Reflections on the Sabbath

As a Seventh-day Adventist Christian, I observe the 7^th day Sabbath which is technically from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday.    The name Seventh-day Adventist combines two central beliefs of the church:  the second coming of Christ, and the importance of the 7^th day Sabbath in the time just before that second advent.  The church teaches that Sabbath observance will be of primary importance in the last days and, in fact, is one of the distinguishing signs of God’s true church.

When I first joined the church in 1979 I strove to observe the Sabbath even though none of the rest of my family observed it.  This wasn’t always easy but I more or less managed.  Everyone knows Jews have observed the 7^th day Sabbath for thousands of years.  You are not supposed to do any work on that day.  The Sabbath is a day of rest.  When I first joined the church I was a student so the Sabbath was kind of cool because it meant I could refrain from doing homework on that day.  But far from turning this into a day of relaxation, I believed that in order to keep the Sabbath day holy, I needed to continually think about God.  I strove not to have any thought stay in my head that wasn’t related to religion.  I never entirely succeeded in this, but I tried.  We think about 90,000 thoughts a day so to eliminate all non-religious thoughts is an exhausting exercise.  And indeed, once sundown came on Saturday night, I was pretty exhausted.  My true day of rest – if I define rest by having the feeling of restfulness – was on Sunday when I relaxed somewhat but also did some things which needed doing.  I felt restful on Sunday, however, because I wasn’t trying to force my mind to think only about God and subjects related to God.

Then when I entered Pacific Union College, my definition of rest changed once more.  I worked three jobs for the most part, and had to study hard the rest of the time.  I don’t see well so this was very wearying for me.  My eyes were constantly tired and the strain of working and studying took its toll.  When I first began to keep the Sabbath, I used to spend much of that time studying the bible.  Now, I simply couldn’t do that any more physically.  My brain and eyes were literally worn out.  I therefore started to do other things which would have horrified me in previous years.  What I needed was to run around outside and just enjoy life.  So I started to do things on the Sabbath which official and unofficial church doctrine said I should not do.

It is inevitable that whenever you have any rule like you must rest on the 7^th day, you will begin to define what that means in detail.  One of the things I was criticized for in college – Pacific Union College is a Seventh-day Adventist college – was that I swam on the Sabbath.  Since I was actually raised a Roman Catholic, little nuances such as the one that said it was OK to go for a hike on the Sabbath, but it was forbidden to swim on the Sabbath, were completely unknown to me.

I am and always have been an excellent swimmer, able to swim long distances without difficulty.  I take after my father in this regard.  For me, swimming was and is far more relaxing and restful than hiking.  When a legally blind person hikes, there are things which normal people don’t realize.  It is easier for me to trip over rocks and roots.  Overhanging braches scratch my face because I often don’t see them.  And hiking over boulders is a nightmare.  In short, although I enjoy hiking, I do not find it very restful because I have to work extra hard not to fall on my face.  Hiking downhill is especially difficult for me because I lack depth perception.  When I am in the water, I just swim.  I don’t worry about tripping over anything.  So swimming was and is way more restful.  When I swim a long distance I feel refreshed and rejuvenated.  There was a big lake near the college and I would swim all along it, relaxing and enjoying the view, as much as I could see of it, of the shore from the water.  There were a couple of islands in the middle of the lake too and I enjoyed swimming to those.  I sometimes dove down to check things out near the bottom.  And for this I got into trouble because the powers that be considered swimming a form of strenuous exercise.  But I knew in my heart that I was doing something more restful for me.  All of this made me consider the idea that what is restful for one person may not be restful for another person.

Today I work as a Business Analyst in IT.  This involves a lot of brain work and sitting at the desk all day.  I find it therefore far more restful on the Sabbath to get some exercise and fresh air, and not to use my brain too much.  If I were a dock worker, I might find restful contemplation and study more rest than exercise and fresh air.

So within the Seventh-day Adventist church, you have questions about what is right or what is wrong to do on the Sabbath and so on.  We ask what it means to rest or to work.  If I work in a hospital on the Sabbath saving lives, is that OK or not?  Should I get paid while I do this or should I donate my salary to the church or some charity organization? 

While I could talk about my perception of what is right, and what is wrong on the Sabbath, I think a better approach is to explain what rest actually means from a biblical sense and then let people make what they will of it.

So what does rest mean in the bible?  That sounds like a silly question because rest means rest doesn’t it?  One thing people should know about the bible is that every word is precious.  We are supposed to think and meditate on the bible because there are layers of meaning which we might miss if we read over things quickly.

According to Genesis 2:2-3 god rested on the 7^th day from all his creative work, and consecrated the 7^th day because of this.  In Hebrew, the meaning is much deeper than in English.  When God rests in the Hebrew language he calls his spirit back to himself.  Thus on the surface, God stopped working in terms of creation, but on a deeper level, God called his spirit back to himself.  What does this mean?  According to Genesis 1:2, before God said “Let there be light” the spirit of God hovered or swept over the face of the deep, depending on what translation you read.  I believe the Hebrew supports intense action by the spirit.

