Notes from the Wayside: Perspective: Shabbat, Smart Phones, and the Reason We Have Rules

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

Shabbat, Smart Phones, and the Reason We Have Rules

One sabbath [Jesus] was going through the grainfields; and as they made their way His disciples began to pluck heads of grain. The Pharisees said to Him, "Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?"

Then He said to them, "The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath."

Mark 2:23-24,27-28 (NRSV)

Have you been standing on your own feet too long?

Have you been looking for a place where you belong?

You can rest

You will find rest

From "Let It Fade" by Jeremy Camp

In Jesus' day, one of the most guarded and tightly-held parts of the Jewish faith was the commandment to observe the Shabbat, the Sabbath day. According to the fourth of the Ten Commandments, the Sabbath day was to be holy, or, in other words, "set apart." The Jewish people were commanded to work diligently for six days out of the week but to set apart the seventh day solely for rest.¹ By Jesus' time, the religious scholars and the teachers of the law had developed a series of guidelines regarding when the Sabbath day started, what was considered work, and how far a person was allowed to walk on the Sabbath. One sect held the observance of the Sabbath so stringently that they even refused to use the bathroom on the Sabbath.

Jesus butted heads with the religious establishment a number of times over this commandment.

The Israelites first received the Ten Commandments while the camped at the foot of Mt. Sinai. Not long before this, they had endured backbreaking slavery in Egypt. When Moses first demanded that the Pharaoh let the Israelites go, the Pharaoh responded in anger and increased their workload. Though they were previously provided the materials to make bricks, Pharaoh demanded that they now gather their own materials and still produce the same number of bricks in one day.² In Egypt, the Israelites lived not as human beings, but as machines.

In Egypt, the Pharaoh demanded more and more productivity from the Israelites, but at Mt. Sinai the Israelites met a God who demanded that they spend an entire day not producing anything.³ This day of rest is a gift from God, intended to protect people's humanity. The Sabbath day provides a necessary balance between work and rest: six days for doing and one day for simply being. The Shabbat became a vital part of the identity of the Jewish people. Jewish thinker Ahad Ha'am once said, "More than the Jews have kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the Jews."⁴

Whether we are Jewish, Christian, or none of the above, I believe that it is still important that we set personal boundaries to maintain the balance between work and rest that the Sabbath day offers us, especially since the existing boundaries between our jobs and the rest of our lives have slowly eroded over time.

Imagine that you had a rough day at work and that, after you went home for the day, you decided to take a walk around your neighborhood to clear your head. Now imagine that your boss called you while you were taking your walk.

A few decades ago, your boss would just have to catch you while you were at home. In the 1980s, the answering machine became popular. If you had an answering machine, your boss could leave you a message, and you could call him back as soon as you returned home from your walk and listened to his message. Later on, the beeper became popular. If you had a beeper, your boss could call your beeper number so that, while you were still on your walk, you would know that your boss was trying to contact you. You could return your boss's call once you reached a payphone.

In the 1990s, more and more people purchased cellular phones. If you had a cellular phone, your boss could actually reach you while you were still taking your walk. The latest generation of cellular phones, often called smart phones, have productivity apps that allow you to send and receive emails, access your important digital files, and even log into your office computer remotely. Not only could your boss reach you while you were taking a walk, you could also continue to work while you walk.

What will they think of next?

When I worked in the gambling industry, I witnessed firsthand what can happen when people do not maintain a healthy balance between work and the rest of their lives. My boss and his wife lived on different continents because of their careers. I saw another marriage fall apart, and I suspect that workaholism played no small part in its demise. My supervisor regularly worked into the early morning hours, and for one stretch of time he was even required to work out of state week after week. He once joked that he forgot what his children looked like. I didn't find his joke very funny.

One day, Jesus and His disciples passed through a field of grain. The Disciples were hungry, so they picked some grain to eat. It just so happened to be the Sabbath day, and picking crops was defined by the religious scholars to be work and, therefore, forbidden to do on the Sabbath. The religious leaders questioned Jesus about this, and He reminded them that one of their heroes, King David, broke religious rules because he and his friends were hungry. He then said, "The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath."⁵

On another Sabbath day, Jesus was speaking at a synagogue when He saw a man with a deformed hand. Jesus was known for healing people with physical and mental problems, and works of healing were also forbidden on the Sabbath. The religious leaders, who were already out to destroy Him, watched Him closely to see if He would heal the man. Jesus asked them, "Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?" He then healed the man's hand.⁶

On yet another Sabbath day, Jesus encountered a sick man, and, once again, the religious leaders were watching Him. Jesus healed the man and asked his critics, "If one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a Sabbath day?"⁷

These stories show us that Jesus held the Sabbath day a bit more loosely than His contemporaries. To better understand what He is teaching us through these stories, I think that we should take a step back and look at the purpose of rules in general.

Jesus once said that the two most important commandments in the Jewish Law are to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind" and to "love your neighbor as yourself." He goes so far as to say that all other commandments are grounded in these two.⁸ In Selling Water by the River, Shane Hipps writes that these commandments to love are the lens through which Jesus views the entirety of the Scriptures." Hipps goes on to say that love is like the keystone of an arch, for it holds together the structure that is the Scriptures.⁹

It is out of love that God gave us the Sabbath Day, and it is out of love that we respect each other's time of rest. Jesus said that "the Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath." I would go so far as to say that people were not created to keep rules but rather that rules were created to keep people. Rules provide necessary boundaries that protect us; however, if we follow the rules too strictly, they can actually get in the way of love. Sometimes, bending or breaking the rules might actually be the right thing to do.¹⁰ Consider what would have happened if Jesus had followed the Sabbath rules and regulations as closely as the religious leaders did: His disciples would have been forced to suffer the pangs of hunger, and a number of hurting people might have never experienced healing.

The purpose of the Sabbath day and of the Jewish Law in general is to uphold and protect the humanity of all people,¹¹ but the strictness of the religious leaders in Jesus' time made the Law a burden difficult for people to bear. Though Jesus offers us freedom from the letter of the Law, we should not use this freedom to forget the spirit of the Law. I don't think that Jesus would ever deny the importance of rest. He did a lot of good things for people in his life, but He also sought times of solitude for prayer and renewal. We should always seek to do what is right, regardless of what day it is, but we must not neglect the the fact that we all need rest.

If you are not currently taking a Sabbath day, I hope that you will consider incorporating a day of rest into your weekly routine. Taking a day of rest requires intentionality. It is important that you work diligently to complete your work in six days so that you can set apart the seventh day for rest. It is also important that you be intentional about how you spend your day of rest so that you effectively recover from the week and renew yourself. Remember that God gave us boundaries to protect us, but remember also that what God values most of all is love.

Notes:

Exodus 20:8-11
Exodus 5:1-18
Rob Bell and Don Golden. Jesus Wants to Save Christians. 2008, Zondervan. p. 191
Judith Shulevitz. "Remember the Sabbath." The Jewish Daily Forward, 04/09/2010.
Mark 2:23-28 (NRSV)
Luke 6:6-11 (NRSV)
Luke 14:1-6 (NRSV)
Matthew 22:34-40 (NRSV)
Shane Hipps. Selling Water by the River. 2012, Jericho Books. p. 20-22
I develop this idea further in my perspective "Rebels with a Cause."
Bell and Golden, p. 33-35