Sabbath, a Park in Time

For those familiar with my writing about Sabbath, there is nothing new here.

Four Treasures of Adventism

A lecture series for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists

Lecture One: Sabbath, A Park in Time

Friday night, April 5, 2013

Text: Exodus 20:8-12

I remember Overton Park in Memphis as a magical place. In the heart of the city, it offered a taste of wildness. On Sabbath afternoons my parents took us there for walks in the woods where we explored paths that meandered among great oaks and hickories. We looked for crawdads (that's crayfish for those of you not familiar with Southern language) in the creek. We fed the ducks.

On summer evenings our family enjoyed concerts at the band shell. There was an art academy set in a sweep of lawn spotted with trees. I remember Thursday afternoons at Overton Park flying kites, swinging on the swings and eating watermelon. On the north side of the park was the zoo and my favorite animals, bears. For a city kid, there was no better place in the world than Overton Park.

I remember one other aspect of life in Memphis in the fifties and early sixties. It took forever to go anywhere. We lived downtown. My cousin, Ricky, my best friend, lived out in the suburbs. Which was a real hassle because it was difficult to talk my mother into driving all the way to Aunt Velma's house. There were no freeways. Rumor had it the commissioner of roads for Memphis had visited Los Angeles and come back to report that freeways didn’t really help anything. They had freeways out there and still had traffic jams. Fortunately, progress eventually found us and construction of freeways began. When the first section of freeway was opened to traffic, it was one of the seven wonders of the world–four lanes wide, no traffic lights. It felt like flying.

As a student in junior high I was developing an interest in politics and urban planning, and my own wonder at the luxury of a superhighway was heightened by economic facts: transportation gridlock was crippling the city's competition with Atlanta for industry and population.

The transportation master plan called for a beltway around town and a cross-town expressway as part of Interstate 40. The beltway was the easier right-of-way to acquire. The east-west route through the established neighborhoods in the heart of city progressed more slowly. The greatest challenge was finding a way through or around a band of exclusive neighborhoods running north and south in the center of town–right across the projected path of Interstate 40. (Memphis, in those days, was a typical southern city with a well-stratified aristocracy. You did not bulldoze the homes of the wealthy.) There was one obvious gap in this roadblock of fine homes: Overton Park. And fortunately for the planners, while there were exclusive neighborhoods north and south of the park, on both the east and west sides there were working class neighborhoods paralleling a defunct trolley line which ran through the park. These working class neighborhoods would present little effective opposition to expressway construction. And the old trolley right-of-way suggested an obvious route through the park. It hadn’t been used for years. It skirted the zoo, didn’t bisect the golf course and didn’t come too close to the art academy.

There was just one problem. An elderly woman in town with a lot of money didn’t want the park desecrated by an expressway. And she went to court.

Nearly everyone I knew was outraged by this woman’s opposition to the park. Memphis desperately needed an expressway. The unused trolley right-of-way through the park was the most obvious, least expensive, most politically-feasible route.

Figuring it was just a matter of time before common sense prevailed, the state moved ahead with construction. Working east to west, they built the freeway to within a couple of miles of the park, and purchased property and demolished houses right up to the park border.

The court battles dragged on for twenty years. Then to everyone's astonishment, and to the great consternation of many, the park won. Thirty years later, when I talked to people in Memphis, most of those who had originally thought the old woman was crazy, grudgingly acknowledged the wisdom of her opposition to cutting up the park with an expressway.

When people in Memphis take their grandkids to the zoo, they’re glad it’s not bordered by a thundering highway. It’s good that the view from the art academy north does not feature fences, exit signs and passing semis. And it’s right that when you golf or take your kids for a walk in the woods, the dominant sounds are bird calls not traffic.

Memphis still needs a cross-town expressway, but the city would be immeasurably poorer if it had sliced through the heart of the heart of the park with an expressway.

