Chapter 3
“Remember”
Another important word in the Bible about the Sabbath is the word “remember.” On Friday evenings, after preparing for the Sabbath, our family comes together to sing a song. Some families sing what is called the L’khah Dodi, a traditional Jewish song sung on Friday nights. It goes, “Come in peace, and come in joy, Thou who art the bridegroom’s pride; Come, O Bride, and shed thy grace, O’er the faithful chosen race; Come, O bride! Come, O bride!”
Our family is not a Jewish family. And our song is much simpler. We sing a song called the Shabbat Shalom, or “Sabbath Peace.” Each person in the family is named.
Shabbat Shalomto A. J.
Shabbat Shalomto Quinn.
Shabbat Shalomto Elliot.
We have twelve chickens, and we usually name them in the song too. Then we eat a big meal, read books together, and go to bed. In the morning, we wake up. We have two rules on the morning of the Sabbath. First, nobody makes their bed. Second, pancakes. Pancakes are essential to our Sabbath. As Quinn sleeps, I often get up early with Elliot, and together we craft the largest pancakes known to man. Sitting on the counter, he helps me stir the batter. Then we cook them up. Elliot will pour syrup on his like nobody’s business (I sometimes worry he has a problem). Then we eat. It is a pancake feast—slappy cakes, bacon, eggs, coffee with extra honey in it.
Pancakes are essential for the way my family does Sabbath. I read at one point that some Jewish fathers, on the morning of the Sabbath, would give their children a spoon of honey. The idea was simple: that they would always remember the sweetness of the Sabbath for the rest of their lives. It is similar to the way the earliest Christians took Communion: with milk and honey. This symbolism was to remind them that in Christ they had come to the promised land. That is my hope—that when I am dead and gone and my boy is all grown up, if anyone even whispers the word Sabbath around my son, he will just start drooling. It is a Pavlovian experiment of the highest order.
We need rest. But we also must learn to remember rest. Truth is, things come up. Schedules get busy. Life happens. Our minds become distracted. We schedule our days to the max. The day of preparation gently reminds us that intentionality and mindfulness are part of authentic rest. Consider this: the first time Sabbath mentioned by name in Scripture is in Exodus 20:8. There, Israel is commanded to “remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” What does “keeping it holy” mean?
Abraham Heschel illustrates that keeping something holy, or sanctifying (Hebrew le–kadesh) something carries with it a sense of preparation as in a marriage preparation. More specifically, the word “to keep” was often used to describe a bride preparing for her wedding day. “To keep” was the same as “to betroth.” In fact, Jews speak of the Sabbath as a “bride” and a “queen”—we are her lover, but we are also ruled by her. What does a man do to prepare for his bride? He prepares a feast, makes a home, gets ready for her. What do you do if the queen comes to your house? You get the house ready. Both images are, in fact, about preparation.
It is extremely notable—when we look at the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, there is only one single commandment that begins with the word “remember.” We are not told to “remember” the commandment against murder. Nor the commandment against adultery. Nor the commandment against idolatry.
The Sabbath commandment is the only one that we are commanded to remember. It’s as if God knew what he was talking about. Why? Because God knew, of the ten, this is the one we’d likely forget. And the truth is—we basically have. For all intents and purposes, the church no longer believes in the validity and ethical importance of the fourth commandment about the Sabbath. We essentially believe in nine commandments and one strong suggestion.
Part of keeping a Sabbath is actually remembering it. Of putting it into our minds. “Prosperity,” stresses Walter Brueggemann, “breeds amnesia.” That is, those who have everything they want are often the ones most happy to overlook the importance of the Sabbath. When the bank account is full, abundant food sits in the fridge, business is booming, GDP is up, and everyone seems happy, we are tempted to keep our lives going the way they have been. And so we forget the Sabbath when everything is going great.
But when we do that, we fail to keep the central component of the Sabbath commandment—simply remembering it.
The simple act of remembering the Sabbath changes our minds. We are often depressed because we do not give our minds, bodies, and spirits a day of rest to look forward to. Simply thinking about the Sabbath brings hope. Dreaming about it. Looking forward to it. Life is so much better when we know that we have a break coming up. There is profound joy in the act of remembering the Sabbath.
Let’s never forget the smell of those pancakes!
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