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The Sabbath is a gift we do not know how to receive. In a world of doing, going, and producing, we have no use for a gift that invites us to stop.
I have, in the words of Wendell Berry, willingly endured “the risks of amateurism” for the sake of my readers who probably feel like Sabbath idiots as well.
“The most brilliant people in the world,” Albert Einstein reportedly said, “aren’t the most brilliant. They are just best at hiding their sources.”
In 1991, a yet-to-be-identified flea market enthusiast discovered a simple picture frame to his liking. Securing the purchase, the shopper returned home only to discover an ancient document hiding inconspicuously behind the frame. Thinking little of the discovery, he continued about his life. Two years later, a friend stumbled on the document and investigated its origin. The rest is history. The four-dollar frame had hidden a first-edition copy of the Declaration of Independence reportedly worth north of one million dollars.
Cultural critic and historian Howard Zinn once wrote, “We can reasonably conclude that how we think is not just mildly interesting, not just a subject for intellectual debate, but a matter of life and death.”
Christian philosopher Dallas Willard agrees: “We live at the mercy of our ideas.”
Humanity is, in this sense, like Jill in C. S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair, who was told to repeat Aslan’s instructions so as not to forget them. “‘Child,’ said Aslan . . . ‘perhaps you do not see quite as well as you think. But the first step is to remember. Repeat to me, in order, the four signs.’”
Sabbath is an orientation as well—an all-encompassing turning toward the Creator God that changes everything about our lives.
H. H. Farmer once said, “If you go against the grain of the universe, you get splinters.”
The words of Martin Luther echo this refrain: “God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.”36
What is the culmination of creation? In Genesis 2:2–3, there are three sentences of seven Hebrew words each, and the middle word of each sentence is the word for the seventh day. This textual feature is utilized to state that the seventh day is the goal of creation.
Sabbath is a scheduled weekly reminder that we are not what we do; rather, we are who we are loved by.
God has often either been reduced to a useful, predictable idol, or is experienced as absent.”
Gerald May once lamented how a pragmatic culture often treats the Sabbath: “We know we need to rest, but we can no longer see the value of rest as an end in itself; it is only worthwhile if it helps us to recharge our batteries.”
Dorothy Sayers once argued that most legalistic Sabbath-keepers had added to “Thou shalt not work” the phrase “Thou shalt not play.”
But the Sabbath is not a form of indulgent individualism dressed in religious piety. Sabbath is about delighting in God for his sake and the sake of the world.
I read at one point that some Jewish fathers, on the morning of the Sabbath, would give their children a spoon of honey.
Flannery O’Connor has this little throwaway line where she speaks of a priest who is “unimaginative and overworked.”
We have, as Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “made an idol of exhaustion. The only time we know we have done enough is when we’re running on empty and when the ones we love most are the ones we see least.”
Being a Sabbath-keeper is basically the art of letting people down at a rate they can handle.
In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness and delight
Addiction to adrenaline can even create what is called anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure. Anhedonia is what Archibald Hart has come to describe as no longer having anything in your life that “moves your heart.”
For me, the desire for sin and the proclivity for temptation seem to be greatly heightened on Sunday evenings after preaching. Many of my preacher friends experience the same thing. This is what many Catholic theologians have for years called a “near occasion of sin,” a moment that we are particularly susceptible to temptations.
To enjoy the Sabbath is to free ourselves from the temptation of total control over the world. To Sabbath is to crucify our desires for control over the world.
We cannot help the world the way we are supposed to without moments of respite and holy indifference, when we turn our attention and compassion to the living God.
The way we now receive news leads to “compassion fatigue,” a real onset of exhaustion from the concerns of the world.
While escapism may seem bad, temporary escapism allows us to do our work better and more intentionally.
Putnam famously said that instead of having friends, we watch Friends on television.
communities, Bauman writes, are communities forged by disconnected spectators around a mutually loved experience like a rock concert or a sporting match. Their participation is a feeling or a sense around something shared. Ethical communities, in stark contrast, are long-term commitments that are marked by the giving up of rights and service. In short, ethical communities are built on relationships of responsibilities.7 These are relationships formed by commitment, love, covenant, and even familial fidelity.
This is a phenomenal distinction
In peg community, I am in so long as it benefits me. In ethical community, however, we willingly give ourselves to a community whether it benefits us or not.
Modern church growth has basically been built on no rest. Our church industrial complex generally rewards Sabbath-breaking as a rule.
Whenever I’m preaching and I catch a glimpse of someone nodding off in the back, I cannot help but celebrate a little inside. That’s okay. Nod off. This is the church.
A fanatic has been described as a person who, when unsure of his direction, doubles his speed. Charles Hummel, Freedom from Tyranny of the Urgent
As Karen Burton Mains has perceptively written, every day of the week was to be transfixed and oriented around the Sabbath day. “Three days to look forward to Sabbath,” Mains writes, “three days to reflect back on its wonder.”
In fact, Jews speak of the Sabbath as a “bride” and a “queen”—we are her lover, but we are also ruled by her. What does a man do to prepare for his bride? He prepares a feast, makes a home, gets ready for her. What do you do if the queen comes to your house? You get the house ready. Both images are, in fact, about preparation.
To help, read Nancy Sleeth’s Almost Amish.6
Embodying economic justice is thoughtfully choosing to practice a way of life that does not enslave others.
Sabbath is scheduled social justice.
As a pastor, I find this awareness of Satan’s authority to be extremely helpful in responding to those who wrestle with questions about how God can be simultaneously good and in control of a world in which there is evil. While being sovereign, God is not fully in control of this world. Satan controls the world—for now. God was sovereign during the Holocaust. That is a disturbing paradox for a Christian to deal with. God has willingly given freedom to humans to do the destructive things they do. The truth remains that this is a world ruled by powers of darkness and oppression at present until
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This is helpful i believe
Here is the working principle: it is not a true Sabbath if my rest becomes another’s slavery. In most cases, the rich must take the first step to use their power, resources, and influence to provide Sabbath on others’ behalf. In the end, if the rich do not Sabbath, neither can the poor.
True life change does not come by simply knowing the facts. True life change comes by beginning to live out truth in a context of great grace.
John Muir once boiled this principle down: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
In the words of Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, “We have found that the men who know the most are the most gloomy.”14
“the most regular way that most Christians remind themselves and others that they are Christians. It is the most significant way in which Christianity takes flesh, evolving from a set of ideas and convictions to a set of practices and a way of life.”
Regarding gathering for weekly worship
The difference between the church and the world is that the church worships the Creator God. The world worships anything else.
A Sabbath day on earth is heaven’s preseason. And heaven is an eternal Sabbath.
God does not demand what he will not model.
