The Sabbath As Service

Sabbath rest is most meaningful when the day is one of service to God, people, ourselves, and our environment.

We live today in a most exciting yet paradoxical age. We can tune our radio and TV receivers to sounds and pictures coming from across the ocean or even from outer space, yet many persons fail to tune their souls to God to hear His voice.

We can race the sun across the sky with supersonic jets, yet we often fail to reach the needy across the street. We live and move among large crowds, yet many persons are afflicted by a deep sense of loneliness or by an identity crisis. Many seek for rest and inner peace by taking vacations, tranquilizers, drugs, or alcohol, yet restlessness, tension, and anxiety often remain in their inner souls.

We can dial a few numbers and talk instantly with someone living on the farthest continent, yet we sometimes fail to communicate with our closest kin, husband, wife, and children. We can harness many types of natural resources to ensure our comfort, yet our very existence is threatened by the depletion and pollution of natural resources.

To sum it up, we live today in a paradoxical age where on the one hand we enjoy increased knowledge, goods, communication, and comforts, while on the other hand many of us experience physical exhaustion, emotional frustration, social neglect, inner restlessness, and loss of assurance regarding God's existence and a divine solution to the problems that afflict us.

In light of this dilemma, it is well to ask what contribution the Sabbath can make toward solving our pressing problems. Let us look at four specific areas of service which the Sabbath is designed to provide to us as individual believers and to our society as a whole. We shall call these four areas of service (1) service to God, (2) service to others, (3) service to ourselves, and (4) service to our habitat.

1. THE SABBATH AS SERVICE TO GOD

The Sabbath is first of all designed to provide us with time and opportunity for serving God. Repeatedly the Scriptures remind us that the seventh day is a "sabbath of solemn rest," holy to the Lord (Ex 31:15; 16:23; Lev 23:3; cf. Ex 20:10; Mark 2:28).

Though we serve God every day, our everyday service differs from our Sabbath service. In what way? Primarily in that during the week we offer God what may be called the Martha type of service (see Luke 10:38-42), in which we acknowledge our Saviour while serving an employer and meeting the many demands of life. On Sabbath, however, we offer God what may be called the Mary type of service, in which we desist from gainful employment and from secular pursuits in order to honor our Saviour fully and wholly.

The deliberate act of resting for God on the Sabbath is most meaningful worship, for it signifies our total response to God. It is an act of worship that is not exhausted in the one-hour attendance at the divine service, but which should last the full twenty-four hours.

Here lies a basic difference between Sabbath keeping and most popular Sunday keeping, namely, in the understanding of the value, significance, and validity of resting as an act of worship to God. Sunday keeping originated as a period of worship followed by ordinary activities. In spite of later attempts by church councils and English Reformers to turn Sunday into a holy day of rest, Sunday keeping for most Christians today is little more than an hour of worship. Indeed, Christopher Kiesling, a leading Catholic liturgist, in his book, The Future of the Christian Sunday, has called for "the abandonment of rest on Sunday as a Christian practice," retaining only the Sunday hour of worship. Some writers propose shifting even the traditional hour of worship to minimize interference with Sunday leisure.

On the contrary, the Bible presents Sabbath keeping as service rendered to God through the consecration of the 24 hours of the seventh-day Sabbath. It is noteworthy that the fourth commandment does not say, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy by attending Sabbath school and church service," but rather, "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy" by working six days and resting on the seventh day for the Lord your God.

We need to remind ourselves that life is measured by time, and the way we spend our time reveals our priorities.

What this means is that the essence of Sabbath keeping is the consecration of time, the act of resting for God on the seventh day. This is most important, because it makes all the activities of this day---participation in informal fellowship and appropriate recreation as well as participation in the formal divine service---worship offerings to God, because they spring from a heart deliberately committed to honoring God on His holy day.

To appreciate the profound religious significance of Sabbath rest as service to God, we need to remind ourselves that life is measured by time, and the way we spend our time reveals our priorities.

To be willing on the seventh day to withdraw from the world of things in order to meet the invisible God in the quietness of our souls means to show in a tangible way our love, loyalty and devotion to God. It means to be willing to tune out the hundreds of voices and noises that clamor for attention, in order to tune our souls to God to hear His voice.

Sabbath keeping is not merely sandwiching an hour of worship into an otherwise hectic day seeking pleasure or profit. It rather means serving God wholly during the whole Sabbath, offering God not lip service but the service of our total being.

2. THE SABBATH AS SERVICE TO OTHERS

The Sabbath provides precious opportunities to serve not only God, who created and saves us, but also others. After helping us find God, the Sabbath helps us find others. After renewing us with a fresh understanding and experience of God's creative and redemptive love, the Sabbath challenges us to reach out and respond to human needs.

