Sermon: Sabbath

So what is the Sabbath, anyway? It’s a day of rest, right? But what about it, what’s the big deal? Genesis 2:3:

“And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all [the] work of creating that he had done.”

The first thing that God made holy in all of creation, was a day—the Sabbath. Everything else is good, but the seventh day, that’s holy. The word ‘Sabbath’ comes from the Hebrew root word Shavat meaning “to cease.” Therefore, our contemporary translation can be understood as “to stop with everything and just relax.” In Spanish, the word for Saturday is Sabado, which is also the Spanish translation for Sabbath. Many of us are familiar with the word Sabado from the acclaimed Spanish language game show entitled “Sabado Gigante” which literally means, Giant Saturday (Sabbath). But I digress. In many cultures and languages, the Sabbath is highly recognized and celebrated with great zeal. The holy days of the Sabbath is the root from where we derive several words in our English language like “holiday” and “sabbatical”.

The Sabbath is understood as a covenant between God and Israel, and there are two basic reasons given in the Bible to keep the Sabbath holy. “To commemorate it as the culmination of creation,”1 and “to offer an opportunity for servants to rest.”1 If we commemorate the Sabbath as the culmination of creation, then one understanding of this is as a “means by which man’s living pattern imitates God’s…work is followed by rest.”2 It is purposely marked as a time where we can show appreciation to God and to the life of the Holy Spirit. It is one way in which we can celebrate the belief that we were created in God’s image specifically to be in relationship with God.
We also commemorate this holy time as a moment of rest for all servants. Humans need time to recover physically, emotionally and spiritually. It is physically impossible for people to continually work without rest; we’re just not designed like that, that’s why we sleep—to rest. We rest in commemoration of the Sabbath by taking that time “to think about and enjoy what God has accomplished.”

We can further expand this idea of rest to encompass salvation. The Israelites were in grueling servitude, bondage, to the Pharaoh but God delivered them through Moses from the oppressive shackles of slavery. We, as believers, as Christians, are sinners but God sent Jesus to redeem us of our sinfulness. One of the many theological implications of the Sabbath is that as believers we will all one day rejoice in celebration with God in Heaven. The Sabbath is also a covenant between God and us.

Even though both Jews and Christians celebrate the Sabbath, we have very distinctive ways of observing it. In the Jewish tradition, “observance is characterized by joy rather than avoidance of anything pleasurable.” “The Sabbath is to be a day of joy: relaxation, spiritual harmony, and a change of pace from workdays. In the home, this is expressed by festive meals with choice dishes…time is to be devoted to study… [and] rest.” Many of us know about the Sabbath in the Jewish tradition by the countless stories in the Bible about the laws that govern its observance. For instance in Matthew 12:1-3:

“At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, ‘Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath’.”

From these accounts, and others just like it, we can see how it is easy to draw the conclusion that the Jewish faith has been traditionally legalistic to the point of missing the intent of the laws. However, for the Jewish faith, to uphold the law is to worship God. There are also many situations in which the general rule of “anything to save a life” is fervently practiced and consequently supersedes Jewish law.

To the Jewish people, the weekly Sabbath is the holiest day in the Hebrew calendar. The Jews have popular dictum that says “The Sabbath is given to you, not you to the Sabbath” which can be seen as a similar understanding of Mark 2:27. This saying appears frequently in midrash and talmud, which are commentaries and explanatory notes on the Scriptures produced by rabbis.

The Sabbath is celebrated in the Jewish calendar from Friday sunset to Saturday nightfall. “The most important observance of the Jewish Sabbath is in the home. Every home is perceived as a small sanctuary.” The practice of observing the Sabbath often entails lighting candles, eating good food, wearing one’s best clothes, worshiping, studying, and demonstrating love for family and friends. Susannah Heschel recounts of her childhood:

“Friday evenings in my home were the climax of the week, as they are for every religious Jewish family. My mother and I kindled the lights for the Sabbath, and all of a sudden I felt transformed, emotionally and even physically. After lighting the candles in the dining room, we would walk into the living room, which had windows overlooking the Hudson river, facing west, and we would marvel at the sunset that soon arrived.”

