"Holy, as the Lord Your God Commanded You": Sabbath in the New Testament

"Holy, as the Lord Your God Commanded You": Sabbath in the New Testament

Sharon H Ringe. Interpretation. Richmond: Jan 2005.Vol.59, Iss. 1; pg. 17, 8 pgs
Copyright Interpretation Jan 2005

For the New Testament writers, the commandment to observe the divine holiness required on the Sabbath is expanded to encompass all of life. How to do that is an issue that Jesus and the Jewish authorities discuss in the Gospels. Rather than a matter of appropriate ritual observance, Sabbath emerges as an economic category at the heart of the gospel message.
Prominent in the homogenized gospel that many Christians carry in our memories are accounts in which Jesus is in conflict with Jewish religious authorities when he heals people on the Sabbath. Having learned (and accepted by faith) that Jesus is the "reliable" character who represents God's will, many conclude that the concern for proper Sabbath observance is a matter of Jewish legalism transcended by Jesus' ministry. Nothing could be farther from the truth. On the one hand, honoring the Sabbath is assumed by the authors of the Gospels and Acts. On the other hand, how to honor the Sabbath is one of the matters of disagreement, both between Jesus and his contemporaries and more directly among members of the early communities of Jesus' followers and the other groups of Jews with whom they were in contact. The rationale developed through the various pericopes about Jesus' Sabbath activity links the honoring of the day to the larger agenda of Jubilee and Sabbath economics that is at the heart of the Gospels.
SABBATH OBSERVANCE ASSUMED
It is important to note at the outset that traditional Jewish concerns related to Sabbath observance are assumed at several points in the Gospels and Acts. Acts 1:12, for example, refers in a matter of fact way to the Mount of Olives being "a Sabbath day's journey away" from Jerusalem, recognizing that there are limits on the distance one can travel on the Sabbath. A similar reference to appropriate Sabbath travel seems to underlie the saying in Matthew's version of Jesus' prediction of the fall of Jerusalem, "Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath" (Matt 24:20)-both being times when travel away from the city would be impeded. Mark 15:42-47, Luke 23:50-56, and John 19:38-42 all link Jesus' burial to concern about the approach of the Sabbath (with John 19:31 specifying the concern that the bodies of Jesus and those crucified with him not be left on the cross during the Sabbath). All four Gospels specify that the women went to the tomb to tend to Jesus' body only after the Sabbath: the day of rest when such activity would have been inappropriate (Matt 28:1; Mark 16:1; Luke 23:56a; 24:1; John 20:1).
The Sabbath is also acknowledged as a proper day on which to gather for prayer (often, but not only, in the synagogue) and to hear Torah read and interpreted. The writer of Acts describes Paul as beginning his ministry in the various cities by going to the synagogues on the Sabbath to teach (Acts 13:13-43; 17:2; 18:4).1 In Philippi, he is said to have sought out a women's gathering for Sabbath prayers "outside the gate by the river" (Acts 16:13) as the site for his initial teaching in that city. The letters unquestionably attributed to Paul do not mention Sabbath observance. In fact, Col 2:16 is the only epistolary reference to the Sabbath, and it simply urges the addressees of the letter to let no one condemn them "in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or Sabbaths." Nothing is specified about their practices in those matters, but the suggestion is that those groups follow patterns different in some way from those of other groups of Jews in their communities.
Jesus himself is said to have gone on the Sabbath to the synagogue in his hometown, where he taught and-at least according to Luke-read from the prophet Isaiah (Mark 6:1-6; Luke 4:16-30; the Sabbath is not specifically mentioned in the parallel in Matt 13:54-56). Likewise, early in his ministry Jesus is said to have taught "with authority" on the Sabbath in the synagogue at Capernaum (Mark 1:21-28; Luke 4:31-37).2
The latter account introduces the issue of Sabbath healing, because it also relates Jesus' first exorcism. It does so with no suggestion that such activity is seen as problematic. When the unclean spirit (Mark) or demon (Luke) recognizes and calls out to Jesus, he rebukes it and orders it to come out of the man. His successful healing of the man is greeted by the people's amazement at the "authority" of his speech. No question is raised about any violation of Sabbath prohibitions of "work," even though the event is set in the synagogue in full view of the leaders of the community, as well as of the rest of the people. One might argue that in fact Jesus' only action is to speak, which is not prohibited on the Sabbath, and his rebuking of the spirit is called a "teaching" (didache), which is an activity appropriate to do in a synagogue on the Sabbath.
