October 1, 2006

The Fourth Word: Remember the Sabbath to Keep It Holy
Exodus 20:1-2, 8-11

Deb and I lived with and took care of an elderly woman for several months when I was in seminary. The woman was wealthy, cantankerous and legalistic. One Sunday afternoon soon after we moved in, we laid down on the living room floor to play a relaxing game of Parcheesi. Mrs. Crary had ridden her escalator chair back upstairs, where she was, as I recall, sitting in front of the mirror doodling with her waist-long hair. Soon, Deb quite innocently threw the dice, and then I took my turn. Within moments, Mrs. Crary yelled down from the banister surrounding the stairway, “We’ve never allowed anyone to play games in this house on a Sunday.” Not knowing exactly what to make of this, I took my next turn and rolled the dice again. “The Lord has blessed the Crary household over the years,” she called again, “and surely one of the major reasons is that we never allowed anyone to play games here on a Sunday.” As Deb and I slowly walked out of the house to catch a breath of fresh air, she said to me, “I hope Sunday never comes again as long as we live in the Crary house!”

Such images of Sunday were not at all uncommon when I was a child. The trees at the camp where I spent all of my summers—a wonderful camp, by the way—were plastered with signs prohibiting swimming and games on that day. In today’s world, however, these images seem like distant memories from the past. Rather than feeling the weight of rigidity and legalism, many people today pay no real attention to Sunday apart from an hour or two in the morning for attending church. In fact, this fourth word—this commandment concerning the Sabbath—is, I suspect, the most violated of all the commandments among contemporary Christians. Few people—including far too many pastors—think seriously about the Sabbath anymore, let alone attempt to put it into meaningful practice. If, as I’ve been suggesting, these commandments are rooted in God’s grace rather than law, the question is, “Why?” The answer, at least in part, lies in the human tendency to categorize and legalize virtually everything that we can get our hands on.

The Bible never really tells us how to enact the Sabbath, anymore than it gives us precise instructions on how to pray. Perhaps worse yet, neither the Bible in general nor this commandment in particular neatly define the “work” that we are instructed to avoid. As a result, many people—both past and present—have focused their attention, not so much on what we are called to do on the Sabbath, but what we are to refrain from. How much, for example, is a person allowed to lift on the Sabbath? It is clear, isn’t it, that all construction work must come to a halt on this sacred day, but what about carrying nails? What if a builder forgets that he has a small nail in his pocket and inadvertently carries it around with him? “Is that working?” the theologians wondered well before the time of Jesus. Are you allowed to pick up a pen or pencil on the Sabbath? A telephone receiver?

Or think about travel. In a day and age before cars and busses, how far could you walk on the Sabbath? A person can hardly stand or sit perfectly still for an extended period of time, so at what point does movement become work? To address this dilemma, certain Jewish theologians—we theologians often get a bad rap!—concluded that a person could walk “a Sabbath’s Day Journey” on the Sabbath, or roughly a quarter of a mile. To walk further was to violate this fourth word. To this very day, in certain Jewish communities, distance markers appear to help people know when they are reaching their allotted limit.

Such questions and restrictions, however, were hardly unique to what we sometimes perceive to be a group of Jewish legalists. All throughout Christian history, Sabbath celebrators—and there were some—endured the ridicule and scorn of similar Sabbath legalists. The Puritans arriving in America, for example, brought with them a seemingly endless list of Sabbath “do’s and don’ts.” Armed with so-called Blue Laws, various legalists continued the tradition of extracting any hint of joy from Sabbath practices. As the story goes, even George Washington himself was one day fined five dollars for riding his horse on a Sunday afternoon in Connecticut! Time and time again, the people of God have discussed and debated what they are not allowed to do on the Sabbath, neglecting at the same time to “remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy.” And in this seemingly unending legalistic context, both the prophets of Israel as well as Jesus, not to mention voices crying out throughout church history, remind us that “people were not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for people.”

So what do Sabbath celebrators believe? What lies at the heart of this fourth word? Notice, as a beginning point, that this fourth word is the first and one of only two positive commandments on the list. Importantly, the commandment does not read, “You shall not work on the Sabbath,” although it certainly includes the stoppage of work. It is possible, however, to stop working without observing the Sabbath in much the same way that it is possible to stop fighting without experiencing peace. Instead, the commandment instructs us positively both to “remember” the Sabbath and to “keep it holy.” Remembering the Sabbath involves intentionally practicing it in our individual and corporate lives, and keeping it holy requires that we in a meaningful way make the Sabbath different from the other six days of the week. This fourth word, then, does not simply instruct us to refrain from certain activities—work—one day out of seven, but invites us to practice and experience a periodic but regular “newness”—to take a break from the ordinary.

But where do we, particularly the recovering legalists among us, begin? In a very principled and gracious way, the Bible offers us two foundational reasons or purposes for the Sabbath, one here in Exodus 20 and the other in Deuteronomy 5, where the Ten Commandments appear again.