The idea of using the park’s open space for important civic improvements was rooted in historical precedent. When the city wanted to build an art academy, it was cheaper to site it in the park than to buy already developed property. And art seemed to fit the purpose of the park. The park had long housed the zoo. And the animals seemed an appropriate accompaniment to the woods and ponds already there. Then there was the new fire station on the southwest corner of the park. This was a blatant desecration of the park. But it was small, only half an acre. The wealthy home owners in the area had insisted on better fire coverage and they were not about to sacrifice one of their fine homes. Besides, they figured, no one would miss a bit of woods. I missed it. The fire station was across the street from our church. I watched the trees being cut. I was outraged at the violation, but I was just a kid.

The proponents of the expressway had tried to sell it as just one more, limited “wise use” of the park. The park would still exist. There would be pedestrian bridges over the expressway. The park was so large it would still have ample space.

That was then. Now there is near universal agreement that the elderly woman and her lawyers had it right.

Open space in a city must be fiercely defended or it will disappear. “Highest and best use” is not emptiness, especially in a thriving city. If no one champions the protection of open space, it will disappear. The press of development will occupy every square inch leaving the city terribly impoverished.

* * * * *

Sabbath is like a park in time. It is intended by God as a tranquil open space in the frenzy of our lives. But like open space in a city, without constant vigilance it will disappear. Nearly every adult I know needs more time--more time for work, for business, education, shopping, home and auto maintenance. We don’t have enough time for a Sabbath.

The idea of a weekly holy day (whether Sabbath or Sunday) has disappeared from American society. Sometime around 2000 (I'm not certain of the date), here in Seattle, Boeing proposed a floating work week in which work on the weekend would be treated like any other day of the week. Any set of five days would be paid as a regular work week–Monday to Friday or Wednesday to Sunday or Friday to Tuesday. It would all be the same. No more time and a half for work on Sabbath or Sunday. The social reality of a weekend would disappear.

In most Christian churches, Sunday is no longer regarded as a holy day. It is merely a convenient day for people to go to church . . . if they don't make it on Saturday night or Tuesday. I remember attending a conference of mostly main line Protestant clergy in the late nineties. The theme of the conference was spiritual practice. Dorothy Bass, a well-known theologian and author of a book on spiritual practices gave the lecture on Sabbath-keeping. Her lecture had three parts. First she talked about the profound value of a sabbath in our lives, time that is not controlled by our drive to produce and achieve. Then she talked about the sabbaths of her childhood. They cleaned the house and fixed the food on Saturday. On Sunday they went to church then returned to her parents' or grandparents' or an aunt's or uncle's home for a leisurely Sunday dinner and an afternoon of conversation, play and communal relaxation. She lamented the loss of this kind of sabbath (i.e. Sunday) tradition from American Christianity. Finally, she offered her remedy: Pastors ought to try to get their members to be regular in attending church. Christians ought to have at least one hour of Sabbath every week. And going to church was her idea of Sabbath. She figured there was no way to recover the rich tradition of her childhood, the best we could do was to teach people they ought to devote an hour to church attendance every week.

Her lament of the loss of sabbath and her wholly ineffective substitute—a weekly hour spent sitting in church—is echoed in a growing number of books being published by non-Adventists. These authors acknowledge the need for a sabbath. Then they recognize we can't really have one, so they propose all sorts of substitutes for real Sabbath. (My switch from lower case “s” to upper case “S” is deliberate.) They urge us to grab thirty minutes of relaxation here, an occasional day off there. All of this writing that I've read so far is far more eloquent and convincing in its lament for the absence of sabbath in our lives than in its prescriptions. The writers effectively portray their hunger for a sabbath, a respite, a park in time. They have almost nothing to offer concerning the experience of Sabbath. Rich writing about Sabbath-keeping experience always is written from within a Sabbath-keeping community. No one has rich Sabbath experience who has not participated in a Sabbath-keeping community. Meaningful Sabbath-keeping apparently is unsustainable apart from a community that supports it. This is one of the reasons Adventist Sabbath-keeping is so vital. We are the only major Christian group still advocating a full Sabbath experience.

