This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 22, 2010.

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Readings

Isaiah 58:9b–14
Psalm 103:1–8 (antiphon v. 4)
Hebrews 12:18–29
Luke 13:10–17

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Prayer

Father in heaven, by your Spirit turn us to you and fill us with a desire to worship you and to keep your day holy; through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

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Message

A few months ago,
I was using Google to research
the Beatrice Ministerial Association.
I don’t remember what I was trying to find.

But in the course of the search,
I uncovered an old article from Boxoffice magazine
from sometime in the 1940s, I believe.

Written from a pro-movie theatre position,
the article chronicles the efforts
by Beatrice business owners and ministers
to prevent the repeal of this town’s Blue Laws.

Blue Laws have a long history in this country
as a means for enforcing public morality.
They’ve traditionally prevented citizens from engaging
in an array of activities on Sundays:
shopping, purchasing liquor, hunting, watching movies, and buying cars.

According to the article,
the American Legion was leading an effort
to repeal Beatrice’s Blue Law forbidding
the screening of movies on Sundays.

The issue had been the subject
of a special election ending in a tie vote,
leading to court appeals over disputed ballots
and questions about a voter’s residency
and whether ballots given to ten railroad men
had received the proper official signatures.
According to the article,
local business men opposed the repeal
as an effort to block the Fox and Rivoli movie theatre chain
from opening a new theatre in town.

In the meantime, F.H. Hollingworth,
who owned the Rialto theatre here in Beatrice,
was making a lot of money
at his other theatre in Wymore,
which had no Blue Law forbidding movies on Sundays.

The article stated,
“Arrayed with the business men
is the Beatrice Ministerial association,
the most militantly potent crusading pastoral organization in Nebraska.”

I never found a follow-up article
to discover how the appeal turned out.
But today the theatres in Beatrice have Sunday show times,
so I guess, in the end, the Blue Law was repealed.

That’s a bit of a rambling detour through some local history.
But I think it helps,
because it gives us a sense
of how mixed up we can become
in asking and answering questions
about how we honor the Sabbath, the day of rest,
Sunday, the Lord’s Day.
It shows that we easily can confuse money and morality,
commerce and church,
politics and piety.

Here’s another bit of older history.
When God brought Moses to Mount Sinai,
he gave Moses the Decalogue, the Ten Words, the Ten Commandments.
The Third Word goes like this:
“Remember the sabbath day, and 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;
you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter,
you male or female slave, your livestock,
or the alien resident in your towns.
For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them,
but rested the seventh day;
therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day
and consecrated it.” (Exodus 20:8–11)

And like good Lutherans, we might ask,
“What does this mean for us?”
In the Small Catechism, Luther writes a response:

We are to fear and love God
so that we do not neglect his Word
and the preaching of it,
but regard it as holy
and gladly hear and learn it. (i>Small Catechism, I)

Luther’s explanation leans a little bit
toward understanding the Sabbath
as a day dedicated to worship—
and it is.
Sunday, for Christians, is the day
we hear and respond to God’s call to come together,
to gather in his triune name,
to raise our voices in praise,
to hear his Word,
to confess our faith,
to lift up our prayers,
to give our offerings,
to share in his Holy Meal,
to depart for service—refreshed and restored.

This is the core, the center of our life on this day.
This is what God calls us to do,
what he inspires us to embrace as our way of life,
what he expects us to give him as our joyful sacrifice.

But the Third Word also tells us
that the Sabbath is God’s gift for us
as much as it is a time for us to give our lives to God.
The Sabbath is a day of rest,
blessed and consecrated by the Lord,
given to us as a free and undeserved gift.

This helps us to understand
what happened when Jesus got into a dispute
with the leader of the synagogue
over the Blue Law of their day:
“Do not work on the Sabbath.
Healing is a work.
Therefore don’t perform healings on the Sabbath.”

The leader had his logic down pat.
But our Lord saw the confusion
that had arisen in the wake of this approach.
The Blue Laws would allow
a farmer to lead his ox to water for a drink,
meeting its need for life,
but then they forbade the healing of a woman,
preventing her from receiving what she needed for life.

Basically, Jesus made the observation,
“If God’s people could work for six days
and then rest on the seventh as a gift from his almighty hand,
could not this woman receive a Sabbath rest through God’s gift of healing,
after working her way through eighteen years of life
under the load of a crippling possession by a spirit?”

That’s why,
“When Jesus saw her,
he called her over and said,
‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’
When he laid his hands upon her,
immediately she stood up straight
and began praising God,” (Luke 13:12–13, NRSV)
worshiping on the Sabbath.

And again, “What does this mean for us?”
How can we live by faith?
How can hear with clarity God’s Word for us?
How may we distinguish with wisdom and humility
between the courses of action that honor the Sabbath—
and therefore God himself—
and paths that wind their ways away from God
and lead us down the road to honoring other gods?

It’s a challenge to know—to anticipate—
all of the circumstances and the details
that can arise when we seek to obey God’s law,
to live in ways that honor him and his Sabbath.

But here are some questions to guide us.

First question.
When I arise on the Sabbath,
and look ahead at my day,
can I, in all honesty, ask myself,
“Do my choices say clearly to others,
‘God is my Lord; I have dedicated this day to him?’”
And then, can I answer,
“Yes. As completely as I can, as fully as I am able,
I will spend the time God has given me this day
in such a way that others who see me
will know that Jesus Christ is the Lord of my life.”
In a nutshell, ask yourself,
“Does my day say Jesus is Lord?”

Second question.
When I reach this day’s end,
and prepare to go to bed,
can I look back on the day’s happenings,
and say, in all honesty,
“Thank you, God, for this Sabbath day.
I have appreciated your generosity.
You have restored and renewed me through this gift of rest.
It has helped me to embrace your grace.
And now I give back to you”?
In a nutshell, ask yourself,
“Have I rested in the grace of God?”

That his how we honor the Sabbath and keep it holy.
And when we do,
then we will live the way the prophet Isaiah
calls across the centuries for us to follow:
“If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,
from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;
if you call the sabbath a delight
and the holy day of the LORD honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways,
serving your own interests,
or pursuing your own affairs;
then you shall take delight in the LORD….” (Isaiah 58:13–14a, NRSV)

And now, on this Sabbath, our LORD calls us to his Holy Table,
to honor him on his day and to rest with him in the delight of his blessed Meal. Amen.