For many years I worked in information systems, which is a polite way of saying I was a slave to computers. I had some good jobs, but every one of them included the expectation that no matter when  computer decided to throw up, I was to come running and clean up the mess. I have done a lot of searches for jobs that use computer skills, and almost every one has the same requirement. Be available 24/7.

In her book Practicing Our Faith, Dorothy Bass writes, “We need Sabbath, even though we doubt that we have time for it.” Those of us who work in today’s fast-paced businesses know that feeling. It isn’t just the technical support teams who work round the clock. It hits everyone. Single mothers with two jobs. Fathers who work for advancement so they can pay for college for their children. Mothers who give themselves to a career and a family simultaneously. The recent upswing in work-at-home options have only added another layer of stress to busy lives. It appears that there is no sacred space any more where someone can truly rest.

On Mount Sinai, God wrote his rules for people on stone tablets, and the third was about rest.
Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work – you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.

This statement sounds like a real blessing. Imagine how it sounded to the Israelits who had just escaped from Egypt. They were accustomed to be bossed around all day every day, with hardly a minute for themselves or their families. Suddenly they were given one day out of every seven to be at peace. Nobody worked. What a beautiful gift.

Jewish history is full of people who looked at that beautiful gift and made it an onerous burden. They devoted a great deal of time and energy to calculating exactly what constituted work and what might be considered rest. Women were reduced to the necessity of checking dishwater (it was okay to wash dishes used for meals on Sabbath) for seeds. They needed to be sure they did not throw out seeds along with dishwater, lest a seed germinate, thereby incurring guilt for farming on the Sabbath. Thus people contrived to make God’s gift of rest a burden.

Christian history is full of a record of similar arguments. Christians worry that we aren’t really observing Sabbath at all, because we worship on Sunday, resurrection day. So some Christians decided to worship on Saturday, and throw theological stones at the rest of us. Most Christians think we should worship on Sunday, but they worry that we might have too much fun. Frivolity would be unseemly on the Lord’s day. Some get very disturbed about our society, a culture in which stores are open 24 hours and people may very well work on a schedule that includes Sunday, with some other day off for rest.

Martin Luther wisely observed that we are silly to get all hung up on the day of the week. God ordained for us a day of rest for every seven. We don’t have a calendar record of the day God supposedly rested, so we don’t really know what day Sabbath is anyway. What’s more, as sinners saved by grace through the blood of Jesus, we just can’t be expected to submit to a Pharisaical interpretation of God’s words. The God who sent his son to die for our sins on the cross would simply not want his children imprisoned in a legalistic calendrical prison. Jesus said that he came to fill the law full, he overflowed all the Pharisaic legalism and set us free. Free to enjoy the gift of rest God ordained for us. Free to worship any day, every day, Monday, if that is how it works out.

Jesus thought we were confused about the Sabbath, too. One Sabbath day he visited a synagogue where there was a woman with a terrible condition. She was bent over so far that she could not see anything but the ground. She had endured this condition for eighteen years. Jesus healed her right in the synagogue, and she stood up straight. People got very excited about it and the whole ritual of the synagogue was ruined. The president of the synagogue told Jesus, “You have six days of the week to do your healing. What made you think you had to heal this woman on the Sabbath?” Jesus said that the people needed to relax a bit. It was okay to do good on the Sabbath, even if it upset the routine a bit.

God set us free from sin, and he set us free from silly semantic arguments about when and how we rest. God loved us so much that he sent his only son to die for us, and God wants us to know the joy of work and the joy of rest. He does not want us tied in knots trying to figure out how to relax. God’s Ten Commandments Rock!