Sabbath Practice Week 3: Creating Rituals

Taste acquisition is an amazing process. For instance, think about coffee. Perhaps you grew up drinking Folgers coffee from a can. It’s good. It’s sufficient. It wakes you up just as much as the next cup. You’ve unconsciously learned to love Folgers without any work or effort. Then, you drank from the fountain of Eclipse Coffee. You’ve never tasted the beautiful complexities or smelled the aromatics of a fresh roasted, crafted cup such as that before. It tastes strange, and yet your drawn toward it. It creates a sense of anticipation and delight. Before long, your habit of making coffee out of a can slowly gets replaced by the ritual of dropping by Eclipse, and soon your taste has been transformed. The only thing you did was change your habit, but unconsciously your taste changed. The Folgers cup that was once fully sufficient is distasteful. The Eclipse cup that was once strange is now a delight, and almost required.

This is the way rituals work in our lives. They form tastes without us being overly aware of it. Our ultimate loves—what we worship—acquire direction and orientation because of the rituals and habits we are immersed in over time. The fancy word for this is liturgy. It’s a shorthand term for those rituals that are loaded with an ultimate story about who we are and what our vision of the good life is. 

Things like habitually turning to social media, consuming/shopping, and overworking are all rituals that create loves. They make us love a certain vision of flourishing (broadcast by who we follow); they make us love material things; they make us love our own importance. And culture sucks us into these rituals through expectation and marketing.

But Sabbath acts a liturgy as well. It’s a ritual that creates taste. According to Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 it is meant to create the love of a God who gave us the gift of life and liberates us from brokenness. And if we practice this ritual over time, we believe that it can bend the needle of our hearts away from our cultural vision of materialism and importance and toward the flourishing that Jesus offers through his presence. We believe at first, the ritual of Sabbath will taste strange to us in a world of busyness and discontentment, but that if we make Sabbath a habit, the world of busyness and discontentment will one day be distasteful. 

And one of the most helpful ways we can practice the ritual of Sabbath is by creating rituals of beginning, ending and gratitude to mark our day and help us settle into rest. These rituals are best done in a way that speaks to our senses—that grab our attention through the power of image and metaphor. And so we invite you this week to create beginning, ending and gratitude rituals to help you create a taste for a day in which you experience the presence of Jesus. 

Here’s some examples to start your Sabbath:

  • Light two candles (symbolic for the two commands in Exodus and Deuteronomy to “remember” and “observe” the Sabbath). Invite the Spirit of Jesus to come and give your home light, joy, love, peace, and rest. 

  • Pour a glass of wine (or grape juice for the kids or the straight edge). Pray a blessing over the drink and give thanks. 

  • If you have a family, this is where, traditionally, the father speaks a blessing over the children and the mother. If you’re with roommates or friends, this can be a wonderful time to bless each other, with prayers like: May you be happy and full of joy. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. May you find rest for your soul. Etc.  

  • Read a Psalm, sing a song, quote a poem, or pray a liturgy to center on God. (Psalm 92 is a great place to start)

  • Pray: ask the Holy Spirit bring a spirit of rest over your life and lead and guide you through the next 24 hours. 

  • If you begin at night, share a meal with your family or friends. 

  • If you begin in the morning, go to church and worship. 

Here are a few ideas to end your Sabbath:

  • Take a slow, leisurely prayer walk around your neighborhood, nearby park, or nature reserve. 

  • Read a psalm. 

  • Share a meal with family and friends. 

  • Spend some time alone or with your family and friends in prayers of gratitude. 

  • Traditionally, the Sabbath ends by sitting on the floor, lighting a special havdalah candle, and sharing 1) the best part of your Sabbath, and 2) what you are looking forward to in the week ahead, passing around sweet smelling spices to savor the day, and ending with prayers of gratitude. 

Questions to Ponder:

Reflect:

  1. What preparations worked well? What things did Preparation Day free me up to not do or enjoy on Sabbath?

  2. What negative or unrestful experiences on Sabbath am I discovering? Is there a way that Preparation Day could deliver my Sabbath from them? 

Anticipate:

  1. What ways can my Sabbath be a day “to the Lord” and different than a “day off”?

  2. What ideas do you have for rituals that can mark the beginning and ending of your Sabbath? Do you already practice something like this but need to refine it?

  3. What rituals of gratitude could be woven into your Sabbath?