Keeping Sabbath

Keeping Sabbath

Sermon manuscript for

Green Lake Church, Sabbath, March 1, 2014

Texts:

Exodus 20: 8-11

Luke 13:10-17

Synopsis. When we embrace the Sabbath commandment as authoritative for us, we are liberated from all sorts of other relentless authorities. We are free to ignore the need to achieve, perform, acquire, produce, accomplish, earn. For a day we are free to enjoy, savor, relish, contemplate, consider, worship. The benefits of Sabbath are fully available only to those who embrace its authority. And the benefits are fully worth the cost.

Yesterday I was at Cypress Adventist School. I told the kids I was going to buy something special at QFC (a grocery store) that afternoon for supper. This special something came in a small glass bottle. Then I was going to Tracy's Produce to buy strawberries. Could they guess what was in the small bottle? They guessed pickles and mayonnaise among other things. So I drew a picture of the small bottle on board. Someone guessed milk. I said that was close. Then they guessed yogurt, ice cream, buttermilk, butter. I said, yes, you are getting close. It's a dairy product. One of the second graders guessed orange juice. I agreed that orange juice is very tasty and sometimes comes in glass bottles, but that wasn't it. I tried giving them another clue. “At your house this treat probably comes in a metal can with a nozzle on top.

Still no one had any idea. Finally I said to the guy who had guessed ice cream, “Take the ice off ice cream. And you'll have your answer.” He still didn't get it. A girl sitting next to him shyly whispered, “Cream?”

“Yes!”

We all laughed together, but I could tell the kids still had no idea what I was actually going to buy. They had no mental connection between a viscous liquid in a glass bottle (or carton, for that matter) and the sweet, white fluffy stuff they could imagine squirting on strawberries.

Now, just for fun, allow me to take a poll: The last time whipped cream was served at your house, did it come from a can? Did it come from a bottle or carton and require whipping?

In March, whipped cream becomes part of the religion at our house. Whipped cream in the old sense of the word. Real cream, poured from a bottle, whipped until it begins to have some body, sweetened with a little sugar and vanilla, then whipped again to perfection with soft peaks. And if the kids are home, you can't use an electric beater. The whipping has to be done by hand.

That's part of the magic.

Friday night feasts are a tradition at our house. And they are more than that. Friday night supper forms the very heart of our religious practice. As a clergy family, our Friday night feasts are more constitutive of our religion than is Sabbath morning worship. Right now, the three of us at home—my wife Karin and I and our daughter Bonnie—all have professional duties on Sabbath morning. Worship services are our job. But Friday night—that's different. Friday night we are not on stage. We are not performing. Friday night we feast, savoring the freedom and richness of Sabbath.

If we have the right combination of people, after dinner, there will be live music, people playing instruments, people singing.

Most of the year, dinner is “haystacks.” (This is a traditional Adventist meal. It's basically a taco salad—rice, beans, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, olives, sour cream, salsa, chips. Did I leave out anything?) But in the spring, sometimes it's strawberry shortcake.

When our kids are home from wherever they have scattered around the globe, on Friday mornings, the first topic of conversation is supper. Who's doing the cooking? What are we going to eat? What time are we going to eat? Who's doing the shopping. No matter how chaotic the rest of our lives, we know that on Friday night, it's time to feast. Together. Leisurely. It's our tradition.

It is also our religion.

We learned it from our parents, yes. But if it were only a family tradition, I doubt that we would have maintained it. It is our religion that creates this sweet open space in our lives. Time for feasting, for worship, for visiting with friends, for hiking, for enjoying sunsets. The experience of Sabbath is wonderfully rich. And this richness is the fruit of our religion.

The Sabbath is a central element of religion in the Bible—something that has pretty much disappeared from Christianity. Among Christians Sabbath-keeping has been transformed into going to church. That is Sabbath-keeping means attending a religious performance.

Imagining Sabbath-keeping as going to church is like imagining whipped cream as something you squirt out of a can. Whipped cream from a can is convenient, but it is hardly the full experience.

Worship together is a rich part of Sabbath-keeping. But it is only a part of authentic Sabbath-keeping. According to the Bible and Adventist practice (which we learned from the Jews), Sabbath is an entire day that begins at sundown on Friday.

The ancient tradition of keeping Sabbath is one of the treasures of the Adventist Church. For us Sabbath is a commandment, an obligation, a tradition, a habit that makes life sweeter, richer.

One way to think of the Sabbath is see it as a central element of our church culture. And culture matters.

I was reminded of the power of culture on Tuesday afternoon. I was talking with Ken up at Zoka's. He and Susana have just returned from three months in Mexico. The countryside is beautiful. The food is fantastic. The people are friendly and helpful. The air was warm. The sky was blue. It was paradise. But there was one striking, disturbing aspect of life in rural Mexico: litter. There was garbage everywhere.

My dad used to live in north Georgia. When I'd go for a visit, we sometimes drove to parks and national forests in the area. It's beautiful country, but I was astonished at the trash. Every trail head had piles of garbage. Along trails we would come across beverage cans, food wrappers and other stuff. It was jarring. Why would people do such a thing? Do the people in Georgia have more evil characters than the people of Enumclaw? Why is it that the national forest trails between Enumclaw and Mt. Rainier are almost entirely trash free and the trails in the national forest in north Georgia were heavily littered?

The difference is culture.