In Exodus 20:8-11, Sabbath observance is directly associated with God’s involvement in creation. God created the heavens and the earth in six days, we are told, and he rested on the seventh. By implication, what is good enough for God is good enough for us. But there is more to it than that. When God created the heavens and the earth, he placed within its very fiber a sense of order and rhythm—a sense of balance, if you will—that enables us to remain in right relationship with him and with each other. As good as godly work might be—and this commandment by implication encourages us to work hard during the other days of the week—God never intended for his creation, humans and animals alike, to live outside of this rhythm. God never intended for people to work endlessly, incessantly, and uncontrollably. He does not want us to overextend ourselves, take on added responsibilities that we have no business accepting, and to associate our self-worth with our own array of accomplishments. God does not want us to lose contact with him and the rest of creation and self-destruct in the process.

I remember some years ago watching a gerbil that belonged to a friend of mine. I had gerbils of my own, but none that acted in this way. This particular gerbil enjoyed running in his metal wheel, but unlike mine, he sometimes did not know when to stop. After running and running, he nearly fell out of the wheel and simply lay gasping in the cedar shavings. Then, one day, he ran too long and never left the wheel at all. There he was, dead in the wheel. The gerbil had literally run himself to death.

Many of us are like that sometimes. We wilt, run out of gas, fall flat on our faces, and the world we live in today does nothing to protect us. Thankfully, God does. The Sabbath, rooted in creation, invites us to live once again in step with God’s pace and rhythm. He takes the lead and we follow. While the world constantly encourages us to run faster and faster and to do more and more, like that gerbil who apparently did not know any better, the Sabbath calls to recognize that time itself is a sacred gift from God. Observing the Sabbath prevents us from secularizing time and turning it into a mere commodity for our own self-serving tendencies. Observing the Sabbath enables us to reconnect in deepening ways with ourselves, each other, and with God. To neglect the Sabbath, then, is to neglect God.

In Deuteronomy 5, where the Ten Commandments are recorded again, this fourth word appears with an entirely different rationale. No mention is made here of creation, but instead of the exodus. In keeping this fourth commandment, Israel is encouraged to remember the former days when they were slaves in Egypt and to celebrate the freedom that God has given them. In essence, the Sabbath is a day for reflecting on what we once were and on what we now are, thanks to God’s saving grace.

Our dog, Sniffles, has since he was a puppy stayed in our yard when we leave him out—he rarely wanders away. Bob Watts’ compost pile has proven to be too great a temptation lately, however, so I’ve been forced to attach a rope to Sniffles’ collar whenever I leave him out. Tied up and confined, his entire countenance seems to change. But when I am out with him and untie the rope, he prances all over the yard—free and clear. So it is with us. We are free, the Sabbath reminds us. God has taken the chains off—we don’t have to pull and fight against the rope. The Sabbath give us time to run around the yard, throw ball with the kids and stick our feet in the stream, all without feeling guilty!

Eugene Peterson, in an insightful article entitled “Confessions of a Former Sabbath Breaker,” attaches two words to these accounts appearing in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. In Exodus 20, according to Peterson, the Sabbath is a day set aside for us to pray. In Deuteronomy 5, the Sabbath is a day on which we are to play. Pray and play. These two activities or experiences, it seems to me, do in fact lie at the heart of the Sabbath. In his infinite goodness and grace, God has given to us a day to pray and a day to play—a day to hang out with him and a day to celebrate with others.

Three weeks into my first semester in seminary, one of my professors took me aside for a moment. He had only known me for three weeks, and yet he was perceptive enough to ask me this question. “If you were forced to make this choice,” he began, “would you rather have an ‘A’ in this course and lose your wife, or a ‘B’ and keep her?” I chose not to answer quickly, but instead went home and thought for awhile. That night, Deb and I made some significant changes in the way we lived our lives. From that day on, we decided to take the Sabbath principle seriously. We did the stopping part that the commandment requires of us—I never studied on Sunday after that. But we also did the “remembering” and “keeping holy” part as well—walks along the railroad tracks, trips to parks throughout Kentucky, and so on.

Frankly, I’ve had a bit of trouble experiencing living in God’s rhythm since becoming pastor here—Sunday is hardly a Sabbath for me. But I feel as though I am finally discovering the Sabbath again. Monday did not work for me. I was too tired to enjoy the day and typically “chilled,” to quote our beloved teenagers. Now that I’ve moved my Sabbath to later in the week, I’ve again begun to look forward to it and to use it in genuinely refreshing ways. I plan my Sabbath days, and I can hardly imagine thriving—even surviving!—without them. I pray and I play.

I want my staff here at the church to observe this biblical principle of Sabbath, and I want all of you to as well. Why? Because I am a raging legalist? No. Because I love you, and I want all of you to be whole. I want you to be well. I want you to live in accordance with God’s rhythm. I want you to pray and play.