January 20, 2008

Eli Herring is his name and just a couple of years ago he was a 6 foot 7 inch, 340 pound tackle for Brigham Young University. Not only was he a star athlete, he also sported a 3.5 grade point average and hailed as one of the top 3 senior offensive tackles in the NFL draft.

And when that draft rolled around, Eli was faced with a dilemma. The Raiders wanted--badly wanted--him. They had 2 crippled offensive tackles and needed young Eli. And he was aware of this. He was also aware that he could sign a contract and play ball each Sunday and fill his lifestyle with luxury cars, suburban mansions and Armani suits, and he and his wife and 18-month old daughter would be financially set for life.

And here’s the rub for Eli. As a person of deep faith and devotion to God, Sunday’s the Sabbath, and he just won’t play on a holy day.

He knew he could compromise his spiritual conviction about Sabbath keeping in order to gain financial security for his family and maybe even gain a sports spotlight in which he could then share his faith and values to young people. He could turn it over in his mind as many ways he wanted to for that end to justify the means. Or he could teach math for $25,000 a year and wear khaki pants and a nice Walmart shirt and keep Sabbath. And that’s what Eli stuck to.

He told the NFL that if he was drafted, he would not serve. Even when the Raiders--the Oakland Raiders!--came calling, he said, “Nope, I’d just as soon teach math and honor the Sabbath.”

Reflecting in The Wall Street Journal on Eli Herring, Ted Roberts wrote: “Wow! Talk bout a role model for kids adrift in a cultural sea of avarice. Especially in sports, where most heroes are sassy, in-your-face types who wave to their juvenile worshippers from a Ferrari…An athlete sticking out his tongue at Mammon?” Choosing instead to teach math and be a high school coach and keep the Sabbath.[1]

It wasn’t about being coy or holding out for more money. It was about his heart and his spiritual core and his conviction that Sabbath keeping is more than important. It is essential.

It’s like another person back in 1965 whose name was Sandy Koufax. He was a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers and he was Jewish. And when the holiest day of the Jewish year came, he told his employer that he wouldn’t play a child’s game on such a holy day. And that’s when his employer reminded him that this game was a bit more than a child’s game--it was the first game of the world series. All you need to throw at 27 strikes and it’s over and then he could go to any synagogue in Los Angeles he wanted to keep the holy day.

Sandy said, “No.” Don Drysdale pitched instead and the Dodgers lost. They also lost the second game of the series and that was with the spiritually observant Koufax pitching. But they won the series, 4-3, thanks to Sandy throwing a shutout in games five and seven.

Obviously Eli and Sandy would disagree about which day they should honor as the Sabbath, but they both agree without compromise that keeping the Sabbath was non-negotiable.

Everyone of us surely acknowledges and admits that we are surrounded by and caught up in a culture that not only resists keeping Sabbath but outright rejects it. We’re too busy running the Rat Race and being consumed by consumerism and being pushed for productivity to find time to keep the Sabbath. And we in the church are no different. In truth, the church even contributes to the Rat Race, keeping people and families busy with activities added in to all the other activities they are trying to keep up with. Of course, active participants in the life of the church are valuable, but when we are more committed to keeping them active than them keeping the Sabbath, we are missing the mark and are more a reflection of the culture in which we live than of the Christ we profess to follow, the Christ who is Lord of the Sabbath..

And trust me, ministers get trapped in the Rat Race as much as anyone else. We struggle with Sabbath-keeping, too. John Buchanan serves a prominent and prestigious Michigan Avenue congregation in the heart of Chicago. When he was a student pastor in a much smaller congregation with no prominence or prestige, John got his important lesson on Sabbath-keeping not from a professor in seminary but from a foreman at a local steel plant who was a member of his congregation. His name was Mike and one summer Saturday morning when Mike saw the young ministers car at church, he went in and asked his pastor, “What (the blazes--I softened Mikes word a little bit) are you doing here on Saturday morning?” “Well,” John stammered, “I’m here being available to the congregation…I’m here in case anybody needs me.” “Let me tell you something,” Mike said. “Nobody needs you today. If they do they’ll call you. Nobody wants to see you today. They’re busy. They’ll see you plenty tomorrow. So go home. Cut your grass, wash your car, sit in your yard, play with your kids. Get outa here.” John did what he was told and has tried to abide by it ever since, thanks to Mike’s seminar on Sabbath-keeping.[2]

For members and ministers alike, the church can become just one more pull on time when we are to be the place where people--members and ministers alike--learn to order time by keeping Sabbath, which is what I intend to do more intentionally in keeping my Sabbath.