To help us remember others, the fourth commandment gives an extensive list of them to be remembered on the Sabbath: son, daughter, manservant, and maidservant, also the sojourner among us and even our animals. The humanitarian aspect of the Sabbath tends to be neglected. Many Sabbath keepers prefer to think in terms of service to themselves rather than of service to others. But Christ took pains through His Sabbath teaching and ministry to clarify and emphasize the social obligations of Sabbath keeping.

The Saviour proclaimed the Sabbath to be a day "to do good" (Matt 12:12 NIV), "to save" (Mark 3:4), to loose men and women from physical and spiritual bonds (Luke 13:12), a day to show mercy rather than religiosity (Matt 12:7, 8). Let us consider briefly how celebration of the Sabbath can be shared with others.

A. Time for the Family. First of all, the Sabbath provides us time and opportunity for the immediate members of the family. The daily work scatters the family members in different directions: husband and wife to their respective work, the children to school.

My wife tells me that when I am away she misses me more on Sabbath than on any other day.

The pressure of weekdays can make even Father a stranger in his family. It is not uncommon to hear children say, "We hardly ever see Daddy. He is always away." On the Sabbath, free from the pressure of ordinary work, Father has an opportunity to become attuned again to his children.

A most welcome feature of our family life since our marriage has been Friday evening. When our children were still at home, the hustle and bustle of the week faded away as our family of five gathered to welcome the Lord of the Sabbath by singing, reading, praying, and listening to one another. The arrival of the Sabbath even yet serves to reknit family bonds of sympathy and affection.

A challenge that we face as parents is to make the Sabbath a day of joyful celebration instead of gloomy frustration for our children. Ellen G. White tells us in this regard that "parents can make the Sabbath, as it should be, the most joyful day of the week. They can lead their children to regard it as a delight, the day of days, the holy of the Lord, honorable" (Child Guidance, p. 537).

B. Time for One's Partner. The Sabbath provides time and opportunity to come close to one special person one's marital partner. The rapid pace of modern life, punctuated by professional and social interests, contributes to the estrangement of husbands and wives and to an ever-increasing number of broken marriages. The Sabbath can function as a catalyst to solidify and strengthen marital relationships, both theologically and practically.

Theologically, the sanctity of the Sabbath serves to safeguard the sacredness of marriage, because the Sabbath teaches that family relationships are sacred. A Christian couple who take time on the Sabbath to renew their commitment to God will very likely also renew their commitment to each other.

Practically, the Sabbath contributes to solidifying marital relationships by providing husbands and wives time and inspiration to come close and listen to each other, sharing their thoughts, concerns, joys, and necessary duties.

My wife tells me that when I am away she misses me more on Sabbath than on any other day. Likewise, when I am away I miss my wife more on Sabbath than on any other day. When we're home together, Sabbath is our special day to worship, to walk, to visit, to relax together.

The closeness that husbands and wives experience on the Sabbath enables them to overcome any estrangement that may have ensued from the tensions of the previous week. They experience a renewed sense of unity and commitment to each other as well as to God.

C. Time for the Needy. Sabbath is the special day to serve God by taking time to show concern not only toward our immediate family members but also toward the needy. It is noteworthy that the "stranger that is within thy gates" is specifically mentioned in the fourth commandment (Ex 20:10; 23:12; Deut 5:14) as a beneficiary of our Sabbath concern.

Jesus, through His Sabbath ministry, taught that the Sabbath is not so much rules to obey as people to love; it is the day to share God's blessings with others. An important aspect of the preparation for Sabbath in a Jewish home years ago was planning for possible visitors.

Similarly, Christian preparation for the Sabbath should include planning to share food and friendship with the visitor, the orphan, the single parent, the elderly, the estranged and discouraged who are present in our church and community.

During the week our many responsibilities may cause us to neglect needy persons. On the Sabbath, as we celebrate God's love and care, we are motivated to share our concern and friendship with the needy. Such service rendered on the Sabbath not only honors God but also enriches our lives with a sense of joy and satisfaction.

3. THE SABBATH AS SERVICE TO OURSELVES

Sabbath keeping means not only service to God but also service to ourselves, because the very service we offer God on the Sabbath by resting and worshiping Him is designed not to add strength or power to God but to enable God to strengthen and empower our personal lives.

God does not need our Sabbath rest and worship, nor does He need our weekday work. What He wants is a receptive heart, mind, and soul, willing to receive and experience His peace and rest, which alone can fulfill the deepest longing of our hearts. How can the Sabbath provide us this opportunity to find rest in God? Let us focus briefly on only two significant ways, namely, meditation and renewal.

