Zion  Lutheran Church
     20191 Wooster Road
     Danville, Ohio 43014

Spring Break

As I write my April newsletter article, my youngest daughter is on Spring Break. Rest is important for our physical, emotional and spiritual health. It is one of the first commandments God establishes with his people for their benefit. Keeping the Sabbath (resting) is then repeated throughout Scripture, especially during the 40-year Exodus journey through the wilderness. God reminds them that life is not all work and no play. They need to stop and rest. However, soon they turned our need for rest into a strict law that somehow was necessary to keep on God’s good side.

A careful reading of Scripture, however, shows that resting is not something we must do as a law, to keep God from punishing us or rejecting us; but is for our well-being. Rest is something we need. It’s for us, not for God. Jesus points this out a number of times, especially every time he heals the lame, casts out demons or cures a person of a disease on the Sabbath and the Pharisees complain that he is ‘working’ when he should be resting. Jesus answered them, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”

People need rest, but God does not. God ‘rested’ on the seventh day of creation, not because he needed to, exhausted from the work of the previous six days, but to enjoy his new creation. Jesus is fully human, and Jesus does take plenty of time for rest throughout the Gospels. He often goes off by himself and prays or takes a day off to get away from the crowds at a friend’s house. He even slept through storm at sea. But Jesus is also fully God and as such, doesn’t need any rest at all. So, at times, instead of resting, he is busy restoring creation through healing, casting out demons and curing many diseases. In John, chapter 5, Jesus even says this directly.

16 Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.”

As the Son of Man, he needs rest. But as the Son of God, he still works until all of creation is healed and restored. It’s comforting to know, that when we need to pause and call it a day, take a little break from our work, God is still actively watching over us, busy protecting our lives from the devil, and slowly but surely changing us back into the people he has called us to be. He never grows tired of working on us.

Psalm 121

1    I lift up my eyes to the hills—

                  from where will my help come?

2    My help comes from the LORD,

                  who made heaven and earth.

 

3       He will not let your foot be moved;

                  he who keeps you will not slumber.

4    He who keeps Israel

                  will neither slumber nor sleep.

 

Pastor