Whatever became of the Sabbath?

    Today, the eve of Labor Day, often is called "Labor Sunday."  Many pastors use this occasion to pay tribute to the working peoples of America.  And that's wonderful!  But please think with me, for a few minutes, not about work but about rest. --And specifically about the weekly DAY of rest that, says the Bible, God wants each of us to enjoy.

    Whatever has happened to the Sabbath?  A generation or so ago, within the memory of some of you here today, Protestant ministers preached regularly on observing the Sunday day of rest.  But how many sermons have you heard on this subject lately?  During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Protestants founded a host of special societies-for example, the Lord's Day Alliance-- for the sole purpose of preserving the Sabbath.  They wrote thick books and distributed millions of tracts.  But today our activities in this regard have all but ceased.  And, as far as I know, the Lord's Day Alliance has died, for one never hears about it anymore.
   
    Whatever has happened to the Sabbath? --When you and I read some of the old literature about it, even when we sing hymns about the Lord's Day--such as our first one today, Safely Through Another Week, the words, the theology itself, seem so foreign to life in our 21st Century.  They seem so antiquated, odd, quaint!  But, friends, THINK of what the Sabbath meant to our ancestors!  Most of them spent six days a week in grinding toil--from sunup to sundown.  Yes, in an era before mechanized farming, before child-labor laws, before minimum wages in the factories!  Surely, to our ancestors, Sunday must have been a blessed relief! --Literally, a lifesaver!  Indeed, imagine the sheer JOY with which they threw back their heads and sang at full voice, thanking God that "SAFELY through another week, God [had] brought them on their way!"

    Today, with our eight-hour workdays and our five-day work-weeks (soon, they tell us, maybe to become even four-day ones), some folks would argue that the Sabbath's a thing of the past--totally irrelevant!  And to look around the average American community, one can hardly tell Sunday from any other day.  But, friends, "Remember the Sabbath Day" is still one of the Ten Commandments.  What does that mean to you and me?  Does God want us to draw up a long list of things we should do and shouldn't on Sunday?  That's what the Puritans did, you know.   They spent their Sabbaths largely in church.  And the rest of the day they stayed mainly at home, eating cold food (for they thought it sinful to cook on Sunday), reading only the Bible and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and teaching their children the catechisms.

    Now all of us agree that the Puritans carried the Sabbath Commandment too far!  In their attitudes towards the Lord's Day they made the same mistake, I think, as the Pharisees of Jesus' day, whom we read about in our Gospel, from Mark, chapter 2.  Here our Lord and his disciples are walking through the countryside, and they decide to take a shortcut through the grain fields.  As they pass through the waving stalks, they stop every now and then to rub the grain between their hands, putting it into their leather bags for later use.  You see, by our 21st-century standards Jesus and the twelve are poor.  Often they never know where their next meal is coming from.   And with this grain they can later, perhaps, bake for themselves a loaf of coarse bread.

    But the Pharisees, the strictest religious sect, are standing by, watching every move that Jesus and his followers make. Had the disciples plucked grain on any other day of the week, the Pharisees wouldn't have complained.  But this is the Sabbath!  And so here they NOISILY OBJECT:  "YOU'RE SINNING TO PICK THAT WHEAT ON GOD'S HOLY DAY!" they cry.

    You know, by the time of Jesus, the Pharisees had compiled a list of over 1,500 things that a person might not do on the Sabbath!  For example, one couldn't carry anything--not even a needle stuck into one's cloak, for that was considered labor on the holy day!  One might not wear jewelry on the Sabbath, nor could a lame person attach a wooden leg.  The Pharisees forbade their wives even to look into a mirror on God's holy day, lest they spy a gray hair and be tempted to pluck it out!

    Now, how does Jesus answer the Pharisees here? He cries, "THE SABBATH WAS MADE FOR HUMANKIND, AND NOT HUMANKIND FOR THE SABBATH!" --In other words, God's Day of Rest and Worship is for our benefit, NOT for our hindrance!  God gave the Sabbath Command to free us, NOT bind us!

    Friends, what is Sunday, the Christian's Lord's Day, to you? --A day of freedom or of bondage?  I'm afraid that, a few generations ago, thousands of children grew up in Christian homes where Sunday was a burden, rather than a joy. The Puritans and their descendants, by their legalism, made the Sabbath into something dreary, something God never intended it to be!  How tragic!  Generations of Protestant children, down to the early part of this century, viewed the Sabbath not with anticipation, but with dread!  Robert Graves, in his amusing poem The Boy Out of Church, wrote:

                                       I do not love the Sabbath,
                                               The soapsuds and the starch,
                                       The troops of solemn people
                                                Who to Salvation march.

