"Sign Language"

There are signs everywhere. Here are just some of them.

On a long-established New Mexico dry cleaner: "38 years on the same spot."

On a New York convalescent home: "For the sick and tired of the Episcopal Church."

In the window of a Kentucky appliance store: "Don't kill your wife. Let our washing machines do the dirty work."

In a funeral parlor in Kansas: "Ask about our layaway plan."

In a clothing store in North Carolina: "Wonderful bargains for men with 16 and 17 necks."

In a Maine restaurant: "Open 7 days a week and weekends."

In a Pennsylvania cemetery: "Persons are prohibited from picking flowers from any but their own graves."

On a shopping mall marquee in Dallas: "Archery Tournament -- Ears pierced"

At a Laundromat in Eugene Oregon: "Automatic washing machines. Please remove all your clothes when the light goes out."

Notice in a field in Iowa: "The farmer allows walkers to cross the field for free, but the bull charges."

In an office in London: "Would the person who took the ladder yesterday please bring it back or further steps will be taken."

On the wall of a Baltimore convent: "Trespassers will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.--Sisters of Mercy"

In a Los Angeles dance club: "Good clean dancing every night but Sunday."

You couldn't dance on Sunday in West Virginia because of a Blue Law. Fred Flintstone and I would know what a Blue Law was. Some of you may not. For the uninformed, a Blue Law was a local ordinance that forbade doing business on Sunday. The Blue Law said you could NOT grab a bite at the Woman Lake Supper Club after church and mosey over to check out a movie at The One Stop. The Blue Law said that you could NOT go to a garage sale on the Lord's Day, much less set up lawn chairs in your yard and HAVE one.

The essence of the Blue Law was this: that Sunday was a day reserved for rest, for spending time with the family, for unwinding, for watching the Vikings choke in the playoffs. The Blue Laws did not say that everyone had to take the day off. There never was a time when cops didn't patrol the streets, that doctors and nurses didn't staff the hospitals, that the good folks at Northern States Power weren't there cranking out electrical juice.

Still, many folks all over the country said, "This isn't fair. Why should I be denied my God-given right to catch the flashing blue light special at K-Mart because of some flashing blue law? And why is the state imposing religious laws on me anyway?"

By and by, war was waged on this blatant enemy of market capitalism and by and by those repressive enemies of individual rights were repealed. Today, to the best of my knowledge, you can shop till you drop 365 days a year in 50 out of 50 states. The last holdout, if I'm not mistaken, was our neighbors to the west: North Dakota, home of Lawrence Welk. Thanka you boys.

Why, you might ask, does God make such a big thing out of keeping the Sabbath? Allow me to give you an historical background.

Sabbath is the Hebrew word for seven, the sign of completion. It took God six days to make the earth. And on the seventh, God stepped back from the canvas of His creation, took a look from a different perspective, and then spent the seventh day relaxing and thinking over what He had done.

Fast forward to many years later. The entire nation of Israel finds itself in slavery in Egypt. Five million people away from home. Let's say that a few years ago the state of Alabama invited all of us in the state of Minnesota to winter in Mobile. We got down there, liked it at first, but later missed lutefisk. But George Wallace says, "I ain't gonna let you go home."

That's the situation Israel found itself in. They were slaves. The Egyptians told them what to wear, what to eat, what to think. Seven days a week. Work. Work when the sun comes up; work until the sun goes down.

When God led Israel out of there and God parted the Red Sea, these five million people found themselves in a situation they hadn't experienced for 300 years: they were free from slavery and free to make a living for themselves.

The scriptures are clear that work is a good thing. It is good for a person to work hard. It is good for people to be entrepreneurs.

With all that said, let it also be said that some - if not most - people have a tendency to overdo things, to work too hard, and to put in too many hours on the job. They have a model of success that dictates slavish conformity to a standard of productivity. They become married to their job and career.

Now, what happens if a person who works 80 hours a week, month after month, year after year? They overload. They wear out. They develop heart trouble in more ways than one.

The body and the mind are not designed to go full steam ahead, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And God knew that if He didn't put His foot down and demand that Israel take the time off, they never would, at least not until it was too late.

