Live the Trinity

Sabbath (or) Holy Fasting, part XII

Richard M. Wright

Quick! What is the primary cause of the decline of American society? Atheism? No school prayer? Evolutionary theory? Abortion? Homosexuality? Microsoft Windows? (A little nerd humor there.)

According to Donald Miller author of Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality (who will speak here in March thanks to a totally gnarly coup by our excellent minister with college students Shannon Rutherford) it is… (drum roll please)… Consumerism.

Say whaaa-? Yup. Consumerism. Hold that thought for a moment.

If the Christian movement wants to engage and influence our culture – indeed help shape culture* – we need to understand our culture more fully. But a chief component of culture – as writer/speaker Lauren Winner explained at the Catalyst Conference – is invisible scripts. So that we know how to be/act in different situations without always having to think about it. If we wish to see/understand those cultural scripts we must actively make them visible. But how?

Winner cites Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping by Judith Levine who describes how she chose to go an entire year without purchasing anything. More precisely she and her partner bought only what was “necessary” and nothing that was a “luxury” (unnecessary). No new clothes/gadgets… borrowing books/movies instead of buying… cooking instead of eating out or buying prepared food… – you get the idea. Winner explained that one result was that “consumerism became visible to that couple in a way that had not been visible before they withdrew” (emphasis mine).

What does this have to do with practicing Sabbath?

That Sabbath can be an opportunity to fast or “withdraw” from our consumerist society. Thereby (a) becoming better able to see these cultural scripts that infiltrate our lives so insidiously (“buy buy buy!”) and (b) becoming free(r) from these voices that tell us we are less than the children of our heavenly Father who loves us and cares for us. If I do not have to shop or watch television or use the computer or work on Sabbath… then shopping/television/technology do not control us (as much).

Granted one is not supposed to fast from food on Sabbath. (On others days sure – but not Sabbath the day of joy.) But we can fast from other things. In order better to see the scripts and be(come) able to reclaim our identity and our freedom in Christ.

*Familiarize yourself with the Christian Vision Project whose website is at http://www.christianvisionproject.com/.

Sabbath (or) Holy Evening, part XI

Richard M. Wright

rq,boß-yhiy>w:) br<[,î-yhiy>w:)

wayhi(y)-‘éreb wayhi(y)-bóqer

“And there was evening, and there was morning...” – Genesis 1:5b

When does a day begin? Twelve midnight – right? (Or whenever your alarm clock happens to go off.)

So why does the Creation narrative in Genesis chapter one repeat six times, “And there was evening, and there was morning – day x”? Because that is how Jewish tradition counts days of course! But that answer is tautological and misses the profound theological point.

Consider. In Genesis one evening is when God begins his work. But evening is when normally we cease our work and/or go to sleep. In his challenging book Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity (which every vocational minister should read… and not a few lay ministers otherwise known as lay people) Eugene Peterson states, “The Hebrew evening/morning sequence conditions us to the rhythms of grace. We go to sleep, and God begins his work. As we sleep he develops his covenant. We wake and are called out to participate in God’s creative action. We respond in faith, in work. But always grace is previous. Grace is primary” (68). This is perhaps where the theology of Sabbath and Sabbath practice kiss most openly.

There are many ways we can elucidate the theological (and psychological and sociological and fill-in-the-blank-ological) significance of Sabbath as rest. And we will. But for now focus on Peterson’s insight. That Sabbath begins with evening and rest because of the primacy of divine grace and divine activity. Before I act… God acts. Before I try to earn my own value through what I do… we have value simply because we are. Before I toil like the world cannot get along without me… we rest because we trust the world depends not on us but on God. (This also has missiological implications.)

When we choose to practice Sabbath is up to you. But I would suggest that it begins not on Sunday morning (not to get into Sunday-as-Sabbath-versus-Sunday-as-Lord’s-Day right now) but rather on Saturday evening. (Marva Dawn in Keeping the Sabbath Wholly describes how her Sabbath begins when she goes to sleep Saturday night [9 et passim].) The Wright family at present begins Sabbath on Saturday evening. (Basically around sunset – we are not fussy about the exact hour and minute.) This is partly because Sunday evening (not to mention morning) is rather busy with a lot of church work so the only restful evening we might get is Saturday. We are still developing how exactly we observe the time but I can tell you we basically try to stop doing things that “need to get done”. (Such as cleaning house… laundry… replacing light bulbs… moving furniture… and so on.)

One last thing. I suggest that Saturday is not the time to stay up late (as I often do). If there is any night you go to bed early…

Sabbath (or) Holy Families, part IX

Richard M. Wright

One of the more significant (sub-)themes at the Catalyst Conference last October was the family.

Reggie Joiner is one of the founding pastors of North Point Community Church in Georgia. During his excellent presentation he discussed the purpose of the church (to show this generation who God is) and finished by listing five specific things the Christian movement can do to be intentional about impacting this generation. Number two was “re-activate the home.”

Consider – the average child/youth spends forty hours per year at/in church activities. (How much of our time and energy do staff ministers concentrate on planning and drawing people to these 40+ hours of activity at the church?) But the average child/youth spends three thousand hours at home (with parent[s]).

Joiner reported that eighty percent of children/youth who grow up in church leave the Christian faith (or least leave involvement in the church) when they become adults. Ouch. I shared this with my fellow ministers one day in staff meeting. Our minister with children and families Peggy Peek replied that a higher percentage of children/youth who attend worship with their families and discuss/practice their faith at home remain faithful as adults.

Is the Christian faith something we do only at church? or also during the rest of the week at home? George Barna in his presentation asked us as Christian leaders how much we are preparing families to be the church… rather than encouraging/allowing the church to become a surrogate family. (Even though there is considerable truth to the latter…)

Two Sundays ago was Holy Family Sunday in the Christian calendar. (Yeah yeah I know – hard to tell just from television or going to the stores.) Samuel growing up in the tabernacle in 1 Samuel 2. Jesus going to Jerusalem with his family in Luke 2 – where he stays and talks with the Jewish teachers in the home of his Father.

I suggest that one of the key ways we fulfill what Joiner and Barna and Peek talk about is this – practicing Sabbath.

In talking about Sabbath and family Tilden Edwards writes: “Mothers and fathers share a special ministerial and priestly function with the rest of the church: that of spiritual guides for their children… Helping to assure and shape Sabbath time for the family is a valuable dimension of their guidance” (Sabbath Time, 114). (I would add that family can include single people as well as couples without as well as with children. The operative idea is the home as the primary locus of spiritual formation and missions.)

When you practice Sabbath at home… as a family… you are already taking a significant step towards re-activating the home and preparing the family to be the church and discussing/practicing your faith as a family and in the home.