Whenever I come back to the northwest after hiking in the South, I always have a renewed appreciation for a culture that resists littering, a culture that supports clean trails and the protection of and respect for the natural world. I've become a bit of a litter-Nazi. If we're hiking together and you're tempted to discard your apple core, I'll offer to carry it out for you. Because I have seen what happens to natural areas when the barrier against littering is flimsy.

One of our vital missions as a Seventh-day Adventist congregation is to keep alive the sweet tradition of keeping Sabbath.

The Bible begins with the story of the Sabbath. God spends a week creating the world, then . . . what? God keeps Sabbath. Here at the beginning of the Bible there is no command to keep the Sabbath. There is actually no explicit reference to human activity at all. There is the simple statement that God kept Sabbath and in doing so created the foundation for our weekly rhythm. Humans keep Sabbath because God keeps Sabbath.

This week I began reading a book on the Sabbath written by Joseph Lieberman, the senator for Connecticut who ran for vice-president in 2000. Lieberman, an observant Jew, makes exactly this point. Yes, Sabbath-keeping is a special treasure of the Jewish people. But even in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, Sabbath is declared to be the treasure of humanity, not only the treasure of the Jews.

Sabbath is not created by Sabbath-keepers. Neither the Jews nor Adventists nor the Seventh-day Baptists originated the Sabbath. When we keep Sabbath we are participating in a transcendent reality. God spend six days working, then rested and made the seventh day holy. Sacred. The primary meaning of these words is “special.”

Sabbath is not more righteous than other days. It is not more moral or more ethical.

It is special. Different. Extraordinary. Without the frame of regular time, there can be no special time. Without a customary routine, what would be the definition of different? Sabbath interrupts the flow of ordinary time. That's what makes it extraordinary. This interruption is an invitation from God for us to leave our ordinary lives and step into a special place. In the protected place of Sabbath, we can give special attention to God, to one another. It is time for us to explore the big questions of life and philosophy—or to leave such questions alone and simply savor the richness and sweetness of the gifts that are ours. It's time for us to be with one another in a unique way.

So how to keep the Sabbath? Two pictures:

The first Sabbath, the one described in Genesis One, was a honey moon. If we use that as an analogy, it suggests great anticipation and planning. Good food and good times. Intimacy and leisure.

Some our Sabbaths should feature good food and good times. Intimacy and leisure. This is what we aim to experience in our Friday night feasts. A friend of mine, Tony Romeo, posted a video of Friday night at the Romeo home. It is a boring video. It's three generations of Romeos sitting around the wood stove, talking, dozing, rocking, playing with toys. It is genuine leisure.

The second Bible passage I would reference is the story in Luke 13. A woman is bent over double, crippled with severe scoliosis. Jesus meets her in the synagogue and heals her. When he is challenged, he responds should this daughter of Abraham who has been bound for 18 years be released on the Sabbath?

Sabbath is freedom.

Freedom from the pressure to achieve, accomplish, perform, produce, earn, master, practice. These are all good things. But if they are never interrupted, our lives are impoverished.

We can experience this freedom only if we embrace the restrictions, the traditions, the rules of keeping Sabbath. Let's be clear, the sweet experience of the Sabbath is not available to people apart from religious authority.

Modern writers who address Sabbath keeping write their sweetest passages full of longing and nostalgia. They are like losers writing about the glory of victory. They think they can imagine how sweet it would be if only . . . I have never known any one personally nor have I read about someone who had a rich, sustained experience of Sabbath-keeping apart from a religious community.

Our own children demonstrate that fact. My guess is that the children who grew up here in Green Lake Church would describe their childhood memories of Sabbath as sweet times. But no matter how rich and sweet and pleasant those childhood experiences were, if those now-grown children are not involved in an Adventist church or Jewish synagogue, they no longer keep Sabbath.

Sabbath is a fragile, delicate treasure. It takes an entire church to keep it alive.

Like cream in a bottle, the entire concept can get lost in the “progress” of life. But this kind of progress impoverishes.

A few concrete suggestions:

If you have children, pay attention to them. I often hear adults talking about kids being buried in their phones, texting instead of talking. I suggest banning electronic communications from the dinner table on Friday night. But that is not enough. That's the negative. Then make sure we listen to the young people at our tables. Listening has astonishing power. Do not exhort, cajole, instruct. Listen.

I hearing a young woman describe her strategy for captivating any guy who asked her out. At dinner she would ask a couple of questions and then listen. Once the guys realized she was listening, they would talk all night, utterly enchanted. Maybe we could learn something.

If you go out to eat on Sabbath, recognize that your pleasure is at the expense of people earning minimum wage, probably working two or three jobs, often working seven days a week, with a sick kid at home. And there you sit enjoying your Sabbath bliss. You better pay for it! Instead of tipping 20 percent, tip 40 percent.

In this world it is not possible for literally everyone to enjoy the rich blessings of Sabbath leisure. Adventists have always been aware of this because of our involvement in health care. In our world, it's not just medical care that must continue on Sabbath, bus drivers and police, power plant and network operators. Given the pressure of a 24/7 society, our activism in support of the Sabbath is all the more crucial.

We don't want our children to be as ignorant of Sabbath bliss as they are of cream that comes in a bottle. We don't want them to have memories of Sabbath blessings that are no longer available because there is no church community supporting Sabbath practice.

God calls us to a weekly honey moon. A weekly experience of holy leisure and intimacy.

God calls us to a weekly experience of freedom—a release from pressure. God invites us to experience in a special way his grace, his favor, his presence.

Then God calls us to act as his agents keeping alive the richest, sweetest experience Sabbath.