What's a Sabbath For?

In his most recent response to my posts on Vacation and Creation, Brad Hightower writes:

I would like to make one little challenge to your perspective of Sabbath. How did Jesus spend the Sabbath? One answer is in all the healing stories. He did good. So a great way to get peace and rest is to "Do unto others". The rest is from self-centeredness and into otherliness. Under the New Covenant, we can enter this Sabbath of deliverance from self-centeredness every day. In fact, we ought to strive to enter into this rest.

I believe your model for leisure time is still really a therapeutic model. My soul finds rest not in leisure or recovery time but in taking His yoke and learning a new way of living day by day that is based entirely on "doing the will of God" and being of service to others...I am challenging your readers to possible re-evaluate the foundation upon we really live. If our daily life produces stress this is a serious spiritual problem. The answer is in learning a new foundation to build upon in seeking to walk in the spiritual principles of Jesus.

Brad's challenge is well worth taking up.  And oddly enough, that is exactly what I propose that I have been trying to do in these posts.  My intention for challenging what I call "X-Box Living" has been to help Christians see that there is a different and I believe better way to spend our leisure time than plug into media, amused at a theme park or indulging ourselves in some bloated, expensive vacation.  Indeed, I want more Christians to spend more time with their friends and families outside so that they will stay connected to the very creation we are called to "cultivate and keep" (how stewardship is best defined, biblically).  I also believe that re-thinking our "discretionary" time is one of the best ways to begin "reconsidering our strategies for living based on the presence and availability of God's Kingdom" (to use Dallas Willard's definition of repentance.

BUT, and here is probably where Brad and I differ, I do think that the model of God in the garden speaks to both the need to spend some time NOT doing even good things so that we can enjoy what God has made and what we have been able to accomplish in service to him.  In the same way that an all powerful God "rested" and communed with his good creation when his work was accomplished, we too are called--no commanded with grave consequences I might add (Ex 31-12-17)--to rest and commune on the sabbath as a sign of what it means to be God's people, called and saved by his work and not their own efforts (Dt 5:15). 

Yes, Jesus healed people on the sabbath (Mt 12:9-14 and parallels). But the gospel accounts of those healings show that he was doing deliberate prophetic acts to assert both his lordship (Mt. 12:8, Mk. 2:27) and to challenge the legalistic sabbath rules of the day that I believe were in direct contradiction to the purposes of God's divine decree.  Brad's assessment that my model is "therapeutic" is accurate.  Isn't that what Jesus was saying in Mark 2:27 that the Sabbath is really all about: healing, restoration--dare I say, "therapy" for humans, not to be a burden of service.   

Brad's larger issue should also not be ignored. 

I am challenging your readers to possible re-evaluate the foundation upon we really live. If our daily life produces stress this is a serious spiritual problem. The answer is in learning a new foundation to build upon in seeking to walk in the spiritual principles of Jesus.

Indeed, this is also what I want to "stress".  I see the harsh and bitter fruit of the lives of the "worried well" all around me.  People who live in comfort and security that few people have ever known are also terribly stressed, terribly driven, terribly disconnected from the reality that everything they have been given came from their father who loves them and calls them to walk with Jesus the road of the Kingdom.  We are instead so consumed with the things of Mammon that we lose the perspective of how much we have here and now available to us as "kingdom people."

I just happen to think that sometimes we need to "unplug" and "get away from it all" to see this.

PS. Since I am starting a new series on Becoming a Kingdom Community using the Gospel of Matthew in my messages at church, I'll also be using this blog space to further ruminate on the themes of living here and now in the Kingdom. Let me also encourage you all to check out Brad's good teaching on discipleship as living in the Kingdom at his blog site.

Comments

[Lyn]

Tod & Brad,
I'm enjoying the dialog and believe both of you have complimentary perspectives - very much like the two variant commands in the decalogue. Exodus speaks of remembering the sabbath, while Deuteronomy calls us to observe the sabbath.

Of course, both are light years away from our modern day concept of "vacating" from our vocation or "a-musing" (not thinking) ourselves to death. Appreciate your posts.

Lyn from Thought Renewal