So God institutes the principle of the Sabbath: work at something for six days, but give it a rest on the seventh. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. This is not just a suggestion: it's a commandment. It's one of God's top ten, otherwise known as the Ten Commandments. And it's good.

In this morning's text, we find Jesus and the disciples on the Sabbath doing three things that look like pretty neat Sunday afternoon activities.

First of all, they are walking. Nothing like a nice Sunday walk. Secondly, they get hungry and pick some grain while they are walking. Anyone ever pick flowers or, better yet, raspberries on a Sunday? Wonderful activity.

Third, they rub the grain to get rid of the chaff, and then pop the kernels in their mouths. This is what we would call Sunday dinner.

Now let's review. Here are Jesus and His disciples taking the equivalent of a Sunday afternoon stroll, picking a few berries and having a snack.

Lo and behold, Jesus and the disciples look up to find the Naysayer Nazis - our old friends the Pharisees - there to lodge a formal complaint against them. "You guys," they tell them, "are breaking the Sabbath."

Like many other things, God institutes a principle. The Sabbath. Take a day off to rest your body. Don't work.

And as soon as God says, "Don't work," the human mind begins working: "Well, what does God mean by work? Does He mean the kind of work where you put in your 40 hours? Or does He also mean the kind of work you do around the house? Does this mean that you can't take out the garbage on the Sabbath? Does this mean I can't change my oil or mow the lawn on the Sabbath?"

Define work. That's the way the mind works. When God tells us to do something, we devise ways of skirting the issue, or complicating the issue.

By the time our passage rolls around, the Pharisees had devised 39 categories of work that could and could not be done on the Sabbath. You could tie your goat to a tree but you couldn't tie a horse to a trough. You could draw water if your cow injured her hoof, but you couldn't get water to give to a guest. My personal favorite is the fierce argument if it was work for a man to put on a wooden leg to walk to synagogue.

So here are Jesus and the disciples, walking along, picking grain, rubbing it, eating, enjoying nature and the good gifts of God, and here come the Pharisees. They pull over the disciples, pull out their citation book and say, "Jesus, do you know why we pulled You over? Number one, You have walked more than 236 paces from home on the Sabbath. That's called taking a trip and You can't go on trips on the Sabbath.

"Number two, we observed You picking grain. Section 12, subparagraph 3 stroke 9 stroke 13 dot six of the penal code says You cannot reap on the Sabbath.

"Thirdly, we clocked You rubbing the grain. That, sir, is called threshing, and in our book you cannot thresh grain on the Sabbath.

"Fourthly, we did observe You placing the grain in your mouths and eating the aforementioned grain. That, sir, in our book is called preparing a meal on the Sabbath. And that's breaking the law."

Now, the moral police squad expects Jesus to cease and desist on the spot. But Jesus says, "Now wait a minute, officers," and goes on to remind them of a very important story in the Old Testament.

David - whom the scriptures call a man after God's own heart - and his soldiers are being chased by Saul, running for their very lives. They are tired, dirty, and very very hungry. They come to the tabernacle in a place called Nob, looking for something to eat, but the only thing in the cupboard is showbread.

Unlike Wonderbread, Showbread was a big deal. It was12 loaves of bread on a gold table, three feet long, that stood in front of the tabernacle. It was baked and replaced once a week. This table was placed directly in front of that part of the tabernacle known as the Holy of Holies.

The showbread was symbolic of two things: first, as an offering to God, secondly, as a reminder of manna.

We take bread for granted, don't we? If we need bread, we go to the store and buy it. Or, if we want to be fancy, we throw some bread mix into the bread machine. Bread. It's common, it's mundane; it's something that always seems to be there for us.

A little while ago I alluded to Israel escaping out of Egypt, and God instituting the Sabbath so that people wouldn't work themselves to death. While out there in the wilderness, they quickly discover that there is no McDonald's in the desert. Five million people, the population of Minnesota, are wandering around. What in the world would they eat? What in the world COULD they eat? There were no grain fields in the desert. Not much wildlife there. No northerns or muskies. In other words, there were inadequate nutritional resources to feed all those people.

Thus begins the panic, like the feeling you get when driving down the road and your gas gauge gets close to empty. You are on an unfamiliar road and wonder if you will have enough to get to the next place. It's an eight-alarm anxiety.

