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Part I: Ceasing
And God blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy because of it he ceased from all the work of creating that he had done. (Genesis 2:3)
To “keep the Sabbath holy” means to recognize that the rhythm of six days of work and one day of ceasing work is written into the very core of our beings. Note that it is a “Sabbath to the Lord”—a ceasing to honor the covenant God.
Cease not only from work itself but also from the need to accomplish and to be productive, from worry and tension that accompany our modern criterion of efficiency, from our efforts to be in control of our lives as if we were God, from our possessiveness and enculturation, and, finally, from the humdrum and meaninglessness that result when life if pursued without the Lord at the center of it all.
Dawn explains one practice of ceasing, “If, before I fall asleep, I find myself dwelling on aspects of my work, I write down whatever is bothering me on a piece of paper and put it in my study so that I don’t have to think about it anymore… Another aspect of preparation for ceasing work is putting all work materials away as I get ready for the Sabbath.”
Our weekly ceasing reminds us that the value of work lies not in itself nor in the worth it gives us, but in the worship of God that takes place in it. Jesus never called anyone to work. Rather, Jesus calls each one of us to the vocation of following him and of glorifying God in every dimension of our lives.
Ceasing Productivity & Accomplishment
One of the ugliest things about our culture is that we usually assess a person’s worth on the basis of his or her productivity and accomplishments. One of the Sabbath practices that supports this ceasing from productivity is the intentional choice to use time to simply be with people.
The need to accomplish leads to a terrible frenzy about time, so the criterion for everything in our society has become efficiency. Dawn explains, “During the times I am not able to do very much, I forget that more important things are happening in me as God works to change my character and transform me into his likeness. If I am so worried about my productivity, I usually miss the lessons He is allowing me to experience so that I can be changed.”
Parents raise children primarily by who they are, not by what they do. God certainly didn’t choose Israel because of their accomplishments or productivity.
Ceasing Anxiety, Worry, and Tension
One of the main causes of modern stress is that we have too much to do. It is necessary to concentrate specifically on ceasing to worry as part of our Sabbath-keeping habits. The practice of thanksgiving is one of the best ways to cease worrying.
Sabbath gives not only refreshment, which eases tension in the days that follow, but also new perspectives, new priorities, and a new sense of God’s presence, which all cause the tensions themselves to assume a less hostile shape during the week to come.
Ceasing Our Trying to Be God
When we cease working, we dispense with the need to create our own future. This is the message throughout the narrative of the Hebrew people – God will provide for his people; they don’t have to struggle to work things out for themselves.
Our own materialism is challenged by the importance of trusting God instead of ourselves for our future. When we get our priorities straight and remember that God is God and that we are merely His servants, we are empowered to do all that we can to be good stewards of the gifts and resources we have been given. To cease being in control of our lives leads to a greater freedom.
When we order our lives around the focus of our relationship with God by letting our Sabbath day be the highlight of our week, toward which everything moves and from which everything comes, then the security of God’s presence on that day will pervade the week.
Ceasing Our Possessiveness
A special appreciation of possessions and a desire not to be dominated by them are part of keeping the Sabbath day holy. This corresponds to the New Testament idea of stewardship—that we do not own our possessions, but are instead entrusted with them in order to serve God with them.
One of the reasons for refraining from buying or selling on Sabbath days is that to buy or sell puts the focus on all the wrong things. We think about what we want instead of what God wants. We let possessions dominate our desires instead of longing for the presence of God.
Unfortunately, we “go to church,” meaning a building, and expect to find God there, instead of experiencing the presence of God in the time of worship. Six days of our week are dominated by the motif of buying and selling, but the Sabbath is a day of giving and ceasing our striving for things. As we keep the Sabbath, instead of our possessing things or space, time possesses us.
Ceasing Our Enculturation
Nothing in Christianity supports our contemporary idolatry of space and things.
Scholars credit the Jews’ observation of the Sabbath with preserving their unique identity during the Babylonian captivity. Jewish essayist Achad Haam noted, “The Sabbath has preserved the Jews more than the Jews have preserved the Sabbath. If the Sabbath had not restored to them the soul, renewing every week their spiritual life, they would have become so degraded by the depressing experiences of the workdays, that they would have descended to the last step of materialism and of moral and intellectual decadence.”
