Sabbath 03: Delight / The Joy of Sabbath in Community

Delight is meant to be a shared reality. In a scripture, delight is connected to this imagery of bending yourself towards something or towards someone. There's a bending in me not just for my own gratification or my own self-satisfaction, but for something else. And then in that giving or in that bending, there's an expansion of the delight I've received. So, delight as much more should be much more than just a personal experience. It's one, it's an experience that's meant to be multiplied. You're listening to the Rule of Life podcast by practicing the way. In each season, we explore an ancient practice from the way of Jesus and its relevance for the modern era. This is season one, Sabbath. Episode three. Now we are to the good part. To recap, we broke down the Sabbath into four movements based on four translations or interpretations of the Hebrew verb, Shabbat or Sabbath. They are, stop, Brian, rest, delight and worship. There, that was not even planned. That was off the cuff. Yes. If you have made it this far, it's about to get good because next up is delight. We wanted, when the three of us were crafting the Sabbath practice for practicing the way, we wanted to start with the light just because it's our favorite and it's the most fun. But you kind of have to like, you know, set the foundation of stop and rest first before you get to delight because Sabbath isn't just about what we don't do. It's about what we do. That is not good English. I like to do. That's nice. You had to go there. My mind is like, I hope people don't and then you just, I need to name it. I'm really listening. But that's kind of the dimension of the Sabbath that we want to explore. One of the original intentions for the Sabbath is an entire day set aside for delight. Now, I have lots of things to say about that. But Brian and Bethany, how does that hit you to kind of frame our conversation? Do you think most people imagine the Sabbath as a day of delight? You know, I would say no and yes. Is that possible to say yes? Exactly. Because it's like, yes, I think in theory, we all have this ideal version of like Sabbath. Right. And it's going to be dreamy and like fireflies and perfectly chilled wine. And the garden of Eden and yes, and chilled wine. Yeah, how it's supposed to be. And at the same time, I think when you actually start leading into it, as we've been talking about, it's an entire day alone feels like a lot, you know, feels like, yeah, that's a great idea in theory, but time is money. Or, you know, like, I don't know if I have enough time or whatever the complications are. So I think, but you talked to anybody who's like, you know, whose experience of Sabbath or what it conjures in their memory or imagination is kind of just like a day of religious observance. Yeah. And kind of like lots of that's the, and like the very few people I know that grew up in circles of the Western church where Sabbath was mandated for them. It was like, well, Sabbath was the day I wasn't allowed to right. Exactly. On Sunday. I wasn't allowed to limitation of the fun things. Yeah. It's like that was the day I couldn't do the fun things. Yeah. Yeah. That I absolutely, we talked last episode about resistances. And I think that hits at the heart of it is you paint a picture of Sabbath. Sometimes when I hear you talk about Sabbath, I'm like, oh, you know, especially in different seasons of life with kids and, and it, it, it's taps into this deep longing that I know my soul and my body has for a place to come into that. You know, we're still, we still are figuring out every new season has new challenges. And I think when you think about the world that we live in, that's so hurried. It's so, um, all the things we talked about, there's so many resistances, all the things that are painfully true in our own bodies week to week. It's pretty easy to sketch a picture of how beautiful it could be. So people, that's the yes and no that you're talking about. It's like the idea like image. Oh my gosh. Yes. The messy reality. And then you realize, I have to prepare and plan and I have to not respond to this people and I have to do all this work beforehand. And I have emotions will come up. Right. I have to face myself. That I've been waiting for. Yes. That wasn't in the ideal image, you know. And we think delight is a state of bliss and ecstasy and really delight as we talked about last time. It moves into through resistance into something deeper. And so it's actually not a lack of tension. It's moving through into a deeper place where the real thing can be engagement with what is not disengagement. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a, I do agree. I think I think it is a both end. Yeah. So in light of that, why don't you give us a recap of the session three of Sabbath delight. Yeah. session three is delight. I open by kind of talking about how sorrow is inevitable in life, but joy is not. Just meaning, you know, Jesus had the famous line in this world, you will face trouble. Saro will come into your life and to mine with or without our permission where any kind of discipline or rule of life or, you know, set schedule, but joy, we have to choose. And we have to keep choosing it. And then I do a very short biblical theology of joy, which I like to do through a Venn diagram. If for those of you listening, you can imagine a Venn diagram three overlapping circles in your mind. First, joy is a feeling. So like I grew up hearing this common kind of refrain in preaching that happiness and joy are not the same thing. And the world offers you happiness, but happiness is based on your circumstances or happenstance, but joy is based on God. And, and that's actually not true. So, you know, Randy Alcorn has that book on happiness, like biblical theology of happiness. And it's hundreds of pages long. And I just remember reading his chapter where he takes that, you know, claim head on basically argues that joy and happiness, those two words are used interchangeably in the entirety of the library of scripture. And what's true about that is for a follower of Jesus, there is a kind of joy that transcends our circumstances because this life is not all there is and because we're living in communion with God. But it's not true that there isn't a legitimate form of joy that God has intended for your life in mind. That is based on your feelings. It's just joy is the feeling of when life is as it should be. When you are living how God wants you to live and, you know, and when the world around you is how God wants it to be, the natural feeling in your body to that is joy. You know, that's what arguably God feels joy and sadness, but God is joyful by nature. God is not sad by nature. Sadness is his response to evil. And the same, I think for us, when we are living as God intended, we have a feeling of joy. Secondly, joy is also a condition where, you know, better language there maybe is a character trait. Joy is not just a feeling in our body. It is the kind of people we become. You know, so in Paul's list of the fruit of the Spirit, the first one is love and the second one is joy. And a number of scholars think that there's actually an order of importance there. You know, we don't know, but love is the ultimate priority and then joy. And of course those two things go together because really Marose people tend to not be the most loving people. You know, and most loving people are very