"How are we going to eat? Did you bring us out here to starve us to death?" The words have no sooner left their mouths when in the morning it begins raining bread. I don't mean that figuratively. I mean literally. Bread falls out of the sky. Manna. Bread. Flat bread with little coriander seeds. It is bread that contains all the necessary carbohydrates, protein, vitamins, minerals and nutrients in a single round loaf, bread enough to sustain the system and to keep them going. Bread.

So there in the Nob Tabernacle, as a reminder that God cares, that God loves, that God provides, is a table with 12 loaves of bread, there for show, there as a symbol. But bread nevertheless.

David and his friends are famished. Starving. What are they to do? Do they say, "Well this bread has higher value as a symbol, and God would rather this place look good and we croak? Or do we eat the bread and survive?" They do the latter. They eat the bread. And the strength of that bread empowers David and his men to eventually accomplish God's will.

Sabbath was made for man, Jesus says, not man for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was not meant to make humans beings slaves of dos and don'ts and shoulds and shouldn'ts. It's as if Jesus is saying, "The Sabbath is given for you. Enjoy it. Revel in it. Be sustained by it. Why go back to Egypt?"

And as for movement, why not enjoy it? Why not dance to it?

There is a legend of a man named Artaban. It is said that he was supposed to be part of the caravan of the Magi - the Wise Men - who followed the star. Artaban had three items with him: a sapphire, a ruby, and a pearl beyond price. The star was hovering and he was riding very fast to rendezvous with the other magi. Time is of the essence and Artaban is riding his horse very fast. He can't spare a single second.

Then, all of the sudden, in the road ahead Artaban sees someone laying beside the road. He stops. The man beside the road is burning up with fever, chills and shakes. If Artaban helps the man, he'll miss his friends. But if he leaves, the man might die.

To him, there is no choice. Artaban stays. He gives the man nourishment, applying oil to bring down the fever.

But he's missed the caravan. How will he ever catch up? The only thing he CAN do is to buy his own camels and provisions, so he reaches into his bag and buys the necessary provisions. And now the king will never see the beautiful sapphire.

Artaban takes off. The star is far, far ahead of him. Finally he comes to Bethlehem. Again, he's too late. The king has had to flee along with Mary and Joseph. Herod's soldiers are going house-to-house killing babies. Artaban stands in the doorway. Here comes the captain of Herod's army.

"Please don't kill this child."

"Nothing can stop me."

Artaban flinches. He puts his hand down into his sack and pulls out the ruby. "Will this stop you from killing this child?" The captain grins and takes the ruby. "What child?" One child is spared his life. But the king will never see the beautiful ruby.

For years and years and years Artaban looks for the king. Always just missing him. Finally in a place called Jerusalem, Artaban almost catches up. A man fitting the description of the king has been taken outside of town to be crucified. "Crucified? The king is about to be put to death?"

Artaban, clutching the pearl of great price runs with every last ounce of strength to catch up. Perhaps with the pearl of great price he can buy the king's freedom.

But up ahead he sees an agonizing sight. A young girl, 15 or 16, is running from a group of soldiers in hot pursuit. The girl runs into his arms. "Help me, please. My father is in debt and they are taking me as a slave to pay the debt. Please save me."

Artaban hesitates. But then he holds out the pearl of great price, gives it to the soldiers and buys the girl's freedom.

The skies darken, the ground quakes. A flying tile hits Artaban and he sinks half-conscious to the ground. He begins to say, "I will never see the king. And the king will never see my sapphire, the ruby, or the pearl of great price." Then Artaban hears a voice.

"Oh Artaban, you saw Me."

"Oh my Lord, when did I see You?"

"I was hungry and you fed Me. I was sick and you came to My aid. I was in prison and you visited Me."

"But when did I see you hungry, or sick, or in prison?"

"When you did it to the least of these my brethren. You did so unto Me."

So Artaban dies with a smile on his face, knowing he had seen his king face to face, and knowing the king had indeed seen his sapphire, his ruby, and his pearl of great price. Things set aside for God were used for the betterment of man. And both were blessed by his giving.

Life is a gift. As the Shakers said, life itself is simple gifts. Let's you and I dance to it.

© Rev. Duane Brown, 2003