Sermon Notes

Exodus 20 8 “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 10 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. 11 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.
Romans 14 4 Who are you to pass judgment on slaves of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand. 5 Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. 6 Those who observe the day, observe it for the Lord. Also those who eat, eat for the Lord, since they give thanks to God, while those who abstain, abstain for the Lord and give thanks to God.
Revelation 1 10 I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet.
(New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, NRSVue)
Exodus 20 8-11 Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Work six days and do everything you need to do. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to God, your God. Don’t do any work—not you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your servant, nor your maid, nor your animals, not even the foreign guest visiting in your town. For in six days God made Heaven, Earth, and sea, and everything in them; he rested on the seventh day. Therefore God blessed the Sabbath day; he set it apart as a holy day.
Romans 14 4 Do you have any business crossing people off the guest list or interfering with God’s welcome? If there are corrections to be made or manners to be learned, God can handle that without your help. 5 Or, say, one person thinks that some days should be set aside as holy and another thinks that each day is pretty much like any other. There are good reasons either way. So, each person is free to follow the convictions of conscience. 6 What’s important in all this is that if you keep a holy day, keep it for God’s sake; if you eat meat, eat it to the glory of God and thank God for prime rib; if you’re a vegetarian, eat vegetables to the glory of God and thank God for broccoli.
Revelation 110 It was Sunday and I was in the Spirit, praying. (The Message, MSG)

In the preface to her 2022 book, Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, Tricia Hersey asserts her “rest movement” started with her grandmothers.
“My maternal grandmother, Ora, the muse of this work, a refugee from Jim Crow terrorism, rested her eyes every day for thirty minutes to an hour in an attempt to connect and find peace . . . Ora’s commitment to “resting her eyes” every day for thirty minutes was radical. Her ability to demand space to “just be” was a form of resistance . . . Whenever I would inquire if she was sleeping, her response was always the same: “Every shut eye ain’t sleep. I am resting my eyes and listening for what God wants to tell me.” While all the world around her was attempting to crush her Spirit, she rested and resisted the beast of grind culture. She taught my mother to rest, she taught me to rest.”
Hersey goes on to say, “Rest is a healing portal to our deepest selves. Rest is care. Rest is radical . . . Rest is a form of resistance because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy. Both these toxic systems refuse to see the inherent divinity in human beings and have used bodies as a tool for production, evil, and destruction for centuries. Grind culture has made us all human machines, willing and ready to donate our lives to a capitalist system that thrives by placing profits over people. The Rest Is Resistance movement is a connection and a path back to our true nature. We are stripped down to who we really were before the terror of capitalism and white supremacy. We are enough. We are divine.”
In many ways, Hersey’s diagnosis of the problematic nature of a work-obsessed culture—and her prescription for intentional rest as a counter-agent to its harmful effects—resonates with God’s command to observe Sabbath in The Decalogue, commonly known as the Ten Commandments. Because God rested to admire God’s own handiwork during creation (Genesis 2:2), all creatures are commanded to rest as well, demonstrating harmony with the rhythms of life and the rhythms of Divine creation. For the Hebrews who embraced saying “yes” to observing the Sabbath, they were also saying “no” to the Egyptian culture of their day which reduced them to mere work mules who had little value outside of producing the commodities that fueled Egyptian consumption.
This week’s lesson centers on how God commanded the Hebrews to observe Sabbath on the seventh day of the week, and the way that early Christians observed the Lord’s Day on Sunday, the first day of the week. As a crucial worship practice of the Church, observing the Lord’s Day embodied how the early Church embraced the radical nature of Sabbath as an embodied practice of faith. Because 1st century followers of Jesus gathered early on Sunday mornings to worship him as the resurrected Lord, instead of Caesar, they were rejecting Roman imperial culture which exploited the powerless for the economic gain of Roman Empire. Likewise, when the 21st century Church gathers to worship on Sunday mornings, we also reject an imperial culture that compels people to work without ceasing to their individual and collective detriment.
While contemporary Christians do not believe in a Christian Sabbath as stated in Article 15 of the New Hampshire Confession (see the endnotes), we do affirm that Sunday is the Lord’s Day—the day on which Jesus triumphantly rose from the dead to secure our salvation (Matthew 28). It is also the day on which the Holy Spirit was poured out on all believers (Acts 2). As such, over time, it became the day set aside for corporate worship and religious observances (Acts 20, as well as the writings of Pliny, Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Dionysius, Clement of Alexandria, Ignatius, and Tertullian). There is no evidence that early Christians observed the Lord’s Day as a replacement for the observance of the Sabbath, or that any of the rules of Sabbath observance were applied to the observance of the Lord’s Day.

