Sundays have changed within the lifetimes of many of us here. Growing up in Toronto I can recall when rinks and theatres and arenas weren't open on Sunday. On Sunday you could fire a cannon down University Avenue or Yonge Street without doing more than disturbing the pigeons. You could probably have done the same with Princess St. or the main thoroughfare of your home town. Teams and clubs did not compete with churches for the time of the members. Only a very few people worked, there were no Sunday newspapers.
Now, if someone were to say to me, "Ross, it sounds like you're sort of pining for those days" I'd have to think carefully about my response. Are the options to the old "blue Sundays" the current "red Sundays" of carnage on the nation's highways in the summer; or "green Sundays", with the beep, beep of cash registers; or the "clear Sundays" when people clear out of their relationships to go and work? I'd have to consider my answer. I'd probably want to start back with the Old Testament lesson which was read a couple of minutes ago. The gift of the Law to Israel was the high point of their wandering in the wilderness. The trouble begins, right at the outset. Most people who read the Ten Commandments have been schooled to read them as as series of controls imposed by God. It is seen as a negative thing, a series of restrictions on our legitimate freedoms. And it became that for some people and it is certainly wielded that way in certain circles today. But, at the outset, it was truly a self-revelation of God. Do you want to understand God, to really know what God is like? Then you start by contemplating a being for whom these are the minimum standards of life. For Israel, the law was much more a gift than an imposition. Christians, at various times in history, have done themselves a disservice by seeing the Ten Commandments purely as a burden to be discarded. As if somehow they have been totally and utterly superseded by Jesus Christ.
By far the longest command in the Ten Commandments concerns the Sabbath. It's also one we're pretty much inclined to forget. Listen to it carefully: "Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days shall you labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; you shall not do any work - you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day." What points does the commandment make?
Well, I hear a couple of major themes. They are humanitarian and spiritual in nature. The humanitarian one concerns the natural rhythms of human life. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" goes the old rhyme. The fact of the matter is that all work and no play makes Jack - and Jill as well - not only dull but less than fully human. We are not constructed to be working all the time. This commandment reminds us of that. The reason I separate the spiritual from the humanitarian here is that this commandment includes not only the faithful of Israel but also their slaves, the resident aliens and even the animals. The slaves, the immigrants, the animals may not have worshipped the God of Israel. But worshippers or not, they are to be given the day off.
Within the lifetimes of all of us here we have seen the continual erosion of Sunday as a day of rest. And I really have to wonder if we're better off for it. I'm not sure we're better off for buying and selling, seven days a week. Yes, we can talk about tourism and essential services but I cannot believe that it is impossible to free more people from work for a twenty-four hour period. Some things have to be done, things we might forget about. I remember from my time in rural pastoral charges, cows still have to be milked, sabbath or no. My point is not to reestablish the old, oppressive blue laws. Jesus said, in response to those who would make the sabbath a burden that the day was made for people and not people for the day. So further restriction is not my aim. But when I read the humanitarian edge in Deuteronomy 5, I think of people who are not in control of their own time and who need to be protected from those who would rob them of a day of rest. I think of small shopkeepers I know who have no desire to be open on Sunday but who are desperately afraid to lose business or who, even more likely, have received orders from those who control their franchise. My hunch is that many of those who work on Sunday do not do so from choice but because the constant threat is there, if you don't do it we'll find someone who can. The sabbath commandment in Deuteronomy was designed to protect those vulnerable ones.
It could be said that wide open Sundays are a response to the pluralism of our society. I wonder how much of that is reality and how much represents convenient excuse. I wonder how many of my neighbours whose spiritual sabbath is other than Sunday really feel better or that life is so much more convenient for wide open Sundays. But let me be clear. My concern is for human welfare rather than religious legalism. I am not all that keen on having the state enforce my tradition's holy day. I do not want a return to the Lord's Day Act. What I long to see is some realistic reckoning with the rhythms of human life.
But speaking of realism I think we need to ask how we, you and I, might better observe a sabbath day. Despite my desire, I don't know how we can turn the clock back on the commercial madness of our society. So if there is to be a sabbath in our lives, each of us as individuals and families will have to create it. I think it's obvious that one day is not more sacred to God than other days. We cannot, obviously, speak of God being more present on Sunday than on, say, Wednesday. We must make the best use of each day, defining "best" in the widest sense of both productivity and caring. With that in mind, what might we be aiming for in creating our own sabbath or strengthening our current sabbath observations? Well, the original command for the sabbath was that men and women would cease from their regular work. But it wasn't just stopping work that was important. It was stopping one thing in order to do something else, or some things else. Not working was only one component of hallowing, or making holy, that special day. What are some things we might do?
The sabbath is useful for remembering. A special day does not mean we ignore the other days. For example, spouses or partners who celebrate an anniversary, don't somehow avoid loving each other the rest of the year. Every indication is that the sabbath was a time of joy and renewal in Israel. Ancient Israel had many religious observances and the sabbath seems to have been at the top of the list in terms of popularity. There are hundreds of hymns about its joy and its goodness.
Our sabbath might contain four components. It should be a day of rest free from ordinary toils and labours. If we work with our minds most of the week it may involve some healthy physical exertion. The little boy who was told not to skip because it was the sabbath made a sensible retort: "Daddy, I'm not tired." There is an old Greek saying that if the string of a bow is always kept tight eventually it won't shoot straight. We need rest and a change of pace. Recognizing that, in many families, if a change of pace is going to occur for one member of the family other family members may have to take over things like making meals or child care.
Secondly, the sabbath should be a day for families and friends. Families today are increasingly fragmented, members going their own way, facing shift work or demands for ever-longer hours at work. I sympathize with those families who say that they won't be in church on Sunday because, in order to get the family together, they need to get out of town. Time together with those who ought to be closest to us is a crucial part of the sabbath.
Third, we keep the sabbath by making it a day of good deeds. Part of our sabbath observation should be to help others in ways that do not bring us any reward other than the satisfaction of obeying Jesus' call to love.
Fourth, sabbath should involve spiritual renewal. Good reading, prayer and deep thought about important matters should be part of our sabbath. Ideally, public worship should be part of our sabbath too. There, I confess, the variety of our society and the fact that, if we are to find a sabbath at all, it must be on a day other than Sunday - creates a problem I don't know how to overcome. Perhaps we should have worship every day of the week. Certainly we should offer it more frequently than one day in seven. But I haven't overcome the logistics of that yet.
The sabbath started with the Jews. Let me conclude with a more contemporary Jewish author. Rabbi Abraham Heschel captures an appreciation for the sabbath when he writes: "Sabbath is one of life's highest rewards, a source of strength and inspiration to endure tribulation, to live nobly. The work on weekdays and the rest on the seventh day are correlated. The Sabbath is the inspirer, the other days the inspired. . . The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals. . . (Sabbath) is joy, holiness and rest." May it be so for us.
� 1997 I. Ross Bartlett