Sabbath: A Case Study

Following up last week's blog of reflections on N.T. Wright's newest book, Scripture and the Authority of God, I wan to explore one of the case studies offered at the end of the book. Taking his basic thesis of scripture as a five-act story, Wright shows the interpretation behind how the church today should interact with the commandment to keep the Sabbath. The seemingly obvious contradictions between the Old Testament's commands and the complete lack of mention in the writings of the very Jewish Paul (particularly its absence in his list of the ten commandments in Romans 13)  and Jesus' bold opposition to at least what the the Sabbath had become leaves one to wonder what to do. Wright suggests that we must observe the Sabbath's role in the five-act story if we are to understand why and how the New Testament writers used it.

The first act finds God in the initial creation account. After six days, God finds rest and provides the foundation for Sabbath observance. While the passage is simple, to the culture in which it was first told and then repeated, something much deeper but also obvious is happening on that seventh day. The Genesis account is a near mirror-image of other creation accounts from the ancient middle-east. Yet the striking differences are what make Yahweh the unique God he is. All the creation accounts climax with the creating god/gods residing in a temple, yet in Genesis, God resides in the Temple that is his entire creation and his "image-bearers," humanity, will do what their God does.

Act two involves the fall, albeit the actual occurrence only takes up a mere chapter among the thousands of the Bible the ramification of man's choice to sin are seen on every page that follows. Our role as "image-bearers" is tarnished if not completely ruined in the disobedient act and God sets forth in the third act to to right this wrong to return us to the "rest" in the Temple of the perfect creation. Its is and has been a long process.

The next time we see Sabbath spoken of explicitly is in the dispensation of the Law in Exodus. Interestingly here the Sabbath begins to take up a deeper meaning than mere rest. While its undoubtedly a day to worship God, it is also ties tightly to justice and freedom. God makes it clear that the Sabbath would be a day for slaves to be free, not just from work but there very indentured state.  The Sabbath becomes a day for the poor and even the animals. God is interested in protecting everything in His Temple. Another feature of Sabbath that will eventually bridge us to the forth act is Jubilee.

Jubilee was a an act of year-long Sabbath every seven years when debts were canceled and ever 49 years (seven times seven) liberty for all, returning to ancestral boundaries, freeing slaves, and rest for the land from plowing and harvesting. Isaiah 61 ties Jubilee to Sabbath observance and offers a picture of what Jubilee (and consequently Sabbath) is ultimately pointing towards, the restoration of God's creation and God's people. It is a day when Israel, His people, can not only observe this restoration but take part in implementing it, a great privilege indeed.

This brings us to the fourth act in the life of Jesus Christ. Jesus opens his public ministry by reading from the Jubilee passage from Isaiah 61, announcing the freedom for the captives, good news for the poor, and such. He caps this reading by proclaiming"Today, this  scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." And in those words, His Jewish audience heard Jesus claiming to be the fulfillment of God's plan of restoration, the very thing the sign posts of Sabbath and Jubilee had been pointing to all along. Time had reached the Jubilee of Jubilees. Jesus goes on to make other statements to emphasize the fulfillment of the Sabbath (and also of all markers of God's plan of redemption in the Old Testament). He is the "Lord of the Sabbath," one must come to him to find "rest" and the time is "fulfilled" in the at hand Kingdom.

John conducts a new creation account of sorts in the passion of Jesus. The work of the new creation is "finished" on the sixth day on the cross as Jesus breathes those last words, "it is finished." He finds rest in the grave on the seventh day and "on the first day of the week" Jesus is resurrected and a new creation is born, the first day. The New Testament authors realized the fulfillment of God's plan for Israel coming in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, that a new day, a new act, had dawned with the rising Son. The book of Hebrews make this the most clear in 3:7-4:11 detailing the entire new age inaugurated by Jesus as a great "Sabbath rest." And that we enter God's rest, the seventh day, by faith in Christ.

So we find ourselves in an interpretive dance in the fifth-act. The Sabbath as practiced by the Jews is not to be ignored but cherished as an integral part of our story as the rudder on the ship that brought us across the sea.  Wright sums it up like this:

"My central point in this section, then, is that the Sabbath command of the Old Testament was a true and necessary signpost, pointing forward to God's purposes for his creation and to the place of Israel in relation to those purposes. but it was always, from the perspective of Genesis 2:3, a sign which spoke of God coming to live in his heaven-and-earth creation, taking up residence, dwelling in the midst of his people. ...Sabbath is a sign of the [end] to come; the New Testament speaks of Jesus acting as if he were the [end] in person, sacred time come to life. This...is what lies behind the wholesale disappearance of the Sabbath command in early Christianity. And this is the clue to the way in which the surprisingly complex scriptural material about the Sabbath can be powerfully authoritative for the Christian in our day, or in any day."

Wright goes on to make some applications of how we are to still practice "Sabbath" today but in a relatively new way. To rephrase his quote, one does not place a sign pointing to Memphis at the Peabody. Our rhythms must point forward to the close of this age of fulfillment, to the new heavens and new earth and to celebrate to the presence of the Spirit in our world as opposed to "waiting" on the coming age in rest. As the New Testament states, Now is the time.

Wright paints a compelling picture of the Bible as a five-part play and gives a convincing meta-narrative to not only buy into but to live within. Reading the Bible in the midst of its entire context is a vastly overlooked discipline that as shown in this case study can deliver fresh avenues for God's authority to to work through and in the scriptures.