Reclaiming Sabbath

What is the Sabbath? Who is it? Why is it? When, how and where is it? These days, many books and studies try to find the answers.
Well, we know who gave the Sabbath, and what it was — the gift of a day to worship and rest from work. Not that work isn't good. In fact, it seems six days of it are just fine with God, but a time of rest to renew, refresh and worship is important to Him too.
It's the when, how and where to observe Sabbath that gets complicated in our 24/7 and Open Sunday society.
It wasn't always so. When people get together, it's not unusual to talk about former times and recently, for me, the topic turns to the Sundays of our youth. No singing except for hymns, absolutely no whistling, no playing cards or ball or any other game that was fun, no polishing our shoes. (If we forgot to do it on Saturday, we went to Sunday School with dirty shoes.) No cooking — the food was prepared on Saturday.

Scenes of Sabbath taking by members of Burns Presbyterian, Georgetown, Guyana. Photo - Rev. Ken Stright

If your family owned a summer cottage, swimming was probably prohibited on Sundays, as shopping certainly was. Because I was raised on a farm, the animals were fed and milked before church, but my sainted father would rather have been hung from a tree than do any cultivating or sowing. He owned a threshing outfit and hired a crew to harvest all the grain in the area, but never, never, no matter what the weather, did he ever suggest his men go into the fields on Sunday. They may not have attended church, but after six arduous days of harvesting, it was their day of rest.
The Jewish Sabbath fell on the last day of the week. Early Christians, perhaps wanting to distance themselves from Jewish legalism, adopted the first day of the week, the day of Christ's resurrection, and celebrated it as the Lord's Day. In time, the two names became synonymous.

Perhaps in their zeal to keep the Sabbath holy, our ancestors with their long list of do-nots took the joy out of what should be the most festive day of the week, celebrating the risen Christ. Nevertheless, we must credit them for at least setting aside Sunday for worship and rest.
Today, that's not possible for many — police, firefighters, health-care workers, to name only a few — because the rest of us would consider it not only inconvenient but dangerous if they all walked off the job every Sunday. Unions and labour laws have set the work week at 40 hours but many workers bring home their laptops and cellphones to work longer and harder than my generation ever did. On days off, parents rush their children from activity to activity or shop and cook to fill the freezer with food for the next week while still trying to catch up on all the odd jobs. Who can blame them if, when they have an hour or so off, they go to the golf course to quiet their jangled nerves? And what about ministers who must work every Sunday? When is their Sabbath?

Two authors believe they have some answers. Lynn M. Baab (Sabbath Keeping, InterVarsity Press) says that everyone, where possible, needs a full day for Sabbath, but not necessarily on Sunday. A day for meditation and reading, but also a time for enjoying friends, listening to music, walking or taking in other activities that relax and bring you closer to God.
And while author Wayne Muller (Sabbath, Bantam Books) would not disagree with her, he strongly believes we can experience Sabbath times or even Sabbath moments any day of the week, any place in the world. That is probably true, but those quiet Sundays of the past when everyone stopped work to attend church had a calming, ritualistic quality missing today.
However, last summer, after reading Muller's book, I was much more aware of the Sabbath times I spent on my back porch, absorbing nature's beauty, enjoying a good book or chatting with friends over a leisurely lunch — times of grace blessed by God.

A few years ago, experts assured us that computers and other mind-dazzling devices would provide us with so much leisure time that we'd have to take courses to learn how to use it! But instead of increasing society's leisure time, these wonderful machines have proved to be work makers and slave drivers. There's less leisure time now because many people find it impossible to step off the treadmill of earning and spending. The Jews commence their Sabbath at sundown on Friday, not when they've finished work. Many Christians, on the other hand, can't stop work because it's never finished.
Earning and spending has a great deal to do with what happened to our Sunday Sabbaths. Productivity rules the lives of working people. Constant advertising brainwashes us until our needs, or at least our wants, far exceed what past generations expected when one car in the garage of a modest home with one bathroom for the whole family was enough. Now gargantuan houses line the streets with a bathroom for each bedroom and two or three cars in the garage. And even though many households have two wage earners with a lot more money to spend, they are often too tired to enjoy the benefits.

If all this made a society that was happier and more content it might make some sense. But common knowledge tells us it doesn't and that depression is more prevalent than ever. So despite all our busyness and keeping up the Gross Domestic Product, we don't seem to find fulfillment in our lives. Perhaps change is coming. Recently, a radio news item reported several companies organizing a spirituality or meditation hour for their employees, the idea being the workers would be even more productive if they had some down time in the middle of their day at the office. For some, this might be considered a Sabbath time.
Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath, has the last word. When he healed on the holy day and allowed his hungry disciples to pluck grain to feed themselves, he said the Sabbath was made for humanity and not the other way around. His views left his legalistic adversaries speechless but angry enough to kill him even though He never suggested that the Sabbath be annulled. We know he worshipped in the synagogue and in the temple on the Sabbath.
God, who is surely wiser, gave us the gift of the Sabbath for spiritual and humanitarian betterment and instructed us to keep it holy. But what is holy? Jesus' actions and words seem to define holy as what honours God and benefits our brothers and sisters. It seems to me in this chaotic 21st century, honouring and enjoying God and our neighbours hold more importance than ever.
We need to seek God's wisdom in the keeping of our Sabbaths so that we have time to worship Him (whatever the day), do His work by aiding our brothers and sisters at home and around the world and by celebrating Him in our hours of rest and recreation.