Thoughts on Sabbath

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep 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, you or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” (Exodus 20:8-11, ESV).

In the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Mark we read about the night when Jesus calmed the storm at sea. He was in a boat with the apostles, many of whom were fishermen and had spent most of their lives on that sea. Such a storm came up that night that the winds were howling and the waves were crashing down on them and even the calloused, hardened fishermen feared for their lives: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” (v. 38). Wakened by their cries, Jesus stands, and rebukes the wind and the sea with a word: “Peace, be still!” (v. 39).

Not only are Jesus' words an clear echo of Psalm 46:10 “Be still and know that I am God...” but his calming of the sea has astonishing significance when we consider what it would have meant from the perspective of the Apostles. All of the Apostles were Jewish, and as Jews, they would have been well versed in the Genesis 1-2 creation account. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Gen 1:1-2). In much of the ancient world, the sea was a symbol of chaos, destruction, darkness and evil. Despite the dark strength of the sea, Genesis 1 reveals that God—Yahweh—is far more powerful. From chaotic nothingness God creates the universe in all of its beauty and mystery and complexity and wonder—light from dark, order from chaos, life from death.

After Jesus calms the sea the Apostles are even more afraid of Him than they were of the waves: “and they were filled with a great fear and said to one another, 'Who then is this , that even the wind and the sea obey him?'”(Mk 4:41, ESV). To the Jewish mind, there was only ever one who had the power to calm the sea—Yahweh himself. They knew Yahweh had calmed the primordial, chaotic sea and created the world. The Apostles were terrified that night before Jesus because, however astonishingly and impossibly, the same One who had calmed the primordial, chaotic sea in order to create the world had just calmed the storm that had been threatening them. And he was standing in their boat!

What does this have to do with the Sabbath?

Often times the work we find ourselves doing becomes overwhelmingly urgent and we feel crushed by it's weight. The pace of life in our culture doesn't help—we feel that unless we are sprinting all day every day we will fall behind and fail. The wind is howling, the sea is roaring, the water is crashing over the insufficient sides of our boat, and we fear that unless we keep bailing, we are sure to sink. Perhaps especially in Social Justice work this feeling can become even more pressing: there are tsunamis and earthquakes—children are dying and—gasp—if we could just—gasp—work a little—gasp—harder...

Sabbath is, in a way, a crying out to Jesus: “Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?” It is an acknowledgment that we are not in control, and that despite our best efforts we are overwhelmed and incapable of achieving all that we had hoped we would. It is the necessary antidote to the pervasive workaholism of our culture, for it is a day of being, not doing, a day of ceasing from our labors, a day of rest. By keeping Sabbath we proclaim our trust in God to be who He says He is: the One more powerful than the sea—the Resurrected One—the Redeemer of the World—the One who is able to work all things together for the good—the one who will finally accomplish His purposes and bring His Kingdom to earth.

A friend of mine says that Sabbath is a day on which to do “nothing obligatory.” After many years of frenetic living my wife Danae and I have taken his advice, and are now attempting to keep Sabbath on a weekly basis.

And do you know what I've noticed? Time itself seems to change during Sabbath. Perhaps this is because, as one theologian put it, Sabbath is when “eternity and time touch,”1 but the seconds and the minutes and the hours seem to lengthen and change their texture when they are not compressed and dissected by endless to-do lists. Thus Sabbath has become for us a restorative time, a life-giving day. We take off our watches, turn off our phones, shut down our computers. It is a day to be with ourselves, with one another, with others. It is a chance to be still, to know that God is God, and that we are not. We sleep in, go for walks, bake bread, read, cook a meal, take a nap, whatever seems good and restful, and (most importantly), non-obligatory.

Thus I beseech you, as your brother in Christ and a fellow weary worker longing for the Kingdom: keep Sabbath. Stop. Rest. Don't think of it as an obligation but rather as a day to be free of the countless responsibilities your life requires of you. God is who He says He is. He calmed the primordial sea at the beginning of everything, calmed the storm that threatened the Apostles, got up from the grave, and will ultimately bring all things to completion.

He is in your boat.

Be Still.

Lord, thank you for who you are. Thank you for creating us, for calling us, for redeeming us. We ask that you would lead us into your Sabbath rest, that you would help us to acknowledge your Lordship and our Creatureliness. Thank you for the work that you have called us to do, but help us to allow you to sanctify our work by keeping your commandment that we cease from our work. We proclaim our trust in you that You are able, that you work in us and through us, and that you are working all things together in accordance with your perfect will.

1) Jurgen Moltmann, God in Creation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 284.

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