Sabbath

Remember the Sabbath and Keep it Holy

I grew up thinking Sundays were Sabbath. We were keeping the 4th commandment by closing businesses on Sunday. Blue laws dating back to previous centuries provided statutory cover. Most people did no work on Sundays. I never knew what made the laws blue. To this day, alcohol in the state of Tennessee can only be sold on Sundays from 10:00 am to 11:00 pm giving two hours of emargo from the rest of the week. Churches held service in the mornings and evenings making it the center of cultural and social connection in our small rural community. The routine was fixed. Sunday School at 10:00, Church at 11:00, dinner sometime after noon. Dinner meaning lunch in the south, not the evening meal. That was supper. Nap after dinner. Choir practice and youth groups at 5:00 and evening service at 7:00.

A question in my youth was raised. Why do we have Sabbath on Sunday rather than Saturday like the original version? Well, Jesus was raised on Sunday so we moved it and called it “The Lord’s Day”. Sabbath was a Jewish thing. But it checked the box of the 4th commandment so we’re good.

39 Laws

The idea of Sabbath is pretty simple. Rest and spend time with God. Remember at the time, when Israel was enslaved in Egypt, they worked 7 days a week making bricks. Moses tried to negotiate with Pharaoh a day a week to set aside for the practice of their faith and we know how that turned out. So Sabbath became one of the Big Ten. The placement of the 4th commandment is rather pivotal. The first three have to do with human relationship with the Creator. The last 6 have to do with humans relating to each other. The 4th commandment is the connection. Not just to God but back to Creation since the 7th day was part of the Creation story. So it got written down. But as all good Pharisees and modern academics know, when you write something down, you have to use words. And words have definitions. What does “rest” really mean? Well, it’s the opposite of “work” so what does work mean? Then it got complicated. One source called the melachot, specified 39 distinct definitions of work. But with 39 statements came conditions and caveats. This must have been around the time lawyers were created. For example, you could not carry anything on Sabbath, but an exception was made in order to carry a woman in labor to the hospital. If each law has exceptions, there ended up being hundreds of laws and rules. Jesus was walking with his disciples one afternoon through a wheat field, which was OK because they were not carrying anything. But the disciples started nibbling on the heads of the wheat, which was a clear violation and got some questions. He reminded us that we were not made for the Sabbath.

So we moved it all to Sunday and got rid of all that Hebrew law and created our own.

“The well-being of creation does not depend on endless work” – Walter Brueggemann

In my self imposed church hiatus several years ago, I started studying Sabbath. All I knew is what I was taught in protestant Christian Sunday School, and I was pretty sure that what we were doing with it was not what God intended.  Sunday was a rush of activity and for me, church was a job.  It wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t Sabbath.  I met Walter Brueggemann in his book, Sabbath as Resistance. Despite neutralizing the Jewish Laws by moving Sabbath to The Lord’s Day, we were headed down the same path. Brueggemann said the intention of Sabbath was to bestow freedom. He went on to explain how our modern culture has replaced the religious command of Sabbath producing a “reality of restlessness”. The service and entertainment industries provide their facade of respite, creating anxiety in the process as we rush from soccer to birthday parties to football games and golf courses dropping into restaurants along the way.

“Sabbath is the sanctification of time” – Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Heschel cleared it all up for me when I read that Sabbath is the “sanctification of time”.  He said Sabbath is the “most precious present” God gave to humans. In that very moment, it hit me that the feelings I had when I was in the wilderness were sacred moments… Sabbath moments, holy time.  I found those most often in wild spaces, where Creation itself was unfolding into eternity.  Sabbath was a holy gift that we ruined with rules and dogma, things that come with religion.  I was discovering it for myself for the first time.  No rules, no timelines, just moments of eternity in the presence of God.

Sabbath Hiking

I coined the term “Sabbath Hiking” to describe the state of mind I have learned to summon when I am in direct contact with creation.  Instead of keeping an eye on my pace and mileage, I put away the GPS device and leave the watch at home.  It is a discipline of using technology only for water sources, hiking conditions and camping locations.  That leaves my mind free of hiking for speed and I now focus on the moment and the act of the hiking, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  Sabbath is the sanctification of time.  Sabbath Hiking is the sanctification of moving through Creation. 

When you remove the rules, Sabbath becomes free to encounter as a state of mind at any given moment. It is a charter member in my list of core values.