joyful. Point being, in a biblical theology, the fruit of the Spirit. Again, these are not just feelings. These are, I think, willard called them inner dispositions of the heart. They are the kinds of people we are formed into and our inner woman or inner man through apprenticeship to Jesus as we create space for the Spirit of God to terraform and transform us from the inside. Out, we become people who are loving, who are joyful, who are peaceful, who are patient, who are kind. So joy is a character trait. The hope is that with each passing year and our discipleship to Jesus, we become more and more joyful by character, not by kind of just the circumstances of our life. And then finally joy is a discipline. You know, there are times when joy is easy. Again, when it's just the first day of spring in Portland, Oregon, you know, that first day where you're like in a t-shirt and you're outside and there's a hope for the future of humanity. Or I remember the day that my first child was born or, you know, whatever it is, there are times when it's just, it's just the natural response to what is. There are other times when joy is a sheer act of obedience to Jesus himself. It is a discipline that you have to choose to index your heart toward the good. Richard Foster called this the discipline of celebration. And again, we don't think of a party as a discipline, you know, or joy, it willered called it the discipline of joy. I think that's pretty far out of a lot of our paradigms, you know. But Foster said the decision to set the mind on the higher things of life is an act of the will. That is why celebration is a discipline. It is not something that falls on our heads. It is the result of a consciously chosen way of thinking and living. Of course, this is Paul's word rejoice, you know, which is masked in the English translation, but in Greek, joy is a noun and a verb. So, but in English, it's translated. The verb is translated, rejoice. But to rejoice is to joy. It is to choose with your will to joy. So that's the Venn diagram feeling condition discipline. Sabbath is a discipline of celebration, like it's in that category. And as a result, it is a delivery mechanism for joy. And I think it is one of the most important disciplines by which we become people who are joyful or full of joy, like God is full of joy. Then in the session, I talk about Genesis 2. And again, that phrase that God rested on the seventh day and how in context, the picture is not of God as burned out and like worn down from a really long week of like, I made the world. But it's more like that feeling like when you get done with a massive project at work, or if you're a caregiver, a season in the life of your care, where you like sit back and you just celebrate what you've done and you just take the light in it. You're like, oh my God, to relish in it. Yeah, I remember back in the day when we had a yard in our house and I hate yard work. I just, I'm not some people love it. And I just hate it. And I remember, you know, sometimes I'd have to go out and do this like Portland Spring like yard cleanup day and it was just Bethany, you're a new homeowner. It's happening. I mean, you're talking about life. I have anxiety. And I would hate it. But I just remember that feeling of like getting done, you know, all this work, I don't enjoy it. It's done. And then just I remember taking a shower, sitting on my back deck, opening up a beer and just looking at how awesome it all was. And that great feeling of just like, I did that and it's great. And of course, three days later, it needs to be weeded again or whatever. But in organ, just things will not stop growing. But it is what it is. So I think that's, I think that's the picture in Genesis 2. In a sense, that's a human mirror of like God is delight. He's resting. He's delighting in the work of his hands. And so on the Sabbath, we delight, you know, we delight in God's world. We delight in our life in God's world. We delight in God himself. I use this quote from Dan Alender and who is our recommended reading for the practice. He writes, the Sabbath is an invitation to enter delight. The Sabbath, when experienced as God intended, is the best day of our lives. Without question or thought, it is the best day of the week. It is the day we anticipate on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. And the day we remember on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, Sabbath is the holy time where we, and listen to this picture of Sabbath, we feast, play, dance, have sex, sing, pray, laugh, tell stories, read, paint, walk, and watch creation in its fullness. Few people are willing to enter the Sabbath and sanctify it to make it holy because a full day of delight and joy is more than most people can bear in a lifetime. Let alone in a week. So then I talk about kind of various ways that we practice Sabbath the light. And then I end by talking about how the Sabbath is the only spiritual discipline that is scheduled by God, not by your felt need or by your community. So like, you know, prayer, for example, we tend to pray on demand, like, oh, I feel like I need to take a minute and go pray or scripture often, like, I feel like I need to read scripture. And I'm going to do it in this time slot or whatever, or church is set by our church, like, my church gathers at 10 a.m. on Sunday, whatever. But Sabbath is one that's not set by us. It's built into the fabric of creation. And the power of that is that Sabbath comes every seven days, every seven days, whether you are ready for it or not, whether you want it or not at the end of a week of bliss and at the end of a horrible week, when winter and in summer to remind us and to teach us to delight in God in all of the seasons of our lives. The Sabbath practice is a four-week experience designed to be run in your church, small grouper community that combines teaching, conversation, and spiritual exercises to introduce you to this ancient discipline for life with God. If you come on the Sabbath practice, you will not just learn about the Sabbath. You will practice the Sabbath. The end goal is to integrate Sabbath into your rule of life in order to arrange your life around God. This offering is completely free thanks to the generosity of the circle, a group of people from all over the world who give monthly to practicing the way available now at practicingtheway.org. With the rest of our time, now I want to kick it back to you too and open up a conversation just with we have a handful of follow-up thoughts to explore this idea of delight, you know, which again is a great and fun idea but is at the same time new for a lot of us. Thought one is just that God is joyful. Yeah and I think you know this is the most understated, I think the most understated one we have here at this point because I think a lot of times, you know, I mean this is our foundational truth. This is actually where we start when we start talking about delight in general but we don't often say it or think about God. I think a lot of people don't actually have this vision of God. Or believe that he's that he's actually joyful, you know, and that he's a person. But this is the place we start is that God is joyful. This is like the base camp of all that we're going to even explore further. And I think the idea here is that God is a person that we get to enjoy. Yeah. That we get to be with on the Sabbath. And even just embracing that basic truth, I think shapes how we