This
summer I read Lawrence Hill’s novel, The Book of Negroes. It portrays
the life of a girl who was abducted from her African village by slave traders
who killed both of her parents before her eyes. She is marched for weeks, naked,
chained to other captives, to the west coast of Africa. There the slaves are
stacked, shackled in the dark hold of a ship with their own vomit and excrement.
Some lose their sanity. They are thrown gruel in buckets to eat with their
hands. Once in the “free” world, they are auctioned off for a price, then marched
to plantations they work to produce wealth for their owners. A few years later the
girl has a baby boy. Wakes up one morning, he’s gone. Her owner had sold him,
explaining that he owns her, all of her, even her children.
God
gave the commandment to remember the Sabbath and rest to a people God had just freed
from slavery in Egypt. They had been oppressed 400 years building supply
cities for the pharaoh without one day of vacation.
According
to Egyptian and Babylonian world views, the majority of humans were created by
the gods to do all the hard work for them. The gods don’t like humans or care
what happens to them. Since kings represent the gods, slaves laboured for
kings. In the Indian caste system the ‘untouchables’ live as poor servants with
no way out. Even they believe that’s what they were “born for.”
Genesis
portrays a totally different view of humans, all humans. God created humans in
God’s own image. Every human is created with intrinsic worth. This has always
been a minority view. The fact that “human rights” is even in our thinking is
a result of the deep penetration of the biblical story in Western societies (Vinoth
Ramachandra, Subverting Global Myths, 100). The language of ‘equal
rights for all’ is rooted in the very Christian tradition that today many want
to marginalize. (Ibid, 101). Most academics and bureaucrats forget the
Christian influence that helped shape the 1948 United Nations Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (Ibid, 107).
So,
when God commands Sabbath keeping to downtrodden Hebrew slaves that he had done
so much to free, God is saying - not just to that ethnic group but to all
people - Do not accept the widespread dehumanizing view that you are not
persons, but work units, machines for making bricks and building pyramids. And
don’t impose that defaced view of humanity on others, not even your work
animals.
Question:
how many days of creation are recorded in Genesis? We hear arguments about six
literal days of creation. Genesis 2:2 reads, “on the seventh day God
finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all
the work that he had done.” God’s week has seven days. Our work is complete,
our lives are complete, when we rest from our work on a seventh day. God built
rest right into the rhythm of creation so that creation can be continually
recreated, refreshed and experienced by all as “very good” not just nonstop drudgery.
We take time to rest so we can “have a life.” Rest is part of being fully
human, in the image of God who rested.
We
can choose an ancient Eastern view of ourselves: you’re worth only what you
produce. That view is very alive and well. But God offers another. You’re of
incredible worth, just because I created you and love you. And that includes
the infant, the ill, the injured, the elderly, and the developmentally
challenged that aren’t capable of working to make things.
In
the first testament some of the consequences for not keeping the Sabbath seem,
on the surface, severe. (Exod. 31:15; Jer. 17:19-27, Ezek. 20:12-29). But
God’s concern is that by forgetting the Sabbath, people will forget living God,
forget who they are in God’s image, and revert to other gods and worldviews
that regard them as less than human and they end up enslaved and debased all
over again. Read the history, it happened. People began to think I don’t really
need Sabbath rest, I don’t need to worship God, I can get along fine myself,
like everybody else. That was the beginning of the downward spiral. Sometimes
took it a few generations to get really ugly. But it happened - the exile to Babylon, for instance. (Neh. 13:15-22)
In
North America, the delight of keeping the Sabbath has sometimes degenerated
into dull routine. “Do we have to go to church?” But church isn’t a static
place to go to; it’s a people of God who have discovered the wholeness that
comes from living by God’s example and teaching - for example, God’s rhythm of work
and rest.
Marva
Dawn has written a great book, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly. Sabbath
keeping, she says, involves:
1.ceasing
– Quit. Stop. Chill. Take a break from every day work - even the thought of
work, and to-do lists, bills to pay, possessions you want.
2.resting
– of the body, but also the mind, emotions, spirit. Our entire being.
3.embracing
– refocusing on God, the wholeness God has created us for, our calling as God’s
image bearers. Resting isn’t just empty, ‘vegging’, flipping channels. Abraham
Joshua Heschel observes, If work without dignity leads to misery, rest without
spirit leads to depravity (The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man, 17)
4.feasting
– celebrating God’s goodness individually and in corporate worship like this.
The slaves in Egypt weren’t allowed to meet for worship. One reason God freed
them for slavery is so they could worship in freedom). So, feast with beauty,
music, food, affection and socializing – not only because you have to
but because you get to.
As
you heard, we have no record of Jesus repeating the Sabbath commandment, but he
kept it himself. He frequently participated in Sabbath synagogue services. He
claimed to be Lord of the Sabbath. So part of following Jesus is keeping
Sabbath, but like he did.