It seems that Sunday became the exclusive day for worship only after persecution in Jerusalem dispersed the Christians and caused Christianity’s great expansion among the Gentiles. The change was legislated by edict on Sunday observance issued by Emperor Constantine in 321 B.C.
Why is it that we pay attention to the commandments not to murder and steal (and think those are terrible sins), but don’t recognize the significance of our failure to obey the commandment to observe the Sabbath day? Certainly if we honor one day as a day set apart to concentrate on the holiness of God, our priorities will be restored and we will again seek God’s will concerning our relationships with parents, with sexual partners, and with possessions.
We do not conform to our culture if we choose not to be dominated by possessions or the anxiety to acquire more of them, but decide to give away much of what we have and use what we have been given as good stewards who desire to enjoy the things of God for the purposes of God.
In Genesis 2, God finished the work he had been doing by the seventh day, so on the seventh day, He rested from all His work. The close connection between the sixth and seventh days imply that human beings, whom God made in His image on the sixth day, will be faithful to that image by resting and ceasing on the seventh day, even as God did.
Ceasing the Humdrum and Meaninglessness
Celebrating the Sabbath is different from running away. We do not merely leave the dimensions discussed—we actually cease letting them have a hold on our lives.
In contrast to the technological society, in which the sole criterion of value is the measurement of efficiency, those who keep the Sabbath find their criteria in the character of God, in whose image they celebrate life.
The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of Sabbath. It is not an interlude but the climax of living. The delight of the Sabbath and its resting, embracing, and feasting give new energy and meaning to life as its climax and focal point.
Part II: Resting
Martin Luther stressed the importance of spiritual rest in his “Treatise on Good Works” as follows: “The spiritual rest which God intends in this commandment is that we not only cease from our labor and trade but much more—that we let God alone work in us and that in all our powers do we do nothing of our own.”
To give ourselves a day’s break from emotional and intellectual problems enables us to come back to them with fresh perspectives, creative insights, and renewed spirits. Just as true resting from work is more than ceasing to work, so the complete resting of our whole being is more than mere physical rest without labor. To rest utterly in the grace of God is the foundation for wholistic rest.
Spiritual Rest
One of the necessary tools for spiritual resting is the Word of God. The Torah was the focus of the Sabbath for the Jews, who spent part of the day immersed in the study of it.
By means of God’s Word, we set our minds and spirits upon heavenly things and set aside our daily business in order to rest in the grace of God.
A rabbinic commentary on Genesis explains what was created on the seventh day: “Tranquility, serenity, peace, and repose.” All these words create images not merely of physical resting, but of the resting of our whole being, our true selves.
One of the deepest needs in our technologized, and therefore non-intimate, society is the need for the tranquility of spirit. The greatest result of Sabbath resting is the opportunity to know the presence of God, no matter what our present circumstances might be.
In short, spiritual rest enables us to let God be God. When we cease from all our labors to control or to understand, there is time in our space for the eternal.
Physical Rest
The Sabbath is never a day to allow ourselves to be pushed (especially by our own false guilt or by others’ expectations) into activity of any kind. If we are primarily engaged in physical exertion during the week, the Sabbath offers a physical respite. For those of us involved in the opposite rhythm of sedentary labor, the Sabbath offers a contrasting change of gentle physical enjoyment.
The interchange of physical activity and rest has been studied extensively by Juan-Carlos Lerman, whose research at the University of Arizona shows the biological need for rest every seventh day and the energizing value of rest. According to Lerman’s theory, failing the rest after six days of steady work will lead to insomnia or sleepiness, hormonal imbalances, fatigue, irritability, organ stress, and other increasingly serious physical and mental symptoms.
Eugene Peterson, author of “The Pastor’s Sabbath,” insists, “Nothing less than a command has the power to intervene in the vicious, accelerating, self-perpetuating cycle of faithless and graceless busyness, the only part of which we are conscious being our good intentions.”
If we are not able to rest one day a week, we are taking ourselves far too seriously.
