PROPER 4/B (Pent. 2, 06/02/2024): Deut. 5:12-15; Ps. 81:1-10 (ant. v. 13); 2 Cor. 4:5-12; Mark 2:23—3:1-6

SABBATH

"Observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy ... Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work ..." (vv. 12a, 13, 14).

Pentecost was Easter’s denouement to conclude the festival half of the Church Year. From Christmas to Pentecost the overarching concern centered on Jesus’ examination of his disciples, “But who do you say that I am?” (Mk. 8:29; Mt. 16:15; Lk. 9:20; cp. Jn. 6:67-69).

The Holy Trinity heads-up the "Time of The Church" that Rome designates as “Ordinary Time”. By your confession perhaps you thought “school’s out”; after all, “with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (Rom. 10:10).

Not so fast, Headmaster Jesus in his time of the Church continues your examination by a not so ordinary question, “But who do you say that you are?” Informed by our gracious Lover’s self-revelation, we are compelled to respond, his Baptized and Eucharistic new Israel.

Today’s Gospel would expect to find Jesus leading his disciples in their way. Not so, instead the disciples are making a path for Jesus through a field as they casually feed on its grain. We discern an unconscious prophetic action, the disciples are "preparing and making straight the way of the Lord" (Mk. 1:3) while partaking of that which later would be the stuff of their Eucharistic bread.

Pharisees accused Jesus' disciples of Sabbath criminality; but what crime was charged; "reaping" to slake hunger, or "highway building" by making a way for their Lord? Either way Pharisees of every age do not see beyond the stricture of the letter (that "On [the Sabbath] you shall not do any work ..." Is that how the Church reads Scripture?

Don't tell me, as our Protestant friends, that the Resurrection establishes Sunday as the new Sabbath; how sad. Sabbath fulfillment in the new creation coming into being is the fruit of Jesus' work on the cross where worship and holiness is wedded with the Church's Holy Supper. But we get ahead; in defense of his disciples Jesus draws the accusers to David, on the lam from king Saul.

David in need of food for his followers entered the tabernacle. He approached the High Priest with a lie, being on a mission for Saul. He requested five of the twelve showbread Sanctuary loaves known as the Bread of Presence reserved unto God. When the bread was a week old they served the priesthood, replaced by fresh baking.

At this point our Christian mentality advances to Jesus feeding the 5,000 with five loaves at the hands of his disciples anticipating of the Eucharistic character of the Church's eternal food for Life in the Resurrection.

Luther explains, the Third Commandment, does not mention our obeisance to a particular day; rather Jesus fulfilled all the law's demands on the cross, "It is finished" (Jn. 19:30) sanctifying all time for the Church's consumption of her food, our NT Bread of Presence.

Heaven's joinder with mankind in Christ is no metaphysical calculus. To say Jesus is fulfillment of all the law and all worship is the necessary corollary of, "new wine is for fresh wineskins" (Mk. 2:22c) lest OT skins burst for inability to contain NT wine, the Spirit, the water, and the blood.

It is said that the law has three functions: curb, mirror, and guide, the "law always accuses" us as sinners; but before the Fall the essential character of the God's law was never accusatory; rather whenever proclaimed it reveled God's gracious being, so also the Ten Commandments.

To say that we should keep holy the Sabbath merely states that we were created to be holy in the good creation. That we are prohibited from murder says that God is the God of life so that we are to be like him in promoting life in every circumstance. We paraphrase, "Today I put before you two trees, the knowledge of good and evil; and the tree of Life, choose life."

So, with the Ten Commandments as we are in the new creation wrought by Christ crucified and risen; the law in essence reveals the character of God in whose holiness we participate. The OT renders the Third Commandment to keep the Sabbath holy on two rationales; from Deuteronomy (5:12-15) man's release from slavery to worldly sin, and Exodus (20:8-11) man's imitation and participation in God's rest.

This is not to say that our life in Christ's holiness is one long "siesta" either on earth nor in heaven. Like the men who followed David to displace Saul; Jesus will be marked for death by purveyors the old religious régime (Mk. 3:6).

As followers of Christ, we by the HS discern our true enemy to be the displaced prince of the world, "a murderer and liar from the beginning". In Christ "we contend against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Eph. 6:12) and so until the Last Day.

On our way we are maintained by the holy things of God, and grain of an eternal Sabbath in Christ; God's Bread of Presence offered and delivered for his priesthood who responds to our Head-Master’s query of identity, “Who do we say we are?”. Amen.

pem.