The Sabbath Right

Imagine for a minute that you are a farmer. Everyday you get up early to feed and water your animals, to milk your cows, to repair your equipment. At different times of the year, you have to plow your fields, plant your seeds, pull your weeds, irrigate your crops, harvest your crops. Every morning, you wake with a sense of fear, "If I don't feed my animals, they will die. If I don't plant today, the rainy season might start before I finish planting. If I don't irrigate my crops today, they might die under the hot sun. If I don't harvest today, the crops might rot in the fields."

Every day you have a strong sense of urgency that you have to work, or else…. You fear for your survival; you don't have time to rest; and so you work seven days a week. Slowly your body begins to break down. You get strange pains in your body. Your organs don't function properly. Even more importantly you have no joy in life. Fear of not surviving drives out every positive emotion. No peace, no thankfulness, no satisfaction.

Now, as that farmer, what is the one sentence that your heart longs to hear someone say to you? My guess is it is this: "I will take care of your duties so that you can rest." Well, that is what God wants to say to each one of us today. But His promise is even stronger. He actually says, "If you will believe my promise and rest one day in seven, I will not only take care of your duties, I will also do a better job than you could have done. And as a result, you will be more successful than you would be if you did not rest. But you have to rest."

This principle of resting one day in seven is often called the Sabbath Principle. But I like to use a different expression because I think it captures the essence better: the Sabbath Right. In this article, when I say "exercise one's Sabbath rights", I mean "to rest one day in every seven". Today let's look at three aspects of the Sabbath Right: the promise, the purpose, the parallels, and the practice.

The promise

In order to understand the bigness of the promise, it is important to keep in mind the fact that the promise was originally given to people in an agricultural society. They did not have the labor-saving devices we have. They were not a society of leisure. If they did not work, they did not eat—just like in the opening story. Let's read this passage:

You shall not make idols for yourselves or erect an image or pillar, and you shall not set up a figured stone in your land to bow down to it, for I am the Lord your God. You shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Yahweh.

If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. Your threshing shall last to the time of the grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall last to the time for sowing. And you shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land securely. I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid. And I will remove harmful beasts from the land, and the sword shall not go through your land. You shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand, and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. I will turn to you and make you fruitful and multiply you and will confirm my covenant with you. You shall eat old store long kept, and you shall clear out the old to make way for the new. I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people. I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves. And I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect. (Leviticus 26:1-13)

Notice that keeping the Sabbath (resting one day in seven) is put in the context of other statutes and commandments such as not worshiping idols. The promise is that if you keep these statutes and commands, including the one about resting one day in seven, you would have abundant harvest, safety, victory over enemies, etc.

Yahweh also gives the other side of the promise: what will happen if you don't keep His commandments. It includes disease, agricultural disaster, defeat, starvation, deportation. We won't read it all because it is long, but let's look at three verses that specifically refer to the Sabbath:

And I will scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword after you, and your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste.

Then the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies' land; then the land shall rest, and enjoy its Sabbaths. As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, the rest that it did not have on your Sabbaths when you were dwelling in it…But the land shall be abandoned by them and enjoy its Sabbaths while it lies desolate without them, and they shall make amends for their iniquity, because they spurned my rules and their soul abhorred my statutes. (Leviticus 26:33-35, 43).

You can see that Yahweh is serious about our intentionally resting one in seven days. He promises great blessings if we obey and great curses if we do not. But if we just think in terms of promises on obedience and disobedience, we will miss the point. The point is that Yahweh gave his people the right to rest. In the US, we often talk about inalienable rights (不可剥夺的权利): life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Here, Yahweh is saying, "You have an inalienable right to rest one in seven days. As long as you exercise this right (行使权利), I will guarantee that even nature will respect the right (尊重权利)."

There is a story in the Old Testament that simply illustrates the promise in operation:

In the evening quail came up and covered the camp, and in the morning dew lay around the camp. And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground. When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, "It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. This is what the Lord has commanded: 'Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each take an omer, according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent.'" And the people of Israel did so. They gathered, some more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat. And Moses said to them, "Let no one leave any of it over till the morning." But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them. Morning by morning they gathered it, each as much as he could eat; but when the sun grew hot, it melted.

On the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each. And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, he said to them, "This is what Yahweh has commanded: 'Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to Yahweh; bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning.'" So they laid it aside till the morning, as Moses commanded them, and it did not stink, and there were no worms in it. Moses said, "Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to Yahweh; today you will not find it in the field. Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be none."