come into Sabbath and then what we can expect in that space of Sabbath, you know, if we're going to spend a day with God and God is joyful, then that's going to be a happy day. That's going to be a good day. One that's filled to your point with joy. It's like spending time with someone you love and actually enjoy, like even you too, like I'm enjoying this because I actually love you. I'm enjoying you as well right now. But you get joy when you're spending time with a person that you love. And I think we forget a lot of time. And somebody who's joyful, like one of the reasons I love being around you and like other people, because you're, I mean, I know you, like you're not always joyful. But your baseline, I think, is joy. Yeah. And I think that is what we get to expect when we come into Sabbath. God is a joyful God. Yeah. And that means that our experience of him at the base level is joy. Okay. I know some people are like, the Apostle Paul then Carl Bart. I'm not that person. But there's a Carl Bart quote, I love that I have to read right now. He has some great thoughts on the Trinity. And really in my mind, everything comes back to Trinity and theology and the nature of who God is. And he writes, God's triune being is radiant. And what he radiates is joy. Yeah. And that interesting, not justice, righteousness, anger, wrath, joy. It's loving, it mean the Trinity's loving intermingling of persons as if in a cosmic dance, radiate beauty. So this image of like delight within the Trinity itself, the Father delighting in the sun, the sun, delighting in the spirit, the spirit, delighting in the Father, just that sense of just enjoyment of one another as person is at the heart of God himself. You know, I remember this conversation with my daughter, Evie, who this was in the last year. So she was either seven or eight and she woke up one morning and I don't know what if we had been reading Genesis or some, you know, like storybible before and there was in her head, but she woke up and she said to me, she said, Dad, I think I know why God created humans. And I said, Oh, that's amazing. Tell me why she, I think God was lonely. And I was like, Oh, I'm like, theologian. But I don't know what I said. I actually told him, do you remember that God is actually God is relationship. He is in love with the spirit and he's in love with his son and they just get to enjoy one another. And I'm just like kind of describing this like conversation as, you know, you know, a rastmas. You know, when he quotes or when he does a translation for John 1, he says in the beginning was the conversation. Wow. John loved that so much. But I was explaining what this joyful celebration of being was and she just looked at me and said, Oh, yeah. You know, I bet that was so fun. Our picture of God is so puny. It's so small and it's not joyful. It's not joyful. It's the last thing. Willard, you know, he says God is the most joyful being in the universe. Such a great like, Oh, what a gift to hear him say that. And one of the things talking about relishing and cherishing, I think people get afraid when they come into a Sabbath and even as we're talking, well, I don't even know how to enjoy God or I don't know how to be with him because my my prayer life is so weak or it's so small or like, I don't know how to do it. And you know, this is a journey. It's not like, you don't walk into deep relationship easily. It takes time and it takes work. And I was reflecting on how many couples that I've walked with and you can almost tell that when the majority of their conversation tends to be about their relationship that it's not going well. And so sometimes like, what my wife and I will do is on a date and I will just like forget our problems, forget whatever weight we're living under and we'll kind of put it all in a box and go out. We're not going to talk about the kids or school or we're going to go and enjoy something together. And the act of enjoying something together creates joy between us. And that's like my kind of like language for like, I want to enjoy poetry on Sabbath together. And I want God to be sitting here with me and enjoying it. And I know it sounds more like a deal to me. Or Sabbath meal does that. A Sabbath meal is that way. And it's partly you enjoy being with God, but you also enjoy with God. The thing that you're looking upon. That's the relishing. And for me, that's been a big shift in the way that I've viewed. Okay, this isn't just a 24 hour devotional. Yes. This is a 24 hour enjoyment together of other things. But it's tied together. And you know, Tozer famously said, you know, what, 70 years ago now that what comes into your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you. Because we become like our vision of God for better or worse. And a lot of people feel guilt over the fact that hey, a whole day, we'll talk about this the next episode, Sabbath as a day of worship, a whole day like devoted to God. Like they feel guilt because that doesn't sound fun to them at all. And guilt is not the most helpful emotion there. I think for a lot of people, for a lot of us, it's because they've yet to realize how joyful God is. And you know, if it's really hard to want to be with somebody that you think is mad at you or scary or cold or a luft like. And if people's primary emotion of God is fear, you know, in particular in certain church traditions, God is so, he hates you so much that he had to kill his son. So he doesn't have to kill you, which is not actually what reformation scholars would say. But that is how it comes across to a lot of people. It's really hard to want to be with somebody like that. You know what I mean? That's not exactly the trinitarian picture of God in Jesus with God as fathers running after the prodigal and who's coaxing the prodigal elder son into the party. You know, come to the party with me. That's a very different picture of God. Yeah. Then it's a good thing I killed my son rather than you. Yeah. And again, I'm not trying to disparage a particular view of the atonement. There's truth embedded in those aspects. God does take sin very seriously. But it is out of his great love and delight in his sons and his daughters. I think we have to have, we have to think biblically about God. We have to think in line with Jesus and the New Testament and God is Father and Son and Spirit and this intermingling of delight. God is the most joyful being in the universe. Like who would not want to be around that? I just think of like my most joyful friends. Yeah. Like a short list of people that are just really joyful. I always want to be with them. Like, Al, if you're listening, do you want to hang with Al? Yes. I want to hang with Al tonight. Because he's just so joyful. You know, like we're just drawn all of us. I can say this is a as a melancholy personality type. We're drawn to joyful people. So we have to realize that God is joyful if our hearts are going to desire to be with him. I think people for that. I think placing it, placing the reordering of his desire for us, because I think a lot of people come in thinking God wants our obedience more than our joy as opposed to seeing. Well, they think of those as two separate things. As opposed to seeing the Father saying, no, it's like it's like me. It's like me as a Father. Like, there are times when I just want compliance out of my own weakness. But genuinely, I want the joy of my children. I want them. And I know that when I'm helping them make decisions wisely, their joy is a bounty. Yes. Obedience is the path that I enjoy. That's the thing. Now you're imperfect. So when you're on your game. Yeah. But no, I think that's exactly it. I think we have to relearn that. You know, that God, but even stating that that's a goal. That's his intention. That's his heart for us as Father is God is faithful God. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was Jesus said that explicitly. He prayed that we that his disciples would be full of joy. Yeah. Can I just one more thing here? Yeah. Just because I think it's important. I think we can hear a lot of what you're saying or I can even and go like, yes, this is great. This is true about God, but that doesn't feel true. So I just want to say, especially because I think my experience on the Sabbath sometimes is like, even though I've got years of like deprogramming and reprogramming and discipline of like thought of who God really is, I think it's okay to come to Sabbath a little bit like a child sometimes to say, like, would you show me in an experience a way who you are? So I just I know that I don't know who that's for. I just haven't just a sense that like it's important to say it's okay to say to God, I've only perceived you this way. Yeah. But would you show me who you are in the joyful sense? Will you show me what it means that you are a joyful God? And will you show me how to be? Yeah. Just what we're saying is like existing within that trainitarian love. Yeah. Like how can I be here and experience that reality with you? And I think it's just I just think it's important for us to say like it's okay to ask God for you. Yeah, ask God to teach you that. Yeah, and to show you that to reprogram and sense. It can come to you. He can come and reveal himself that way to you. And we just we need that sometimes. One of the what you're defining is something that for me has been such a helpful thing in my whole relationship with God and my whole experience of Sabbath and experience of practices is that I naturally by my attachment by my family system will approach God through a very particular set of lenses that I anticipate and define what I view of God myself and others. Will he be there to respond or not? Is he a safe place to go to or is he a fearful place to avoid? And one of the things that's been helpful is creating new memories consistently. That's the space that Sabbath allows is actually to redefine every week. Yeah. What might be what the world and what your experience and your memories and your you know your family of origin. Yeah, this whole opportunity of one day a week actually let him redefine it. Yeah, that's really sad. And I mean, imagine that that's the palace of time, right? That Heschel says you're building room after room of new memories. Yeah. Of joy, of delight. Yeah. You know that yeah, it's not always perfect. And I absolutely resonate with that so much because I come back to that place. Yeah. I like that. I'm not a computer but I like that programming reprogramming idea. It's like a quilt being re, you know, come come back together. It's good that he says being brought together. It's a great comfort. You know, Brian, when you sat down with Rich Viotis for that interview, you posed a very similar question to him. Let's listen to what he said and then we can kind of sort of riff on that a little bit. The more people I meet, I mean more people who are delight deficient in the church, than people who are feasting too much. And so I often, and it comes out in a couple of questions, whenever I talk about Sabbath or, hey, what brings you joy? What brings you live? I just see just a puzzled look on people's faces. I don't know, but I'm so oriented by where I try to get by or I got to work tomorrow. I enjoy what that I don't know. There's no category for joy in my life. And so helping people to move in that direction and then at the same time, there are important. I mean, we have a length for a reason in the church calendar that our lives are not oriented by our desires and driven by our lusts for more, but that we are appropriately bound to eat or we're not driven by our appetite anymore. But I think what I've discovered is we celebrate length and we observe length every year as a church, but at least the people in New York City, the people I pass through who tend to be driven by evangelical penicostle sensibilities, don't often have a category for delight and joy. And so I've tried to swing the pendulum and then appropriately so, no, what does it mean to be more restrictive and be more disciplined? And what does it mean to say no? And that's really, at the core, Sabbath is what am I saying? No, too. What am I saying yes to? Next thought is just that delight is how we honor our joyful God. You know, I think it is how we a scribe honor to who God is if the core of his being. Roll Hizer has that simple idea that the best possible way to say thank you to anybody, God or your antichristmas is just to really enjoy the gift deeply. You know, like as a gift giver, particularly I think of this through lens of a parent, but it doesn't have to be that when you give something, if somebody's really happy with it, that's the best way they can honor your sacrifice. Bart again called joy the simplest form of gratitude. And you know, there is a thread of nosticism and this attempt to kind of marginalize or vacate the body or this anti pleasure kind of strain that runs through the history of the entire church and often through some of the best streams of the church. But it is thoroughly unbiblical. And you know, this anti body anti pleasure, Alan Dern is booked writes about what he calls holy sensuality. And it doesn't mean sensuality in the sense of that's a negative word from those Christians, you know, we think of like dirty sex. It doesn't mean that at all. So he would include sexuality in sensuality. He means like your senses like eating good food and watching the sunrise and lighting a candle and viewing art and you know storytelling and all of this like there's a whole there's an unholy sensuality that we are all too familiar with. But what people don't realize is that's the counterfeit. The reality is a holy sensuality. So he writes about a theology play and like holy pleasure and how the Sabbath is a day for all of that. Yeah, I think we've made Sabbath, you know, I think we can move to the place where it's more ritualistic and there are rituals to practice and that's based. Yeah. But less fun. And I think one of the objectives I've set out really early on in practicing Sabbath was like I needed this to be fun. And it wasn't coming from a spiritual place. It was coming from a place of desperation of like I am working my butt off all week long. Like if it's not good, I don't want to do it. So I was sort of like testing out. And it's a lot of time today. Yeah. And probably like reversing that a little bit like spiritually probably not the best thing to do. But I was like it's going to be fun. And then you know, I'm going to do this other thing. So that's classic Bethany. My brain never has that thought. It's got to be fun. That's what's wrong with me. That's right with you. Just how do you make this fun? Give it, you know, give it life. So I just think that's like permission for us. Like that did teach me. Like what you're speaking to is that like like when my parent gives me a gift that I love or a gift from a friend that I'm just like mesmerized by that I