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 4th
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.
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