Peterson Eugene - 24-Jun: a Prescription for a Healthier, Happier Life

THE SUBJECT OF Sabbath keeping is in the air these days. I think I have read with admiration and appreciation most of the books and articles written on this subject in the last fifty years. Maybe you have too. No matteryou must read this latest entry in the genre. Matthew Sleeth has crafted a compelling invitation to consider and participate in Sabbath keeping, an invitation that is, in my experience, without peer.

His credentials are impressive. His years of experience as an ER physician in hospitals qualifies him as a veteran in a culture of demanding overwork. His entry into the Christian faith ten years ago provides a total reorientation of his imagination in the Hebrew/Christian culture of Sabbath keeping. And most impressive of all, he explores the many details of what is involved in practicing Sabbath in a world that is unrelenting in its distractions and pressures to work longer and harder. He does it not as an impersonal expert but firmly in the context of marriage and family, with all the domestic and relational details involved in doing nothing where doing nothing always requires constant coordination and relationship.

Under Dr. Sleeths pen, Sabbath, a dead word for so many, undergoes a resurrection, comes alivenot as a bare commandment, the fourth in the sequence of ten, but as a vigorous way to live in the present. This takes place in a freshly imagined (but not fanciful) recovery of the salvation and Jesus-context of the Scriptures. The writers mastery of the entire biblical revelation raises Sabbath keeping far above an unadorned rule to be kept. In detail after detail it comes to be seen as a cornerstone for comprehending a world defined in all its daily living by Gods rest, Gods not-doing. He showcases Jesus recovery of Sabbath keeping unfettered by the legalistic restrictions that had taken all the creativity and joy out of Sabbath in the world in which Jesus grew up. Jesus is still the primary antidote to the cheerless rule keeping associated with Sabbath in our time.

Which is to say that this is a book that restores Sabbath to its extensive biblical narrative context. Jesus, not rules, sets the tone. This Sabbath keeping is conveyed in storiesdoctor stories, stories of friends, stories of family, Jesus stories. The stories keep Sabbath nestedintegral to the time and place in which relationships form and develop. Everything is written in ways that give men and women dignity and room, atmosphere and space to be themselves in a good creation. There is not a hint of judgmentalism against any who are either unaware of or hostile to this holy day. Sabbath is simply presented not as a rule to be kept but as a freedom to enter into.

Not the least of the attractions of 24/6 is the style of the writingwith wit, sharply observed phrasings, new ways to express old truths. Dr. Sleeth renames Sabbath Stop Day. And here are a few sentences that stopped me in my tracks:

If the Ten Commandments are written on apple pie and you get to choose which slice to have based upon size, choose the fourth. You will get more than a third of the pie put on your plate.

No one ever found the Lord on the day they won the lottery. Faith is more likely to blossom on the day we lose our job.

Stopping and resting are the working definitions of holy.

The seventh day is blessed as holy because the Lord stopped and rested.

And here is a meditative practice that I find attractive. Until now Id never come across subtracting one word at a time from Psalm 46:10 to help me come to rest:

Be still and know that I am God.

Be still and know that I am.

Be still and know that I.

Be still and know that.

Be still and know.

Be still and.

Be still.

Be.

The cumulative effect on me of this extended, comprehensive, and lively writing on Sabbath practice is a sense of how natural and inevitable it seems: Yes, of course, this is the way we have been created to live well. There is nothing obtrusive here, nothing that feels like an invasion of our privacy or an infringement of our pursuit of happiness. That is not to say that the difficulties we face in Sabbath practice in our culture are not formidable obstructions to how we embrace the practice. Edmund Burke is often quoted saying, Beware the terrible simplifiers. There is none of that here. But neither are there any onerous Sabbath burdens placed on us. In Sabbath keeping we become more ourselves, not less. In Dr. Sleeths pithy sentence, Sabbath is a time to transition from human doings to human beings.

Eugene H. Peterson

PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF SPIRITUAL THEOLOGY

REGENT COLLEGE

VANCOUVER, BC