Click here to listen to Rankin’s sermon on Keeping the Sabbath.
It’s been said the fourth commandment is the most debated but least observed. Yet as interest in spiritual formation and spiritual practices has blossomed the last few years, new attention is being paid to the gift always at hand, week after week.
Jesus promises to give us rest (Matt. 11:28). But too few of us are experiencing it in our hurried and frenetic lives. Could it because we are out of step with the rhythm intended by God and woven into the fabric of creation? “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God…for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth…and rested on the seventh day” (Exodus 20:8-11).
There are many wonderful resources out there to help us reimagine Sabbath. Here are some we’ve found the most helpful.
Keeping the Sabbath Wholly by Marva Dawn. Dawn is a pastor’s theologian and if you’re looking for a resource that is both theologically rich and practically minded, then this is a wise choice.
Ruth Haley Barton’s books Embracing Rhythms of Work and Rest and Sacred Rhythms take the challenges of establishing this new rhythm seriously while carving a navigable path forward.
If you want to tackle the modern classic from one of the most important Jewish thinkers of the 20th century, then pick up Abraham Heschel’s The Sabbath. It’s brief and surprisingly accessible.
Mark Buchanan’s The Rest of God and Wayne Muller’s Sabbath deserve their places as treasured resources on this topic.
For those who want your ideas of Sabbath challenged, pick up either the delightfully provocative Walter Brueggemann’s Sabbath as Resistance or A.J. Swoboda’s Subversive Sabbath.
And if you feel like you’ve already read everything there is to read on the Sabbath, take a flyer and try Judith Shulevitz’s The Sabbath World, part history, part meditation, modern classic.
In addition to the book-length treatments, you can consult chapters on Sabbath keeping from books on spiritual disciplines by Richard Foster, John Ortberg, Justin Whitmel Earley, and Dallas Willard.
Finally, it should be said about Sabbath keeping what Mother Teresa said about prayer. You can only truly learn what it is by practicing it.