can't stop enjoying like God delights on that. So even when I'm playing laser tag with friends, which like that's a weird thing. Shabbat Shalom. But like I'm just a bit struck. The dumbstruck right now. I just I thought I knew you. I kind of re-discovered it. And now I'm imagining Bethany. And I'm realizing that wasn't a joke. That was like a real out of your life. I thought it for the next I R L analogy. Yeah. Bethany playing laser tag on the Sabbath. And I'm aggressive. You can cheat lasers on the Sabbath. I'm pretty sure that's considered whatever it is for whoever. I know. Now I'm feeling judged and I'm a little bit ashamed. But I just say just to say it's okay to prioritize fun because I learned really really early on that that God delighted in watching me laugh and enjoy and savor the thing that he had given to me. So it's okay to embrace that that fun part. But just to normalize it. You know not just to say like laser tag could be it. And the point here isn't like, Hey, when you just have more fun. It's totally. Willard used to say that the devil's strategy is to make sin look good to us and make it look like it will make us happy. So one of the best possible ways to avoid sin or temptation to sin is to discover joy. Yeah. To be happy. Yeah. You know, like and people that are really happy. Temptation seems to be an on issue. You know what I mean to put it through marriage analogy. If you're really happy in your marriage, temptation doesn't go away, but it plummets in any kind of raw power. Where if you're really unhappy in your marriage, man, it can be a daily temptation. And you could apply that to so many different facets of our life. Happy people, joyful people, full of delight, discipline and condition and feeling. They tend to be holy people. Yeah. And all the most holy people I know are extraordinarily joyful. You know, what's the role has aligned the most joyful person you've ever met or is a saint. You know. Third thought is that we just have to watch out for counterfeit delight. Yeah. I mean, I think this one is is a zinger. Can I say that? Yeah. You know, I think in today's day and age, it's super easy to confuse delight with what you're speaking to earlier, that kind of hedonistic pleasure or even entertainment, which we've spoken to, you know, on previous podcasts. It's easy to say like, well, what feels good is what is good. And to let that kind of be the barometer and in the ways that we define delight, particularly on the Sabbath. But in reality, you know, I think we've been saying this, but delight is rooted in joy, which is more of an internal reality produced by an encounter with God and His goodness in our life. So I think you know, the more we encounter true goodness, the thing that our soul is actually aching for, the more we'll see what's real and what's not. You know, I think even to the point you just made about what Willard said, you know, the devil's strategy is to make sin look good. And I think he's pretty good at that. And he's very good at it. And even to tell us to say like, this thing is what's you know, is good. And I think there's a real work for us to do in identifying and on the Sabbath where we actually become more clear on that. Yes. Because the enemy's constantly at work in us. You know, and all those little subtle things, will you deserve it or it's no big deal or come on, you got to delight, but there are actually temptations to just unholy sensuality. Yeah. You know, yeah. And as we come clear, clearer, the more you practice Sabbath too. I feel like life just becomes clearer with Sabbath. It gives you a space from the noise and the programming of the wider secular culture and your own heart to just kind of like come back to sanity to like a reality-based view of the world. Yeah. I was just reminded of that great line, Heshell has this line where he talks about Sabbath not being about frivolity or diversion. But Sabbath being about a place where we come to recollect our tattered lives and it's just this lovely vision. Because this one I'm not untamed is, it's diversion. You're not reintegrating your life. He says it dissipates time. Yeah. It's about dissipating time instead of like cherishing it and that word cherishing so important. The line that I really love is just as labor without dignity is the cause from misery, but rest without spirit is the source of depravity. Wow. And it is that that's that frivolity. Like so where's the balance part of that's the exploration. We'll talk about in a minute, but I think you're right. There's this recollection of self that gathered our that image of gal regathering our tattered lives. Yeah. That is there. Yeah. Thought for is that Sabbath is a so to kind of follow up the we have to watch out for counterfeit delight. Thought for is that Sabbath is a weekly exploration of true delight. Keep riffing on that. Yeah. No, I absolutely think that's the exploration piece because you can't know. I mean, it's a time of this has been my experience like laser tag is probably a newer discoverer for you, which I think is amazing. And who knows if that might be something that's still can't come in. Actually, there's no. I just love that right now. Like, you know, it's poetry and it's chilled wine and it's what's not just like me. It's laser tag. I love it. I go crazy. Cardying with my kids. They have these electric carts. We go to a parking lot by our house and we just I mean, and I read while they're doing that. But it's like yeah, yeah, there it is. No, but I still enjoy it. I mean, I love, I mean, I'm I'm always climbing like I'm I'm naturally I'm like a I'm very like playful. My wife laughs me all the time because I'm the dad at the park after the kids get out of school. Who's like climbing a tree with their kids? Great. So like that side of it is like I've always had that kind of those are the things that I need to discover. And when we talk about exploring true true delight, it's comes back to the idea that you may not know what really delights your soul because we're so labored under the resistances under the architecture of work and consumerism that even that space feels like I don't know what I'm going to do. What do I do? Go play tennis? Go fish? Go golf? Like people make up these things, these hobbies, but they don't know what truly delights them. So I began to take a I began to take like a a pros and cons of things that like I keep in my Sabbath and I don't after I tried them for a few Sabbath. One of the things that came to us at the beginning of the pandemic was we had our TV in the garage because we were doing this long fast and in the very beginning of the pandemic and our kids which they watch shows not a lot but enough where they were like disappointed that they didn't have the TV in there in the house. And I said this is what we're going to do. We're going to take post it notes and everything that we do instead of putting a show on we're going to fill the gap in our wall where the TV was. Oh that's great. So you know we put it basically filled this three by three or whatever a TV is and it was like we read this together and we played this we went to kites and it was just like that is delight. And is that wall where the TV was that wasn't a dissipation of time or energy but was actually this thing that discovered at the end of the day my my body is sore for you know maybe running hard or something but I feel truly rested somehow. And that's that playful idea. That idea of is something a