shoulders rather than taking the burden off their shoulders.
"The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath" (Mark, 2, 27). In Jesus’
argument with the Scribes and Pharisees he defended his disciples for plucking ears of
corn to help a hungry person and he argued that Sabbath is not broken in cases of
necessity or by acts of charity as is the way that his disciples were accused of ‘breaking
the Sabbath’. The Sabbath is now celebrated on Sundays by Christians celebrating
mass.
In Mark’s Gospel, Mark speaks of the Sabbath in a very controversial way. Mark claims that Jesus fought with the Pharisees to change the way of the Torah’s system of sacrifice employed on the people for the Sabbath day. He talks about how Jesus reacted to the harsh reality of the Sabbath thousands of years ago in Israel. Mark begins talking about Jesus’ disciples picking ears of corn as an act of charity for a hungry man and how the Pharisees for this scolded his disciples. This is what started Jesus’ argument that the Sabbath ‘was made for man, not man made for the Sabbath’. This means that Jesus thought the Sabbath was too much of a burden on man and instead should be a relief of burden like the relief that was experienced by God after he had finished creating the world on the seventh day. Jesus wanted the Pharisees to change the law of the Torah so that the Sabbath can be broken in the case of necessity or in the act of charity to one another. I believe that this view of Jesus revolutionised the Sabbath to make it what it is today, a day of rest and worship.
There are various different Christian denominations that all celebrate the Sabbath in a different way. Yes, all these denominations accept that Sabbath is there to be a day of
rest as it was for God but they each celebrate the Sabbath in a different way, The Church of England has a Eucharist, similar to the Catholic church, the Catholic church has mass every Sunday, the Methodist church has a service of bible readings and sung hymns
and the Evangelical church has praise and worship in a celebration mass. Sunday is the
day of rest in all denominations but mass is treated differently in each denomination. This might be because some Christian denominations don’t agree with Jesus’ laid back image of how the Sabbath should be celebrated to the same extent that other Christian denominations do, or they are trying to be more modernised and less strict than the founding Church of Catholicism.
Despite all this, Sunday remains the main day of worship. All Christians
believe that some work is necessary, however Sunday is still a day of rest. I’m sure that if God on his day of rest saw suffering on his new world, he wouldn’t have sat down and watched, he would have tried to help. And I think that is the view that all Christians should take on the Sabbath, treat it how God would treat it.
I conclude that Sabbath is a day of rest and should be treated the way God would treat it by making exceptions to rules when it is absolutely necessary (in a matter of life or death) and that in order for the Sabbath to truly be a day of rest, there should be no
rules and the rules that shouldn’t be made in the first place, shouldn’t be enforced as watching all the people to make sure they don’t break the ‘rules’ of the Sabbath won’t be resting anyway. Mark expresses the way that Jesus thought we should treat the Sabbath in a way that we can learn to keep the Sabbath holy, Mark helped Christians to understand the Sabbath in humane way. I believe that the different Christian denominations celebrate the Sabbath in a very similar manner. They all celebrate the Sabbath in a way that Jesus would have wanted the Jews celebrate the Sabbath, yet they still all stick to their own traditions.
