Debbie Headley:

I have really enjoyed hearing about our various thoughts re: the Sabbath so I
thought I would share a couple of my own.

I think of Sunday as a day of rest, renewal, and re-energizing for me as well as
a time set aside for worship. Most Sundays include my very important Sunday
afternoon nap. My kids learned at a very early age that you do NOT wake up mom
unless there is a lot of smoke or copious amounts of blood involved. Sunday
dinner is usually the same every week: ice cream and pop, followed by a few
games- my favorite is speed Scrabble!

My thoughts regarding worship have expanded over the last few years beyond
singing songs on Sunday at church. I find it very worshipful to work hard at
setting up meaningful activities for our corporate times of worship such as
putting together Christmas Shoe boxes filled with Christmas gifts for children
in 3rd world countries. (Yes, this is a thinly veiled announcement that we will
be doing this activity on Nov.12, but I really do find it to be full of meaning
and worship.) I also find a special type of worship in work that is in service
to others even if it is hauling bricks. (Not my own bricks- that is work!)

I’m looking forward to hearing from others,

Roy Gathercoal:

The Sabbath, huh? Is this the “Saturday Sabbath” or the “Sunday
Sabbath”? I still am puzzled about why the early church felt it
necessary to “sanctify” a particular day other than the
Sabbath–especially in that many of the early church, especially in
Jerusalem, still were active in their synagogues. I do know *when* it
was done, but continue to be perplexed as to *why*. Surely it couldn’t
be as simple as the Gentile Christians wanting to be sure they weren’t
mistaken for Jews?

This isn’t (entirely) a piece of idleness on my part. A large part of
the problem with being retired/disabled is that you never get a day off.
Like the farmers and ranchers, grad students and new parents, setting
apart a particular day to *not* do what you apparently *must* do is tough.

I also note with some sadness that, as in many parts of what we call
ordinary life, the brunt of the necessary work seems to fall upon the
backs of those lowest on the economic scale. Even among those employed
on the lower rungs of frequently have a “pecking order” in which the
more senior employees are less likely to “have to work” on Sunday. Seems
to be the case without regard to their religious affiliation. I’m sure
the same thing held in Jesus’ time. Cows then surely needed milking as
they do now! I don’t see any reference to these folks, unless it is the
point of Jesus’ retort to the Pharisees who complained that his
disciples were “working” by picking grain to eat as they walked
through/by the field. The field owners probably could honor the Sabbath
more faithfully if they knew that their servants were working hard at
home. . .

Kathleen has told me (I’m a native Oregonian and thus some of the East
coast practices are fascinating/amusing to me) that her grandfather
lived in Trenton and worked for the Jewish community on the Sabbath by
going from house to house and turning on the ovens. Apparently it wasn’t
work to cook as long as someone else tended the fire.

When I was growing up in our small logging/farming town the set of
practices that constituted “honoring the Sabbath” seemed a bit
arbitrary. I never was able to reconcile the notion that our
“professional Christians”–the pastors–by definition worked on the
Sabbath.

So what are we to make of things?

I’ve wrestled with this one since Jr. High. Starting out as a fine young
argumentative literalist, I was way too eager to point out the
inconsistencies that were/are all around me. (Strangely, I found there
was just too much work in noting others’ inconsistencies to get a moment
to even catch a glance in the mirror!) I will confess that on at least
one occasion I pulled out the “don’t you want me to obey God” argument
to try and weasel out of my chores one day of the week.” Thankfully God
has spared me the embarrassment of trying the “we need to honor the
Sabbath/Saturday because of the Old Testament and the Lord’s Day/Sunday
because of the New Testament.”

In grad school, as it appears was also the case with Kathleen although
we didn’t know one another at the time, I started to take seriously
keeping the Sabbath. For me that primarily meant a sorta kinda fast. I
would drink only broth and water or fruit juice on Sundays. I didn’t
really understand why this was so important to me at the time.

But I think I understand a bit better, now.

Several years ago I was delighted to hear an account about how an
understanding of displaced/refugee populations today just might help us
better understand the scriptures that arose out of the exiles of the
Israelites. Apparently it is so very important to many in these
populations living away from home to hang on tightly to some small bits
of culture and practice so that they can affirm one another’s commitment
to “living in a strange land” rather than assimilating. There at Purdue,
thousands of miles from home and without a “church home” it just might
have the thing that reminded myself that I was “a stranger in a strange
land.”

Perhaps, behind all of the little practices, as inconsistent and even
silly as they may be, we need to remind one another that we are still
“strangers living in a strange land.” Perhaps honoring the Sabbath is
important to our little community as well.

