This week as the Sabbath approached my thoughts shifted from why we observe the Sabbath to why we celebrate it. We should not think of the Sabbath as a cyclical, repetitive event but rather as a final celebration of God's creative and redemptive activity. A popular and faulty teaching is that the Sabbath is a necessary rest that allows us to be replenished for the upcoming six days of work. This teaching is antithetical to what Sabbath rest conveys. In the creation account, God rested on the Sabbath when He had finished His work. There was no more work to be done in creation. God did not rest on the seventh day so that he could repeat His creative activity for another six days again and again. His creation was final and it was good. As we celebrate the Sabbath we ought to be entering its rest in that frame of mind. Yet, is it realistic to think that we can actually finish our work in the six days preceding the Sabbath? In my line of work, this is unrealistic and unthinkable, oftentimes I approach the Sabbath with unfinished business. I have heard the argument that it is more honoring to God that we finish our work rather than keep the Sabbath, but how does this line up with the theology behind the Sabbath? One teaching of the Jewish sages on Exodus 20:9 that I believe well reflects the meaning of Sabbath rest is that we are to "Rest on the Sabbath as if all your work were done. Another interpretation: Rest even from the thought of labor." 1 .
This is utterly important because the Sabbath attests to God as the creator of all things. This truth, so foundational to our Christian faith, is expressed as a witness when we celebrate the Sabbath and affirms this essential creed. Our unfinished efforts speak only to our finite limitations. Our celebration of the Sabbath, speaks to our acknowledgement of God's infinite being and perfect finisher of that which He begins. This has profound implications in the Sabbath's relation to God's redemptive purpose (a post for later). To bring our "finished" business as a way to honor God, above His sanctified and holy day is no different than to bring an unworthy sacrifice in the manner of Cain. George Elliott beautifully illustrates this purpose in the Sabbath:
The reason of the institution of the Sabbath is one which possesses an unchanging interest and importance to all mankind. The theme of the Creation is not particular to Israel, nor is worship of the Creator confined to the children of Abraham. The primary article of every religious creed, and the foundation of all true religion, is faith in one God as the Maker of all things. Against atheism, which denies the existence of a personal God; against materialism, which denies that this visible universe has its roots in the unseen; and against secularism, which denies the need of worship, the Sabbath is therefore an eternal witness. It symbolically commemorates that creative power which spoke all things into being, the wisdom which ordered their adaptations and harmony, and the love which made, as well as pronounced, all 'very good.' It is set as the perpetual guardian of man against the spiritual infirmity which has everywhere led him to a denial of God who made him, or to the degeneration of that God into a creature made with his own hand. 2
My brothers and sisters in Christ, I urge you, bring not your unfinished (or finished) efforts as that by which to honor God. Rather, rest in Him and his Sabbath which He made for you (Mark 2:27). In a day when we tend to super-spiritualize God's ordinances we forget that they were given to us as blessings and reminders of who His is.
Until next week,
Shabbat Shalom!
1 Quoted in: Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951), 32.
2 George Elliott, The Abiding Sabbath. (New York, 1884), 17-18.