When
Pharisees questioned Jesus about his disciples not keeping all the detailed
laws their teachers had added to God’s commandment, Jesus reminded them of the original
purpose of Sabbath: “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for
the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27). Reading on in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus also healed a man
with a withered hand on the Sabbath in spite of criticism from legalists,
asking, in effect, is it not OK to do someone good on the Sabbath? He healed many
people on the Sabbath (Mark 3:4, cf. Luke 13:16; 14:3; John 5:8; 7:23) Jesus
restores people on the Sabbath; that’s what Sabbath is for: restoration, healing,
revitalization.
So, Jesus helps us avoid unnecessarily restrictive,
nit-picking, legalism, which has maligned the church’s practice of Sabbath keeping
in the past, as some of you know. But Jesus also helps us to avoid
“conveniently” neglecting it to our own detriment, enslavement.
Sabbath
is a gift God has given only for our good, to help us feel more human
again when we’ve become exhausted, disoriented or beaten down. It helps us
avoid perceptions and practices that demean our humanity. Some examples:
1.Productivity – Our culture is characterized by productivity. “How will the
work get done if I take time off?” We feel driven to run at 110% nonstop. Our
affluence affords us many opportunities and possessions, but not all good
things are good for us. Rest allows us to discern what our priorities should
be, rather than be driven by the tyranny of the urgent. Marva Dawn says, “The
Sabbath rhythm …enables us to integrate all the scattered parts of ourselves.”
(142)
Do
you ever feel exasperated, “I don’t have enough time!” But does not our work
always remain incomplete? Eugene Peterson says, rest on the Sabbath as if
all your work is done. (The Pastor’s Sabbath, Leadership, 55, Spring
1985, 32).
When
the seventh day came around, God said his work was ‘very good,’ good enough and
quit. God is not a perfectionist. No need to keep tinkering or fussing. We’re
created to be like God.
Contrary
to bitter atheists, God is not a sadistic slave driver. God avoided becoming a
workaholic.
Ceasing
from work on the Sabbath day allows us to give up the attitude of productivity,
worry, pressure, justifying our existence by getting things done, {trying to be
in control of our lives, our scrambling for possessions and the resulting
vacuum of meaning in our culture. (Peterson, 55).
2.
Possessiveness. Our culture values things over people. Seven days a week,
round the clock purchasing. More things are better. People are seen as
consumers. Net worth is reduced to a monetary sum.
Our
education system steers students toward lucrative careers, turning out
professionals that seek success, climb corporate ladders and are very good at
shopping. Unfortunately Christians, both conservative and liberal have drunk deeply
of this unchristian individualistic, consumer mentality. But this is
mis-education – missed education. From a Christian world view, education is not
about information, but formation, not about what we know but what we love.
Humans are not primarily machines for production, or possessors of things, we’re
lovers. God and Sabbath call our restless hearts from the workplace, the
malls and stadiums to our first love, the One from whom we’re made. (Eric
Miller’s review of James K.A.Smith, Worship, Worldview and Cultural
Formation, rest) “Observing Sabbath is like wearing an engagement ring.”
(Karen Burton Mains, Making Sunday Special, 163). Look Who I love.
Sabbath,
even our practice of giving offerings, reverses our idolatry of things, so that
giving, sharing and serving for the sake of human well-being replaces getting
and acquiring for its own sake. Like God, we, at our best, are givers not
getters. Things are our tools, not our master. Slavery uses people for things.
Sabbath reminds us that things are for people, freeing us to be stewards of
things rather than possessors. (Dawn, 124).
3.
Performance. We’re shaped by a global media owned by a few powerful tycoons
that obsesses over mindless celebrities (Ramachandra,16). Children and teens copy
actors, music and sports stars.
I’ve
heard Christians complain that when it started to get into a lot of Sunday
practices, rehearsals, games and performances, their parents pulled them. They
didn’t like it. But I think to myself, but you’re here worshipping God. Your
friends aren’t. They’re lost to the Sabbath and the Lord of the Sabbath. So
are many of their parents who kept driving them all over. And now their own children
will likely be secular too. The sad irony is that almost none of those friends
made it to the big leagues and stages either. Double loss.
Voltaire,
no friend of the church declared that, “if you wish to destroy the Christian
religion, you must first destroy the Christian Sunday.” (Tilden Edwards, Sabbath
Time: Understanding and Practice for Contemporary Christians, 35).
As
you know, many difficulties get in the way of Sabbath keeping. The spiritual
practice of rest requires every bit as much deliberate discipline as prayer,
Scripture reading, hospitality, sharing testimony, and giving thanks. Schedule
it in like any other worthwhile activity.
Don’t
worry about getting it perfect. Like any practice it takes practice. Its
purpose is not to enslave us but to free us from slavery, to help us be fully human.
Abraham
Joshua Heschel said the Sabbath “is not an interlude but the climax of living.”
(Ibid, 2)
Freedom
Through
Jesus Christ, you are free
to
extend forgiveness and to be forgiven;
to
serve and to be served;
to
love and to accept love.
Go
into your communities this week as a free people.