The Sabbath needs a champion as much as Overton Park did. It would be silly to argue that a park is the most important need of the city. Does a city need a park more than roads, a water system, courts or fire stations? The city needs all of this and more. It would be equally silly to argue that the Sabbath is the most important need of modern life or the modern church. Is the Sabbath more important than the good news of grace, Bible reading and prayer, honesty or compassion? It’s a silly question. Healthy Christian life includes all of this and more. But while Sabbath is not “most important,” it is a vital constituent of Christian spiritual life. Sabbath is the grand, special treasure of Adventism. It is a Christian treasure that we are uniquely positioned to steward. We are guardians, defenders of the park.

Parks require community protection. We make rules: No freeways. No fire stations. No McDonalds. No flower picking. No wood gathering. In the same way, Sabbath, the park in time, requires some fairly sturdy rules to protect it from the relentless pressure to fill every minute of our lives with productive activity. Don’t work. Don’t have your family or friends work (Exodus 20). Don’t engage in commerce (Jeremiah 17). To generalize and modernize the Sabbath rules: On Sabbath quit your struggle to secure your place in the world. Instead, rest in the security God offers. Don’t strive to make money or earn grades or win the championship or beautify your home or fix your car. All these things are necessary. You have six days to do them. On Sabbath ignore your failures and inadequacies and achievements and successes. On Sabbath, deliberately disengage from the rat race.

Phrasing these ideas as rules: Do not work. Do not participate in competitive sports—as a spectator or participant. Don't change the oil in your car. Don't paint the house. Don't watch the news on TV. Don't go to the mall. Don't game.

Of course, every human rule has exceptions. The park sign reads, No flower gathering, but who will complain if a child picks a dandelion bouquet? Building a McDonalds in Overton Park would be sacrilege, but the services of an ice cream cart on the 4^th of July are welcome. An expressway would destroy the park, but paved roads make it easy for families to gather in the picnic grounds.

It’s the same with the Sabbath. Don’t work. But some work must be done. Saving and protecting life is a higher value than enjoying Sabbath. (In the modern world necessary work includes more than health care. Police and fire services, public utilities, public transportation, for example, all must operate 24/7. We count on those services. It would be wrong to condemn people for providing services we use!)

No housework. But God does not call us to fast on Sabbath or to eat cold dinners. One of the congregations I served met in rented facilities. After every service we vacuumed so the building was ready for the Russian church which was also a renter and met in the building on Saturday evenings. This was necessary work.

No commerce. No shopping. For a day let's resist the seduction of consumerism.

No competition—whether we're watching or participating.

Double tips if you eat out. Eating out is not ideal. If you must, make sure the wait staff experiences something special. You're enjoying your Sabbath at their expense. So show your appreciation by tipping them appropriately—that is extravagantly.

There is no way to write a set of rules that has no exceptions. On the other hand, every community that is going to effectively transmit and communicate its “grand principles” has to be willing to make its grand principles concrete in rules, in lists of specific behaviors.

“Value This Park” is a lovely expression, but at some point, the community has to take the next step and spell out at some of the concrete ways we live this value. So: Do not litter. No discharge of firearms. No commercial collection of forest products. No motorized use of trails. Dogs on leash. Pick up after your dog.

There is an inescapable element of arbitrariness in making any set of rules. Still they are necessary. When we lived in Thousand Oaks, Karin and I became involved in a dramatic example of a community deciding to create a rule that went way beyond general principles. Our neighborhood petitioned the city to outlaw the consumption of alcohol in our park.

As an Adventist minister, my opposition to alcohol would have hardly been remarkable. But you would have been greatly puzzled at the endorsement of this rule by my neighbors. They were regular people. They were horse people—rather famous for the generous lubrication at their social events. Their very definition of a summer picnic was ice-cold beer. These folks enjoyed alcohol. So why would they sign a petition to the city council asking for alcohol to be outlawed in our park?

