Next weekend, the second weekend in June, will be a long weekend for most Australians to celebrate the birthday of King Charles III. Whatever our thoughts might be about the monarchy, most of us will probably be happy about the public holiday as it gives us an extra day to relax and do something enjoyable or fun with family or friends.
Would you say a public holiday is more of an expectation or a gift? An expectation is something that another person wants us to do. It can be a demand, a set of rules, or a list of things that we are supposed to do, whether we want to do them or not. A gift, on the other hand, is totally different from an expectation. It is something that someone else does for us or gives to us. A gift is given unconditionally, with no strings attached, and is given to benefit the person who receives the gift.
Three and a half thousand years ago, God sent the prophet Moses to lead his people out of slavery in Egypt to freedom as a new nation. After leaving Egypt, they arrived at Mount Sinai where God gave them the Ten Commandments. These commandments explained the way of living which was to be the foundation of this new nation. One of these Commandments was to ‘Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy’ (Exodus 20:8 NLT). On the seventh day of Creation, God rested from his work (Genesis 2:2,3), so he instructed his people to set aside one day each week to rest from their work as well.
Imagine what it might have been like for the Israelites to hear that command. They had been slaves in Egypt for 400 years. They received no pay for their work, with no overtime or penalty rates. They probably didn’t even get a regular day off. Now, God was telling them to take every seventh day as a rest day. This Sabbath day off wasn’t an expectation God was placing on them. It was a gift he was giving them because of his great love for them. God knows we need time to refresh and recharge for our bodies, minds and spirits to remain strong and healthy. Even though it is one of the Ten Commandments, God gave the Israelites a Sabbath day off every week as a gift because it was good for them.
By the time of Jesus, however, people had turned God’s gift into an expectation. A group of very religious Jews called Pharisees believed that God’s chosen Messiah would come when every Israelite was keeping God’s commands perfectly. They had developed a comprehensive set of 613 rules covering almost every part of their lives which they expected people to keep. These rules defined what the Pharisees considered to be work and they were very strict with enforcing them. When people broke their rules, they severely criticised and judged them.
In Mark 2:23 to 3:6, when the Pharisees saw Jesus and his disciples breaking their rules, they challenged and criticised them for it. Jesus saw the Sabbath day of rest in a very different way to the Pharisees. He responded to their criticism by saying, ‘The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath’ (v 27 NLT). Jesus was showing them that God did not create a day of Sabbath rest to be an expectation, a demand, or a burden. Instead, God created it to be a gift and a blessing for people, to help us and to be good for us. In saying these words, Jesus is teaching us to view not just the Sabbath, but every good thing God gives to us, as a gift for our good, not an expectation to make life difficult.
We can apply this teaching to many different areas of our lives. We all live with expectations from work, family, society, and even ourselves. Expectations aren’t bad in themselves because there are things in life that we need to do even though we might not want to. The danger comes when things which are intended to be gifts for our good are turned into expectations that can unnecessarily burden us and we lose our joy in doing them.
One example of this is the way we view church. For a lot of people, being part of a church community can seem to be more of an expectation than a gift. There can be lots of things we are told to do, or we think we have to do, which we might not want to do. Like the Pharisees of Jesus’ time, there can be rules or demands that people can experience which can make church more of a burden than a joy. In these stories from Mark 2:23-3:6, Jesus challenges us to re-think the purpose of our church communities. One important activity on the Sabbath for thousands of years has been listening to God’s word with others. As God’s people who gather on our day of rest, Sunday, to listen to God’s word, Jesus might be saying to us that ‘church was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the church.’ Maybe Jesus is challenging us to ask if our experience of church has been more of an expectation than a gift, and asking us to think about how we might be able recover church as God’s gift to help give rest, peace and strength to our bodies minds and souls.
The New Testament paints a picture for us of what ‘the church as a gift’ looks like. It is a community of a very diverse group of people who become family through the faith they share in Jesus and what he has done for them. In these communities, people find grace, forgiveness, acceptance, healing, and the kind of love which reflects the love God has for them in Jesus. In this church people find peace, hope, joy, and rest for their souls. It is a giving community where people experience the life-changing grace of God in their relationships with each other. This faith community gives people opportunities to share the good gifts God has already given them with each other. They don’t do this as an expectation or because they think they must, but as acts of faith and love as they participate in God’s giving nature and become part of the gift that God gives to others. God gives us church as a gift so we can find rest, peace and strength for ourselves, and we can be his gift to others so they can find rest, peace and strength through us.
We all live with expectations in our lives because there will always be things we should do which we might not want to do. However, God never intended the Sabbath rest day, or his church, to be an expectation. He always intended them to be his gifts to us so, in the middle of all the expectations we might experience in life, we can find rest, peace and strength. As we enjoy a public holiday next weekend, remember that it is a gift and not an expectation. In the same way, God gives us his church to provide for our physical, emotional and spiritual needs, and so we can be his gift to others.
More to think about or discuss:
- In your experience, is church more of an expectation or a gift? Can you explain why?
- What do you think Jesus meant when he said, ‘The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath’ (v27 NLT)?
- What might church be like if we applied this to our faith communities? What do you imagine a ‘church as gift’ without expectations might be like?
Pastor Eugene Online 
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