“Daily Sabbath”
By Rev. Dr. David E. Gray
Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church
June 7, 2009
Exodus 20: 8-11; Hebrews 4: 1-11

As we begin the summer season, we think of taking time off and slowing down. Because at this point during the year, many of us, myself included, have been running too fast.

There is a tale in which a wise man sees a boy running in the street and asks him, “Why do you run?” The boy replies, “I am running after my good fortune.” The wise man tells him, “Silly boy, your good fortune has been trying to chase you, but you are running too fast.”

Many of us are running too fast. We all have our own experiences and data points. Gilles Lilovetsky’s 2005 book Hypermodern Times, reports some of the pace and stress of modern life. UsaToday has reported that 43% of Americans suffer from serious stress and many want to slow down. Even young people are not immune. The Washington Post recently had an article about three high schoolers in Montgomery County who succeeded in getting a perfect attendance award. They had not been absent for 13 years from kindergarten through high school. They never missed school once “for a cold, family vacation, college visit or senior skip day.” These are great accomplishments. But they come at a cost. Some of these young people reported feeling great stress - “with the mounting pressure to stay perfect.”

Never taking a day off is a problem. I struggle with this. I love what I do but it can become too much I’ll admit. It’s a challenge to our health and to our spiritual development and has been since the beginning of time. Fortunately, there are resources of our faith that help us think about this issue.

We find much in the concept of Sabbath. This concept was critical in the Hebrew Bible. I spoke at the Friday evening worship service this week at our Bethesda Jewish Congregation and discovered how seriously they take this concept of Sabbath. It was critical in our first lesson and critical to our second lesson from the Book of Hebrews.

The Book of Hebrews is an anonymous letter or epistle in the New Testament written to strengthen the faith of Jewish Christians in the early church. It speaks of a concept of rest that is both an idea and is focused around something and someone. Let’s hear what was written to the Hebrews about the ancient concept of rest.

First, you are probably wondering why I am wearing this collar. This is the old Geneva collar. Many preachers wear them, perhaps others have here. I am fond of them when the fit into the liturgy such as they do today. The “Tabs” signify the tablets, as in the Ten Commandments and the idea was that they would signify the responsibility of clergy to teach the law. As in our first lesson, we are talking today about Sabbath as one of those commandments.

The Geneva collar also fits with the Puritan and Reformed tradition and some of the ideas of Calvin and the early Reformers who I will discuss today.

Remembering and honoring the weekly Sabbath is important to our Christian tradition, but I would suggest that so are daily moments of Sabbath.

The weekly Sabbath is important. God commands us to. God calls on us to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy as written in Exodus. Deuteronomy goes further and says we should “guard” the Sabbath. And that is a challenge with our ever creeping commerce and technology that gives us no shortage of work distractions. God also models honoring the Sabbath. As we know from the creation story in Genesis, God completed the work of creation in six days and then rested on the seventh day. Importantly, God rested from all God’s works. The text says from “all” works. That implies God did no work at all. Sometimes it is important for us to do no work. We must have some time, blocks of time off, like a week’s vacation or one day a week at least. Psychologists and doctors will argue is important for health. For me, that Sabbath time ends up coming on Saturday as Sunday is a work day and I try and guard Saturday as family time as much as I can. Moreover, our traditional encourages it. For John Calvin, the Sunday Sabbath was important so that people could rest from their works and sin and could be still so that God could work in them spiritually. Calvin felt that the weekly Sabbath was important for the people of God to gather to worship corporately, read scripture, and be trained in piety. He felt that there should be a day for the cessation of work for laborers. And he felt that practically, humans could not do the spiritual work that they were called to every day, so they at least should one day a week for rest.
Our second lesson for today mentions Sabbath within the context of rest. The New Testament idea of rest builds on the Hebrew Bible concepts of Sabbath and rest as sanctuary and salvation.

For the ancient Israelites, the Sabbath was sanctuary. It was part of the covenant that God had with God’s people and received critical attention in the Torah. Wayne Muller writes in his book, Sabbath, that in the Babylonian captivity and after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 A.D., during periods of exile, Sabbath became the temple, the sanctuary, for the people of God. The practice of Sabbath was the spiritual glue that helped them stay together and became a point of identity for the Jewish people.

In the Hebrew Bible, the concept of Sabbath rest also took on a geographical focus as salvation. It was about finding rest in the Holy land, as we read from Deuteronomy. Canaan became a rest for the people. Rest came to mean the holy land, the place of promise, the place of salvation.

In the New Testament, Christ became a kind of sanctuary of rest and the person of salvation. Jesus said, “Come to me all who are weary and heavily burdened and I will give you rest.” Jesus is sanctuary for rest. And as Sabbath came the identity of the exiled Israelites, was find our identity in Christ.

For Christians, Christ also is our salvation. In Hebrews 4, there is a connection to the Hebrew concept of rest as salvation in Canaan with the reference to Joshua leading the people – referring to the people’s new position in a holy place of salvation. The Hebrews text encourages Christians to obey God and find rest in God.