Another Sabbath healing story in which Jesus' action provokes no opposition relates the healing of Peter's mother-in-law later on the same day (Mark 1:29-31; Luke 4:38-39),3 an account linked to the previous one by the opening reference to their leaving the synagogue. In Luke 4:39, Jesus again heals with only a verbal rebuke of the fever itself. In Mark 1:30, the healing involves an action by Jesus-lifting or raising her up from the bed where she has been suffering from the fever. It is not clear that assisting someone in that way would be specifically prohibited on the Sabbath, however. Furthermore, that story is set in a private home belonging to one of Jesus' closest followers, without the narrative presence of religious authorities whom readers (and especially re-readers) of the Gospel might expect to raise objections. It thus functions narratively as an instance of the disciples' being let in on a demonstration of Jesus' power to mediate the life and healing that make their "service" or "ministry" possible (the verb in both Mark 1:31 and Luke 4:39 is diakoneo).
SABBATH HEALING CONTROVERSIES IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS4
The first of the Sabbath healing controversies is common to all three Synoptic Gospels (Matt 12:9-14; Mark 3:1-6; Luke 6:6-11). It serves in Mark and Luke to close out a block of stories that demonstrate the building tension between Jesus and the religious authorities on a variety of issues (Mark 2:1-3:6; Luke 5:17-6:11).5 In those versions of the story of the man with the "withered" hand, opposition to Jesus by the authorities is anticipated without being expressed directly. Instead, Jesus takes the initiative with his question that goes to the heart of Sabbath observance. That question clearly implies the affirmation of God's hallowing and blessing of the Sabbath (Gen 2:3) and of the Sabbath commandment in the Decalogue (Exod 20:8-11 and Deut 5:12-15), but without referring directly to any Sabbath regulations. At issue is not whether to keep specific Sabbath rules, but how to make a day holy, which is what those rules were meant to assure. The answer of the pericope is that one keeps the Sabbath by not failing to do good, an omission that is equated with doing evil, something clearly inappropriate on the Sabbath. The concluding verse in Mark (3:6) underlines the contrast between the positive action for good counseled by Jesus' actions and words, and the consequences of his opponents' focus on the specifics instead of the purpose of Sabbath observance. Their death plot is not an activity appropriate to the Sabbath, of all days!6
In Matthew's version of that pericope, the authorities challenge Jesus explicitly about the prohibition of work-in this case, healing-on the Sabbath. Jesus' answer implies that all Jewish authorities would recognize these as legitimate exceptions to that prohibition when it is necessary to save the life of even an animal. Following the rabbinic form of argument from the lesser to the greater, he concludes that the exception would apply even more clearly in the case of a human being (Matt 12:11-12). That text, however, and versions of that debate about exceptions to the prohibition of work on the Sabbath found in Luke 13:10-17 (a story set in a synagogue) and 14:1-6 (at a Sabbath meal in the home of a leader of the Pharisees), present several problems. First, in none of these instances is there a clear need to act in order to save someone from death. Instead Jesus' action could easily have waited until after sunset, when the Sabbath was over. The Gospel writers are thus really arguing that healing or wholeness of life carries the same urgency as the literal preservation of life. Second, the exception cited in Jesus' reply is not altogether clear. According to the Qumran community (CD 11:13-14), that exception would not be permitted. Later rabbinic traditions such as m. Sabb. 18:3 and b. Sabb. 128b, however, would be closer to the view attributed to Jesus.7 The debate presented in these pericopes thus may reflect a conflict between groups of Jesus' followers (both in the communities of Matthew and Luke and in the earlier community from which some of their shared traditions emerged) and groups of other Jews about specific details of Sabbath observance. The views of those others may well have been closer to what is reflected in the later rabbinic sources than to those of Jesus' contemporaries at Qumran.