The reason was very specific, and very local. The park was filled with mothers with little kids. Youngsters riding their horses in the equestrian area. Kids swinging on swings. Kids playing on the ball field. Then for some reason our park became the gathering spot for a group of young men. At first they blended in with everyone else. But when this group began attracting 20 to 30 men on summer afternoons and they began to get a bit tipsy, they became a threat to tranquility and safety of the park. There was nothing illegal about the young men gathering there. And if they had remained sober, it would have probably been a cause merely of a little extra caution on the part of parents and grandparents. But adding the lubrication of alcohol turned this gathering into a threat.

So the city outlawed alcohol in the park. The police visited a couple of times and the gang disappeared. The park was restored as a welcoming open space for all. The law remained on the sign, but there was no longer any need for enforcement.

It's the same with Sabbath, the park in time. It's protection will mean creating specific, concrete rules. Almost by definition, the very specificity of these rules means they will become obsolete over time. Some rules will need to be rescinded or ignored. Other rules will need to be invented, all for the purpose of expressing the principles of sweet Sabbath observance in a way that makes sense now.

Many Adventists have appropriately moved away from a rigid, stern observance of the Sabbath that was rooted in the Puritan suspicion of anything pleasant and enjoyable. But we need to be careful in our “freedom” from old rules. If we are careful, we will wake up one day and realize that the quietness of the park exists only in our memories or imagination. The encroachment of the necessary and obligatory will have obliterated the leisurely, tranquil sacred space in our lives called Sabbath. The landscape of our lives will be completely full and dreadfully impoverished.

Fixed boundaries and consistent enforcement are a necessary condition for the preservation of the special nature of the park. And it’s the same with the Sabbath. The only way for us to enjoy its blessings is for us embrace the firm boundaries set in Scripture.

If God had merely suggested the Sabbath as a good idea, who would have the time for it? If God merely gave us permission to take some time off, most of us would say thank you, but realize that we’re just too over-committed to take any time off right now. So God commanded us to take the time off. He ordered us to stop our important tasks and take twenty-four hours for fellowship with Him and with our families.

During college, I took organic chemistry in the summer between my junior and senior years. Everyone else in the class had already taken the course during the regular school year. They were repeating it to improve their grade and their chance for admission to med school. I was taking the class for the first time, and it had been three years since my last chemistry class. Trying to keep up was tough. I studied “organic” from eight in the morning until late at night.

Before the summer was over I was literally dreaming organic chemistry. Long strings of equations stretched out across the paper in my mind as I tried futilely to balance them. There was no way I could afford to take a day off from studying. I’d fall behind my classmates who were studying seven days a week. And they had a head start anyway.

But because of God’s command to keep the Sabbath holy, late Friday afternoons I’d close my books and prepare to welcome the Sabbath. For twenty-four hours, from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday, I’d remember that I was more than a student. I was more than a cog in the machinery of education. I was more than an aspiring physician-to-be. For twenty-four hours I luxuriated in my status as a child of the king. My present and my future were in his hands.

Every week I savored this Sabbath enactment of the gospel. I rested from my labors. I rested in God’s accomplishments. I did not stop studying because I finished all my studying. I rested because of the commandment. The unyielding command and fixed boundaries of the Sabbath liberated me for special communion with God. If God had merely invited me to rest, I’d have thanked Him for His invitation and kept right on studying. But since God gave me an order, I was liberated from the tyranny of school. I was set free to savor the joy of fellowship with God and his people.

Both the park and the Sabbath are safe-guarded by firm boundaries and strict rules.

The frenzied pace of our culture is pressuring us to build multiple freeways through the park. The requirements of commerce and personal achievement threaten to completely dominate the human landscape. Don’t let it happen in your life. Keep the freeway out of the park, and not just for yourself. Our own resolve in park-tending, will insure that the woods, the zoo, the duck pond and picnic tables–and the surrounding tranquility–are still there for our children and grandchildren and our neighbors. Our Sabbath-keeping will maintain a priceless sanctuary, an irreplaceable park in time, for generations to come.

