friday after ash wednesday

I began reading Lauren Winner's book, Mudhouse Sabbath, today.  Lauren was an orthodox Jew who converted to Episopalian Christianity.  What she does in the book is give gentiles a taste of Jewish spiritual disciplines, and then reorients them for the Christian life.  The first chapter on Sabbath-keeping left me longing.  Friday is supposed to be the "pastor's sabbath".  So it says on the monthly church calendar.  But it isn't. Rarely are we intentional enough to let Godly rest break into our time.  Not even on Sundays.  She writes, "But there is something, in the Jewish sabbath, that is absent from most Christian Sundays; a true cessation from the rhythms of work and world, a time wholly set apart, and, perhaps above all, a sense that the point of Shabbat, the orientation of Shabbat, is toward GOD."  She wrote about buying and making all the food for Saturday on Friday before Sundown.  She talked about Sabbath rest transcending the Torah.  There are thirty nne prohbitions associated with Sabbath.  But keeping it is about embracing God's rhythm of life. God rested from creating.  And it is about resurrection, renewal, rebirth.  It is about the in-breaking of the new creation.  Jesus interprets sabbath prohibitions from the perspective of living according to God's redemptive and restorative mission.  It is better to heal and give life on Sabbath than to abide by legal prescriptions.  The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.

Americans don't do Sabbath.  We don't even do weekends.  We do vacations.  Lauren Winner describes a typical Sabbath in her book and it sounds like a weekly vacation, with spiritual meaning.  She talks about the fallacies in our vacations; first, that sabbath rest is meant to make us more productive workers.  And second that sabbath rest is designed to benefit and honor the one who is taking it.  The bubble-bath, spa-goer, if you will.  She or he is the center of sabbath.  But what if Sabbath is honoring God?  Imitating God, and acknowledging that God is in charge of the world.
I don't have a rhythmic approach to Sabbath.  Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't.  I am becoming more aware of it when I'm in it.  But we have to name it and live into it more intentionally.  Cherie said that sabbath for her would be like our vacation at Silver bay.  We play, we hike, we eat good food that is prepared for us, we rest, we read, we make applesauce to share with others, we enjoy the beauty of creation.   Our home is not so conducive to sabbath.  There are reminders of work and chores all around.  How can we embrace sabbath in our home?  The other challenge is that Cherie teaches on Fridays and Saturdays now. How many people in our world are working a seven-day week? This is unhealthy.  There are those who view sabbath-keeping as laziness in our culture of work.  And there are people who are idle, whose lives are not robust with activity or productive labor.  I think of people in prison who are doing nothing but waiting out their sentence.  How meaningless.
Sabbath is about meaningful time.  It is about kairos time, more than chronos time.  Its not about ceasing for 24 hours, so much as embracing God's time.  And God's time is eternal.

Pray for: truckers, shift-workers, overworked people and those who are idle.