Emotional Rest
Very often we are too emotionally drained to be able to cope with what is happening to us or because of us. The rush of time, the pace of change, the frenzy of demands upon us all leave us physically exhausted.
The Sabbath is a day set apart for deepening our relationships with God, and that necessarily leads to emotional healing. A special day set apart for prayer and meditation is a great gift for our emotional healing. A great part of emotional healing of the Sabbath lies in its contribution to both solitude and community. We need silent spaces, time for reflection and meditation. On the other hand, we also need communal interaction, and the activities of the Sabbath day encourage family unity, leisurely conversation, and growing friendships.
The rhythm of Sabbath times alone and together with others can bring great healing rest to our emotional lives. When so much of our life is unsure and dependent upon circumstances beyond our control, the sureness of one day in every seven to set everything aside gives us emotional stability. A day of Sabbath rest satisfies our profound need for time to allow ourselves to feel, to be sensitive, to experience all the gifts of life more thoroughly.
Intellectual Rest
One of the stultifying effects of our culture is that it doesn’t give us much time for creative and reflective thinking. Sabbath keeping enables us to understand the larger purposes of God and to place our intellectual work within that cosmic framework.
When we are rested, we can think more objectively. Oftentimes our great frustrations in thinking arise because our perspectives are so clouded by the immediate impact of problems or pressures or pains.
Holy time creates calm. Not only will that calmness last into the rest of the week and enable us to think things through more thoroughly, but also it will free us to be more creative.
When a building is renovated, old materials are removed so that the new can be constructed more sturdily with better materials. In the same way, we need Sabbath resting from our old intellectual patterns in order to bring in the new building blocks of the spiritual perspectives with which God wants us to order our thinking.
Aids to Rest
Now it is time to pause and consider what practices you may want to develop in order to let your Sabbath keeping be a holy time of ceasing and laying aside work, productivity, worry, striving to be God, possessing, and all the other entrapments of our culture and its meaninglessness.
Sometimes a walk alone (in the presence of God) brings vast emotional healing, but at other times pouring out sadness to a friend is more helpful.
The things most conducive to intellectual rest are those aids that either lead us to new, creative paths of thinking or strengthen our minds in God so that the painful thinking that we have to do in days to come is undergirded.
An Ethics of Character
Our ethics are founded upon the grace of God. We value people not for their accomplishments but for who they are. We discover new serenity when we allow ourselves to be rather than forcing ourselves to do.
The Sabbath rhythm leads to an ethics of becoming (how our character is being developed) and not of doing (how we react in specific situations).
Nicholas Wolterstorff in his book Until Justice and Peace Embrace, asserts that “a rhythmic alternation of work and worship, labor and liturgy is one of the significant distinguishing features of the Christian’s way of being-in-the-world.”
Part III: Embracing
Dawn explains, “I entitled this section Embracing rather than Choosing (which was my original title) because I realized that I needed a stronger word to convey the intensity with which we grasp the positive aspects of Sabbath keeping… By embracing God’s instructions in response to his immense grace and love, we choose to imitate God.”
Embracing Intentionality
Embracing intentionality is taking care of how we do what we do. Sabbath keeping says clearly that we are not going to do what everybody else does. We are going to be deliberate about our choices in order to live truly as we want to live in response to the grace of God.
Christianity does not provide an elaborate set of rules to follow for keeping the Sabbath. We all know how those rules became ends in themselves rather than means to an end for some of the Pharisees in Jesus’ day.
The Jews’ original intention was to be deliberate about their actions in order to recover their identity as the beloved, holy people of God. Christians would do well to follow that kind of intentionality. If we were more deliberate about our lifestyles, we might be more conscious ourselves of God’s grace, of who we are as God’s people, and of how discipleship involves careful choices.
Embracing the Values of the Christian Community
We must positively—and deliberately—choose the values of the kingdom of God: a different mindset about what is important in and for our lives.
The fellowship of God’s people offers tight bonds of intimacy. Within these supports, the individual finds order, solidarity, a sense of direction, and hope. An important virtue in the Christian community is the priority of worship. We choose to spend our time, especially on Sabbath days, in company with others committed to God, remembering our identity as his people together, celebrating our oneness in his grace.