good test of of is something's delightful and beautiful as if it calluses you and deadens you like watch a TV show watch eight hours of a TV show and see if you're more callous to that you're not more rested or you're more rested. Yeah. And even if it's harder to read a long novel there's something more restorative in the long process and beauty will always deepen and restore and and I think the light will always deepen and restore even if it costs you energy. But this I think this is why we put delight as the third movement which is you know that's our architecture you know not a chapter in verse from scripture but in my mind there's a flow there from stop rest delight worship because that is my experience of the Sabbath not like I block out okay four hours I stop but there is a progression there of course they all overlap where first I just need to stop and my body goes through all the stuff. Yeah. Then I need to rest. That's exactly because delight will require something of you delight is a verb it is something you do. Yeah. And if you're too tired I want this is the danger of exhaustion in the spiritual life is when we are exhausted we actually don't have the energy to do the very things that will restore our soul. Yeah. Because we're too tired. Yeah. So we turn to sin or we turn to diversion or entertainment or whatever because that does not require anything from us other than just entropy you know. So this is where you know Richard Foster called joy the keystone of the spiritual disciplines. We need to be joyful which is why delight is really important and what I find on Sabbath is I have to rest for a while and then I will just find myself naturally beginning to delight. Yeah. You know what I mean it's like at a certain there's always a turning point and where that turning point is in the Sabbath for me basically is a great indicator whether or not I was in my rule of life for the week previously or not. But if it's at a decent there's this moment there is this moment where I just feel my heart shift and I'll just notice a bird or I'll just have a joyful feeling or I'll just smile at the future and I can just sense it like okay something just shifted in my body I've now rested to the point I now have capacity for delight you know. Oh good. Fifth thought as we move on and this is a key one is that delight in general but Sabbath in particular is best done in community and this is one of the great I think dangers of like the millennial wellness culture is we run Sabbath through our hyper individualistic grid and we're like yes Sabbath is really important it's like a form of self-care for me yeah rather than thinking of the Sabbath as a community discipline that we do together to delight in God and to justice the poor and worship the center you know it is a it's best done in community. Yeah you know I think it's it's interesting to think about that because delight is like an overflowing image in my mind like it's like delights the the sweet thing which is what we're all going for when we're eating dinner anyway like my main objective when we're eating dinner is like desserts coming. Yeah so we got to get through this to get to the good thing which is kind of what we've been talking about but that's in my mind delight is this like extra yeah it's like how I would see it's like there's just there's a little bit of an overflow of goodness and and so in that like if there's overflow we could to your point indulge ourselves or we could share it like it could be it's it's meant it's excess that's meant to be shared together with other people so in so many words delight is meant to be a shared reality. In a scripture's delight is connected to this imagery of bending yourself towards something or towards someone I just did a little study this morning because I'm an academic not at all but but in my mind it was really helpful and it's been helpful that like there's a bending in me not just for my own gratification or my own self you know satisfaction but for something else and then in that giving or in that bending there's an expansion of the delight I've received so delight is much more it should be much more than just a personal experience it's one it's an experience that's meant to be multiplied in many ways and I think you know in simpler terms there's just a delight you get from being with someone else or from you know sharing something with other people yeah just part it's designed to be done together like when you want to celebrate I'm like I need to call my you need to celebrate with someone yeah so it's a I'm as introverted as they come but like I don't throw celebration parties by myself which is actually really good to know because that would be just like alone yeah on that yes just me popping a popper champagne your chair just me I feel like it's like a new sad piano like a popper by yourself not even me the point is multiplication like delight multiplies and it's meant to multiply you know yeah this is really making me think of a few things that Tish Harrison Warren said about Sabbath and community and the tragedy of how Sunday has has lost the Sabbath quality even for modern Christians now we even for Christians that are fastedious about church attendance Sunday is no longer this communal day of worship and rest and justice she listen to what she had to say on this something that can be a little sad for me in our contemporary moment is that Sabbath rest has come to be understood so individually that it's kind of my day of rest or it could just seem like you know this like privileged luxury um but this historically was deeply communal so it was a something the church did take the church rested together so it wasn't day where I mean maybe you all go home and take a nap but then there's also like you gather you have friends you have a feast which for introverts like self yeah which I am an introvert might that might sound like oh my gosh that's like exhausting but I think I think we need to be around like our easy friends like our easy family on Sundays you know and um particularly doing feast seasons and this helps like introvert extroversion is really balanced well by like feast that Christmas and Easter you know feasting with friends and um and so um there was that element that the Lord's Day was something always kept together but then because of that there was a justice element to this that we don't just use working so that we can like have a spa day we cease working so that others can cease working so that we don't in the end only see the poor other people's bodies as something to kind of serve us but but the rest is given to everyone by God and so we extend rest to everyone who we can God and honestly like I don't even know what this means to keep this now like what what what is this mean when we have um like it you know people working in chicken factory seven days a week 24 hours a day what does this mean in a globally connected world where we have you know internet server farms and that sort of thing I mean I don't know like when we have people every moment have to be like cleaning up the dark web what what does this look like I don't have an answer to that but I I do want to say there should be like so we need to kind of rediscover the communal element of the Sabbath both with churches keeping it together like you know they're keeping the Sabbath but also that um there's kind of a always in the Old Testament the call to rest is this like radical call to treat