A. Sabbath Meditation. On the Sabbath we can experience divine peace and rest by taking time to meditate in the climate of stillness and free reflection that the day provides. According to some social analysts, the lack of reflection is a fundamental cause of our culture's restlessness. Many today live intensely active, restless lives without understanding their true selves, and because of this are ever sensing emptiness and disillusionment.

Some people, in their attempt to find peace and joy, seek to forget their tensions by going from one round of activity to another. But inner peace and harmony are to be found not in forgetting ourselves by doing an endless round of activities, but rather in discovering ourselves by being still.

The psalmist expresses this truth eloquently when he echoes God's gracious invitation, "Be still, and know that I am God" (Ps 46:10). For many of us this ideal remains largely unfulfilled during the week. The Sabbath, however, provides us with time and opportunity for meaningful reflection and meditation by releasing us from the pressure of our daily work. In his book Turning East, Harvey Cox, a distinguished Harvard University theologian, tells how he discovered a kind of Sabbath meditation in Boulder, Colorado while researching Eastern meditation at a Buddhist center.

While at the Buddhist center, Professor Cox accepted an invitation from a Jewish rabbi to celebrate with him "a genuine, old-fashioned Sabbath, appreciating the world rather than fixing it, just savoring being rather than doing." By accepting the rabbi's invitation, Cox discovered that "meditation is in essence a miniature Sabbath. "

In other words, Harvey Cox found that what Eastern meditation promises, namely, an experience of divine reality, could readily be experienced by observing another Eastern institution, the old-fashioned biblical Sabbath, being rather than doing, and appreciating God's world rather than fixing it up.

Cox noticed, however, that Sabbath meditation is superior to Oriental meditation in that it does not encourage detachment from the realities of this world (a contemplative life instead of an active one), but rather provides a one-day interlude that enables a person to look forward to the better world to come while still being alive to the present one.

I would like to propose that all of us include a time for meditation in our Sabbath planning. Some may wish to meditate by themselves; others may wish to join in group meditation. Still others may prefer to meditate while reading devotional literature or while contemplating the beauty of nature. We must allow for diversity in our spiritual exercises, because we do not all experience divine realities in the same way. The important thing is to take some time during the Sabbath to meditate, to let our minds dwell upon spiritual realities.

The time spent in thoughtful meditation may enrich our moral and spiritual perceptions more, say, than listening to a Sabbath afternoon panel discussing a controversial theological topic. Chances are, in fact, that listening to a polemical discussion may trouble our minds and thus destroy the peace and rest of the Sabbath.

I was impressed while studying in Rome by the impact prayer and meditation had on some of my professors and classmates. I saw them taking time for prayer and meditation in the early morning and also during the 15-minute intervals between classes.

Some of my professors and classmates would take advantage of those brief intervals to withdraw into the little chapel. The effect of their spiritual exercises could be seen in their peaceful and serene dispositions. While prayer and meditation are possible and necessary every day, it is the climate of stillness provided by the Sabbath that enables us truly to meditate, that is, to discover God and ourselves; truly to experience an awareness of God's presence; freely to "taste and see that the Lord is good" (Ps 34:8).

One of the workers replied, "Sir, we are waiting for our souls to catch up with our bodies."

During the week, as we work to produce, to sell, to buy, and to enjoy things, we tend to view our material wants as more important than our spiritual needs. Our bodies seem to become more important than our souls. The Sabbath is designed to restore the equilibrium between our bodies and our souls.

The story is told of some African workers who were hired to carry pieces of heavy equipment on their backs to a remote post in the interior of Africa. After several days of marching, one morning they refused to pick up their burdens and go any farther. They sat by the side of the road turning a deaf ear to the appeals of the man in charge.

Exasperated, the leader of the expedition asked them, "But why don't you want to go on?"

One of the workers replied, "Sir, we are waiting for our souls to catch up with our bodies." The Sabbath gives our souls a chance to catch up with our bodies; to allow our souls, through worship and meditation, to be enriched with new moral and spiritual values. The spiritual renewal that comes to us on the Sabbath through worship and meditation enables us to turn a new page in our lives, to start a new week with a fresh provision of divine wisdom and grace.

B. Sabbath Physical Renewal. A second way in which the Sabbath enables us to experience divine rest and peace in our lives is through the time and opportunity it provides for physical renewal. We experience physical renewal on the Sabbath, resting from ordinary work and even from the thought of ordinary work.

On the Sabbath our bodies can rest better than on weekdays, because our minds are at rest, at rest in God. Second, physical renewal comes to us on the Sabbath not only through rest but also through engaging in joyful activities. A question often asked me is, "What do you consider appropriate or inappropriate Sabbath activities?"

