Second Presbyterian Church

"Do We Have Time for the Sabbath? The 4^th Commandment"
April 6, 2003

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Sermons Homepage » Sermons for 2003 » Sermons for April 2003

#5 in the Series on The Ten Commandments
The Rev. Daniel E. Hale, D. Min.

• Exodus 20: 8-11
• Mark 2: 23- 3:6

What an unusual idea! If I understand some of what this commandment is requiring of the Children of Israel, it is requiring them to pay homage to God by NOT working one day a week and dedicating that day to the LORD!

Now, that latter part of the idea is not so unusual. Even in our day of secular domination we understand the concept of dedicating a day to or for someone, somebody. We have national holidays - Labor Day: we remember our workers. We have Memorial Day: we remember our soldiers, especially those who died in battle. We have National Secretary's Day. We celebrate Lincoln's, Washington's, or Martin Luther King's birthdays. We know how to have a day dedicated to important people to our faith and nation.

But it is very difficult for us to dedicate one full day a week that is dedicated, or honors God!

We should not feel too disheartened about this difficulty, because it has been a challenge ever since this Fourth Commandment became a part of the Jewish and Christian Faith.

As we can quickly see, the difficulty of keeping the Sabbath is the danger of one extreme or another. At one extreme a community of faith can make this commandment into a series of laws, of "do's" and "don'ts" which tend to take on a life of their own and eventually become oppressive. So in our New Testament reading today we have a situation in which it is wrong to pluck grain to eat even when you are hungry, because the Sabbath rules state that you cannot harvest on the Sabbath. It was okay to rescue your livestock, but it was NOT okay to heal someone. Instead of the Sabbath being created for the benefit of people, the reverse had developed; people had become "created" for the benefit of the Sabbath! Its purpose had been turned upside down.

My parents were devout Christians. When I was 5 years old. They worked as hard as any one I know trying to live in accordance with their Christian faith. My father was also a minister. Sundays were meant to be days dedicated to God. After Sunday morning worship and Sunday dinner we could NOT go outside to play sports, such as baseball. We could not do much of anything that was considered secular. Thus, we were restricted from a lot of activities that other people would tend to do on Sunday afternoons. Yet, every Sunday at 5pm my father would turn on the radio and listen to the program, "The Shadow," which I believe was a "who dun it" mystery. Even as a loving, caring family as we were back then, the sense of the Sabbath was that it was restrictive, not refreshing.

This seemed to be the way things were when Jesus was ministering on earth. The stories read today are stories that relate how the rigidity of keeping Sabbath rules was actually working in opposition to the purpose of keeping the Sabbath. The religious leaders had become more focused upon the rules of the Sabbath that the intent of the Sabbath. The purpose of keeping the Sabbath was for the people of God to experience spiritual and physical renewal. It was a time to rest. When we rest from our work we are expressing that our work is NOT our god, but that God is our God. When we work seven days a week, take little or no break from it, we are worshiping our work and we are guilty of breaking the first commandment: You shall have no other gods before me. We are essentially saying that we and our work are sufficient for our lives and that we really do not need God to be a part of who we are and what we are to be.

At the other extreme, a community of faith that does NOT take this commandment seriously can eventually lose all sense of having a specific day, or amount of time solely dedicated to God. In reaction to Christians of earlier generations the Christian community now runs the risk of ignoring the command to keep one day a week for the LORD. Most of us remember Blue Laws, which were laws that made it illegal for most businesses to be open on Sundays. Now, Blue Laws rarely exist and virtually any business may be open on Sundays.

In addition, the situation in the Western World has become much more complex than to have businesses close down on Sundays so that the people can have a day of rest. First of all, we are no longer a Christian culture, but a pluralistic culture in which Christians still are a large percentage. Every community has other religions such as Judaism, Islam, Hindu, etc. The Sabbath day for Jews is Saturday. The holy day for Islam is Friday. If we had strict Blue Laws, then we would be forcing non-Christians to take it easy on a regular day and disrespecting the day they have set aside for worship.

Secondly, we are in a global context which means that some businesses need to be open virtually all the time in order for the economy to function smoothly. Although it is Sunday morning here, it is well into Monday in Japan and the Orient, so that we would have to "choose" whose Sabbath Blue Laws to honor.

Thirdly, and perhaps the strongest reason that the situation is complex, is that we have all grown accustomed to having certain businesses open on Sundays. Conveniences tend to transform into functional necessities. We are not accustomed to gassing up our automobiles on Saturday, so that we can have fuel enough to get through the drive to church and the Sunday afternoon drive in the country. We are not accustomed to making sure that we have the groceries by Saturday in order to get through Sunday. We may shop only once a week, but if we need an item on Sunday we go get it.

So, our present situation in which keeping a day of rest that is dedicated to the LORD presents a real challenge. There seems to be no simple solution. There is no single day that stands apart for us to honor God and to rest. Sure, we still, sometimes, attend Sunday worship, perhaps even Sunday School. Yet more often that not the rest of the day is flooded with many activities ranging from recreation to vocation.

And I believe that this problem has contributed to the decrease in participation in the life of the typical congregation. The idea of a day to rest and worship, to relax and enjoy the fellowship of sisters and brothers in Christ has largely disappeared.

Some Christians have even challenged the idea of the validity of a Sabbath day. After all, the "true Sabbath," is the seventh day of the week, Saturday. It is the holy day of the Jewish faith, because the Lord rested on the seventh day. It is the holy day of the Jewish faith, because the Lord delivered the Israelites from Egypt and they are to spend the day in rest and praise to their mighty God.

But we Christians worship on Sunday, the first day of the week. Why, because it was Sunday that the Lord was raised from the dead. Each Sunday is a mini Easter in that every time we worship on Sunday, we commemorate the fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and is still alive! For us the 4th Commandment is valid in that we are still called to a day to rest from our work and refresh ourselves spiritually and physically. It can still be valid in that keeping the Sabbath is a way of expressing our worship to God and not worshiping our work.

And there is a human factor that concerns me. When we do not take sufficient rest from our vocations, our everyday worries, we become emotionally, spiritually and physically burned out. We need to take time off from our vocation. When we don't we pay for it spiritually, or emotionally, or physically, or any combination of the three. What is really worth noting is the fact people who do take sufficient time away from their work end up doing better work! I believe that the LORD blesses people who honor God by not worshiping their work!

Do we have time for the Sabbath? If you are like me, you usually do not take time for the Sabbath. These days we don't seem to have time for anything that is not absolutely important, because we never get that caught up in all the things that we must do. In order for you and me to have time for the Sabbath, we must TAKE the time, not wait for it to become available. And since it has strong implications for whom or what we are really placing first, God or something else, it is imperative for us to do it in order to honor God.

To remember the Sabbath and to keep it holy is a challenge, because we need to continue to find ways to worship, praise and ENJOY God without it deteriorating into a bunch of legalistic rules that take the fun out of the day when we worship the Lord. Amen.