It’s taken years for me to integrate Sabbath-keeping into my week. For most of my life, I have attended a church service on Sundays, but otherwise Sundays haven’t been distinct. In recent years, though, ceasing from work, resting, and celebrating God’s goodness on Sundays has gained importance in our family. It’s become a day when we worship with our church community, eat a midday meal, nap or read for a long portion of the afternoon, and enjoy time together in the early evening. As I’ve written elsewhere, we try to avoid purchasing things on Sundays. We also try to avoid e-mail. I’ve taken to giving our household appliances a rest. The laundry can wait.
American culture doesn’t share my family’s appreciation for the Sabbath. I routinely pass a highway billboard from People’s Bank extolling their around-the-clock services. They boast that if there were eight days in a week, they’d be open all eight days. We live in a 24-7 era. We may only report to an office five days a week, but most people are “on” all the time, via the internet, cell phones, and retail establishments.
So my ears perked recently when I heard an interview with William Powers, author of Hamlet’s Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age. One of Powers’s strategies for using technology wisely is what he calls “an Internet Sabbath”: “We turn off the household modem … We can’t do Web surfing … We really enter this other zone, and it’s wonderful …. Even when we’re connected, we can feel the benefits of having been disconnected a couple days ago.”
Two other news stories caught my eye. The first was a review of Chastened, Hephzibah Anderson’s book detailing her year of swearing off sex. The second came from an NPR story about “Meatless Mondays,” Sid Lerner’s attempt to convince New York restaurants to serve vegetarian meals on Mondays. In both cases, non-religious people have lifted practices of self-denial out of their traditionally religious context and found them to bring freedom, wisdom, and well-being.
None of these stories involves a recognition of God as one who deserves worship and who offers a way of life in which self-denial leads to flourishing. Yet they all reflect those truths. Powers, Anderson, and Lerner have all recognized a need for limits and a need for order. This echoes the story of creation in Genesis 1-3, in which God works to bring order out of chaos, and the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2-3, which reflects the human need for limits. (Of course, Genesis 3 also reflects our perpetual tendency to deny those limits and try to be God instead.)
In Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, Marva Dawn writes, “the rhythm of six days of work and one day of ceasing work is written into the very core of our beings.” Any type of Sabbath-keeping is a recognition of who we are as part of God’s creation. Yet, as Dawn also observes, the Sabbath (and spiritual disciplines or obedience to God’s commands in general) become pale versions of truth if they are separated from the God who created them. The Sabbath is a gift to us, for sure. But it is intended to be so much more.
Sabbath-keeping not only offers a day of rest, a rhythm that frees us from the incessant demands of technology and productivity. Sabbath-keeping also provides us with a chance to see ourselves as integrated parts of a community. According to Dawn, “the Jews’ original intention was to be deliberate about their actions in order to recover their identity as the beloved, holy people of God.” Christians gather to worship God on Sundays. We also gather to remember who we are as disciples of Christ, sent forth into the world for the remainder of the week to minister to others. Moreover, the Sabbath is about other people: In our rest, we allow others to rest. We cease from making demands of others — the demand of returning a phone call or serving a meal in a restaurant.
Finally, and most significantly, the Sabbath, the commandments, spiritual disciplines — all are about God’s character. Again, in Dawn’s words, the “basic meaning of the biblical Sabbath is an acceptance of the sovereignty of God.” Christians observe the Sabbath in response to the grace offered to us through Christ. As we rest and fellowship, we are reminded of who we are as limited creatures privileged with the chance to participate in God’s work on earth.
I commend William Powers, Hephzibah Anderson, and Sid Lerner for their efforts to bring order, rest, wisdom, and flourishing to human life. I can only hope their experiences lead them beyond themselves and into the community of faith, to acknowledge the one who created them with the need to rest.
