7) Keep the Sabbath

If I tried, I couldn't not.

Does that make sense?

"Keep the Sabbath," says Trillia Newbell. “The Bible instructs us to rest and ultimately rest in Jesus. So, for 2022 I intend to keep the Sabbath.. . .I need the rest.”

Sorry if I was a little curt yesterday with the mighty John Newton and the saintly Tim Keller, but I just didn't buy into all those spiritual gymnastics. Felt too much like Ben Franklin in the Autobiography.

But Trillia Newbell? If I tried, I couldn't not. The Sabbath is in my DNA.

"The Sabbath is an organizing principle. 

It is a socially reinforced temporal structure."

Them's fighting words for folks like my mother, who had powerful instincts when it comes to what we used to call "sabbath observance." The Sabbath is certainly "not for man," not if you read the Bible.

But her son can't help feeling that maybe it is. Judith Schulevitz's The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order is fascinating and thoughtful. By her reckoning, the Sabbath, as we know it, is, in fact, a "reinforced, temporal structure"--and she's Jewish, not Dutch Reformed. By way of my wooden-shoed perspective, the Sabbath (upper-case) is really more of all of that--more "reinforced" and "temporal" because the Ten Commandments, interpreted with an OT spin, the perspective in which they were delivered, would have pointed sharply, militantly, at the seventh day, or Saturday. Not Sunday.

I know, I know--somewhere along the line (Schulevitz tells the story, by the way) Christians simply determined that we could red-pencil that commandment and edit in a new specified day, Sunday, the first day, and still live under the mandate of the divine directive. But it's impossible, really--rationally, at least--to argue that that determination wasn't made by someone outside the circle of Christ's disciples or apostles. Some other guy hundreds of years later first thought that idea through, some guy to whom we don't impute Holy Spirit-generated writing power, the divine vision of "scripture." It wasn't Jesus who edited the commandment; we did.

Here's Schulevitz: "Either you want to be organized in this way or your don't," she says, and I think she's right, just like Trillia Newbell. But then she goes on, "or, if you're like me, you do and you don't." Yeah, okay--she's speaking for me there too. "But if you're like me you can't quite forget what it feels like to have a Sabbath" (I have to remind myself that her name is Schulevitz and not, well Schaap or Schuller), "you can tell when it's missing, even if you don't necessarily miss it." 

Yup. That's how deep. DNA-level. 

What I'd like to know is how on earth did this Jewish woman worm her way so successfully into my Calvinist psyche?

I don't shop on Sunday. I'm not militant about it, but I just don't head down to Wal-Mart--often, at least--even though I could, and even though I have done it when my ox falls in a ditch. To get a plunger, for instance--when by chance, I met my son-in-law, who was just as guilty about being there as I was. Fortunately, I had that plunger in my hand. Can you think of a better symbol for sheer necessity?

I attend church, twice, in fact, for most of my 70 years. My old Arizona friends used to think I was in a cult.

Two weeks ago I took a long walk with my grandson on the Sabbath and the two of us missed the evening service. As righteous as such bonding moments might be, it's in me to feel a bite of guilt anyway. That's how deeply "reinforced" Sabbath observance is in me.

And I'm okay with that, Ms. Newbell. I'm a good enough Calvinist to say that a little guilt can be a blessing. Besides, the next Sunday I was there at worship, twice. This week too--well, once at least (we live a ways away). A little hiccup in the ritual ain't going to despoil me or violate the commandment, methinks.

I remember playing ball just a block away from home on Sabbath afternoons when I was a kid and sweating up a shirt full. What I had to do back then was stop somewhere between court and home, in a stand of trees where no one could see me, sit quietly and dry myself off before going home, lest my sin of Sunday basketbalol be made known. 

Back then, I couldn't watch TV either--until Vince Lombardi came along and ruined the Schaap family Sabbath. Today, my mother, who would have wondered where her son had gone wrong years ago, can likely list last year Packers' draft picks. She wouldn't miss a game for anything. I'm spotten when I say it, I know, but some might even say that, come Sunday afternoon, she watches the Packers religiously. Sorry, Mom.

There are lots of reasons why I find Schulevitz a joy, but finally there's this--even though she claims "the Sabbath" is a "reinforced, temporal structure," she'd just as soon live with its strictures, and even a spot or two of guilt, which I guess isn't the sole province of Calvinists. A few Jews must have it too.

I like that, living in between. I think she's right. I sound like the last of the existentialists maybe, but it seems to me that we've got to find our own way on such things. The dangers are clear: on one side, the parable of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," people so driven by a tradition that they're incapable of thinking about it rationally; and on the other, life without rest and peace and, most importantly, devotion.

Somewhere in between lies the path--or paths--most all of us walk, day to day, and in this new year.

And for the record--Go Pack. It's looking good this season.

See you in church.