Stephen
Terry, Director
Sabbath:
A Day of Freedom
Commentary
for the July 20, 2019 Sabbath School Lesson
"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, NIV
The text above ties Sabbath observance directly to the
story of Creation in the book of Genesis. One might assume two things from this
text. First, when it was established, people observed it. Second, those to whom
this passage was addressed had forgotten it and needed to remember. According
to the biblical record, the Decalogue was given to Moses soon after the
Israelites had been freed from a 400 year sojourn in Egypt, an experience that
began favorably in the days of the Patriarch Joseph and ended with abject
degradation as they toiled under Egyptian slave masters. The God of the Bible
meant nothing to the Egyptians. They worshiped a pantheon of idols instead,
including even the pharaoh as being worthy of worship. Of course, the Sabbath
was nothing to them, and likely during their long enslavement, the Israelites
would be expected to labor under the whip every day. Being foreigners in a
strange land, they may not have even had the opportunity to enjoy the various
holidays associated with the different Egyptian gods since they did not worship
them anyway. Rest was probably elusive.
Apart from the Mount Sinai experience, Moses may have
encountered the Sabbath in Midian while he was joined to Jethro's household.
Jethro, also known as Reuel, was acknowledged as a priest who served the God
that Moses encountered in Horeb.[i] Moses' wife, Zipporah, was
raised in that household to love and serve God. As part of that environment,
the Sabbath may have still held sacredness for the family, a sacredness honored
by Jethro as priest and taught to Moses by his wife's example and
encouragement. Moses may also have recalled lessons he had learned while very
young when he was being nursed by his mother. Although, after so many
generations, especially if the Sabbath had been forgotten, we cannot determine
how much of his cultural or religious experience at such a young age was
understood or even what survived the lost memories of childhood. His attempt to
mete out justice before he fled Egypt shows that he understood that he was
Israelite and not Egyptian, but this may have been something the Egyptians
constantly reminded him of as opposed to something from his childhood.
That Moses may have learned about the Sabbath from Jethro
and Zipporah may also be inferred from his familiarity with the Sabbath before
it was handed down with the Decalogue at Mount Sinai. Its importance was
established before then in conjunction with the manna provided to the
Israelites in the wilderness. Each day they gathered manna and if they did not
eat it all, it spoiled the next day. However, on what we call Friday now, they
were able to gather twice as much and nothing spoiled the next day, the
Sabbath, so that they did not have to go out and gather on that day. Then on
the first day of the week, which we call Sunday now, they could resume their
labor of gathering manna for each day according to the normal experience. This
weekly cycle was repeated for forty years, sustaining them until they crossed the
Jordan near Jericho to take possession of the land.[ii] The Israelites have been
careful to remember the Sabbath cycle ever since. By Jesus' time, it was still
being observed, and he kept it as well,[iii] although redefining it
in the process as he sought to restore its original purpose and meaning.
Although the Israelites had the weekly cycle correct, the Sabbath had come to
mean a series of rules that must be carefully observed in order to avoid
contaminating the Sabbath with unholy thoughts or actions. Much of the idea of
the blessedness of rest, liberation and healing had been lost in burdensome
ritual. Rather than seeking salvation from slavery as the day symbolized,[iv] they instead bound
themselves with chains of ritual and even beyond that, they continually debated
what unwritten rules were also prohibitive based on what had already been
determined. As a result, much of religion had degenerated into rigidity with
little compassion or freedom for its adherents.
We still struggle with this today. Even though as
Seventh-day Adventists we understand the importance of the seventh-day Sabbath
as a memorial of Creation, liberation and salvation, we also struggle with the
problem of making too literal an application of Sabbath observance that
sacrifices compassion on the altar of obedience. In the past, this has
sometimes become absurd in its triviality. I remember while in college taking
theology I would take part in discussions with fellow theology students over
issues of why it was frowned upon to play with a football on Sabbath, but
playing with a Frisbee was fine. Was it because the football had pointed ends,
whereas a Frisbee did not? (If you have ever been hit by a Frisbee when not
paying attention, you know how absurd that argument is.) Or was it because a football
was associated with a more macho sport? We never could reason out an answer.
The Bible is silent about both footballs and Frisbees and mostly silent about
sports in general except for Paul's references to athletic training.
Another concern was based on the idea that swimming on
the Sabbath was a violation of Sabbath sacredness while wading was not. Again
the Bible is silent on both activities in regards to Sabbath observance.
Naturally such discussions required a definition of wading as opposed to swimming.
From those discussions, some determined that if you did not wear a swimsuit and
rolled up your pant legs, then as long as the legs did not get wet you were
wading and not swimming. In other words, a difference of an inch in water level
defined proper Sabbath observance. God forbid you should step into a hole while
"wading."
Such ambiguities have created an ambivalence about
Sabbath observance today that have caused some to give up entirely on trying to
follow all the man-made rules that have evolved over the centuries. This may
have also been the case in Jesus' day as well. The religious leaders referred
to the common people as the am ha'aretz or "people of the land." Based on the Talmud, this was a caste
within Israel that was felt by the religious leaders to be negligent in their
observance of ritual. The feeling was so strong that intermarriage between
those who were observant and those who were not was strongly discouraged.[v]
These are the kind of people, "sinners," that Jesus was often accused
of associating with. Perhaps then there should be little wonder that his
message of liberation from the onerous requirements of the religious leaders,
or worse their condemnation, found a reception with such people.
This experience with the
Sabbath should be instructive for us that we stand in danger of committing the
same error when we use too much of a fine-toothed comb in parsing out what is
and is not Sabbath observance. While grace does not do away with the Sabbath
any more than it does away with the rest of the Decalogue, it restores the
proper relationship to the commandments that has been lost. The commandments
remind us that we are out of harmony with God and therefore with much of the
universe he created. They remind us of the call to freedom from slavery given
to the Israelites millennia ago. We are created to be free from the passions
and desires that so easily enslave us. We can see this when faced with prison
for murder and we spend the rest of our natural lives behind iron bars, or
worse, are condemned to death. But we may have a more difficult time
understanding how worshiping God or observing the Sabbath also relates to our
freedom from bondage. Perhaps it is because these things are not derived from
man's logic, even though apologists might try to construct a theological
edifice to demonstrate how reason dictates we must observe them. Instead faith
is specifically experiential. Reason alone does not get us there. Quite the
opposite sometimes, it can cause us to develop meaningless rituals to convince
ourselves that we have arrived at understanding, while falling far short in
reality. God does not expect us to make a complete transition in one step.
Instead he simply asks us to give him a try. He knows that from little seeds
will come great harvests. He knows this because it is a law of nature that he
created. For instance, if we plant one dried up kernel of corn in the ground
and it germinates, it produces more kernels than we can hold in both our hands.
He simply asks us to plant our dried up past in him and while resting in him as
that kernel rested in the soil, he will make something marvelous of our life,
not from our own effort, but from that miraculous spark of life he gives to all
things. When that happens, the Sabbath and everything else will gradually fall
into place, and we will come to know a peace we have never known before.