In other words, the Spirit of God, what Christians call the Holy spirit, was apart from God creating the world.  God said the words, but the Holy spirit was physically on the earth doing whatever needed doing.  The bible does not explain this process, but the spirit was busy doing things and when God rested on the 7^th day, God called his spirit back to himself, thus making himself whole.  That is the concept of rest, as much as the cessation from work is.

Let me employ another image.  In the Hebrew language, the word spirit is the same for wind or breath.  Thus, some English translations, such as the NRSV – my favorite translation – use the term “wind” instead of spirit.  Thus in Hebrew, the Holy Spirit is the divine wind or breath.  So another metaphor I can use to explain the Hebrew concepts at work here is that on the 7^th day, God took a breath.  That is, he breathed in.  I stress this is a metaphor.  God drew his breath back to himself.  In fact even in English today we use the expression, stop, take a deep breath and relax.  This is essentially what God did on the 7^th day.  He took a deep breath.

But what does all this mean?  We are created in the image of God so we can understand this process easily enough.  When we are busy, our mind is occupied with whatever it is we are doing.  Thus today, we don’t necessarily use the word “spirit “but instead we use the word mind.  Let me illustrate.  Suppose I am worried about something at the office.  Perhaps I am wondering how to design some software properly.  I don’t need to be physically at my desk.  I could be lying on my couch at home fretting over the design.  In biblical terms, my spirit is brooding or moving over the software.  My mind is elsewhere.  In fact, for most of us, our mind is scattered all over the place.  What’s going on at the office?  What’s going on with my football team?  What about this, and what about that?  Are the children learning properly?  I need to get the car serviced.  I need to make sure we have a present for our friend’s birthday.  And on, and on, and on.  Our mind is sweeping over the things of this world and our mind is quite occupied.

Thus it is that on the Sabbath day, like God, we call our spirit back to us.  We take a breath.  If I am at home but my mind is at the office working on the software problem, I have not gathered my spirit to myself.  Part of me is elsewhere.  And of course, we also have this expression in English.  We say to someone, “Your mind is somewhere else.”  Let’s say I am brooding over something that happened in the past.  Then I “snap back to the present.” So even in English we understand this concept well, though we may use different words.

So when I call my spirit back to myself, my spirit or mind leaves the office.  It clocks off, so to speak, and comes back home.  In modern terms, this means I am whole.  My spirit is not scattered here and there.  It is back with me and I am in one place, concentrating on the now and the here.  My spirit returns to the body temple.  It comes home.  And of course, Paul tells us our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) so if I call my spirit home to my body temple, hopefully that means it communes with the Holy spirit or christt which is within me.

And this lies at the heart of the Sabbath.  The word Sabbath in Hebrew has the word “house” within it.  Jews speak of “going to temple” on the Sabbath day because of this.  So on an individual level, I call my spirit back to temple.  In this case, it is the body temple.  I say to my spirit, time to come home.

The word Sabbath also has the word Father as part of the word.  Thus, Father and Home are part of the word Sabbath.  Of course, this metaphor is easy to understand even though in the modern context, both the husband and the wife work.  But back in the day, the woman generally stayed home or very close to it, while the husband went off to work.  So in Hebrew, stopping work is very much tied in with the concept of returning home.  Daddy comes home to his family and stays there on the Sabbath.  He doesn’t go away from his home on the Sabbath.  That is, he doesn’t go away from his family.

In Hebrew, the word house also can mean “woman”.  They have the same root.  Thus, the meaning is even deeper.  Daddy comes home and spends time with Mommy.  This is why in Judaism, the Sabbath evening is a time of intimacy between husband and wife.  After all, when God created Eve on the 6^th day and told Adam to join with his wife, he probably didn’t mean for Adam to wait 24 hours before any fun stuff.  But in Hebrew, the man enters his house, or his wife, and I think we all know what I’m getting at there.

In Hebrew, the husband is the priest of his household, responsible for teaching his children, or making sure his children are taught the Torah etc.  So the priest enters the holy place of his home on the Sabbath, and also enters his wife on the Sabbath.

So we have two circles.  The first circle involves the individual calling their spirit back home to themselves or their body temple.  The second circle is when the husband comes home and stays home for a day.  Then the next day the husband can go back out into the world to work.  So just as God drew in his breath, we draw in ours.  The home draws in the husband or in today’s world, all of us who go out into the world.  Then at the end of Sabbath, we can exhale again and get busy once more.

The third circle of the Sabbath involves the community.  During the other six days, the community of believers are scattered throughout the world, doing worldly things like working, studying and so on.  But on the Sabbath day the community “goes to temple”.  We gather together as a community.  So think of the community as exhaling during the week, and taking a deep breath on the Sabbath and drawing all its members to one place, the temple.  Thus we have the temple of the individual, the temple of the home, and the temple of the church or synagogue.  The individual takes a deep breath.  The family takes a deep breath.  And finally, the church takes a deep breath.  Then, at the end of the Sabbath, all three exhale and go back to being busy.

