Living Consciously: sabbath

Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent.
Mark 3:4

I’m good at not killing and not stealing and not committing adultery. I’m pretty good at not coveting and not lying. I respect my parents and respect God and try not to make something an idol in my life. But this whole Sabbath thing is tough. Keeping the Sabbath day holy is one of the Ten Commandments, but it’s very often overlooked. Is that alright? I really don’t know. This post isn’t going to answer that question.

Earlier this year I read The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs. I absolutely loved it! He’s a great author and a terrific story-teller! His year focused much more on following the Old Testament laws as literally as possible than on following Jesus’ instructions. And as difficult as those Jewish laws are, I’m sure following Jesus’ teachings would have been much more difficult.

One of my favorite stories (and don’t worry, this isn’t much of a spoiler or anything) was when he locked himself in his bathroom. If my memory serves me well, it was something about trying to fix the doorknob and then shutting himself in without the knob in the door so that he had no way of getting out. He was stuck. His cell phone didn’t work and the window wasn’t any help. I think he tried to get some work done with the toilet as his desk, but that didn’t work. So he just sat there. And it was a forced Sabbath. Sometimes I wish something like that happened to me.

It’s pretty easy to see that Jesus didn’t care much for the Sabbath laws that the Pharisees upheld. By holding to the letter of the law, the religious leaders completely missed the point of the law. The Sabbath law wasn’t for God, it was for humans. God rested after creation and likewise people should set aside time to rest. We don’t rest for God’s sake; we rest for our own sake. God created us and knows what’s best for us, so we should rest.

Our culture doesn’t tell us to rest. It tells us to produce. It tells us to go and never stop. It tells us not to waste time when we could be working. On the other hand, there’s a portion of our American culture that tells us we don’t have to do anything. It says that the ultimate goal in life is to relax and do nothing, even if you have to work like a slave for decades in order to get that point. (Alternatively, you could win the lottery or have a rich uncle.) Where’s the balance? Where’s the happy point with enough work and enough rest?

I think we should keep a Sabbath. I don’t think it has to be Sunday. For pastors it can’t be Sunday. I think Sunday is pretty arbitrary. Jews rest from Friday evening to Saturday evening. I think Christians claimed Sunday simply because Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday and we like to remember that. (And that’s certainly worth remembering!) Pick Sunday if you want to, or pick another day.

Actually, I don’t think it’s even important to pick a nice 24 hour chunk. We use “day” to talk about the Sabbath because Genesis 1 was translated as “day” and God rested on the 7th one. I’m a supporter of the idea that Genesis 1 is poetic and therefore isn’t talking about 24 hour days. There wasn’t even a sun to define days by for the first three “days.” These periods of time could have been a thousand years. (So let’s all pick 1000 years to set aside as our Sabbath! Maybe not.) Or perhaps God created things in a matter of minutes. I don’t think the length of the Sabbath has to be universally defined.

Let’s just put another layer to conscious thought into how much time we’re resting. Pick one evening a week and agree not to schedule anything. Then when the evening comes, pick something that’s not stressful to fill your time. Go for a walk. Call your mom. Bake cookies. Maybe you’ll find something that doesn’t stress you out that also helps someone else. (You love mowing lawns and find it relaxing? Maybe your neighbor hates it. I sense an opportunity!) Before you do anything, look at your time through this Jesus lens I’ve been talking about. And if seeing through that lens is difficult then maybe reading the gospels would be a good Sabbath activity.

I don’t think anything I’ve written here is revolutionary or anything. It’s just your friendly reminder to relax. Be still. The world won’t fall apart if you’re unproductive for a morning or afternoon or evening or Saturday or whatever.

I like taking mini-Sabbaths to play Minesweeper and listen to whatever my favorite music happens to be. Sometimes I just do that for hours. What does your Sabbath look like?