“Sunday Isn’t Kosher”

Exodus 20:8-11

Mark 2:27 (The Message): Then Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made to serve us; we weren’t made to serve the Sabbath…

Eugene Peterson: In Exodus we are told to keep Sabbath because God kept Sabbath. Since he rested on the seventh day, we also rest on the seventh day, get back in step with the creation rhythms of work and rest.

In Deuteronomy we are told that keeping Sabbath is a matter of simple justice; it prevents the stronger from exploiting the weaker; whether parents over children, employers over workers, even masters over horses and mules. Everyone is given a day to recover the simple dignity of being himself, herself, in the community without regard to use or function or status.

Andrew Greeley: If there is something obviously wrong with those who thought that Sabbath joy and tranquility could be imposed by precise legalistic regulations…there is something equally wrong with those who profess to be followers of [The Lord] and find almost no time in their lives to commune with him. If we believe in a God of history, a God who intervenes in time and makes it holy, then how can we have so little time for him? How come we work so frantically, as though everything depends on how much we can squeeze out of time and nothing depends on how much [God] can put into [it]?

… the question is, do we have enough faith and confidence in the goodness of God to really trust ourselves to relax?

A Retired Pastor: All too often Sunday, the “day of rest and gladness” turns into a day of “haste and madness.”

[prayer]

Exodus 20:11 told the children of Israel that they were to take a Sabbath day of rest because God rested, the implication being that creation was not complete without the Sabbath. Deuteronomy 5:15 told those same people that keeping Sabbath was a way of remembering their deliverance from Egypt, implicitly reminding them that every Sabbath was to be a remembrance and celebration of the first Passover.

We Christians do not keep Sabbath. Early Jewish Christians did. Early Gentile Christians did not. For both the most significant day of the week became the first rather than the seventh. Why? Our Lord Jesus rose from the dead on the first day. Every Sunday worship service was and is a celebration of the resurrection.

This Sabbath keeping thing led to some conflict early on in the life of the church, a conflict that was finally resolved by the Jerusalem Council described in Acts 15. By act of that Council Gentile Christians were exempted from Jewish practices. All the Council required of them was that they “abstain… from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood.”

From that day forward it was very clear that being a Christian didn’t first involve a conversion to Judaism. Simply put, while Jewish Christians who wished to do so still kept kosher – still did all those Jewish things like Sabbath keeping and circumcision – Gentile Christians were free not to.

At some point about 800 years later Sunday was declared to be the Sabbath. Those two very distinct days were artificially turned into one by an increasingly legalistic church that was by then way too cozy with the empire. Not only could the church impose Pharisee-like rules and regulations on the Lord’s Day, they could depend on the state to enforce those rules. Sunday, the Lord’s Day that is not the Sabbath, was turned into a Sabbath that came to resemble the one that Jesus reacted to so strongly. A good thing, a wonderful thing, was turned into something that God never intended it to be.

Sabbath was a gift God gave his people. It was a day set aside from the other six, a day of worship and rest. Sabbath was a reminder that creation itself needs restoration. Sabbath was also a reminder that the days of enforced labor the Israelites had endured in Egypt were over. They were no longer anybody’s slaves, nor was anybody to be their slaves. They were free to take one day totally off. As Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.” It was to be a gift not a burden.

And it’s a gift we all still need. There’s probably no easy way to separate Sunday from Sabbath at this point in history, but somehow we need to make sure that the Lord’s Day is celebrated and respected by those who call themselves disciples of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, whether we consider Sunday the Sabbath or not, there is still a need for God’s people to draw apart from the world for worship and rest. Just as we give God a percentage of our income on a regular basis, we are to set aside for him one day out of seven.

And that’s not just a simple a matter of piety. The human body needs rest. Our hearts, minds, and souls need to be refreshed by time with the Lord. God never intended for human life to be a 24/7 rat race. God created light and darkness, intending that the darkness be used for sleep. Those of us who have been blessed with families need to spend time with them. We who are disciples of Jesus need to spend time in restful fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We need time to read and prayerfully ponder on God’s Word. Cell phones, Blackberries, and I-Phones need to be turned off. Computers need to be shut down. Work needs to cease.

And not just on Sunday morning. Somehow we need to carve Sabbath moments out of every day, times of rest and re-creation. Years ago, the psychiatrist Carl Jung told a patient that he could not see him at a certain time on a certain day, that he had another appointment. At that particular hour on that particular the man found Dr. Jung sitting alone by himself near a lake. The man was taken aback. He confronted Dr. Jung, reminding him that he was supposed to have had another appointment at that time. Dr. Jung simply said, “I have made an appointment with myself.”

Such appointments with self and the Lord are Sabbath moments, moments when we step away from our jobs, our chores, our housework, and even our church work. One such appointment with self and the Lord is described in Luke 10:38-42, our Lord’s famous visit with Mary and Martha.

Martha was so caught up in, or as the text puts it, so distracted by her responsibilities as hostess that she wasn’t visiting with Jesus at all. And when her sister Mary sat talking with Jesus instead of helping her with all the those tasks, she got upset and said to Jesus, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me.” To which the Lord responded, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

Our culture is not “appointments-with-self” friendly. Ours is a 24/7 world that constantly works at keeping us worried and distracted. Its message is work more, work harder, work faster; be competitive, be ambitious. Take your work home with you. Take it with you when you go on vacation. Wring everything you can out of every day. Stay wired. Stay anxious. Stay tired. Keep running even when your physical, emotional, and spiritual tanks are empty.

Teach your children how to pass tests instead of enjoying the process of learning. Keep your children’s schedules as overly booked as you do your own. Don’t leave then any time to daydream, play make believe, or simply just be. Deprive them of their childhood as you mold them into workaholic miniatures of yourselves. Thus goes the conventional wisdom of 21^st Century western culture.

That so-called wisdom is the antithesis of Sabbath keeping. It leaves time for neither God nor self while making little tin gods out of busyness, work, success, and ambition. It leads to a way of life that uses people up and spits them out. It fits hand-in-glove with the insatiable human need for more that causes us to use up and wear out the natural world – as part of God’s covenant with the children of Israel even the land itself was to be given a Sabbath year of rest on a rotating basis.

Sunday is not Sabbath, at least not in any legalistic sense. Sunday is the Lord’s Day. Sabbath, of course, can happen on any day, including Sunday, but we must be careful not to over schedule it with church work. Dying for Jesus is one thing; killing ourselves working for the church is another.

In closing I’ll share a final thought about Sabbath from Andrew Greeley: “The appropriate question to ask on Sunday evening is, do I approach the new week with more serenity, tranquility, joy, and faith than I was conscious of last Friday evening?” If the answer is yes, then we’ve experienced Sabbath. Amen.