On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. And Yahweh said to Moses, "How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? See! Yahweh has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day." So the people rested on the seventh day. (Exodus 16:13-30)

The reality was that manna naturally rotted after 24 hours, which meant that people had to go collect it to eat every day. But this was in conflict with the right to rest one day in seven. So Yahweh said that people should collect two-days worth on the sixth day and then He would do a miracle of preservation on the seventh day. Look at verse 29 again: "Yahweh has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days." That is the promise succinctly: "Yahweh has given you the right to rest one in seven days. Therefore, on the sixth day he will provide for you what you need so that you can exercise that right."

The Purpose

Second, let's look at the purpose for the Sabbath Right. The most obvious reason is the biological necessity. God designed our bodies to operate most efficiently if they had rest one in seven days. But that begs the question (引起疑问): Why did God design our bodies this way? I believe the answer is this: to create a regular opportunity to meditate on three blessings: our creation, our salvation, and our sanctification.

To Meditate on the Blessings of Creation

Let's look at two passages:

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. (Genesis 2:1-3)

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:8-11)

Both of these passages say that Yahweh did two things for the one in seven day rest: He blessed it and he made it holy. What does it mean for a day to be blessed? It means that the day becomes a source of blessings. What does it mean that God made a day holy? It means that Yahweh set the day aside for special focus on what is holy, namely, Yahweh and his holy works. Thus, when we by faith exercise our Sabbath right, we place ourselves in a position to receive the blessings that He pours out on those who exercise that right. Furthermore, while we rest, if we meditate on the fact that all true blessing comes from His grace, not our labor, then we give Him our special attention on our rest day, thus keeping the day holy and honoring Him. This is a quote from John Piper where he imagines what God would say to explain the reason for the Sabbath:

Let my highest creature, the one in my image, stop every seven days and commemorate with me the fact that I am the creator who has done all this. Let him stop working and focus on me, that I am the source of all that he has. I am the fountain of blessing. I have made the very hands and mind with which he works. Let one day out of seven demonstrate that all land and all animals and all raw materials and all breath and strength and thought and emotion and everything come from me. Let man look to me in leisure one day out of seven for the blessing that is so elusive in the affairs of this world. (http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TopicIndex/115/510_Remember_the_Sabbath_Day_to_Keep_It_Holy/)

So the first purpose for the Sabbath right is to create an opportunity for us to meditate on the blessings of creation.

To Meditate on the Blessings of Salvation

The second purpose for the Sabbath right is to create an opportunity for us to meditate on the blessings of salvation. Let's look at this passage:

You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and Yahweh your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore Yahweh your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. (Deuteronomy 5:15)

Yahweh is saying, "I saved you from the Egyptians; therefore, keep the Sabbath." That therefore is an odd conjunction here. I think it means this: Yahweh saved us and He wants us to intentionally meditate on that fact once in seven days. Not only did we not make ourselves, we cannot sustain or save ourselves without his grace.

To Meditate on the Blessings of Sanctification

The third purpose for the Sabbath right is to create an opportunity for us to meditate on the blessing of sanctification. Let's look at this passage:

Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, Yahweh, sanctify you. (Exodus 31:13)

It is God who chose us and set us apart. It is God who is conforming us to the image of His Son. Our sanctification totally flows from his free grace, and the Sabbath is an excellent time to reflect on this fact.

The Parallels

I think that it is useful to look at two parallel laws in the Old Testament in order to understand another purpose of Yahweh for the Sabbath: testing the faith of His people.

The Sabbath Year

Let's first look at the Sabbath year law:

Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord. For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits, but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap what grows of itself in your harvest, or gather the grapes of your undressed vine. It shall be a year of solemn rest for the land. The Sabbath of the land shall provide food for you, for yourself and for your male and female slaves and for your hired servant and the sojourner who lives with you, and for your cattle and for the wild animals that are in your land: all its yield shall be for food.

Therefore you shall do my statutes and keep my rules and perform them, and then you will dwell in the land securely. The land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and dwell in it securely. And if you say, 'What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?' I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years. When you sow in the eighth year, you will be eating some of the old crop; you shall eat the old until the ninth year, when its crop arrives. (Leviticus 25:2-7, 18-22)

Obeying this law took an incredible amount of faith. Can you imagine what the farmers thought when Yahweh said this to them? They probably thought, "Are you stupid? We will starve." But Yahweh was asking them to give Him a chance to show that He is a big God. He was asking them to show through their actions that they really believed that Yahweh was their provider, that their survival ultimately depended upon His grace, not their labor. It is one thing to say, "I believe in Yahweh." It is a completely different matter to show through your obedient actions that you believe that Yahweh is trustworthy.