I always refrain from offering a standard formula for two reasons. First, because physical needs vary considerably according to age and profession. For example, the Sabbath needs and activities of a teenager bubbling over with energy are likely to be different from those of a middle-aged bricklayer.

Second, I believe that any attempt to classify or specify "legitimate" Sabbath activities may encourage legalistic attitudes that stifle the very spirit of freedom and joy of the Sabbath. Thus, rather than listing appropriate or inappropriate Sabbath activities, I will venture to suggest three basic principles to guide us in selecting suitable Sabbath activities.

We would stop in a convenient spot to sing, to discuss a relevant topic, to listen to stories and experiences, and to pray together.

First, our Sabbath activities should be God-centered rather than self-centered. They should be not an end in themselves but rather a means to express our delight in the Lord, to celebrate the goodness of God's creation and redemption. "If you turn back your foot from the sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken"

(Isa 58:13-14 RSV). In our fear of breaking the Sabbath, we may discourage our children and youth from engaging in any form of activity on the Sabbath. The challenge that I see is to teach them how to choose and to engage in Sabbath activities in a way that will enable them to express delight in the Lord, appreciation for His creative and redemptive love commemorated on this day.

Second, Sabbath activities should promote freedom and joy.

They should contribute to celebrating and experiencing the redemptive freedom offered to us by the Saviour on and through this day.

The same activity may be an experience of freedom or of restraint.

For example, a Sabbath picnic in the backyard or in a park can be a joyful, delightful celebration of the goodness of God's creation if adequate preparations have been made before the Sabbath so that everyone can participate freely in it. On the other hand, if some people have to spend hours on Sabbath preparing the food, the picnic becomes an expression of selfishness, since it deprives some persons of the freedom and joy of the Sabbath.

Third, Sabbath activities should encourage fellowship and communion and not competition.

A complaint that I often hear from our young people, especially in our colleges and large churches, goes something like this: "It is very difficult to make new friends in this

place." Apparently one reason for this problem seems to be that the school program offers limited opportunities for informal group fellowship.

Most social events seem to be so structured as to presuppose a date. If a young man or young lady does not have a date, he or she may feel left out and thus may choose not to attend a given social occasion.

Celebration of the Sabbath should encourage informal group fellowships. I treasure memories of the many joyful Sabbath afternoons I spent as a teenager with the young people of our church in Rome and of our school in Florence.

As a youth I looked forward to Sabbath afternoons, when as a group we would go out to a park or hike to the mountain behind the school. We would stop in a convenient spot to sing, to discuss a relevant topic, to listen to stories and experiences, and to pray together. I believe that more can be done to encourage informal group fellowships among our young people on Sabbath afternoons.

These group fellowships may be organized in a home, in the lounges of the residence halls or of the student center, or outdoors when the weather permits. These group fellowships occasioned by the celebration of the Sabbath provide a welcome opportunity to our young people to share together their talents, experiences, and concerns and to establish lasting friendships.

4. THE SABBATH AS SERVICE TO OUR HABITAT

A fourth area of service provided by the Sabbath may be called service to our habitat. There is great concern today over the precarious ecological balance of our environment.

Celebration of the Sabbath provides us the opportunity to serve God by consecrating our time and lives to Him, to serve ourselves through the experience of spiritual and physical renewal, to serve others by coming closer to our family members and needy persons, and to serve our habitat by becoming responsible stewards of God's creation.

As Christians, we share in this concern because we believe that God has placed us in this world as stewards of His good creation. The Sabbath offers us both theological incentives and practical opportunities to be good stewards of God's creation, to develop an ecological conscience.

Theologically, the Sabbath reminds us that we share with nature in God's creation, redemption, and ultimate restoration. It tells us that nature is our worthy partner, not only in this present world but also in the earth made new (Isa 66:22-23).

Practically, the Sabbath teaches us not to exploit but to admire nature as an expression of the beauty and glory of God's handiwork (Ps 19:1). When nature ceases to be an object of contemplation and admiration, it easily becomes an object of exploitation. If a person believes that this world is not God's creation but the product of spontaneous generation, there is little to stop such a person from exploiting its resources irresponsibly.

Says God, "The land is mine and you are... my tenants" (Lev 25:23 NIV). The Sabbath teaches us to acknowledge God's ownership of this world, by enjoining us to surrender the right to use gainfully on this day the land, people, and even animals. On the Sabbath we do not go to the forest to cut trees into firewood, but to admire the trees, the flowers, the birds as expressions of God's handiwork.

Conclusion. Our brief meditation has reminded us how vital are the values and celebration of the Sabbath for our contemporary human needs. May these unique opportunities the Sabbath offers us to serve God, ourselves, others, and our habitat help each of us experience a larger measure of the Saviour's rest in our lives.