Sabbath

The Sabbath, fourth Commandment, a Law of God. Who understands its meaning best, or, is there a single wisdom?

In religious conversation with a few dear friends, it's often a chuckle seeing the reaction to my statement, "Jesus is definitely my favorite Jew."  But it's true, and there's no real contradiction at all.

Growing up in a post-Holocaust, Jewish family, I didn't really learn much about who Jesus was. But later, for a few years, the subjects associated with the historical Jesus became a deep interest for me, an intriguing mystery with few clues, many angles and speculation, but scant sources for any consensus. 

In the four Gospels we get glimpses. Brief, textual shadows of details, inconsistent, contradictory, hardly defining or clarifying the complicated times in Judea and Jeruselum. Who was Jesus? Of course, this is also where faith takes over. For billions of believers, His identity is divinely clear, and unequivocal.

For me, whoever he is, whatever the true status of Jesus in humanity's story, I mostly admire his reasonableness, and his keen rationality in profoundly understanding humankind's imperfect and therefore vulnerable nature. 

The question of the Sabbath is a good example of why I'm forever a Jesus fan. Those who were jealous and fearful of Jesus criticized him, accused him of violating the Sabbath with acts, healings, perhaps miracles. But Jesus replied to the tireless critics as true as his unique understanding of the Torah's prophets.

The Sabbath is a direct gift from God, an aid, and commitment to assist people, not shackle them with irrelevent policy. The restrictions of the Sabbath were intended to narrow people's focus for one day a week on the Creator, instead of the created world. Rules were simply a structure, not a spiritual straightjacket.

In the Gospel of Mark, 2:27, "Then he said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."

Always respect and celebrate those who keep the Sabbath's official thirty-nine categories of restrictions, it's a difficult burden. And, those who spend their Sabbath less formally, but still focused on God in ways most personally preferred, I believe they're good, too. 

Jesus understood how you must meet folks where you find them, with the Sabbath, with faith, with everything human, as his all too brief ministry exemplifies.