Tithing

The other passage is about tithing:

For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, 'How shall we return?' Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, 'How have we robbed you?' In your tithes and contributions. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil, and your vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the Lord of hosts. Then all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of hosts. (Malachi 3:6-12)

Giving away one-tenth of your income is another big challenge to one's faith. But when we do it, by our actions we are shouting the truth that we believe that Yahweh is the ultimate source of our provision. We are also protecting ourselves from the disease of greed. Luke Wong once described greed, guilt, and grudges as viruses of the heart. What better way to vaccinate ourselves from greed than by giving away one-tenth of our income?

In the same way, when we choose to exercise our Sabbath right, we are declaring to ourselves, to our neighbors, to the angels and demons, and to Yahweh that we believe that He is the source of our provision, and we vaccinate ourselves against greed. For hourly wage-earners, it is all the more obvious since they are choosing to set aside the wages that they could have earned on that day.

The Practice

Lastly, how do we apply this truth? How do we exercise our Sabbath right? I started thinking about this on Sunday, February 28. The previous Sunday I served all day at ZCA. Then the previous Monday – Friday, I worked as usual. On Saturday morning, I attended a kickball outreach. Then in afternoon, I attended the monthly outreach. I did not take any time to physically rest on Saturday, much less to intentionally meditate on God. The next day I played the piano at church. By noon my back was in so much pain that I just had to go home and could not serve at the Bridge in the afternoon. While I was at home recovering, I meditated on the situation and realized that I had not been exercising my Sabbath right. Sunday cannot be counted as a day of rest for me because I serve all day on Sunday; it is physically and emotionally tiring. I work on Monday through Fridays. That means that I need to guard my Saturdays so that I can use them to exercise my Sabbath right.

That means that I need to say no to non-restful activities on Saturday so that I can have enough time to rest physically and to meditate on God's creation, salvation, and sanctification. And if for some reason, I must be active on Saturday, I need to schedule a replacement day of rest in the immediate future. For example, I had to work last Saturday. I told Nate that I did not want overtime payment. I said that I wanted a day off. Money cannot compensate for lack of opportunity to meditate and draw near to God.

I think that if someone asks me to serve at an outreach on Saturday, I will respond, "I could, but only in exchange for not serving on Sunday, and there are no other pianists right now, so I won't." From my perspective, it is a matter of setting boundaries. The Sabbath is my right. It is also my responsibility. If I don't exercise it, I am the one who has to shoulder the consequences: physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. In the US, we have saying: "Either we exercise our rights, or we lose them." I choose to exercise them now.

In addition to the meditative aspect of the Sabbath, I think what John Piper said about rest is helpful:

And so, one of the things we should do is do things on the Lord's day that refresh us for his service, intellectually, physically and spiritually. So if you sit at your desk all week, probably you should walk or ride a bike on Sunday. And if you work on the farm, breaking your back all week (which is what they did in the Old Testament), then sit down and take a long nap on Sunday.

That's the way I think with myself. I'm working six days a week, and on Monday—which is the day I take off—I'm putting my feet up and not thinking in terms of work. But rather, I pray at the beginning of the day, "Lord, whatever happens today, may it be energizing for Tuesday. May it be energizing for the week that's coming. Give me strength, give me energy."(http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TopicIndex/115/3465_What_does_it_mean_practically_to_keep_the_Sabbath_holy/)

On October 2, through a combination of boat, plane, and car, I traveled to a Trappist monastery in a village called Shuili, in a township also called Shuili, in the county of Nantou, in the country of Taiwan. The monastery was located about an hour by foot up a mountain. There were only three resident monks, all of them priests: the current superior Father Paul and two aged former superiors Fathers Raphael and Francis. I stayed for five nights and had the opportunity to partly participate in their strictly regimented lifestyle that involved among other things rising at 3:30 a.m., retiring at 8 p.m., daily Mass at 6:30 a.m., and corporate prayer six times per day. (Although I set my alarm clock for 3:30 a.m. with great earnestness, each time that it arrived, I could not find within me the passion for 3:45 a.m. corporate prayer requisite to mobilize my slothful body. Thus, the earliest round of corporate prayer to which I could ever make it was the 6 a.m. round.)

