“If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
and the LORD’s holy day honorable,
and if you honor it by not going your own way
and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,
then you will find your joy in the LORD,
and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land
and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.”
The mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
Isaiah 58:13-14 (NIV)
Sabbath, it’s probably one of the things we are the worst at. It’s really Un-American. In a world that honors efficiency, dogged pursuit, and a “whatever it takes” attitude, REST is just silly.
One of my favorite authors, Lauren Winner, looks back at her Jewish Roots and practices and reflects on them from a Christian perspective in her book, Mudhouse Sabbath. Mudhouse is the name of the coffee shop around the corner where she attempts to regain some of the richness she experienced in Shabbot (Sabbath).
She shares the following thoughts on Sabbath from a sermon delivered on March 11, 2005 at Calvary Episcopal Church. You can find the except here or the entire sermon here.
From:
In God’s Time: Three Ways to Re-Orient Our Clocks and Calendars
by Lauren Winner
The final practice that I want to share a little bit about is the practice of keeping Sabbath. Those of you who have read some of my books know that I grew up Jewish and observing the Sabbath. Friday night to Saturday night was a significant part of my own spiritual formation, and it is one of the things that I have really missed since becoming a Christian.
In observant Jewish communities,…the Sabbath is really a day apart. It is a day that is truly separate from the rhythms of work and week. And I’ve tried to think creatively about how we as a Christian community might learn from the Jewish community about keeping Sabbath. Obviously, our Sabbath practices are not going to look identical to the Sabbath practice of the Jewish community, but I’ve begun to instigate a few observances on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath, in my own life. I want to share two of them with you before we close.
In the Jewish tradition…the Sabbath (Friday night to Saturday night) begins with a Sabbath dinner. If some of you have Jewish friends, you may have been invited to their home for Shabbat dinner, Friday night dinner…the lighting of the candles, the special blessings with wine and bread…and in general, just a very leisurely introduction, transition, into the Sabbath. Some friends of mine from church and my husband and I have begun to do this on Saturday nights. We don’t do it every Saturday, but once a month, twice a month, we will gather on Saturday night to have some special prayers and songs and a leisurely dinner to inch us into a day of rest and celebration.
I really commend that to you. It’s changing the rhythm of my week. It’s beginning to orient my week around Sunday, instead of having Sunday be the exception to a week that is oriented around work and commerce.
The second thing that I do in my Sabbath practice is actually something I abstain from, something I don’t do. I have given up using e-mail and my cell phone on Sundays. If we had more time today, I would say a little bit more about why I think these particular technologies shake up the way we inhabit time. There’s a certain instant-ness to these technologies and, particularly for those of us who are active in the workforce, the sense that people can get hold of you any time of day, regardless of where you are, and demand your instant attention.
Setting those things aside has been very liberating—there’s just no other word for it—liberating for me in terms of having a Sabbath, a day where I not only rest, but where I clear away the bustle so that I can attend to God in a particular way. It’s not that I think we can’t meet God during the week or when we’re chatting on our cell phone or when we’re in the bustle of the world, but I believe that having a Sabbath where we dedicate 24 or 25 hours to attending to God in a particularly focused way helps us to recognize God when we’re back in the bustle and the craziness.
Challenge: REST!
Prayer: God of creation, thank you for your work AND your rest. Amen