Her father was a Rabbi and preeminent Jewish theologian named Abraham Joshua Heschel. In his book The Sabbath he describes the Jewish sentiment towards keeping the Sabbath:

“The art of keeping the seventh day is the art of painting on the canvas of time the mysterious grandeur of the climax of creation: as He sanctified the seventh day, so shall we. The love of the Sabbath is the love of man for what he and God have in common…The seventh day is like a palace in time with a kingdom for all. It is not a date but an atmosphere…It is a day that ennobles the soul and makes the body wise.”

He goes on to describe the Sabbath in many beautiful and poetic forms; one such is in the imagery of the bridegroom. Christians are familiar with this metaphor as the church is known as the bridegroom of Jesus. Let’s think about that for a moment, each week one day is celebrated as the partner of the faith! It is held in the same regard we think of the church, as partners with God. It isn’t celebrated just one day a year like we celebrate Christmas or Easter, but every week, as a bride. They celebrate the Sabbath as a weekly relationship with God, one that requires communication and feedback. They celebrate it as a covenant.

We as Christians could stand to learn a lot from our Jewish friends. Christians share a lot of similarities how we observe the Sabbath, but there are several key differences. We “observe Sunday, the first day of the week, as the Christian Sabbath. [We] note that Christ arose on the first day of the week…this day on which Jesus arose [is] call[ed] the Lord’s Day.” In our view it is more of a celebration of the resurrection and the redemption of our sinfulness. In the Presbyterian Book of Order, the Directory for Worship tells us:

“It is the beginning of the believer’s week and gives shape to the life of discipleship. Disciplined observance of this day includes preparation of one’s self for (1) participation in public worship, (2) engagement in ministries of witness, service, and compassion, [and finally] (3) activities that contribute to spiritual re-creation and rest from daily occupation.”

For us, the Sabbath is our powering-up that sustains us through the week. We are rejuvenated on this day to continue in ministry throughout the week in the midst of our ministries. In our version of the celebration, we dress up, go to church, eat a big meal, and spend time with our family and friends. But how often do we follow through with the ritual blindly, so tired from the busyness of the week, that we coast through Sunday only to start the week on what always seems to be “too short of a weekend?” Few of us actually practice both parts of the foundation of the Sabbath. We commemorate, but we don’t really rest. We don’t really keep the Sabbath in its fullness.

But who’s to blame us? We have so many responsibilities during the week that they inevitably spill over to the weekend. The things we couldn’t get to in during the week we end up trying to catch up on, on the weekend. So what happens to us? We don’t rest; we don’t take the time to recover, to revamp, to breathe. We don’t take the time to sit in solitude and marvel at God’s Glory. For so many of us in this room, the closest thing we have to the restful part of the Sabbath is the Taize service. That is an amazing resource to us yet that only lasts an hour. I think it’s a safe assumption to say that we all struggle with this solitude more than we should.

This past summer I was fortunate enough to participate in a “spirituality and wilderness” course offered at the seminary. We began by visiting some caves out in west Texas in the small town of Sonora. From there we moved on to New Mexico, where we had fun rock-climbing and repelling, and even doing some high-ropes work. The pinnacle of the trip, however, was an eight day excursion into the mountains of southern Colorado. Each one of us carried fifty pound packs into the wilderness where we were isolated from all forms of distractions. We weren’t allowed to take cell phones, i-pods, not even watches! The culmination of the hiking adventure ended with a one day, two night “solo”. For those of you who have never gone camping on this level, as I hadn’t, a “solo” is where they basically send you out into the wilderness with nothing but a tarp for shelter, a little bit of food, and the clothes you carried in. You’re separated from the other people in the group and you aren’t supposed to wander around alone in the mountains. The idea of this exercise was to provide an opportunity to confront God in solitude. We were to spend time just listening and resting, basically keeping the Sabbath. I, however, spent that time in sheer anxiety. I had never done anything like this trip before and I was completely out of my element. Instead of spending that time in quiet, contemplative reflection, I spent it in anxious boredom.

I spent hours thinking of a myriad of other things, responsibilities I had when I got back, what food I was going to eat when I got back, I even sang random songs in my head, most of which I could only remember one verse or just the chorus. I couldn’t wait to get back to Austin! So now after months of being back, weeks of being under the stress of school and responsibility, I wonder about what could have been. If I had more experience with solitude, with rest, could I have gotten more out of it? If I had had a different mindset, could I have rejoiced in that moment of rest and reveled in the glory of God’s creation? So how can we observe our next Sabbath and engage in spiritual re-creation and not recreation?

-- Jose Lopez, Campus Ministry Intern