Exodus 20 8-11 Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Work six days and do everything you need to do. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to God, your God. Don’t do any work—not you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your servant, nor your maid, nor your animals, not even the foreign guest visiting in your town. For in six days God made Heaven, Earth, and sea, and everything in them; he rested on the seventh day. Therefore God blessed the Sabbath day; he set it apart as a holy day.
In the opening verses of the lesson, the writers of Exodus make it clear that remembering the sabbath day as “holy” separates it from the other six days as sacred time/space that has been designated by God where rest—the literal cessation of work—is essential to the full functioning of the created order. People are reminded that God created time and space and is uniquely qualified to decide how that time and space should be spent. The act of remembering is a deliberate theological act centered on God as the source of our being and times.
The rationale that the writers give for God resting on the seventh day rests on Genesis 2:1-3 and Exodus 16:23. The commandment instructs each Israelite to plan and to finish his week’s work by the Sabbath. The reason why we do not wish to stop what we are doing is most often because we have not finished. Thus, the command instructs the Israelites to plan to be finished by the end of the sixth day. The commandment is broadened from Exodus 16. In that scriptural passage, God prohibited the Israelites from gathering manna on the seventh day. Now, all labor is prohibited. Humans within the Israelite community, humans outside of the Israelite community, and non-human creatures must all keep Sabbath because God kept Sabbath. Divine rest completes, or finishes, the very act of creation. “It is a religious act with cosmic implications.” Further, observing Sabbath is a voluntary act of joining God’s original intention for the rhythms of creation. Conversely, not observing Sabbath violates the order of creation, disrespects Divine rhythms of creation, and neglects God as the center of all.
It may seem like a stretch to suggest that rest helps to keep the chaotic forces of life at bay. However, resting resets the body, mind, and spirit so that people and creatures are renewed for the work to come. Further, because the Sabbath is a democratizing factor for all, equalizing the socio-political dynamics for the haves and the have-nots, blacks and whites, humans and non-humans alike. No one is better or more elevated than another. Rest is the one time within creation that anticipates an age when everything returns to being, “very good” as it was “in the beginning” (Genesis 1:1-2:4).
While the first four commandments of the Decalogue address humans relationship with the Divine, and the last six commandments concern human relationships with each other, the command to observe Sabbath forms a bridge between all ten.
Romans 14 4 Do you have any business crossing people off the guest list or interfering with God’s welcome? If there are corrections to be made or manners to be learned, God can handle that without your help. 5 Or, say, one person thinks that some days should be set aside as holy and another thinks that each day is pretty much like any other. There are good reasons either way. So, each person is free to follow the convictions of conscience. 6 What’s important in all this is that if you keep a holy day, keep it for God’s sake; if you eat meat, eat it to the glory of God and thank God for prime rib; if you’re a vegetarian, eat vegetables to the glory of God and thank God for broccoli.
In the second text of this lesson, we consider Paul’s understanding of how a person’s new life in Christ becomes the primary factor for determining behavior within Christian community including whether the Lord’s Day is embraced. Because early Christianity is primarily comprised of Jews who became followers of the “Way of Christ,” many Jewish Christians continued to practice Jewish customs even after they affirmed Jesus as Lord. Paul says they should “love each other with mutual affection, be patient in affliction, and live in harmony and peace with everyone” (Romans 12:9-18).
Additionally, Paul says Christians should not judge each other. This particularly refers to not judging other Christians concerning what they eat and drink, or how they choose to observe or not observe the Lord’s Day. In verse 5, Paul says each individual Christian is free to follow their own conscience concerning their worship traditions as long as their motivation is centered on worshipping God. Ultimately, God will judge who is right or wrong.
Revelation 110 It was Sunday and I was in the Spirit, praying.
The final verse of the lesson comes from The Revelation to John. He describes the day that he experienced a heavenly vision of Jesus while on the Isle of Patmos as he was praying in the Spirit. He says it was the Lord’s Day, indicating that by John’s time (circa 100 CE), Christians worshipping on Sunday was firmly in practice.
Chapter 14 of The Didache—an early Christian handbook on Church doctrine, rituals, and ethics—also indicates that Christian worship was held on the Lord’s Day. It says, “But every Lord's day gather yourselves together, and break bread, and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure.”
Whether by John’s affirmation, or The Didache’s instruction, it is clear that early Christians committed themselves to setting aside Sundays as the day that they gathered to focus on remembering and worshipping Jesus of Nazareth. They did not multi-task. They completely gave themselves to in-person community centered on recalling the teachings, life, ministry, sacrifice, and resurrection of Jesus. In a perilous time that enticed them to embrace the Roman culture of capitalism, consumption, and commodification, early Christians rejected that life to focus on God. They disinvested in the Roman system of economics to be mindful of God is a world that was hell-bent on mindless things (social media, tv, etc.) This week’s lesson on invites us to embrace the Lord’s Day as a return to those things that are mindful of God in Christ Jesus.

i. Tricia Hersey, Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto (Kindle Edition) 5-7.
ii. Terence E. Fretheim, Exodus: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Kindle Edition), 229.
iii. Ibid.
iv. Ibid, 230-231.
v. Go to the website, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm, to read the full text of The Didache.