The congregation I meet with has breakfast before a nine am service weekly. We drag some people in for the coffee (which is OK) and the sugary buns (which is a weekly struggle to avoid). The service is early because sport has been moved to Sunday, since Saturday in NZ is a day of commerce, and on Sunday many shops are open.
If your business is in a mall, you have contractual obligations to open seven days a week — for ten, or at the busy time, twelve or even fourteen hours.
In this time, Jeremiah’s concern about the Sabbath seems quaint. The kind of things only the ultra-orthodox worry about. For the rest of us, Sunday is the busiest day for the food industry and entertainment and a day of shopping.
But perhaps the neglect of the sabbath is an early sign of societal fall.
Thus said the LORD to me: “Go and stand in the People’s Gate, by which the kings of Judah enter and by which they go out, and in all the gates of Jerusalem, and say: ‘Hear the word of the LORD, you kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, who enter by these gates. Thus says the LORD: Take care for the sake of your lives, and do not bear a burden on the Sabbath day or bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem. And do not carry a burden out of your houses on the Sabbath or do any work, but keep the Sabbath day holy, as I commanded your fathers. Yet they did not listen or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck, that they might not hear and receive instruction.
“‘But if you listen to me, declares the LORD, and bring in no burden by the gates of this city on the Sabbath day, but keep the Sabbath day holy and do no work on it, then there shall enter by the gates of this city kings and princes who sit on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their officials, the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And this city shall be inhabited forever. And people shall come from the cities of Judah and the places around Jerusalem, from the land of Benjamin, from the Shephelah, from the hill country, and from the Negeb, bringing burnt offerings and sacrifices, grain offerings and frankincense, and bringing thank offerings to the house of the LORD. But if you do not listen to me, to keep the Sabbath day holy, and not to bear a burden and enter by the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle a fire in its gates, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem and shall not be quenched.’”
(Jeremiah 17:19-27 ESV)
Do I burden others on Sunday? Well, our habit is to go to church, then a long walk, then have brunch. Which could be anywhere — most of the photos I take are on Sundays, when I try to spend a couple of hours walking with a camera attached to me. Days on call excepted: for emergencies do mean I will work.
However, the day of rest has other purposes, and they relate to justice. I’m fairly well off, and work five days a week: some of my successful colleagues have cut down to four days, while the poor and those trapped by contractual obligations often work two jobs, seven days a week, to make what I can make in two days.
The Sabbath regulations ensure that everyone stops and everyone rests. That commerce takes a day off. That we depend on families, or worse, churches. That perhaps. the poor can eat more than breakfast at services.
When we lose the regulations around rest we start to break down the natural laws of hospitality and recompense that allow societies to function. Jeremiah told the princes of Judah, who had the law and a regulated sabbath, to obey them or their society will break.
God has not changed. The exhaustion of the poor damns us as much as that other sign that we are a broken society: the annual Gay Parade (Romans 1: and they were abandoned to their lusts… man for man, and woman for woman, paraphrased).
When we reform, we need to remember that we are not silicon chips or robots. We are mammalian, frail, but with a huge capacity to recovery.
If we rest. If we do not rest as per a schedule, we break down.
