The technological milieu which envelops us promises that its devices will annihilate time and space­waiting can be erased with e-mail, faxes, and faster computers; distances can be eliminated with speedier jets and stronger rockets. To a great extent, technological toys and tools have accomplished that goal, but we've discovered that without time and space we experience a vast emptiness.

Instead of the joys of genuine community, we have myriads of superficial relationships; instead of "home" we have fast food and faster conversations. Though churches might yearn to counteract its emptiness, we can't escape the technological milieu. Its devices are helpful; its pervasiveness, complete.

Philosopher Albert Borgmann advocates finding "focal things" and practices by which the technological world can be questioned and held accountable and by which the most important human values can be preserved.¹ One of the church's greatest gifts that draws us to God as our focus and provides the kind of practice Borgmann advocates is Sabbath keeping.

Sadly, I don't know many congregations where the members both individually and corporately practice Sabbath keeping. One clergy couple, however, responded to my book, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, by deciding with their two parishes to observe an entire Sabbath year. During that year their Methodist and United Church of Christ congregations learned about personal Sabbath keeping, eliminated meetings, and more fully celebrated worship and fellowship. They even canceled their large fund-raising German dinner in order truly to "cease" the work of church business. They focused on worship renewal and on identifying the churches' spiritual gifts and mission.

As a result of their Sabbath year, the congregations experienced significant increases in worship attendance, welcomed more new members than previously, discovered deeper commitment to Sunday School and adult classes, involved more community members in their Christmas service, and stayed on track with their benevolences. At the year's end, the congregation wrote a new mission statement, re-instituted only those meetings essential for their mission, and found new zeal in being the church.

The experiences of these two churches­as well as my own experience of wonderful changes in life when I began keeping the Sabbath while pursuing my Ph.D.­convince me that Sabbath keeping is not only possible in our times, but also urgently necessary for our churches and a vital gift for the world.

The practice is made much easier if others join us; imagine how supportive it would be if everyone in a congregation established the habit together. I know, from countless comments made at continuing education events across the denominational spectrum, that congregational members are much more likely to experiment with Sabbath keeping if their pastoral leadership presents a model.

Space prevents me from offering a thorough explication of how Sabbath keeping can be taught in a congregation, but a close look at one text, Exodus 31:12-17, can give some samples of how this practice and its benefits might be understood. Please keep some version of the text nearby as you read this article.

A Trustworthy Word
Let's first realize that the practice of Sabbath keeping is based on a truthful, trustworthy Word. In the original Hebrew, Exodus 31:12-13 employs four words for speaking or saying­"The LORD spoke to Moses saying, 'as for you, speak to the children of Israel, saying.'" The Torah frequently uses this fourfold structure of speak/say to intensify our recognition of this Word's reliability.

In verse 13, the verb speak comes from dabar, the noun form of which in later Hebrew literature began to mean "event," since whatever God said could be trusted to happen. The other three verbs come from the root which produces our affirmation Amen. Indeed, the gifts this text proclaims can be counted on. God is faithful, and the Sabbath will truly be for us the great treasure God says it is.

The Hebrew word shabbat signifies "stopping," and verse 13 emphasizes that "ceasing" is a sign throughout the generations that it is the LORD who sanctifies us. What might happen in a congregation if its members stopped their work and worry, their need to accomplish, their having to be in control, their messiah complexes for one day each week and thereby learned to stop all of those (except work) the rest of the week?

What might happen (in council meetings, for example) if members of your church community really learned that it is the Lord who justifies us and we don't have to?

Sabbath thus underscores our freedom, for God makes each of us and the congregation as a whole a holy gift. YHWH has given us this day to remind us and tell the world that we are made holy by grace. We don't have to rescue ourselves from our inability to be what we wish, for God sanctifies us. If your congregation is a gift to its neighbors, God will do it and not our "success" in the world's terms.

As verse 14 highlights, the Sabbath day itself is already holy. When the congregation gathers for worship on Sunday (the Gentile church's "ceasing" day in order to emphasize Christ's resurrection as the foundation of our faith), we are welcomed into "holy time" already set apart. Sabbath worship enables us to discover and enter into God's embrace and then to celebrate as we embrace God's way of life.

Suddenly, however, verse 14 seems a bit tough when God says that "everyone who profanes [the Sabbath] shall surely be put to death." It sounds as if God is out to get us if we don't get it right. Though certainly that is not the kind of God we have, what could this mean, especially when the same "shall surely be put to death" appears in verse 15 for whoever does any work on that day? Why would God threaten that the person "shall be cut off from among the people?"