Worship and devotional times are especially important because they give us materials for thinking about other dimensions of God’s values that we will want to hold together in the Christian community. The early Christian community celebrated with glad and generous hearts (Acts 2:42-47).
To be a Christian community together, we need time together. Observing the Sabbath gives us the intentional time for deepening the bonds of our community and enfolding each of us more foundationally in the values we share.
Embracing Time instead of Space
One of the specific choices among the values of the Christian community is embracing time instead of space. One of the foremost is the deliberate decision to focus on events in time with persons rather than using time to acquire or accomplish things.
Jesus honored the Sabbath. He spent it worshiping and teaching. However, because he truly embraced time instead of space, he cherished persons rather than rules (so he healed a woman on the Sabbath). Do our Sabbath practices—and our actions on other days as well—set others free from the things that put them into bondage?
Sabbath keeping means an investment in individuals rather than possessions and accomplishments. Ceasing our work and concentrating on spiritual resting create the possibility for deeper caring about the persons whom God brings into our day.
When we experience being enveloped by Sabbath time, we become people who are not enslaved to time. We get in touch with eternity and bring eternal values into all the days of our week.
Embracing Giving instead of Requiring
The Sabbath practice of giving rather than accumulating, of caring for the needs of others instead of requiring for oneself, of putting aside one’s personal pleasure in order to create pleasure for many helps transform us. We need the freedom that inevitably results from choosing to be stewards rather than possessors.
From 2 Corinthians 8:2, this is the most unusual equation in the history of humanity: most severe trial + overflowing Joy + extreme poverty = rich generosity! Paul rejoiced that the Corinthians’ contributions to the needs of others resulted in overflowing expressions of thanks to God. This is one of the most delightful blessings that come from giving: the deepening of faith of those who receive.
Good stewardship in the Biblical sense lies in recognizing that God gives us all we need to abound in good works and in trusting him to provide what is needed for the ministries to which he has called us. Where our money is, that is where our hearts are also (Luke 12:34).
If we are involved in giving to various missions concerns and ministries, we will inevitably be involved in prayer for their work, even as recipients will pray in gratitude for our support. A special part of our Sabbath prayers can include the various mission agencies or persons in ministry whom we support with our finances.
Embracing Our Calling in Life
The Sabbath is a day for counting our blessings and embracing the goodness of our own particular circumstances. God’s people recognize that our lives are part of the larger purposes of God.
In The Mustard Seed Conspiracy, Tom Sine emphasizes that we ask the wrong question if we search for God’s will in our lives. He says that we should instead see what God is doing in the world and become part of the program.
Quality time spent with others in conversation and prayer often strengthens our own notion of who we are and what we are to do with our lives. In the moments of ceasing work and the need to accomplish, we can get more fully in touch with who we truly are, and that helps us know the resources with which God created us in order that his purposes could be uniquely fulfilled in our lives.
God has uniquely equipped each of us for our particular roles and He will provide all that we need for the ministry to which He has called us. Immersing ourselves in His love on the Sabbath overwhelms us with His grace, clarifies our perceptions of our role, and empowers us for the tasks that He makes clear.
Embracing Wholeness—Shalom
Shalom designates being at peace with ourselves, health, wealth, fulfillment, satisfaction, contentment, tranquility, and—to sum it all up—wholeness. One of the ways in which the Sabbath contributes to our wholeness is that it frees us to enjoy all the dimensions of our being. As we enjoy art or music and appreciate beauty, as we experience the healing and rediscovery of our emotions, as we celebrate our true masculinity and femininity, these things bring greater balance to our lives. Moreover, in the integration that through ceasing, resting, embracing, and feasting produce, we know our real identity, and that leads to the genuine humility and confidence of truth.
We crave order to give us a sense that things are under control. Robert North, author of “The Derivation of Sabbath” found the world discovered that a seven-day week matches our inmost, yet “the adaptation of various ancient elements into an invariably-recurrent sabbath of highly purified observance was an original and immensely influential cultural achievement of the Mosaic revolution.”
The most important ordering takes place in our lives when we observe the Sabbath focus of placing God at the center and then prioritize everything else in proper relation to that focus.