We find our rest in God, not only on Sunday but all week. That is an important idea that flows from our concept of the trinity. Today in the Christian church, we think about the unity and fullness of God and of our connection to the totality of God. It is called Trinity Sunday. What this doctrine says to me before anything else is that we should not how the fullness of God is at work throughout each day. The Trinity is a way to state and affirm the completeness and fullness of God. We confess in our tradition that we worship one God which we know in three persons and who works in three ways at the same time. We affirm with the Israelites the Shema from Deuteronomy "Oh hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord alone.” Israel was to worship one God and we Presbyterians are monotheists as well. However, we believe that we experience God in three ways. Scholar Donald McKim points out that when the early Christians met Jesus, they knew they were experiencing the power of God, but that Jesus was also distinct from God. In the same way, as we discussed last week, at Pentecost, the Christians experienced the power of God through the Holy Spirit. They knew they were encountering God but they knew it was distinct from God.

The trinity helps us explain our thinking that God is not limited. We do not only experience God in one form or at one time. God came in the human form of Christ and we experience God through the Holy Spirit. It implies God is a part of each of our days. There has even been a debate throughout Christendom about whether ideas like Trinity Sunday and Sabbath apply to only one day. The argument, made most notably by Pope Alexander II, was that to have one Sunday dedicated to the Trinity obscured the whole point of the Trinity “which is the completeness and ever extending nature of God.” Alexander argued that "the Trinity is its fullness is honored every day of the church year."

The argument is that our close connection to God should not be limited to one day during the year because the Trinity extends ideas like Sabbath to every day. It is a real temptation for many religious people to limit our participation of faith to only Sunday, and to take on different and other attitudes during the year. That is not the standard that Bradley Hills sets for itself. I know the focus here has been on living out our faith in our daily lives. The concept of the trinity argues for our living our closeness to God each day, not just one day but everyday.

For Calvin, Jesus was the fulfillment of the concept of Sabbath. Some ancient Jewish teaching from the Talmud held that on the Sabbath, God’s people gained an extra soul. There was a focus on heightened spirituality on that particular day. We hold that the Trinity allows us to have heightened spirituality each day. Just as rest had been purposeful in the Hebrew Bible, connected to the Holy land and the Temple, for Calvin, Sabbath is now found in Christ. Because of the Trinity and the Holy Spirit, Sabbath rest was no accessible every day.

We are still to honor the Sabbath on Sunday. As Christians, we are not called to rest on any particular day; we are called to rest on that particular day. That day was the first day of the week. Sunday has a particular focus as Sunday is the day the church has chosen to celebrate the Sabbath. It commemorates the resurrection of Christ. So we celebrate the resurrection in a way each Sunday. This is an example of the kingdom having come.
Yet because of our Trinitarian connection to Christ every day, we do not only experience Christ’s resurrection on Sunday. Calvin wrote that “The resurrection of our Lord is the end and accomplishment of that true rest which the ancient Sabbath typified.”
Calvin wrote that on Sunday, “We begin our blessed rest in Christ and daily make new progress in it.” He thought, “We are not contented to one day but the whole of our lives” can include Sabbath. Calvin wrote further “….there is a sabbathizing reserved for God’s people, that is, a spiritual rest; to which God daily invites us.” Calvin wrote, “The promise of God to the Israelites is fulfilled in the coming of Christ, who makes us enjoy the promised rest on every day, not just one.”

As God’s people, we are able to find rest not in a day, but in a person. Calvin’s Reformed Trinitarian theology held that God is with them all the time.

This plays out frequent rest. Christians should realize that they need to develop some time for rest every day of their lives.

Just as God modeled rest, throughout the Gospels, Jesus went to quiet places for breaks, for prayer and for rest, modeling purposeful rest for us.

Calvin developed his own type of lectio divina, or sacred reading of the Bible as a daily spiritual exercise.

Richard Baxter, one of the great Puritans, added thirty minutes of daily meditation on the word of God. Baxter was as influential as anyone in the 17th century in translating the ideas of Calvin into the mainstream life of the nation.

John Bailey, another Calvinist, interpreted Calvin’s ideas of Sabbath into a daily devotional scripture routine that encouraged families to read the Bible each day of the year.

I have found a routine of scripture reading, meditation, journaling and exercise to be important for me. Weekly time off is critical, but so are daily breaks for spiritual practice to create moments of Sabbath in each of our days.

Whatever it is for you, let Sabbath be both a weekly and a daily activity. Try this summer to institute some new patterns that can continue into fall. Honor God’s commandments, Christ’s modeling of rest and the Trinitarian power we have to connect to God each day, not only Sunday.

Tin No Han, the Buddhist monk, was on an elevator once when it opened and he saw a clock on the wall. He remarked, “A few hundred years ago, there would not have been a clock, but a crucifix on this wall.” That is a telling example of the cultural focus on time.

While we are running through life, the wisdom of our faith tradition and many others teaches that when we slow down regularly, we go much further. And we worship our ever present God as well.

Thanks be to God. Amen.