So the Sabbath day is a process of breathing in, then breathing out, breathing in, and breathing out.  Since in Hebrew the word spirit is the same for wind or breath, then just as the Spirit of God goes out from God into the world, so the Spirit of God goes out into the world in the form of his people.  The spirit of God goes out into the work place from the home.  And of course, our spirit goes out from us to be occupied with the things of this world.

The book of Hebrews tells us that ancient Israel never did enter into God’s rest.  We should be able to understand this better now.  True Sabbath rest is spiritual, as well as physical.  Israel wanted the physical, but they did not want the spiritual.  Israel fought among themselves.  They did not come together as a community.  They never stopped to take a deep breath, bringing their minds into focus on the here and now.  They continually worried about this and that.  In short, the Promised land, when viewed purely materially, was never going to be paradise.  When Israel got there, things went downhill and they were eventually tossed out.  Paradise is only paradise when we know how to rest.  That is, paradise is only paradise when we call our spirit back to appreciate paradise, and when we appreciate paradise with our family, and with our community.

This metaphor also applies to Christ.  Today his spirit is in all of us.  It is therefore scattered.  It is worrying about this and that.  God’s people are fragmented today but the day will come when Jesus will call his spirit to himself and make all of the fragments one.  There is only one bride, and one body, not many brides and many bodies.  At some point, there will be one, and only one church; one, and only one bride of Christ.  Christ is the last Adam and he will have one, and only one Eve.  Then we shall all have rest and the true Sabbath will begin.

One mistake people make today is to concentrate purely on the individual and their role in the Sabbath.  In other words, they ask, how should I keep the Sabbath?  Is the Sabbath necessary for my salvation?  It is difficult for non-Jews to remember that the Sabbath is as much a communal commandment as it is an individual one.  Back in the day, people cried out for days off.  They didn’t have weekends like we do now.  The Sabbath came in to make sure people had at least one day off from work.  But if this company allowed Wednesday off, while this company allowed Thursday off, then Israel would still be a busy place seven days a week.  You would not have the opportunity to take a deep breath and return your mind to yourself and enjoy your home because your spouse might have to go to work.  The only real way to ensure rest, was if everyone rested at the same time.  That way, everyone in the family and in the community were guaranteed to have at least one day off together.  So you could draw together as an individual, a home, and a community.

And as we know, if you don’t breathe, you don’t live.  Today we have many denominations.  Most observe Sunday and only a very few observe the Sabbath.  If I just look at the Sabbath as an individual, my idea of rest differs from yours.  This is why I prefer to swim instead of hike.  But the bible tells us when redemption comes, all flesh will gather before God on every New Moon, and on every Sabbath.

From new moon to new moon, and from sabbath to sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, says the Lord.  (Isaiah 66:23 NRSV).

We may be scattered and fragmented today.  And perhaps today as people live in different circumstances, Sabbath keeping is sometimes uncertain and lines are blurred.  When I was on my own with a family who were not Seventh-day Adventists, it was often difficult to keep the Sabbath.  It is different when you live in a community.  Thus, we may be scattered and fragmented today, but one day, we will be brought together.  God will draw breath and we will all meet the Lord in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17) and when we do, we will be whole.  We will be one.  There will be one Adam, and one Eve.  And we will all rest together.

So is it necessary for me to keep the Sabbath today?  In today’s world I stand with Paul who says in romans 14 that we should not judge one another if one person thinks one day is more holy than another or if a person thinks all days are the same.  But what I am really asking here is “Do I have to keep the Sabbath in order to be saved?”  That is really the wrong question.  After all, if I ask “Do I really have to refrain from murdering in order to be saved” the obvious answer is yes.  And since the Sabbath is one of the ten commandments it seems obvious to me anyway, that if this principle applies to the other nine, it should apply to the Sabbath.

But this is the wrong question to ask.  Why?  Because what I am really saying here is “I’d rather be able to kill, but if it means I can’t be saved then I’ll refrain.”  That is, of course ridiculous when applied to the 6^th commandment.  The right question is “Don’t I want to refrain from killing?”  And if Christ dwells in me and I in him, and, well, you know, the usual Christian stuff we talk about, then the answer is “Of course.  I don’t want to hurt anyone.”  And so it is with the Sabbath.  When I understand what rest really means, and how all pervasive the concept really is, the question of “Do I really have to” is irrelevant.  It’s like me asking “Do I really have to see the new Star Wars movie?”  It never occurs to me to ask that question.  I simply want to see it.

The basic problem is this today.  People ask “Do I really have to” instead of “Do I really want to.”  And if you are asking “Do I really have to” then you have missed the point altogether. 

Now I know man always messes things up.  When a community keeps the Sabbath it tries to punish a blind guy for finding swimming more relaxing than hiking through the woods.  But that is an us problem, and not a God problem.  But I hope that if people really understand what it means to rest, then they will stop asking “Do I really have to”, and start asking “Do I really want to.”  And if the answer to that question is no, well, that’s where a relationship with God comes into it.  You and God can work it out from there as far as I am concerned.  Otherwise, if the answer is yes, then stop and call your spirit back to yourself on the 7^th day and join with others who do likewise.  Enjoy your spouse and your family if you have one, and enjoy your church.  There is always enough work to do.  It’s time to rest.