Roy

PS I remember with great fondness that for several years many of the
people in our small church (even people in the community referred to it
as “the white church” as opposed to “the brick church”) would go spend
Sunday afternoon/evening with another family. In retrospect, I believe
that practice was far more important to my own spiritual development
than was the “Sunday Singspiration” service it replaced. I still long
for that opportunity to know others in my family of God in their home
and in mine. It did a lot to help God get several important lessons
about the triviality of consistency pounded into my embarrassingly thick
head. . . and there were some great desserts!

Richard Benham:
I remember the walks to church. It was about five miles across town to get to church and then the walk home. The walk always included talks, chats really, between one or two or all of us. Dad was usually not present. I looked forward to those walks and I looked forward to the growing up years in First Friends Church in Portland. There are so many memories that come flooding back that I can’t sort them out. The old fold up cardboard pump organ in the “beginner’s class” Teachers, mostly gone now, but still revered in some way.Ahh, and roast beef cooking the whole time we were gone. There was nothing like the smell of home on Returning from church on a Sunday morning.

Earl and Annie Tykson:
We came from different backgrounds, so our perspectives about keeping the sabbath day holy have changed for each of us over the years. We have tried to live our lives to honor the sabbath during our 47 years of marriage, and some things have changed with those years. Like many of our generation, if we were raised in the church, we prepared for Sunday on Saturday . . . even to polishing shoes, baking, etc. I, Annie, well remember how upset I was when my parents - 25 years our senior – did some buying on Sunday (because they had been to the city!) and I gave them a speech about how it was giving our kids the wrong message. Now we are at that stage — and beyond — in our lives, and see things differently. It is still important to prepare for worship on Saturday. Because Earl was a pastor, we did not attend Saturday night functions, even ball games, although we did allow our children to do so from time to time. It was necessary that we be rested for Sunday, not worn out from too much excitement the evening before. We encouraged the churches we pastored to not schedule Saturday night functions, although sometimes it happened, and we lived! Fellowship with our church family on Sunday was important: either Sunday dinner in one another’s homes, or after church on Sunday evening. Popcorn was a standard after church function on Sunday evenings for many years in our home, generally including a number of others in the group. Now we eat out on Sunday . . . but we try to tip our waiter/waitress well! We still try not to shop on Sunday, but there have been times when the ox was in the ditch. . . we still try to be sure the gas tank is full, to make Sunday a day of rest and re-creation, however that might look to us: Earl often watches TV, Annie reads. And Sunday afternoon naps are highly enjoyed!

There is more that we could say, but you didn’t want a book! Will enjoy hearing from others.

Elaine Cropper:
For my family growing up Sunday was planned for. If we needed gas it was bought on Saturday. We did not buy anything on Sundays we did not go out to dinner because that would make some one else work. Simple meals ( pot roast and veggies put into the oven before we left for church) were planned and a lot of the prep was done the day before. Sunday drives happened, My dad couldn’t fish on Sundays when he was growing up , we could. Homework should be done before Sunday. The general rule was that it was a day of rest and that included not making others work, we didn’t pay to attending anything. Unless it was church related. We lived by the Spirit of that Law. I still live by the spirit of that. We have tried to make Sunday a special day. I would like to say I don’t grocery shop or buy gas or clean my house etc. on Sundays. That is my goal. I expect my children to get their homework done before Sunday. I make meals that are simple for me. I relax, hang out with my children and husband. Read a book, watch a movie, play a game with my family. I do try to do things that are restful and that point me to think about my Creator.

Kathleen Gathercoal:
When I was in college, I, like most students I knew, studied morning, noon, and night. There was never enough time to do all the reading and write all the papers that were expected an if I didn’t do them, I knew I’d never be admitted to grad school/ When I got into my doctoral program, the work load only increased..

After I’d been in my doctoral program for awhile, my major professor asked me to observe the Sabbath. I was not a Christian at the time, but he was. He said that it was important to him that anyone who worked with him should have time to listen to God; He wanted me to take Sundays off. I resisted, saying that it was a risk for me to lose one seventh of my reading and writing time and it was unfair for him to impose an expectation for which I would assume all the liability and in which I didn’t even believe.. He said, “treat it as an experiment” and encouraged me to try taking off Sundays for the rest of the semester. If at the end of the experiment I was less productive, I could quit the practice and he would go to the other faculty and explain my performance, but If I were not less productive I should continue the practice for the years I remained in his lab. I had little to lose, so I gave it a try. On Sundays, I would take off to walk in the park, or go to the zoo, or art museum.

At the end of the semester I was healthier and happier and was doing better in my classes than either he or I had expected. I continued to practice the sabbath and years later it took on additional meaning when I began to be a follower of Christ. Sabbath is a blessing that I try to pass on to my grad students now.