We will be singing after the sermon a familiar hymn that asks God to forgive our foolish ways. The words come from a longer poem by the Quaker, John Greenleaf Whittier, who included the lines:

Sabbath keeping is a way to let our light shine, like Eli and Sandy, and show we are distinct and different from the general culture surrounding us. Keeping Sabbath is more than a rule to obey. It is a rhythm to embrace. It is a rhythm of time and time is something we all have. How we order our time is the issue. Traditionally Christians mark Sunday as our Sabbath each week. It’s the day we set aside as the time to keep Sabbath as witness to the God of all time. But whether it be Sunday or not, we each must take time to observe as Sabbath each week, and even some portion of time each day as a little Sabbath. And in keeping that time we are sending a message. As Christian Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says, “Sabbath provides a visible testimony that God is at the center of life--that production and consumption take place in a world ordered, blessed and restrained by the God of all creation. Reordering social time around Sabbath is a visible declaration that all times are in God’s hands…”

Sabbath is also a way--a God given and graced way--we are renewed in mind, body and spirit and refreshed in our communion with God. It is a rhythm of grace--the grace of rest and the grace of work.

Keeping the Sabbath is not the same as “A day off.” That’s the way the culture understands Sabbath. “A day off” is beneficial, of course, but Sabbath is not a day off. “A day off” is a secularized sabbath. Sabbath for us must carry a biblical understanding, not as the culture understands it.

The word Sabbath means stop. Quit. Cool it. Take a break.[3] Sabbath-keeping is the rhythm God practiced and the rhythm God built in to human existence. After being busy creating the world for six days, God stops and rests and enjoys the goodness of creation. As we read in Exodus, “on the seventh day God rested and drew breath” (31:17, njb). God rested and was refreshed.

Keeping the Sabbath fully, completely, keeping the Sabbath wholly begins with taking time to stop, to cease work. In God’s pattern for human existence, one’s life is not defined by productivity or how much you do or achieve. As Christians, keeping Sabbath wholly is affirming that our lives are defined in God with the mind of Christ through the Holy Spirit. We quit work to affirm this faith. Sabbath ceasing says, “We are not self-sufficient, we are not independent. In God we find our sufficiency. On God we are dependent.” Ceasing begins Sabbath-keeping.

And we cease so we will rest. “On the seventh day God rested and drew breath.” We follow the pattern of God who ceased creating the world and then created a day of rest. Once again in commenting on the Sabbath, Brueggemann depicts this God who rests as saying, “I’m not going in to the office tomorrow. I’ve put in long hours every day all week and tomorrow I’m putting my feet up and enjoying what I’ve accomplished.” So, work isn’t finished when you leave the workplace. As with God the Creator, work is only finished when it is enjoyed with rest. In the image of God we rest and draw breath.

Sabbath-keeping with Sabbath rest is a time when we let ourselves appreciate the life in us and around us as a gift of God.[4] No working. No producing. No fixing anything. Just rest with the realization that life is a gift from the hand of God--unmerited and unearned--and that the same hand of God holds us. In our appreciation of God’s loving, wonderful, gracious presence surrounding us, we keep Sabbath by resting physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. Sabbath is the time we allow ourselves to fully rest as a foretaste of the great eternal rest in God that awaits us, as the writer of Hebrews proclaims.

Activity and rest is God’s rhythm of time for our lives. When you and I keep the Sabbath wholly, when we cease from our labor and put our feet up and rest, the world will not come to an end. Everything will not fall apart. Rather, with Sabbath-keeping everything will come together, especially the fragmented bits and pieces within us and in our lives.

Every Sunday, Kentucky farmer/poet Wendell Berry goes for a walk on his Henry County farm and then goes home and writes a Sabbath poem. His Sabbath poems go all the way back to 1979 and they continue to be written. And in one of them he says, “I go among trees and sit still./ All my stirring becomes quiet/ around me like circles of water./ My tasks lie in their places/ where I left them, asleep like cattle…After days of labor/…I hear my song at last,/ and I sing it. As we sing/ the day turns, the trees move.”[5]

Sabbath is God’s gift to all of us to cease and rest, to quiet our stirring and let our tasks lie in their places where we left them, asleep like cattle, and hear our song at last and sing it.

[1] Ted Roberts, “You Can’t Be a Beacon if Your Life Don’t Shine”

[2] John Buchanan, “Sabbath-keeping,” Christian Century, 7/18-25/01.

[3] Eugene Peterson, “Rhythms of Grace,” Weavings, March/April 1993.

[4] See Tilden Edwards, Sabbath Time

[5] Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir, p. 1.