THE SABBATH AND WORK: "GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR"
The Synoptic healing controversies turn on Jesus' apparent violation of the prohibition of work on the Sabbath, especially if healing of a condition that is not life-threatening (regardless of the means by which that healing is accomplished) is interpreted as doing work. It is important, however, also to understand those controversies against the background of the economic significance of Jesus' work as an itinerant healer and of the early church's preservation of accounts of that work.8 In that role, Jesus and other such healers (of which there were both Jews and Gentiles) would likely have been the only health care providers available to the urban and rural poor alike. Unable to hire professional physicians or to travel to known healing centers, the poor-as well as wealthy people in moments of crisis or when other means failed9-had to hope that such a healer would pass by in time to help them. Jesus' "work" among those people-like other aspects of his ministry of "good news to the poor," appears to have been central to his identity, and specifically to his interpretation of what it means to keep the Sabbath holy.
Another controversy about a supposed violation of the prohibition of work on the Sabbath that has special implications for the poor underlies the story told in Matt 12:1-8; Mark 2:23-28; and Luke 6:1-5. In that account a group of Pharisees hold Jesus responsible for his followers' violation of the prohibition of work on the Sabbath when they pick heads of grain as they traverse grainfields. The issue is not clear cut, for while agricultural labor (such as actually harvesting the grain by cutting it with a sickle) would clearly be prohibited, Deut 23:25 appears to permit precisely the sort of gleaning by hand that the disciples have been doing.10 Instead of citing that provision in response, however, Jesus is said to refer to the precedent of David's action described in 1 Sam 21:1-6, when he and his followers were allowed by the priest to eat the bread of the Presence when they were hungry. The rationale does not fit the challenge, both because the problem in 1 Samuel is not that of Sabbath observance, and because David claims that he and his followers have actually met the purity requirements for eating that holy bread (contrary to what is stated in Matt12:4; Mark 2:26; and Luke 6:4). The pericope concludes by returning to the issue of the Sabbath, with the affirmation of the sovereignty of the Human One (or, traditionally, "the Son of Man") over the Sabbath.
Matthew's amplification ofthat concluding affirmation in 12:5-7 uses a logical tour de force to achieve the christological clarity concerning this enigmatic title that would have been crucial to the debates between his community and their neighbors. Mark's amplified conclusion in 2:27(11)-"the Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath"-points instead to the purpose behind the institution of the Sabbath itself, namely, the well-being of all people. Whether or not the specific wording of that saying can be traced to Jesus (a debate beyond the scope of this discussion), its substance conforms to the economic implications of the Sabbath rule in the Decalogue that work should cease for everyone-slave and free, resident alien and Israelite-as part of their own remembering of their identity as slaves in Egypt whom God set free (Deut 5:14-15).12 Similarly, the provision to protect gleaning rights on the Sabbath in Deut 23:25 would also have affected principally the poor peasants. Jesus' defense of his disciples' action thus becomes another dimension of his proclamation of good news to the poor, which the Synoptic Gospels affirm as the heart of Jesus' ministry.
SABBATH "WORK" IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL
In many ways the accounts in the Fourth Gospel concerning Jesus' Sabbath activities raise the same issues as the Synoptics. The debate between the Johannine community and their Jewish neighbors about what is permitted on the Sabbath is explicit in John 7:22-23. Through the character of Jesus, in the long dialogue that elaborates on the interpretation of the healing account in John 5, the community asks about an underlying principle: why is it permitted to circumcise a male on the Sabbath in order to fulfill the law but forbidden to heal a person's whole body? The very form of the question makes clear the conclusion that such a policy makes no sense to the writer or to those to whom and on whose behalf he writes.
The issue of healing and Sabbath observance is raised also in the story of Jesus' healing of the person blind from birth in John 9. There the Pharisees' charge that Jesus has violated Sabbath law is based on his having kneaded the mud used to effect the healing. The focus is their debate about Jesus' identity and source of authority. Some conclude that Jesus "is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath." On the other hand, others immediately question that conclusion by asking, "How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?" (John 9:16) The issue of Sabbath practice is thus connected to that of Christology, or of Jesus' identity.
The story of the man by the Sheep Gate pool in John 5 develops an escalating series of questions about Sabbath observance. The issue is first raised about the healed man's carrying of his mat. Such an action would clearly violate Sabbath laws against work. On the other hand, such laws would not have been a concern for someone who is paralyzed.13 Appropriately, then, when he is said to claim that he is simply doing what he has been told by the person who healed him, the attention of his challengers shifts to that person, namely Jesus, (once the healed man identifies him), who presumably should know that to carry a burden on the Sabbath is wrong.
