February 27, 2005

I asked Jill what it meant to keep the Sabbath and she said, “Not doing laundry.” I bet if I asked each one of you what it meant to keep the Sabbath, I would get a variety of answers ranging from a literal interpretation to a more personally customized meaning. The wide range of answers reminds us that the fourth commandment is not an easy commandment to understand let alone keep. We all have our own understandings and beliefs about what it means to keep the Sabbath, mostly because our faith tradition has not done a very good job in helping us Christians understand what Sabbath keeping means.

It is easy for us to point fingers at the Jewish religious leaders and see how they turned the original intent of Sabbath into a set of rules, regulations, and prohibitions, but the Church throughout its own history is not an innocent bystander. The early Church leaders and theologians, even the Reformers, did not agree on how Christians should keep the Sabbath or if they should keep it at all. For them, the Sabbath was strictly a Jewish observance because it was done on the seventh day of the week as a remembrance of God’s resting on the seventh day from God’s work of creation. But Christians had another day that was their primary and most important day, Sunday, the day of Resurrection, the Lord’s Day.

This conflict lead some Church leaders to dismiss the practice of Sabbath keeping all together citing that since the most important day for Christians is Sunday, and not Saturday, then Christians are no longer bound to keeping the Sabbath, therefore the fourth commandment has no bearing on the practice of the Christian faith. Other Church leaders agreed that Christians are no longer bound to Sabbath keeping on Saturday, but they disagreed that Sabbath keeping should be done away with all together. They argued that for Christians, the Sabbath is not Saturday, but Sunday, the Lord’s Day, since that was Christianity’s most important day.

But in the end, the Church did with the Lord’s Day exactly what the Jewish religious leaders did with the Sabbath, they turned the Lord’s Day into a quasi-Sabbath with just as many rules, regulations, and prohibitions about what could be done and not done on Sunday – even to the determent of the well-being and care of people. A story is told about a leader of the reformed movement in Scotland relating a story about an Irish family, who was destitute on the street on a snowy January night in 1847. One child out of the seven had died, and the mother was dying herself, but the Church ruled that soup kitchens for the destitute were not to be opened on the Sabbath for fear of offending the Lord.

We must never forget that religion does not consist in rules and regulations. If being a Christian simply means abstaining from work or pleasure on Sunday, attending church on that day, and saying prayers and reading the Bible on that day, then Christianity would be easy. Whenever we forget that love and forgiveness and mercy and ministry are at the heart of the Christian faith and replace them with rules and regulations we do a disservice to the Gospel and make a mockery of the good news of Jesus Christ.

Faithfulness has at all times been far more about doing things than in refraining from doing things. God’s commandments are important, and Jesus’ teachings about how we should live cannot be neglected, but if the practice of faithfulness and obedience to God’s commandments as disciples of Jesus Christ stops us from being with people, for people, and helping people then our religion is no religion at all, and it becomes merely a check list of prescribed do’s and don’ts. People matter far more than systems and institutions.

Given our wide variety of answers to what it means to keep the Sabbath, maybe what we need is a fresh, new approach to Sabbath keeping by changing the question from how one keeps the Sabbath to why we should keep the Sabbath. I do not believe that the fourth commandment to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy is null and void for Christians. The Ten Commandments are still our commandments even though we are Christians, because they are still God’s Word to us.

Being a Christian does not mean that the Old Testament Scriptures have no relevance for us. The Old Testament is and always will be the story of God’s creative and redeeming and saving acts of grace toward God’s people. The New Testament is a fulfillment of the Old, but not it’s replacement. But this does not mean that we should treat the Sabbath the same way as the Jews.

The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the same God who we know in Jesus Christ, and the story of the fore-parents of our faith is our story, but we are not Israelites. We are Christians, Christians who have as our most important day, not Saturday, but the Lord’s Day. To speak about how one is to keep the Lord’s Day is to do the same thing that the Jews did with the Saturday and the early Church did with Sunday. This is why the question needs to be changed so that we may discover a much deeper purpose for keeping the Sabbath.