We can establish customs that hold us together and build a special bond of meaningful and Joy-full memories from happy, celebrative times together. Dawn explains, “Every week, I begin the Sabbath with Kiddush prayers and candles, spend time in worship and Bible Study, eat different foods from those of the rest of the week, and end the Sabbath celebration with candles and the Havdalah (farewell) prayers.”
Sabbath keeping helps us discover new dimensions of God, for in its silences we often meet the God hidden in our afflictions. In its disciplines, we can learn how pain can be redeemed. Even though God might be silent, our ceasing from spiritual endeavor and our spiritual resting enable us to meet him in the holiness and eternity which the day shares with him.
Embracing the World
The first place we embrace intentionality is choosing carefully how and why we do what we do. We live deliberately in order to embrace a quality of life that is possible only in relationship with the Lord of the Sabbath. We do not have to do anything on the Sabbath day, so we are free to move as the Holy Spirit leads us, to participate in whatever opportunities the day gives. Thereby, we are set free to care more deeply about others and to discover more richly who they are as fellow children of God.
The Sabbath day often enables us to discover new insights into our own calling in life and to embrace that calling more thoroughly. Instead of society’s criterion of efficiency, keeping the Sabbath offers the will and purposes of God as the ultimate criteria.
Part IV: Feasting
Observing the Sabbath includes not only freedom from, and repentance for, work and worry (ceasing), the renewing of our whole being in grace-based faith (resting), and the intentionality of our choosing and valuing (embracing), but also the fun and festivity of a weekly eschatological party.
Feasting is a right-brained activity that gives us better balance—since most of us spend our workdays engaged in primarily left-brained activities.
Feasting on the Eternal
Just as Monet went back day after day to capture an effect, so we go back week after week for the effect of the Sabbath in order to paint into our spirits the eternal, the presence of God. We do this primarily through our personal and corporate study of the Scriptures, in moments of silence, and through our personal and corporate worship.
Karen Burton Mains, author of Making Sunday Special, emphasizes that our Saturday habit of getting ready for Sunday is the discipline of getting ready for the Lord’s final coming.
The Word of God becomes Revelation to us when we receive it as God’s Word addressed personally to each of us. Only with humility and gratitude can we approach the table of God’s Word to feast there on his eternal love.
Sabbath keeping helps us by offering a day in which we recognize that we are incapable of providing for ourselves—either physically or spiritually. If we are to feast spiritually, God must provide the manna of his Word. Only by His grace has He chosen to reveal Himself to us; only by His grace can we understand and believe what His revelation declares. Many times we cannot hear God’s voice because we want him to speak our language. The great gift of Sabbath keeping is that we set aside a whole day to focus on seeing God, to choose His holy ways in order to experience His presence.
Unfortunately, our common expression “I’m going to church” often destroys our sense that we are “going to worship.” To say the latter might remind us that worship is a feast, a delightful experience, a holy time in the presence of God.
The presence of God in our worship, in his Word, and in our customs for keeping the day transforms us for the entire week into persons whose values are not transient, into Sabbath people who carry the kingdom of God within them wherever they go.
Feasting with Music
Does the music in your congregation elevate God alone? Or is it so subjectively slanted that it focuses on me, the worshiper, and my feelings?
Ephesians 5:19 encourages us to sing and make music to the Lord in our hearts, and many of the Psalms urge us to make a Joy-full noise to the Lord and shout to God with cries of Joy. What matters is how the Holy Spirit is using music to mold who I am—who we are—becoming.
Feasting with Beauty
When we observe a day especially set apart for beauty, all the rest of life is made more beautiful.
Especially on the Sabbath day (but throughout the week, too, of course), we want our homes to reflect our care and concern that the home be a place of rest, of fulfillment, of God’s gracious love.
Reflecting on God’s goodness in all its beautiful forms, we realize more profoundly that we are a special part of His creation and designed especially for His purposes in a uniquely beautiful way.
May our Christian observances of the Sabbath be filled with light and loveliness, so that the radiance and Joy of the day can soften our griefs and trials and bring beauty to the other days of our weeks.
