Remember the sabbath..

When I was serving as a priest, I knew what I was going to be doing and where I would be every Sunday. I also knew what I would be doing during the week before each Sunday—writing a sermon, reviewing a church bulletin, choosing hymns, planning the liturgy, and other tasks related to Sunday. For most Christians, Sunday is recognized as the Sabbath and church-going Christians (you don’t have to go to church to still claim your identity as a Christian) generally equate observing the Sabbath with going to church.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. — Exodus, 20:8-11[2]

There is certainly nothing wrong with remembering the Sabbath by going to Church, though I have found my life is very different now that I have retired as a working priest. I do go to Church on occasion but I also continue to ponder what it really means—to me—to “keep the Sabbath.”

As a working priest I could not keep the commandment to not do any work, to rest, on Sunday. I worked so that others could keep and have a holy Sabbath. That was a gift and an honor to be able to serve in that way. It is probably one of the reasons many clergy choose to continue serving in a church, part-time or in a supply priest role, after their retirement from full-time ministry. Other clergy, once retired, carefully discern and find a church that they attend as a congregant, enjoying sitting in the pew with their family and friends.

It is too easy as a retired priest to have church-going become a rote and not necessarily meaningful action. My challenge has been to come to an understanding of what “keeping the sabbath holy” means for me. I have not resolved this completely and continue to think, to pray, to ponder, to read—Joshua Heschel, Marva Dawn, Walter Brueggemann—to try to create a Sabbath that will feel like I have kept it holy.

Once I retired, I no longer had the challenge which I faced my whole career, that of being a workaholic. For many years it was almost impossible for me to take a day to rest. There was always more I felt I should be doing. Intentional spiritual retreats away from my work were helpful and meaningful, but I would always return to my age-old pattern of over commitment and overwork. There were never enough hours in a day or days in a week to accomplish what I felt I was called to achieve.

Once I retired I surprised myself that I was able to let that go, though it took and still takes a deliberate intention to do so. It would be oh so easy to get involved with an overloaded schedule of committee work and other worthy causes. Many retired people are now busier than they were when they were working. I do try to give back to my community but I intentionally try to do it in a manner that does not overwhelm my calendar and fill every empty hour of my schedule.

I grew up in a family that did faithfully keep the Sabbath. I have fond memories of both my grandmother and my mother doing all their cooking and errands on Saturday so that all they had to do was heat up our Sunday lunch after church. My mother never cooked on Sunday night, which was unusual as, even as someone who worked full-time, she always cooked suppers for our family. But Sunday nights we were on our own. Find the leftovers in the refrigerator or make a sandwich or fix a bowl of cereal. She was off-duty. She was honoring her Sabbath.

My grandmother refused to even use a knife (or a pair of scissors) on Sundays as she would say, “I don’t want to risk cutting my ties with the Lord.” On Sundays after church we would come home, have lunch, and then drive out and “go visiting” to see friends or other family members in the area. We might pick some scuppernongs out at someone’s farm or sit on the porch as Aunt Nellie dipped snuff and talked about the old days. Sometimes we might stop at one of the few pharmacies that were open on a Sunday and have a cone of ice cream. I remember that my grandmother’s favorite was lemon ice cream. I don’t remember any philosophical or theological discussions about keeping the Sabbath holy; it was just something that was done, was lived, and treasured.

Theologian Walter Brueggemann writes that the Sabbath is not about keeping rules but breaking away from our everyday cycle and placing our focus on what really matters—God, other people, all of life. He calls out our “24/7 society of consumption, a society in which we live to achieve, accomplish, perform and possess. We want more, own more, use more, eat more and drink more.” Sabbath is a way to break the chains that bind us. According to Brueggemann, the Sabbath is intended as a day of rest, worship, relationships and celebrating.

Keeping the Sabbath means, to me, finding a joyful balance between head and heart. I am still trying to figure it out. I know it means taking time to listen for God’s voice in the stillness, to pay attention to the world and the people I love. Maybe even pay attention to the people I don’t love. Some Sundays (and yes, I can now claim Sunday as my Sabbath) it may be reading without a break. It may be just gazing at the sky and the trees and the mountains without guilt about doing “nothing.” Sabbath is about discovering that nothing is actually really something. Retirement offers a lot of “nothing” which is of course that longed for “something” we imagined all those years of working long hours. Maybe it is in the nothingness that the holy can be found.

Being intentional about keeping at least one day each week for Sabbath seems like more than just a good habit. It seems like a pathway to the holy. I am praying to continue finding the way that feels true for me.