There is no doubt that the world is changing. Even saying that is an understatement. One does not have to look long to see another example of the continuing secularization of society, the on-going debate over the place of the Ten Commandments in government and public buildings is just one of many examples. We are living more and more into a post-Christendom age. No longer is society interested in maintaining the long held status quo of Sunday inactivity.

I miss those days when nothing was open on Sundays, and everyone was just expected to be in Church, and everyone was expected to be home with their families. Those days are gone. Sunday has become just another day, just another cog in the wheel of the capitalist machine in a post-Christendom age. Society runs on a 24/7/365 schedule. Church is not as important for people as it once was. Families no longer spend time together as they once did. Instead, they are fractured by television, Internet surfing, busy calendars, and work schedules.

I, of all people, know that Sunday cannot be the Sabbath for everyone. I cannot take the Lord’s Day off every week and not do anything. Some people have to work on Sundays that’s just how it is. I also know that sometimes it seems as if there are just not enough days in the week or hours in the day to get done what needs to get done. My schedule is busy between family, church, commitments, study, teaching, and everything else going on. I of all people know that I am not always faithful when it comes to keeping the Sabbath. I know that this is one commandment that I have a hard time keeping mainly because I don’t have the time to keep it, and that is such a poor excuse.

What I so often fail to remember is that by keeping Sabbath, by keeping one day holy and to the Lord, I become intentional about keeping myself in communion with God and remembering God’s covenantal relationship with all of God’s creation. Sabbath keeping is an intentional act. It is God’s intentional act to build into creation an ordering of working/resting rhythm, an ordering of how creation itself is to live in communion with God and with one another. And it is our intentional act when we put aside all human striving and recognize the decisive role of God’s abiding presence in our lives. Sabbath is to be a time of communion as well as rest, a time of service as well as study, a time of relationship building with God and others as well as a time reflection and prayer.

Jesus says to the Jewish leaders, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.” The Sabbath is not humanity’s creation, but God’s gift to humanity. Sabbath is a divine humanitarian gift from the grace of God for God’s people. It is not to be a burden, but a joy. It is not to be a set of rules and regulations, but an intentional act of our faithfulness and obedience toward the God who created and ordered all things and all people.

To keep the Sabbath is to be purposeful in our participation in God’s intention for not only the rhythm of creation, but also for the relationship of creation. Sabbath keeping carries with it a cosmic significance. It means that we are intentional about being governed, not by the standards of a secularizing society, but by the God who created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them. It means that we are intentional about being dependent, not upon wealth and status for our joy and salvation, but upon the God who created us in God’s image for God’s purpose. It means that we are intentional about keeping the Lord, not at the outer edges of our life, but at the center of our life at all times and in all places. It means that we are intentional about keeping ourselves in tune, not with the society in which we live, but with God’s kingdom in which Jesus reigns as Lord and Savior. By keeping Sabbath, we make a bold claim about our priorities, the priorities of our faith and life and family and church.

On this spiritual journey through Lent, I pray that you will begin today, as I will, to be more intentional about keeping Sabbath, about keeping one day holy and to the Lord. The Lord’s Day is the most appropriate day, for this is the day we remember God’s gracious acts through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, this is the day when the Church family gathers together to worship and glorify God, to pray and fellowship together, to remember those who are the least, the lost, and the left out, and to study and discuss God’s Word for us, this is the day when we seek to enter more deeply into the meaning of faith and its implications for our life as Christ’s disciples.

But whatever day you choose to be the Sabbath, make it be a day when you commune with God and rest from rat race of society. Make it be a day when you build your relationship with God and with others. Make it be a day that you do something that connects you to God and gives you joy and fulfillment. Make it be a day that you can give your full attention to God’s presence in your life through prayer, study, service, fellowship, or in ministry to others, but whatever you do, do it not out of obligation or burden, but out of a faith that trusts in God’s presence, a love that knows no condition, and a hope that looks to the day when the Lord of the Sabbath will finally and fully make all things very good again. Amen.