenly Jerusalem will meet and unite with earthly Jerusalem, how we – the assembly of Christ – are the bride of the Messiah.
The psalmist says the fool cannot know nor understand. I don’t understand everything I just said? Am I a fool? (LOL)
What the fool cannot understand is that God wishes to save us. The difference between the fool and the wise is whether we believe and trust God’s promise of redemption. That is the only difference. All have sinned and come short. All are invited to the wedding feast. But not all accept the invitation to be washed clean so they can recline at the table and feast with God. The line between heaven and hell is believing God’s word and living a life that trusts that God’s redemptive work is out of love and faithfulness. That’s it. We have no part to play other than responding to God’s offer with “yes,” “I’m sorry,” and “thank you.”
Some ways we say “thank you” is by obeying God’s commandments and by delighting in his presence. This is what sabbath was created for. Jesus said that humanity wasn’t made for the sabbath but that sabbath was made for humanity (Mark 2:27). It was made for us to have time to delight in God and with God as well as one another.
Sabbath comes from a Hebrew root meaning to cease, to rest. Biblically, the seventh day of the week is set aside for rest. God himself modeled for us what ceasing to work looks like when he rested after six days of creating the world. God then commanded Israel to set aside the seventh day and keep it holy. We Christians who are grafted into Israel (Rom 11:17) are also to take a day to rest and feast and delight in the LORD.
Dan Allender, in his book Sabbath, says, “The Sabbath is a feast day that remembers our leisure in Eden and anticipates our play in the new heavens and earth with family, friends, and strangers for the sake of the glory of God.” Allender talks about how sabbath isn’t a weekly vacation during which we “vacate” or empty our lives. Sabbath, rather, is “a day of celebration and delight.” Sabbath is “meant to be an encounter with God’s delight” in us and his creation. This feast of remembrance “is about good food, drink, music, conversation, and the remembrance of sitting with God in the garden” before that fatal conversation with the serpent. Sabbath, Allender continues, is a time to receive and extend reconciliation, to share abundance and joy.
I’m so glad coffee hour is back, even if on a limited scale. Coffee hour here at Grace captures this sense of feasting and delighting in one another and God. The generosity with which you all contribute to coffee hour – turning what is supposed to be coffee and donuts into a full-out brunch – is reminiscent of the agape feasts of the early church. It’s a time of food and fellowship. That is the spirit of sabbath.
One of my favorite things about living in Israel is that it is a society that, by and large, keeps the sabbath. Friday mornings, Jerusalem is all bustle as people do last-minute shopping and clean their homes. As evening draws near, shops close, buses race through their last circuits, and eventually, the streets grow still. It is easier to keep a sabbath when everybody is doing it.
I’m not telling you to move to a Jewish neighborhood and take your sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Paul tells us in two places – Romans 14 and Colossians 2 – that we are free to observe feast and fast days as our Holy Spirit-infused consciences dictate. However, keeping a day of rest and delight is commanded. It’s right up there with honor your parents and don’t covet your neighbor’s stuff. It’s OK to pick another day to feast and delight. The point is to set a day aside, to sanctify time for God’s glory.
Is what we’re doing right now in church sabbath observance? Not necessarily. Let us not confuse Sunday worship with sabbath. They are related, but in my mind they are not the same. Sabbath is the seventh day. Sunday is, by one reckoning, the first day, by another reckoning, the eighth day, the day of new creation. Sabbath looks back to Eden and the Exodus and anticipates the coming redemption. Sunday, for the follower of Jesus, is the feast that celebrates
- that the redemption is already won,
- that Jesus the Messiah, the firstfruit of the resurrection, has risen from the dead,
- that the Kingdom of God is dawning on earth through the hearts and spirits of all who walk as disciples of Jesus now.
Keeping a sabbath is absolutely counter-cultural in our productivity-obsessed society. A lot of us here can remember when most towns in America did grind to a halt on Sundays, as most were home having Sunday lunch with the family after church. Those days are gone, but the commandment has not changed.
How do we do keep a holy sabbath in a 24/7 world? There is a clue in Psalm 92:10. I’m going to read it from a different translation:
You [LORD] raise my horn high like that of a wild ox; I am soaked in freshening oil. (NJPS)
The raising of the horn is a picture of divine favor, of grace (cf. Ps 89:17, 24). The psalmist says God soaks him in “freshening oil.” Being anointed with oil in ancient times was a messy affair. In Psalm 133, we have a description of oil running down Aaron’s beard and collar, presumably after a jar of it was poured over his head. But the writer of Psalm 92 wanted a stronger word than “anoint.” God is soaking him with oil, mingling his being with oil that refreshes him.
Only a few weeks ago, we refreshed ourselves in the truth that God has poured out his Holy Spirit on all flesh, just as promised by the prophet Joel. We are soaked in the Holy Spirit as he indwells us. It is this “freshening oil” of God’s Spirit that enables us to obey him, especially when what he commands goes against a pagan or humanist society. To use Paul’s words, God’s grace is sufficient for us.
We must make the effort to obey. The Holy Spirit living inside of us will enable us to set aside a day to delight in God and in each other.
And as we stop to peer into eternity, where we’ll enjoy God’s sabbath rest forever, we see that those of us made righteous in the Messiah are planted in the house of the Lord and flourish. We will still bear fruit in old age, ever full of life and vitality, and will ever declare that the Lord is upright; he is our rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.
Let us pray.
Almighty God, who after the creation of the world rested from all your works and sanctified a day of rest for all your creatures: grant that we, putting away all earthly anxieties, may be duly prepared to delight in you, that our rest in this age may prepare us for the eternal rest promised to your people in the age to come; through Jesus the Messiah our Lord. Amen.
Image: Detail of shabbat plate. Photo by Ann Van via Flickr (cc). Background blurred.