Practicing Sabbath

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This past week at Kairos Los Angeles I talked about the importance of engaging in different practices that help us to become more like Jesus.  Part of what it means to become more like Jesus is walking in the Spirit and living a life more and more characterized the by fruit of the Spirit, including patience.

We live in a culture that is always in a hurry, encouraging us to stay busy non-stop.  It is interesting that the Chinese join two characters to form a single pictograph for busyness:  heart and killing.  Could it be that they understand that busyness kills the heart and makes us stop caring about the things we care about?

In last weeks message we talked about how one of the biggest obstacles to become more patient people is our view of time.  We took a look at how our culture views time and how God views time.  I’m not going to write about that, you can just download the mp3 and listen to the message if you want. 

WAYS TO OBSERVE SABBATH
This entry is simply to talk about how we practice Sabbath practically speaking.  The message gave the reasoning behind the gift of Sabbath.  Moltmann shares a great thought about Sabbath: “The Sabbath opens creation for its true future.  On the Sabbath the redemption of the world is celebrated in anticipation.  The Sabbath is itself the presence of eternity in time, and a foretaste of the world to come."  So how can we practice Sabbath? 

Here are a few suggestions that Eugene Peterson, author of The Message gives us in Working the Angles, suggestions that have helped me immensely.  He says, “ Sabbath means to quit.  Stop.  Take a break.  Cool it.  The word itself has nothing devout or holy in it.  It is a word about time, denoting our non-use of it, what we usually call WASTING time.”

While the reason for keeping Sabbath in Exodus is to imitate God in order to remember we are not God, the reason for keeping Sabbath in Deuteronomy is to remind us that we are no longer slaves.  As Eugene says,  “While the Israelites were in Egypt, they went about 400 years without a day off.  As a result they simply became hands, work units.  Not people made in the image of God, but equipment for making bricks and building pyramids.”

He goes on to give us some very practical advice – “The Biblical idea of the Sabbath is about praying and playing.  It’s not like the Puritans Sabbath that eliminates playing altogether and it’s not like the secular Sabbath that eliminates prayer altogether.  The true Sabbath combines both prayer and play and makes the day more complete.  I have found that it replenishes the soul.  God wanted us to see the importance of rest and replenish so much, that He commanded it, though He has not commanded which day.”

One definition he gives for a Sabbath that I really like is:  “Uncluttered time and space to distance ourselves from the frenzy of our own activities so we can see what God has been and is doing.  If we do not regularly quit work for one day a week, we take ourselves far too seriously.  The moral sweat pouring off our brows blinds us to the primal action of God in and around us.”

If you follow God’s example, you will take time to rest, find refreshing things to do, do things that rejuvenate your soul and allow you to refocus your life. Here are some of the practices that I have engaged in:

• Catching up on my rest, by not setting an alarm to get up (Of course if you have kids that may not be possible, since they are natural alarms.  Maybe you need to encourage a family nap time during the day.)

• Engaging in those things that recharge me emotionally

• Engaging in what refreshes me physically

• Engaging in what renews me spiritually

• Engaging in Sabbath with other friends, remembering the gifts and goodness of God

I like what Ruth Haley Barton says in Sacred Rhythms – “I would say do not make Sabbath keeping a weighty exercise.  Explore it with delight, as though you are learning from God together how to make the day special for both of you.  Then, be as intentional about protecting it as you can be, but do not become rigid and legalistic about it, which ruins the spirit of the day.”  After all it was Jesus who said, “The Sabbath was made for human beings, not human beings for Sabbath.”  Mark 2:27

Marva Dawn in Keeping Sabbath Wholly gives four helpful concepts for a Sabbath way of life that have helped me to develop my Sabbath in practical ways. Here they are:

CEASING - ceasing work, ceasing productivity and accomplishment, ceasing anxiety, worry and tension, ceasing our trying to be God, ceasing our possessiveness, ceasing our enculturation, and ceasing the humdrum and meaningless.

RESTING – spiritual rest, physical rest and emotional rest.

EMBRACING - intentionality, the values of Christian community, time instead of space, giving instead of requiring, our calling, wholeness, and our world.

FEASTING – on the eternal, with music, with beauty, with a meal with others, with affection, and with festival.

The Sabbath should be a time of rest, refreshment, rejuvenation and refocusing.  I like how Walter Brueggemann describes Sabbath, “Periodic, and regular disengagement from systems of productivity whereby the world uses people up to exhaustion.  That disengagement refers also to culture-produced expectations for frantic leisure, frantic consumptions, or frantic exercise." 

If you want to learn more about how to observe Sabbath, here are ten sites I have found interesting on the web:

God’s Counter-Cultural Invitation to Sabbath Rest from Calvin Institute of Christian Worship

Resources for Sabbath Keeping and Sabbatical Taking from Duke Divinity School

Practicing our Faith – Sermons, Essays and Study Guides about Sabbath

Keeping Sabbath: Reviving a Christian Practice by Dorothy Bass

The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics by Ched Myers

Judaism 101: Shabbat – A Jewish understanding of Sabbath

A Palace in Time by Abraham Joshua Heschel – Abraham meditates on the day ‘that can soothe all sadness away’

Celebrating the Sabbath! Learning to celebrate Sabbath the Messianic Jewish Way

Remember Sabbath by St. John in the Wilderness

Sabbath Keeping – An interview with Lynne Baab who has authored a book about Sabbath

Comments

[Ryan Bell]

Good stuff, JR. As a Seventh-day Adventist pastor it's always a little humbling to see others who haven't traditionally emphasized Sabbath doing a better job talking about it than we are. In the next couple of weeks I'll be writing two chapters on Sabbath for a book I'm writing with a friend. It should be interesting. Maybe you can read them for me when I'm done. Shabbat Shalom, brother!

[Erika Haub]

Hey, thanks for a great post! We just preached on the Sabbath last Sunday (we are working through the Ten Commandments) and I plan to share this with our congregation as a resource. One question--we are a body made up of many diverse peoples, some of whom are impoverished, and the need to work for them feels so critical. My husband and I have been in that position this last year where he worked every day, so that we could remain at this ministry. Anyway, any wisdom for those whose choice to work is more about food on the table for their kids and less about that next raise or second car? Thanks and God bless.

[Chris Ridgeway]

I love teaching on the sabbath.

Unfortunately, I still find, year after year in ministry, I suck at implementing it. I go in with good intentions, and often find myself afterwards feeling more, not less stressed.

Some of it concerns the selfish feeling I discovered inside of me: wanting to control the time by barricading it from outside influence. This idea was modeled for me as wise boundaries, but spiritually it became poisonous for me.

I like Eugene Peterson's comment on the balance between prayer and play.

Phew. Essentially, my comment is: this takes effort to do effortlessly.