Feasting with Food
It is sad that for many, to feast means to make gluttons of themselves.
The Sabbath is a day for feasting in the best sense of the world. In general, Americans don’t know how to feast because they don’t know how to fast. Sabbath feasting—celebration—draws its meaning because of its contrast to fasting—the simple life—of the other six days. Even in their poorest times, the Jews make every effort to buy special foods and candles that mark keeping the Sabbath.
Since most Americans have all kinds of special things to eat every day, for many the only way to make Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts uncommon is by eating more.
Many of those who suffer in poverty know better than we rich Americans the delight of God’s provision. When we are not forced to live simply, we lose track of the wonder of God’s provision. One way to increase our sense of the delight of the Sabbath is by eating more simply during the week and saving favorite foods for our holy celebrations.
If we are gluttons all of the time, we do not know what it means to go without luxury, much less the essentials. If we consciously choose to live more simply most of the time, so our Sabbath feasting is a holy celebration, then we are aware of how special those holy occasions are. Inevitably, this will lead to a greater concern for those who are never able to feast, for those whose very lives are threatened by our gluttony.
We fast so that we can more profoundly enjoy the feast. We do all that we can to make the feast special. We share our feast with those in need. And we look for God’s surprises in the way he provides for us and in the poor guest who brings us his presence.
Feasting with Affection
One of the most terrifying aspects of the technological society is its loss of intimacy. Many people in our culture are desperate for affection, and most do not know how to give or receive it.
Sabbath keeping offers hope for relationships because of its emphasis on one’s relationship with God, its rhythms of community and solitude, its gift of time, and its call to cease striving and productivity and work. Furthermore, the intentionality of the day lends itself to a conscious enjoyment of our relationships with, and delight in, each other as the outgrowth of our delight in Yahweh.
Our relationships are like the spokes of a wheel—the closer we draw to the center (God), the closer we are to the other spokes. Sabbath time enables us to experience deeper affection by giving us opportunities to share closely with our loved ones our thoughts, prayers, desires, emotions, disappointments, intentions, and values.
When members of the Christian community treat one another with holy affection, they meet the need for intimacy and enfold each other in the embrace of God. Christian community can promote social intimacy in various dimensions of life by offering opportunities for Sabbath fellowship in worship, meals, activities, programs, and possibilities for service.
Feasting and Festival
Sabbath keeping offers us a unique opportunity to celebrate, for what we commemorate is God’s constancy and consistency, His order and faithfulness, the preciousness of life under His sovereignty. It is not like our birthdays which we celebrate because they happen once a year. Rather, we celebrate every seven days because God’s grace happens always.
Every worship service becomes a special festival of some specific aspect of God’s provision. The Sabbath is an intentional day of remembering how Yahweh ordained the practice of Sabbath keeping by His own example at Creation, how the people of Israel observed it throughout their history, and how Jesus continued to practice and honor it, especially in His acts of compassion. Moreover, to keep the Sabbath is also to look to the future, when we will finally know the perfect ceasing of all work, the ultimate resting in the completion of God’s purposes, the total embracing of all God’s best gifts, and the eternal feasting in the very presence of our Lord.
To keep the Sabbath invites us to have festival fun, to play, to enjoy our guests and our activities, to relish the opportunity for worship, to celebrate the eternal presence of God himself. We feast in every aspect of our being—physical, intellectual, social, emotional, spiritual—and we feast with music, beauty, food, and affection. Our bodies, minds, souls, and spirits celebrate together with others that God is in our midst.
Sabbath Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, and Feasting
For six days a week, human beings are involved in the act of making, shaping, and transforming the world. So, we take one solid period of time, twenty-four hours, to change our relationship to the world—to refrain from acting upon it and instead to stand back and celebrate the grandeur and mystery of creation.
One of the most important parts of Sabbath keeping is the involvement of the worshiping community. We cannot keep the day alone.
When the Sabbath is finally fulfilled, our divisions and weaknesses will cease forever. We will rest eternally in God’s grace and love. We will embrace his kingdom and sovereignty ultimately and perfectly. We will feast unceasingly in his presence.
May you “Keep the Sabbath Wholly,” just as God instructed…as you shoot for the stars!