Sabbath Work (Sabbath part 2)

    My previous post discussed what the Sabbath is. The Sabbath is Yahveh's special holiday, the day set aside especially for him. The Sabbath is all about celebrating Yahveh for who he is and what he has done.

    For those of you who either know me personally or have been following this blog know exactly what is coming next: a question. My particular question is what does it mean to celebrate the Sabbath? How does one go about doing that?

    Think about it. There are specific ways of celebrating other holidays. At Southern Adventist University, where I am currently a student, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day we celebrate by using that day for community service. In America, we celebrate Independence Day (July 4 for the internationally inclined) with fireworks and barbeques and such. New Year's is celebrated with a midnight kiss and a giant ball falling on New York's Time Square. Christmas with presents. Easter with egg hunts and passion plays. Halloween with candy and costumes. Thanksgiving with football and, to be honest, gluttony. The Super Bowl with just plain awesomeness.

    I think you get the idea. We celebrate holidays in their own unique way. This of course leads me back to my question about the Sabbath. What does it mean to celebrate the Sabbath? How should we celebrate the Sabbath?

    As mentioned in the previous post, at the heart of the 10 Commandments is that the Sabbath commandment. It goes something like this: "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." (Exodus 20:8-11).

    What it means by Yahveh "rested" on the Sabbath has already been discussed. Also already discussed is the fact that the key word in the commandment is "remember." What I want to focus on here is the point of this commandment, "on it you shall do no work." This is the point of the command, in that prohibiting work is in fact the command.

    But what does this mean, do not work? What is meant by "work"? Is this meant in the physics sense, work is a transfer of energy? Or is the meant in the sense that anything I consider "work" (like say, dishes) is not allowed on the Sabbath? In English, the word work has an incredibly broad and vague meaning.

    Thankfully, Exodus was not written in English, at least not originally. What has been translated "work" was originally the Hebrew word melakah, which literally means "occupation", "business", or "employment." Essentially, it specifically refers to our moneymaking jobs. So basically, the commandment is saying to not go about making money on the Sabbath.

    In some ways, that is still just as confusing. But let us think about this for a moment. Why do we make money? To provide for ourselves, of course. Money may not buy happiness, but it does buy survival. Things required for life, like food, shelter, clothes, and such all cost money. So to provide for our needs, we work. And there is nothing wrong with this; indeed the commandment orders us to work for six days. But when we work to make money, where is the focus? The focus is on ourselves.

    So this is the point that the fourth commandment is getting at: Sabbath is not about you. Given the context of the previous blog post where we discussed how the Sabbath is really Yahveh's special holiday where we are to celebrate him and who he does, this makes perfect sense. The Sabbath is not about us; it is about Yahveh. The command of not working means that we take our focus off of ourselves and put it on Yahveh.

    Does keeping the Sabbath mean that we simply do not do our job that gets us money on the Sabbath? Is that all there is? Of course not because this concept of work goes far deeper. In Isaiah 58:13-14 the Bible says, "If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the LORD's holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you will find your joy in the LORD, and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob." The mouth of the LORD has spoken." Now as a kid, this verse drove me nuts. I mean, how is it possible for me to call the Sabbath a delight when I cannot do what I want on the Sabbath? Those concepts are contradictory, right?

    In English, we think of the words of "pleasure" and "delight" as largely synonymous. But in Hebrew, two different words are used here for "pleasure" and "delight." When the Bible says "do as you please", the word is haphetz, which literally means "joy", "longing", "wish", or even "business." Attached to the end of the word is the second person possessive marker, meaning your wish, your joy, your business. In other words, the pleasure is all about you.

    But when Isaiah talks about "delight", he uses the word oneg, which literally means "delight" or "exquisite pleasure." It is related to the word "spoiled" or "pampered." But this is in the context of Yahveh's holy day, so who's delight are we talking about? Ours or Yahveh's? The answer is obvious.

    The text goes on to tell us that we honor the Sabbath by not going our own way, but rather finding our joy in Yahveh. What is the point here? Breaking the Sabbath means focusing on ourselves, instead of Yahveh. We put our own joys, our own pleasures, our own affairs above those of Yahveh. But this is what the other six days of the week are for. So work is whatever takes our focus off of Yahveh and puts it on ourselves.

    This can be anything. For some it is a job, for others it is doing yard work around the house, and for others it could even be ministry, if that ministry takes their focus off of Yahveh and puts it on themselves. Indeed the Bible is deliberately vague on being specific on what exactly work is. In the Bible, there is no list of 39 prohibitions telling us what we can and cannot do. This is because "work" is a deeply personal thing between us and Yahveh.

    In Numbers 15, there was a case where a man was found collecting sticks on the Sabbath, which seemed fishy to the Israelites, so they arrested him. Now the penalty for Sabbath breaking was death, but instead he was arrested. Why? Because the Israelites were not sure what to do with him, whether he was guilty or not (it turned out that he was and then they stoned him, but that is somewhat beside the point). Sabbath keeping is a personal problem.

    This was the issue that Jesus had with the Jews when it came to the Sabbath. It was only about keeping the rules for them that they completely missed the Lord of the Sabbath who was standing in front of them (Mark 2:28). In fact because Jesus took the time to care enough about a man to heal his hand, they went out on the Sabbath to plot how to kill Jesus (Mark 3:6). For them, Sabbath keeping became Sabbath breaking.

    For many of us, this is an issue we have today. We try to define exactly what is and is not okay for the Sabbath and we end up missing the point. Work is what gets between us and Yahveh on the Sabbath, not a list or rules. That is something that no one can legislate, but only something you can know for yourself. So that is the question that you must answer. What is work? What gets between you and Yahveh? And are you willing to put it aside for one day a week?