These statements are certainly not describing the LORD's intention. God does not wish for us to be put to death, but rather YHWH grieves because we are killing ourselves. Because our lives are dominated by stress, busyness, the wicked paces of work and voluminous activities, we contribute to our own hypertension, heart attacks, illnesses, and alienation from "among the people."

We don't stop very easily. Shabbat ceasing means not only to stop our work, but to stop worrying about the work and thinking that we're so important in the first place. How our lives are driven by our culture's need to accomplish! Similarly, churches clutter up their Sundays with "necessary" meetings and prevent the parish's families from enjoying Sabbath rest together.

Could we instead let the day be filled with genuine fellowship, coffee hours that really last an hour, and time for wholehearted and authentic conversation? Could we practice as a church the move from the need for accomplishment into celebrating that we are the beloved of God? Could we learn together as loving brothers and sisters in faith to "cease" every dimension of our lives that keeps us from resting in God's grace?

Sabbath is a day to set all of our work aside totally. If I started worrying about some aspect of work on Sunday when I began practicing Sabbath keeping, I'd write down enough phrases to remember my concern, put the paper in a basket, and then not pay any more attention to the matter until the following morning. I discovered that the more Sabbath keeping became a habit, the less work concerns even arose in my mind.

What a great gift it would be to all the congregation members and to the well-being of the community itself to have a whole day to set all our stresses aside, to practice eternity instead, and thereby to gain God's perspective on things. If we develop this Sabbath habit, then we learn to live that way the rest of the week, too, and then our freedom from anxiety and tension throughout the week is a great witness to our neighbors.

God doesn't want us to be put to death or to be cut off from the people. We do that to ourselves.

The death warrant of verses 14 and 15 reminds us how important it is to stop totally, to enter completely into the gift of this day and the gifts of the people who keep it. The day reminds us that the LORD never tells us in the Scriptures how much we have to accomplish for God to love us. Such burdens to produce put us­and many churches­to death.

That's why verse 15 goes on to instruct us that for six days we can work, but "on the seventh day there is a sabbath of complete rest." It is a shabbat shabbaton, a ceasing of ceasings, a stopping of everything that keeps us from rest.

Psalm 23 exhibits all these kinds of rest, but its invitation to social rest is especially attractive. The declaration that the LORD prepares a table for us in the presence of our enemies offers us a suggestion for dealing with our church "adversaries." Why not invite them to Sabbath dinner, and, because it is the Sabbath, not talk about the troubles between us? Instead, we could simply enjoy each other's company in the midst of grace and complete resting. Set a table, God's table, of Sabbath feasting, a foretaste of eternal unity­and see how God might transform the relationship!

What helps us most to live this way is knowing that the Sabbath is not a day off, but a day for. It is a day for re-learning the immensity of God's grace. Since we all need to learn that better, it is an extraordinary mercy that God didn't just suggest Sabbath keeping!

In verse 16 YHWH's people are commanded to "observe the sabbath, to celebrate the sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant." The Sabbath gives us a foretaste of the feast to come in an entire day set aside for feasting with every dimension of our lives.

How might it change the congregation's worship if we aren't tight for time (because there is no other work to do this day) and if our corporate celebration immerses participants in a sense of eternity? Could our worship involve a feast of various styles of music, a diversity of sounds to display multifarious dimensions of the Triune God?

Most of all, the Sabbath enables us to envision the LORD's eschatological presence, God's kingdom already breaking into this aeon. If our corporate worship cultivates a sense of that kingdom presence, then each of us and the community all together can live in its reign more thoroughly all week long. Certainly in an age of pressures and hurry, we all need the delight of a day when we are not controlled by "have to's, shoulds, oughts, or musts," but are set free instead to relish God's presence and anticipate the LORD's coming.

The end of Exodus 31 underscores an evangelistic reason why a congregation's Sabbath keeping is so important: it will display for the world a sign between God and God's people forever, throughout all our generations, a perpetual covenant of God's complete faithfulness, God's promises kept. Sabbath provides the opportunity for us to enter into the LORD's own refreshment, a delight in creation and creatures that will affect how we be church and how we live the congregation's mission throughout the week.

Marva J. Dawn of Vancouver, Washington, is a theologian and musician who teaches under "Christians Equipped for Ministry."

Endnote
1. See Albert Borgmann, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life; A Philosophical Inquiry (The University of Chicago Press, 1984), especially pp. 196-209.