With that shift of attention comes also a change in the action that is in focus (John 5:16). The reference of the "such things" that have provoked the persecution of Jesus is implied in the reply attributed to Jesus. That reply refers not to his instructions to the man to pick up and carry his mat, but to Jesus' own "work," which he links to God's work (John p5:17). As the story goes, "the Jews" seek to kill Jesus because he calls God his Father, "thereby making himself equal to God" (John 5:18). While that very "un-Jewish" christological claim is precisely what the Johannine community was confessing about Jesus, the way it is presented draws on principles close to the heart of Jewish culture and tradition. First, "Father" is a designation for God common in Judaism in the centuries preceding the time of Jesus.14 That reference in itself would not account for their opposition to him. Second, on a very popular level, by doing the work his "father" does, Jesus could be seen as claiming not equality but obedience-carrying on the "family business"! Finally and more seriously, the reply attributed to Jesus does make a claim about Jesus' identity. It does so by introducing the connection of Jesus' action specifically to God's work of judgment and giving life that never ceases (despite the Sabbath "rest" proclaimed in Exod 20:11). That connection is spelled out in the long discourse found in John 5:19-47. Just as in the Decalogue, the Sabbath regulation relates both to practical concerns (and especially the impact on the poor) and to the very holiness that is part of the identity of God, so in the Fourth Gospel pericopes about Jesus' Sabbath activity relate to his identity as the Christ and to the ethical values embodied in the community of his followers.
SABBATH ECONOMICS: JESUS AS HERALD OF THE GOD'S REIGN
Particularly in the Synoptic Gospels, then, but also in the Fourth Gospel, Sabbath is linked to good news to the poor and to the wholeness and integrity of life. In that sense texts focused on the Sabbath day can attune us also to Sabbath issues present (perhaps more subtly) in the Sabbath year and especially the "super-Sabbath" or Jubilee traditions that underlie the Gospels' witness to the ministry and teachings of Jesus-an intricate set of issues whose detailed examination is beyond the scope of this essay.15 Suffice it to say that, like texts related to the Sabbath day, laws in the Hebrew Bible concerning the Sabbath year (Exod 21:2-6; 23:10-11; Deut 15:1-18) and the Jubilee year (Leviticus 25) posit God's liberating act on behalf of Israel while enslaved in Egypt as the principal rationale for our need to grant a periodic rest to the land in an agricultural fallow year, and once every seven years to cancel debts and set free any Israelites whom financial need has forced into indentured servitude.16 The Jubilee laws of Leviticus blend the cyclical Sabbath year traditions with royal practices of granting amnesty at the inauguration of a new king, practices learned from Israel's neighbors and exilic overlords. These Jubilee laws assume a once-in-a-lifetime event whose unique provision is built on the principle of sovereign ownership of the land as the reason why no part of it can be sold in perpetuity, but instead must be returned at the Jubilee to those families and tribes to whom God had allocated its use and stewardship at the time of the settlement.
Although legal provisions related to the Sabbath and Jubilee years are not mentioned in the New Testament, the Hebrew words for "release" and "liberty," limited otherwise to the Jubilee legislation,17 are found also in Isa 61:1, where they are part of the proclamation of the herald announcing the inauguration of God's eschatological reign. That text, in turn, is used in the Synoptic Gospels (Matt 11:2-6 par. Luke 7:18-23; Luke 4:16-30) as the programmatic text that characterizes the ministry of Jesus as herald of God's reign. From that basis of clear reference to a Jubilee text, one can then recognize how the themes of Isa 61-good news to the poor, "release" or "forgiveness" (as it is often translated) of monetary debts and "sins" alike, and the healing of blindness and other conditions and diseases-permeate the Gospels to identify Jesus and to speak of the human response that is to characterize the boundary moment that occurs whenever people hear the inaugural trumpet of the reign of God.
CONCLUSION
The Sabbath in the New Testament, both in specific references to observing the Sabbath day and more generally in responses to the Jubilee inauguration of God's reign, continues to affirm the divine nature of the Sabbath and of the covenant into which God invites humankind, just as in the traditions of the Hebrew Bible. Sabbath holiness expresses both who God is and what God requires of God's people. To put it another way, the New Testament debates about how to observe the Sabbath day tap into the broader but always subversive canonical memory that the holiness of God is always linked to God's passion and compassion for euangelion-good news to the poor.
