Te Pouhere and the Sabbath
Was Sabbath made for humanity, of humanity for Sabbath? It is
the question at the heart of our gospel reading (Mark 2:23 – 3:6) It is still
one of the big questions we wrestle with as a church and as followers of The
Way. How do we understand Jesus answer?
Often we read this as a new way of reading Torah. And at our
less humble moments, this shows how we are right and Jews are wrong. But what
if Jesus approach was not new?
This week on Working Preacher[1]
both Matt Skinner and Karoline Lewis have suggested that Jesus was tapping into
an old rabbinic tradition that understood this commandment as either the an
invitation to the Hebrew people to rest with God before they joined in the
ongoing work of creation (Exodus 20) or was an offer of one day to a people who
had been enslaved, working every day in gruelling conditions (Deuteronomy 20).
It was God’s guarantee they would never go back to those days. It was an
invitation for them to work with God to ensure no-one else suffered as they
did. In other words this is a commandment to provide the framework for people
to live life to its fullest, not a programme of rules meant to trap people.
This Sunday we celebrate our churches constitution – Te Pouhere.
Too often we see the rules of the church as man made regulations that deprive
us of the freedom to live in God as a church. But today let us celebrate these arrangements
that allow each Tikanga in our church to thrive, and so offer life in a way
that speaks to their cultural context. Let us commit ourselves to remember that
Te Pouhere was made humanity, not the other way round.
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