Jenny Crackenburg:
When I started working in the kitchen at the Yamhill County Jail, I found myself working with a group of inmates who were all very new Christians. None of them had attended church and while some of them attended bible studies (ask Edwin Espana about this ministry) before they joined the kitchen crew, those meetings were no longer available to them. The kitchen workers don’t live with the other inmates and aren’t allowed to attend the bible studies with the other cell blocks. They have their own quarters over the kitchen where they live and work closely together. They held their own bible study meetings that consisted of reading the bible and puzzling out what it meant for them. They did not even have a bible commentary to reference.

One of the practices they were observing was to be good stewards of their own bodies. They worked out each day and were careful only to eat foods that are healthful. This was quite a significant thing for them. The jail receives lots of donations of things like doughnuts, chips, and other snack foods. We also often have excellent homemade desserts. One of the privileges for the kitchen workers is they can eat all they want of those items. These new Christians did not eat them at all because they did not believe it would be good stewardship of their bodies. I was very impressed by the constant discipline they showed.

The inmates were going over the Ten Commandments shortly after I started the job and it was fascinating to listen and watch as they sorted out how to apply them without any denomination’s teachings to guide them. They were concerned about the teaching on the Sabbath because jail rules require them to work seven days a week. They had already gone over the Sermon on the Mount and this had led them to be less literal in understanding how to follow commandments.

The inmates decided (without any outside input) that the real point of honoring the Sabbath was to remind us that the blessings we have in life are not just the result of our own work but a gift from God. The guys decided to make Sunday the one day that they did not work out and on which they would eat dessert. They did not pig out but they would have a cookie or doughnut with lunch and dessert with dinner. They said this reminded them that their increasing strength and good health was not due only to their personal discipline, but was also a gift from God. I thought it was a very appropriate way to observe the Sabbath.

Anna Baker:
I grew up on a dairy farm up the road from a Friends Sunday School. My family did not go to church and did not observe a Sabbath. The cows still needed milking and there was work that had to be done. During my SS years in the 1950’s there was an emphasis on perfect attendance. We could get a pin the first year and wreath the second year and bars each year after that for perfect attendance in SS. If we missed a Sunday we had to be sick or attend another SS somewhere else. When I went on backpack trips with the Girl Scouts over the weekend I needed to encourage some kind of worship and let my SS know what we did. I don’t know that was to keep the Sabbath holy or just be sure we were in SS. I was taught not to do school work or buy things on Sundays in my church and youth group.

When I was first married I remember my mother-in-law telling me that when she was a girl in the 1920’s her father would not take them to church because going to church meant riding the trolley that meant someone had to work on the Sabbath in order to get them to church.

We raised our kids going to church every Sunday. One time we were traveling on Sunday and could not attend church along the way. It was December and dark and rainy. We pulled into a park in the Redwoods and had our own worship service.

My husband and I still have a “perfect attendance” ethic to be in the house of the Lord for worship on Sundays, but we do frequently go out to dinner on Sundays or stop to pick something up at the store though.

Al Crackenburg:
i did not grow up in a christian home. my father and mother were very observant about having fun on sunday. they considered observing the sabbath as a day when you went out and did things that you liked to do. i think it was a hold over from their days of growing up on a farm. in the summer and fall, my parents usually invited someone over for a game of cards or to drive out to a picnic area and maybe fish or throw a softball around. it was a very unusual time for me. my parents were such over achievers and hard workers that to see them goofing around not accomplishing anything tangible was a little mystifying and unsettling. they rarely watered their garden or did anything normally done on the rest of the weekdays. it was a secular version on keeping the sabbath: people needed time to goof around and sunday was the day to goof around.

Bill Jolliff:
I’ve really appreciated the sharing on the idea of “Sabbath.”

It’s great to hear some of those good experiences–my own experience was considerably less positive. In the Friends church I grew up in, which was located in a farming area of Ohio, not working on the “Sabbath” was one of the primary indicators of who was truly saved and who was going to hell. The truly Christian grain farmers, we were taught by the clergy, would let their wheat be ruined by a thunderstorm before they would harvest it on a Sunday (which they, too, inaccurately deemed the “Sabbath”). Interestingly, dairy farmers were in fact allowed to milk and (here’s the strange part) to sell the milk on Sunday as well; exactly why this was an exception is something I never heard taught about. As you might imagine, this teaching divided families in terrible and lasting ways.

Gideon did the unthinkable; he tore down the altars to Baal.  His whole village was ticked and wanted to kill him.  Other prophets committed similar sacrilege on the resident idols built to other Gods.  God trucks no idols; that much seems clear, as witnessed by this second commandment.  Most of us have no problem with that as far as we know, never mind the sacred drawings or carvings on our Tiki lamps.  So if graven images aren’t our problem, is this commandment even worth our time?