Since Vatican II Trappist monks no longer observe a vow of silence; nevertheless, the monks were generally taciturn. This was frustrating initially since I am a highly relational person. Clearly, I am not called to a contemplative lifestyle. I asked for a directed retreat. I had wanted to be able to confide my hopes, dreams, visions, goals, and frustrations with a priest and receive wise counsel how to proceed. Unfortunately, Father Raphael was unpracticed in the art of active listening. Each day when he arrived at 8:30 a.m. to give me direction, he gave an impassioned monologue with his eyes closed, instinctively knowing when an hour had passed and promptly leaving at 9:30 a.m. I never had a chance to speak more than twenty words. It almost seemed that his hour with me was a release valve for his pent-up need to talk, and he had no capacity to listen. This was also frustrating.

Father Paul was very fascinating. During corporate prayers his facial expression was so hard to interpret. If it had been on my face, it would have indicated boredom, but I am not convinced it had the same meaning on his face. He led the corporate prayers like a parliamentarian, with a timer to guarantee that each devotion was exactly the prescribed length. When he spoke with me, he never once looked me in the eyes. When he delivered my meals to me, the interaction lacked the greeting and leave-taking civilities that I had taken for granted that everyone used, and I realized that phatic communication in fact functions to lubricate interaction. I mentioned in passing that I planned to go to Sun Moon Lake one day, and he volunteered to take me. I could not quite visualize what it would look like to do something touristic with someone whom I had not yet seen smile, but I agreed.

Father Paul and I set out together at 10 a.m. He blankly asked if I wanted to see some ethnic dancing, to which I responded in the affirmative. We had polite conversation while he drove me to the lake. We stopped at several different places for different views of the lake. Being a very food-centric person, I kept asking myself, "I wonder what we will do for lunch. I hope this is not a fast day. Has he been to a restaurant before?" At last he interrupted my internal debate and said, "Let's go to Starbucks for lunch." This surprised me on a couple accounts:

Even in America, I would not eat at Starbucks because the price of a sandwich is high relative to its size. I assumed a vow of poverty would not allow eating at Starbucks.
Although I consider coffee to be a near necessity, I still consider Starbucks coffee to be a luxury. I assumed a vow of poverty would not allow drinking Starbucks coffee.

Through this one lunch, I began to see that Father Paul was human too. I asked him questions like, "Does following the same routine every day ever start to feel boring or monotonous?" He answered, "Yes." I followed up with, "So how do you handle it?" He followed his pattern of interpreting my every you as a plural "you monks" and said, "We talk to our superior." I tried again to elicit a personal answer to which he responded with the results of a personality inventory, said that he is not emotional, is well-suited to a contemplative life, and does not have those types of feelings.

The next thing that happened really helped me to see his humanity. In follow up to my response about my wanting to see some ethnic dancing, he took me to an "aboriginal village". I was very surprised how much the entrance fee was, but I did not think about it any more. As we walked around, I kept thinking that this was an odd place. I had expected to see at least a reconstructed but functioning aboriginal Taiwanese village. Instead, I saw a reconstruction of a British earl's house and garden and fountain in one place. Then an area with stocks and totem poles and quasi-American Indian stuff. Then he pointed to a building and said, "Let's go in there." I followed him and got in a little boat, expecting it to take me to the aboriginal village. As we slowly went along, the man-made scenery was very early American West. The ride ended with a hide speed drop resulting in a huge splash of water. It was a water ride, not a boat ride to an aboriginal village.

Afterward, he kept saying like a kid who tasted candy for the first time, "That was very exciting." Then he took me to another building, where I sat in another seat that turned out to be a roller coaster. It finally dawned on me that we were in a "Aboriginal" theme park. I could not believe how dense I had been. I just so did not have a category for riding a roller coaster with a monk in a theme park that it blocked me from realizing where I was. The total absence of lines did not help. At Six Flag Great America, you sometimes wait in line >45 minutes for a single ride. It was a rainy day, few people, no lines, no loud music, and both "rides" so far had been indoors so my senses did not have the data to interpret. After the roller coaster, my eyes were opened and I could see the other rides and games and other trappings of a theme park.

Eventually, we took a cable car to the top of a mountain where there were nine imitation tribal villages, and we watched a performance of the courtship dances of a particular tribe. Then we headed back to the monastery, where Father Paul put his robes back on, and we headed off to Vespers. The other monks probably thought we just went and serenely looked at the natural scenery of the Sun Moon Lake, but I knew that I had ridden a roller coaster with this monk.

磨玉团契 (Polishing Jade Fellowship)

Wednesday, March 10, 2010