    --"Troops of solemn people?" --THERE's the problem, isn't it?  God never INTENDED our Sundays to BE solemn and serious, but joyful!  That's where the Puritans went wrong.    And the REACTION against the gloomy Puritan Sabbath has swung the pendulum violently in the opposite direction!  That wonderful iconoclast, the Irreverent (and, incidentally, fallen-Presbyterian) Mark Twain, much to the sandal of Victorian church folk, once declared, [I] ". . . abhor and detest the Sabbath-day and hunt up new and troublesome ways to dishonor it!"
   
    And now, in our own times, the Lord's Day goes increasingly unobserved, unnoticed, ignored. Yet, friends, the Sabbath-Day Commandment still stands in the Decalogue.  And God, I'm convinced, still makes the gracious promise to us we heard this morning, in our Old Testament lesson, Isaiah 58.  Listen!   "If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,. . .then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride upon the high places of the earth. . .!"

    How might a Christian of the 21st Century go about keeping the Sabbath Day holy?  How can you and I avoid the dreary Sundays of the Puritans, but also the secularized Sundays of modern America?  Isn't there a halfway point between the two?

    YES!  Let me briefly offer three suggestions as to how we today can keep God's Day holy.  FIRST, make Sunday different from every other day of the week.  Tell me, is anything more boring than doing the same thing over and over?  "Variety's the very spice of life," said William Cowper.  Sunday should be special!  A day when the individual and the family alike break routine, wind down, change the pace.  A day for different atmosphere, different attitudes, different activities.

    SECONDLY, make Sunday not only different but a day for worship, prayerful study, fellowship!  The day to praise God's name with your brother and sister Christians in the service of worship.  Here in this place on Sundays Jesus Christ meets you and me, through Word and Sacrament!  Here God bestows on us, again, God's peace, joy, love.  And, afterwards, we depart from here refreshed and renewed.  In Christian Education, the Sabbath's the day to study and discuss God's written Word, again--with our fellow Christians!

    One FINAL suggestion:  MAKE THE LORD'S DAY A FAMILY DAY!  (Or, if you aren't married, a DAY WITH FRIENDS day!).  Not only go WITH your loved ones to church and Sunday School, but make Sunday AFTERNOON, also, a time to do things together!  Make it the time when you really do get around to going on that picnic in the park or on the beach.  Perhaps even more important, make Sunday afternoon the time when you and your family (or friends) visit the residents of a convalescent home!  Or an aging and confined member of our congregation, to bring them cheer and joy!  (If you need to know names, just telephone the church office!  We have a whole list for you.)  Or get some brief training and orientation, and become a volunteer visitor to a nearby prison.  Now there's a Sunday afternoon mission for you!
   
    Yes, if you would avoid both gloomy and secularized Sundays, make the Lord's Day DIFFERENT; make it a WORSHIP day, and make it a FAMILY or CLOSE FRIENDS day!

Prayers:   
    Creator God, your Son worked with his hands as a carpenter.  Accept our thanks, on this Labor Sunday, for all men and women who toil.
    For the products of factory and field that they provide for us, to enrich and bring ease to our lives; for their hours of work, often monotonous; for the pride and satisfaction that honest, dedicated laborers can take in their tasks, we thank you.
    In your mercy, bring about understanding between labor and management. May wages be fair and labors, worthy. Where grievances exist, help us to talk them out, so that name-calling will end, and we may all work together as comrades; in the name of the proletarian Master Worker, Jesus, the Carpenter of Nazareth.
    God, who on the seventh day of creation rested, make us truly thankful for the Christian Sabbath:  for what it meant to our ancestors and what it can mean to us; for the rest that it affords us, the opportunities it provides for spiritual nourishment in your house; and for the hints that this day gives us of that eternal rest that we, one day, will know with you in heaven.  In your mercy, deliver us from those who would pervert the Sabbath--either through small-minded legalism, or gross secularization!
    Gracious God, hear our prayers today for those who seek employment but, so far, haven't found it; and also for those who know no respite from their labors.  Hear our intercession for those perhaps in this very sanctuary who are anxious and troubled about many things;  those who are ill, those who face difficulties on their jobs or in their homes.  Cause them, we pray, to cast their burdens upon the Lord, granting them the assurance that you will, indeed, sustain them.
    Finally, God of all time and space: you are preparing for us a place of eternal Sabbath joy, beyond the labors and cares of this world; and you have welcomed to your celebration table our brothers and sisters, in Christ, who have toiled before us.  Keep us in fellowship with them, until we, too, share their rest and your perfect presence; for we ask it in his strong name.  Amen.