The purpose of park rules is to protect the opportunity for enjoyment. The rules are not an end in themselves. The rules are almost universally negative, because the positive experience of enjoyment cannot be meaningfully commanded. Imagine a large sign at the entrance to a park: Enjoy yourself! Then in small print underneath: failure to obey this law is subject to a $250 fine. We would laugh. It's silly.

Outlawing littering and providing sanctions for doing so, makes sense. Prohibiting wood gathering for fires makes sense. But you can't require people to enjoy a campfire.

Overton Park offers a variety of park experiences. The zoo. The woods. The picnic grounds. The golf course. The art academy. The band shell. These different features serve different functions and different people. They are united in their contrast with the routine, ordinary world of city life. They don’t make money. They don’t contribute to the industrial, political or financial stature of the city. They serve the relational, artistic, spiritual needs of the citizens.

Similarly, the Sabbath is not a single, monolithic event. It offers opportunity for individual, family and church worship. It provides an occasion for walks in the woods and for unrushed time with family and the family of faith. It offers time away from the pressure to produce, achieve, accomplish. It reminds us that to be fully human includes being in touch with God.

Let me go one step further. Classic Christianity in the tradition that runs from Paul through Augustine, Luther and Calvin to American Protestantism defined true religion as a set of carefully defined ideas. Some of you will recall intense battles about justification, sanctification, glorification, substitutionary atonement, forensic justification. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches split over the difference in meaning between two words that different by one letter. Essentially they anathamatized each other, i.e. consigned each other to hell because of the difference between “similar” and “identical.”

Adventists have battled each other, split congregations, broken friendships, fired people over differences in their understanding of the precise historical identification of the ten horns of Revelation, the correct ontological description of Jesus, whether or not a person could at least theoretically achieve perfection in this life. Etc. Etc. Ad nauseam.

There is an essential place for theological, spiritual disputation within the church. We can't help ourselves. It is as essential in the religious world as philosophy is outside the church. Participating in theological, philosophical discourse is part of being fully human. But when we define our fellowship, our sense of community, in terms of agreement with detailed theological statements, we are inevitably setting up criteria for exclusion of our own spiritual relatives. Anyone who spends a life time studying theology or philosophy will eventually develop at least an idea or two that is divergent from the ideas of his peers, his community, his church.

Sabbath creates a community space, a spiritual/social family that transcends our obsession with doctrines, beliefs, prophetic interpretations. Sabbath-keeping provides a way for non-believers to be religious, to connect with God's community and ultimately with God.

Young people argue that a religion that doesn't make an observable, palpable difference in the world is not worthy of their investment. I tend to agree with them. If our religion consists merely of coming into this building for a nice musical/social experience, that's okay as long as we're willing to pay for it. But we will have a very difficult time persuading our kids to pay the same price we pay to keep up our social club.

I'm arguing that one purpose of the Adventist Church, a purpose so large, so important for the quality of life that it appropriately deserves significant investment of energy, money, time and soul is to act as a guardian of the Sabbath, a park in time.

We are across the street from Green Lake Park. It is one of the jewels of Seattle, and certainly is a great treasure of this area of the city. Every day it is filled with people, rain or shine. People are still running around the park hours after sunset. No one imagines this area would be better if the park were any smaller. To the contrary compared with Central Park in New York or Overton Park in Memphis, I can't help but thinking how sad it is that the park is so small, basically a little doughnut of land surrounding the lake. Even that doughnut of land had to be artificially created. People had built houses right up to the edge of the lake. To create the park, engineers created a new outlet for the lake and lowered the surface of the lake several feet making accessible the little strip of land where we run today.

In the larger Protestant world, Sabbath has been almost completely lost. The only noticeable voices addressing this change are loud laments about what has been lost and hand-wringing acknowledgment that they can see no path back. Within the Adventist Church there is a rich literature celebrating the treasure we have in the Sabbath. And many of us can testify to the sweetness it has brought. It is a treasure, indeed.