[Footnote] 1 Whether Paul actually did so is another question. His own letters do not mention such a beginning to his ministry. They seem rather to suggest that he encountered people in the course of plying his trade as an artisan and trader. 2 Matthew's soft-pedaling of Jesus' attendance in synagogue gatherings on the Sabbath, like his frequent reference to "their" synagogues (e.g., 4:23; 9:35; 19:17; 12:9; 13:54), may reflect tensions between Matthew's group and other Jews in their city or region. see the discussion of the religious identity ofthat community in Anthony J. Saldarini, Matthew's Christian-Jewish Community (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994). 3 The parallel in Matthew 8:14-15 is found later in the narrative sequence, following the collection of teachings known as the Sermon on the Mount and reports of other healing activity. There is no connection to the Sabbath. In this account Jesus merely "touches" her hand to effect the healing. 4 The Sabbath healing stories in the Fourth Gospel focus the issue differently. They are discussed below. 5 Additional stories about Jesus' activities and teachings break up that block of stories in Matthew's account without eliminating any of them. The effect, however, is to set the opposition clearly in the context of Jesus' own agenda and successful vocation (Matt 8:1-12:14). It should be noted, however, that Matthew's silence about the first exorcism and his disconnection of the story of the healing of Peter's mother-in-law from the Sabbath (Matt 8:14-15) results in a univocal message in that Gospel: Jesus' acts of healing, when done on the Sabbath, always lead to opposition from the Jewish religious authorities. 6 The picture is worsened by the addition of the Herodians as partners in the plot, since they were a group with whom Pharisees concerned with observing the law would not have wanted dealings at any time. Neither Matthew 12:14, which parallels Mark 3:6 in the aim of "destruction", nor Luke 6:11 includes the Herodians as co-conspirators. Luke further leaves the opponents' response more ambiguous than Mark, as they are said merely to have "discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus." The "fury" attributed to them, however, tips the scales in a negative direction there also. 7 J. A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke (X-XXIV), AB 28A (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1985) 1040. 8 See Gerd Theissen, The Miracle Stories of the Early Christian Tradition (trans. by Francis McDonagh; ed. by John Riches; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983) for a foundational study of those traditions. 9 Both of these "exceptions" can be found in the characters of Jairus, whose daughter is at the point of death, and the woman suffering from hemorrhages, who has already spent all she has in the quest for healing, in Mark 5:21-43. 10 Indeed, for subsistence laborers or any people whose survival depended on constant diligence and ingenuity or on obedience to the orders of their employers or masters, to observe the Sabbath command to lay aside all work would not have been possible anyway. 11 This verse is found in most manuscripts, but not in Codex Bezae (D). 12 The explanation given in Exod 20:10-11 goes back to God's own nature and activity in the creation, which is a connection implied also in the stories of Jesus' Sabbath healing found in the Fourth Gospel. 13 The man's disclaimer in response to Jesus' question that he has no one to put him into the pool in time also suggests that he is among the poor who have no servants to see to their needs, and presumably do not have the luxury of ceasing work on the Sabbath. 14 Gottlob Schrenk, "peter, ktl." TDNT 5 (978-982). 15 For a detailed study of the presence and role of the Jubilee in the Gospels, see Ross Kinsler and Gloria Kinsler, The Biblical Jubilee and the Struggle for Life (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), and Sharon H. Ringe, Jesus, Liberation, and the Biblical Jubilee: Images for Ethics and Christology (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1985). 16 Although neighboring texts forbid the oppression of resident aliens in the land, it is important to note that the liberating effect of the Sabbath year laws, like the Jubilee laws of Leviticus 25, is limited to other Israelites. 17 The Greek words used in those texts in the LXX (the noun aphesis and the verb aphiemi), however, are sufficiently common that language alone is not sufficient to assert a Jubilee or even a Sabbath reference. It is the inclusion of quotations or paraphrases of the texts themselves that allows one to affirm that connection.
[Author Affiliation] SHARON H. RINGE Wesley Theological Seminary Washington, D. C.