On the Purpose of the Sabbath

Ryan Billington

8/31/11

Orientation to Religion and Medicine

Essay:  A Day for Healing

                My history within the Adventist church places a rich emphasis on Sabbath, God’s holy day of rest.  From the time of my childhood, I can recall many of our family traditions that surrounded this day:  the hectic Friday cleaning after school, the special Friday night meal, attending Sabbath school and church, special Sabbath games after lunch, and a special sundown worship to conclude the Sabbath before the Saturday nights of games and family fun.  Yet despite my extensive history and experience with the Sabbath, I still wrestle with what I’m to do on this holy day.  I suggest in this brief essay that Sabbath is to be a time for reflection that can then stimulating action; a time for re-centering and re-adjusting my life around the redemptive work of God.

My personally defined purpose of Sabbath sounds terrific:  a reflective, action-stimulating day for re-centering upon the salvation possible through Christ.  However, the application of this purpose—any sort of application—is incredible difficult.  Allow me elaborate.  I claim to be a follower of Christ.  In my understanding, this claim means that the central focus of my life and actions are upon Christ and his example, and that I seek to live in a connection with God that alters the my decisions, my daily course.  I am to seek God, and allow that seeking to transform my actions.

How does this purpose of my being a Christian in every day of my life relate to Sabbath?  Sabbath is to be special day—set aside from other days of the week as a unique opportunity for God’s redemptive work.  Therefore, how should Sabbath differ from what I seek to do every day as a follower of Christ?  What in my actions on this seventh day sets Sabbath apart as holy?  What makes this a day dedicated to the salvation of my life and my world; what makes my Sabbath a special time for God’s redemptive work?  After having wrestled for several years with the mechanics of “the Sabbath difference” with only pint-sized results, I have begun to reach beyond my fears of “breaking” the rules of this holy day.  Instead of Sabbath being a twenty-four hour standard of living which I must achieve, the day is becoming a checkpoint for the standard of living to which I prescribe the other six days of the week.  Therefore, instead of Sabbath being a day that I must set apart, it becomes a day when I look and wrestle with how it is that I’m setting my life apart.

                They say that in the Gospels—the record of Jesus’ life while on earth—the majority of his miracles were performed on Sabbath, that on this particular day of the week, Jesus actively sought out individuals to heal.  Often, he did so publically, under direct observation of his greatest critics, such as in Mark 3, and Luke 13.  Might I suggest that Jesus was trying to re-adjust, to re-center the holiness pursued by the Pharisees upon the ways of God.  I think that Jesus was not merely teaching us about Sabbath, or about the ways to keep this day holy, but that he was also pursuing individuals—the Pharisees, the leader of the synagogue—by challenging, begging a readjustment not only of their standard of Sabbath-keeping, but of the standard by which they were living life. 

In the Old Testament, the Sabbath day was set apart by God as a holy day.  But in the New Testament, in John 17 just before his crucifixion, Jesus prays to God for “all who will ever believe in me”, saying, “Make them pure and holy by teaching them your words of truth… I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are—I in them and you in me, all being perfected into one.  Then the world will know that you sent me and will understand that you love them as much as you love me” (John 17:20, 22-23 NLT).  From my limited understanding, it seems that we are to be the glory of God, perfected by God’s redemptive work into the holiness and oneness of God Himself.  We are to be holy, not merely keep a holy day.  And once we are living holy lives, perhaps then we will figure out what keeping a holy day is all about.  Perhaps this is a small piece of the reason that Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.  So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27 NIV).