 | | Nicholas Zork |
Liturgical Lessons from the Decalogue: Sabbath
By Nicholas Zork
"Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." (Exodus 20:8-11) The fourth commandment is pregnant with liturgical implications, but I want to focus on one that is often missed by those of us who are most committed to observing the seventh-day Sabbath. We miss this key implication by failing to adequately learn from Jesus' Sabbath practices. Although Jesus did customarily go to the synagogue on Sabbath (Luke 4:16), the Gospels suggest that the bulk of Jesus' Sabbath activities took place outside these liturgical gatherings. For Jesus, the Sabbath was primarily a day of active holiness, embodied in His healing ministry. The Gospel of John emphasizes the way Jesus' healing practices flaunted Sabbath prohibitions and challenged prevailing notions of true Sabbath observance. Describing the healing by the pool of Bethesda, the Evangelist recounts the following: "So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. In his defense Jesus said to them, 'My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.'" (John 5:16-17) Jesus' response infuriated to His critics and should be unsettling to us as well, especially in light of the command to rest on the Sabbath. But we must grapple with this story if our Sabbath worship practices are to resonate with the One in whose name we gather. In his book, The Lost Meaning of the Seventh Day, Sigve Tonstad offers an important reflection on this Gospel story: "Like Jesus, His critics invoke the memory of creation as the basis for Sabbath holiness, but their idea of the Sabbath derives from a distorted picture of reality. The distortion hails back to a distant time when all was well in the world. In the serenity and perfection of God's rest at Creation, as their picture still has it, something is missing: Where is God in the face of present need and suffering? Being present, and responding to the present reality, constitutes the essence of Jesus' idea of the Sabbath. At Creation God's commitment to humanity is described by God's rest, but the reality of disease and death calls or a different Sabbath message. Resting in the face of crying needs implies remoteness and indifference. God is not like that, for God is not remote; God is present. This message, written on the Sabbath from the beginning, is still the message of the Sabbath, and Jesus delights to point it out. No matter how shocking the thought, Jesus defends His actions by the ultimate criterion: 'My Father is working until now, and I am also working.' Prioritizing the notion of presence, working takes precedence over resting. God is, as were, hard at work to make right what is wrong." And this is precisely what we find Jesus doing on the Sabbath: Jesus is present with those in need, working "make right was is wrong." So how, then, are we called to observe this day in light of God's healing presence with us? Like Jesus, we too are called to be present, meeting the needs of those around us, bringing healing to broken people, addressing the suffering of a world that is not what it was created to be. And if we are honest, we must admit that most of us do not observe the Sabbath the way Jesus did. Observing the Sabbath according to the example of Jesus means that we are called to be actively present, present with God in meeting the needs of our neighborhoods, cities and world. Resting from our work is a rest from self-concern, not a rest from all concern. But my fear is that we have turned Sabbath into yet another opportunity not to be present but to be absent from a world in need as we withdraw for worship gatherings. Unfortunately, these gatherings are often characterized not by presence but by what and who is absent: "worldly" people and their "worldly" practices; needy people and their needs; and, most of all, anything that might threaten the rules of the irrelevant games we've become so comfortably adept at playing. I believe God invites us to gather on Sabbath to worship our Creator and Redeemer, but God invites us to gather not as an act of withdrawal from the world but as an act of being present in the world and in places of need. We are called to say with Jesus, "our Father is working until now, and we are also working" - not at our daily jobs, not paying bills, not doing laundry - but for deeper purposes. Recently in Buenos Aires, Argentina, I met some followers of Jesus who know how to gather with purpose and presence. As a congregation they are deeply involved in addressing the needs of their neighbors, whether these neighbors are members of their congregation or not. I asked the pastor of this small congregation about their liturgy, and he told me a story: Many people in Buenos Aires do not have homes so they occupy empty buildings. At one point, local police were planning to evict the numerous families from an abandoned clinic where they were living, putting them out on the street. But just before the police arrived, members of the congregation gathered the families in the center courtyard of the clinic. They led the people in prayer and song at gunpoint for eighteen hours until the police finally gave up. "Worship for us," the pastor said, is "a tool of resistance." What a profound example of a liturgical practice that is present in world! We serve a God who is present with us and invites us to set aside a day to experience that presence. We experience God's presence as God meets us in worship and as we encounter and embody Jesus' presence in a world so badly in need of liberation and healing. As we prepare for worship on coming Sabbaths and liturgically remember God's presence with us - in Creation and Redemption - let us ask how we can be more present to both God and the world we are called to serve. Share your thoughts in our Facebook dialogue.
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