workers with dignity and so there's there is a justice element of of treating workers with dignity but also like laying down our fights for a day like in our in our cultural polarization where it's conceived if you spend you know one second not calling people out on Twitter that um you're you know tepid about justice like what does it mean for us to cease from our even political striving and actually like make room as a community to be just a human being with limitations with longings that desire to rest and to play and to then extend that same courtesy of being a human being with limitations to other people particularly those that that aren't privileged um I I don't know what that looks like but I I do feel like that's where the church needs to kind of press in on Sabbath so that it's it's not sort of spine through just a and a deeply individualistic lens well lots of really great thoughts there and I'm going to be thinking about that for a while last thought before we wrap up is you know as we think about Sabbath and Sabbath delight and as we think about Sabbath and delight are both best done in community our last thought is the best way to start this maybe that's too strong of language but one of the best ways to start this is the Sabbath meal for me the kind of re-organization of the Sabbath around a community meal was like a game changer you know so like I started Sabbath alone because kind of just the way our story played out my wife was not into it at first so first it was just me and then we were both into it and then you know early on we started in the morning because we're Americans and so the day starts when you wake up and then you know came into kind of biblical theology of day starting it sundown and there's all sorts of wisdom tradition around you start Sabbath at night and you begin with you know sleep and such so changing at night that was amazing but then and we had a kind of a family meal that we'd start with but then when we turn that family meal into like a party and we formed a kind of a Sabbath community that we all Sabbath together at the same time we begin together we turn our phones off together we do the Sabbath box together we tend to end the Sabbath together too so come back together on Saturday nights for like a big you know dinner in a movie or something like that that for me which came like 10 years into my Sabbath practice it was almost like rediscovering the joy of it's been the best season of Sabbath I've ever had I think it kind of goes back into this meal idea goes back into this like shared experience like what better to share than food I mean you know not to sound trivial but like it's a beautiful space and I think you know I don't know but my experience is even the last season around tables with people that I love has had this really extraordinary it's just done an extraordinary work in me of reminding me that I'm not alone yeah and it I don't know how to say it except that I felt like at the table when I was with others and do that I have a meal every Sabbath it's like my loneliness is absorbed and I reminded it some deep level of my place in in their story but in our story and in what God's doing we mean together so the table has afforded me even a different perspective on what God's doing that if I were just having a regular meal during the week it's something different but this I don't know has captivated my imagination and helps set a trajectory and framework for how I enter into the week yeah oh that's making me think I just read Andy Krauch's recent book where he writes about household and you know this Greco Roman idea how homes were organized differently in the New Testament era than they are today around kind of a single person in an apartment or a nuclear family or whatever but it was this idea of household and there's a biblical theology some of that's just that was Greco Roman culture and the New Testament occurs at the same time but there is this biblical theology of like kin is the language we use where you blur the lines between biological family and brother and sister and Christ yeah and this kind of this you know through line of biological family and honor your parents and children and spouses but then there's also this impetus to create family yeah and to create kin so for those like myself or you Brian who have a kind of more traditional family structure then there's a responsibility on us to open up I think there's a biblical philosophy on us to create family for people that don't and for single people to move toward families and there's so much that a family can give to a single person and a single person can give to a family yeah and you know and and to create communities of justice community of Sabbath rest so I think there is a biblical concept there of kinship of household of beginning to form communities around tables that Sabbath together hmm we live this tremendously compressed constrained kind of family life but the ancient world had this thing and the Greco Roman world in particular called households which were actually not just intergenerational family the household idea emerges in more complex societies where you end up with a nucleation around a mother father pair the Potter family lesson in Roman world and it's a patriarchal world and I'm not saying we adopt all this for us and order the early Christians adopt all of its features but just think about how worked culturally you've got the the father the mother the children and maybe some older relatives in the house but then you have actually what we would now call economic relationships which is a word that comes from household oikonomiya is the the role of the household the oikos we get economics from household because the economic life of the ancient world happen through these relational networks that were that we are also based in this thing we call patronage and allowed people to be connected to one another in very thick ways sometimes literally living under the roof of a Potter family and and so a whole group of people some related biologically others related economically all these people are part of the household now to just jump to our moment what I in this book I'm exploring and and my wife and I are actually literally living right now which we could talk about is what if we started to rebuild these bigger than family household settings and by that I primarily mean though not exclusively literally under one roof where other people have the keys to your door because for intimacy for trust for marital relationships to happen in all all their dimensions there is a kind of interiority that's needed for the family for the parent child relationship so I'm not all saying commune but but I do think there's there's a way in which I think an index of relational health in your life is how many people have the keys to your house and the freedom with appropriate boundaries of course but the freedom to come and go and and another way to put it is who knows who would who would know if you died in the middle of the night first of all maybe your kids would know now but your kids are ready to grow up and leave the home this part of human development they grow and they leave they form families and they're up maybe you have a spouse but more than half American adults do not have a spouse and there's all kinds of reasons why they don't and not everyone is going to marry and Jesus himself said not all of his followers would marry so who's going to know you well enough that if you don't awaken the morning they're going to check on you that when you fall asleep they move a little more quietly because they know you're asleep that's the most elemental bit level of being known then the rhythms of my days there's someone else who is present enough to me that they are aware that I am and that if something is wrong they pick up on it including things that I would rather they not know her wrong because I need to be known like that our best meal of the week is is our Friday night meal it's the one we probably spend their most on it's some of we actually started changing the way we budget so that we could accommodate for hosting people weekly around it because it's not cheap we've talked about this you know and I remember the moment um actually I kind of felt a conviction about it where my my daughter Evie she started only equating the Sabbath meal with the word Sabbath she is tonight's Sabbath and she just thought of it yes the meal is like I'm not doing enough on the next day to like help create a boundary for you but I also felt this love of it because the ritual of it for her of setting the plates and and playing out the table mat and knowing who's there the preparation preparation for her because my kids are so they're very extroverted they love being with people same with my kids and so for them it's this invitation into like Sabbath whoever we have Sabbath with their family for the night you know and sometimes we do it ongoing with them and sometimes it's all one offer it might be you know every a couple times a year because of our rhythm and I have just loved to watch how um our family gets wrapped up into this and how it's actually begun uh the way that we delight and the way that we welcome people into that has begun to actually shift our community some of our closest friends started sabbathin um started keeping Sabbath after the first time they had Sabbath meal because they're like I just want this ritual yeah as a marker for a week in my life and I just thought that was such a thoughtful um way of just okay this is how I'm going to invite people into different this is this is a missional even for people who follow Jesus a mission way of inviting people into deeper intimacy and conversation and the savoring of the meal actually for us emerged out of this thing called three meal days which was something we did when before we had kids when we lived in northern Ireland we had a we lived in a house with multiple people and we would do these things on our day off we didn't call it Sabbath then where we just do three meal days where we'd invite these neighboring people from I mean we called our house the embassy because we were Americans there was northern Irish people across from us were German and Dutch and we would spend one day together where we would do all three meals together and the way it's structured our whole day of just the slow in the intro to like yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah let's go but when you organize your day around those things yeah something that actually forced and you know that would be too hard to do now fully but there's something I learned in that season my friend Daniel created that three meal day and I so cherish that I challenge people all the time we'll just try to schedule it see what it looks like to spend one start with one yeah yeah that's it start with one start with one really beautiful I read this book by a social psychologist a few years ago getting secular thing not about this but where he did all the research at where are most people the happiest and he found that the highest levels of happiness are when people are eating meals together around a table yeah what I love about this is it's so simple yeah anybody can do this yeah yeah yes there's like an expensive high-end version where you have like the kinfolk table and the expensive wine and all the things you know but you don't need to be rich to do this yeah you don't need to have some gorgeous home this is you know the tragedy of people confusing a biblical theology of hospitality with with entertainment yeah you know what I mean which is more of like showing off than welcoming people and yeah I mean Jesus was hospitable and he didn't even on a home yeah you know but everywhere he went he was the host welcoming people to his table and so I think this is so simple anybody can do this on almost any budget yeah you can you can host a meal you can create family you can create a Sabbath and I still think this is the best you know response to the injustice that many of us feel that is often exacerbated by Sabbath I mean Sabbath was intended as an act of justice it was this idea Sabbath is never just for you it was always for from the Sabbath command on yeah it was for you know in the 10 commandments you were a servant and you were animals but it was always intended for others it was like how do you how do you create yeah cultural architecture of justice yeah where all people have access to delight yeah and arrest and again we know we think of justice as this as an angry thing we do it's hard for us to equate justice with delight yeah this idea of creating a community of justice in a positive sense so Sabbath is like we're not going to change the systemic injustice of America or Western civilization but you know what we can invite some people for dinner yeah and we can create Sabbath for people that don't have it and we can open Sabbath communities you know that's what I love about it is just so it's such a doable thing and that is I think as we draw this to a close that is likely the best place for you to start again for those of you that are new to Sabbath or just starting the practice you know there's a whole line start where you are not where you should be many of you are not ready yet to like dive into a full 24 hour thing with fixed hour prayer and all of the things yet and laser tag after fixed hour prayer right maybe before I don't know we are free in Christ as the same goes but most of you can start with a meal on a Friday night or a Saturday night or after church on Sunday you can get a few friends together or your family and and you can do this those of you running the practice this is the exercise for week three throw a party eat a meal do it together with your community so we have a lot more to say next week in our final episode on worship but to end Brian is a writer of poetry in case you don't know and he will occasionally text me a poem and I am a reader of poetry not a writer of it but we thought it would be fitting to end with a poem on Sabbath and delight. Draw me to the heart of inner love towards close fires and healing meals like the frosted months gather life and bomb the soul indulge me in the longing of taffy stretch conversation too sweet too long and altogether too delightful put past the mere bread of daily need and savor this banquet of joy and pleasure rejoice with me in feasting fellowship riding the highs of bellow laughter and bear with me the stomach rising fall that dips near despair keep pace in step and in time to notice the coloring of leaves and stiffening branches let us be bored to depth each gravity laid in foot sinking deeper to life without fear or worry but with rest help me to know at the beginning what will have at the end a friend. Friendship is the victory born from it moved by it and lost in it let me savor at the beginning what will know in the end God is friendship (upbeat music)