HE SEVENTH DAY IS the armistice in man's cruel struggle for existence, a truce in all conflicts, personal and social, peace between man and man, man and nature, peace within man."

So wrote Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of America's most widely respected religious leaders, in his profound and scholarly work The Sabbath. Herschel seems to suggest that we have only a fleeting contact with God during the hustling pace of our daily activities, and that the Sabbath is there to remind us that God requires at least one sustained devotional experience during a week-a time free of distractions and interruptions.¹

An Island of Refreshment
Put succinctly, Heschel declares that "the seventh day is the exodus from tension, the liberation of man from his own muddiness."² "In the tempestuous ocean of time and toil," Heschel says, "there are islands of stillness where man may enter a harbor and reclaim his dignity. The island is the seventh day, the Sabbath, a day of detachment from things, instruments and practical affairs as well as of attachment to the spirit."³

The Sabbath is a time when, with our human electric batteries run down, we can take advantage of the inexhaustible supply of spiritual energy that God has made available to us. A time when our whole being has the opportunity to spring to life again, to be both strengthened and purified. A time when we take refuge from the first six days of limited opportunity to absorb the unfailing possibilities that only the Sabbath can give. A time when we honor the exquisite fashioning of God's creative work. A time that reminds us that whatever we accomplished during the week was made possible only by His power. When we knowingly trivialize the spiritual benefits of the Sabbath, the result is a serious loss of spiritual power.

There is a single-mindedness about the Sabbath, unlike any other day of the week. It's not merely one among the seven days of the week. Rather, it's a retreat to a space in time, secluded from the distractions of daily toil. Its overriding interest is in worship, in experiencing the extraordinary strength that comes from communion with God. Like a laser beam, it's an experience that pierces the depths of our spiritual being. It's a time to take a break from our daily activities and frustrations, to connect with the all-wise God in praise and thanksgiving.

And what a break, what a sanctified break it is from the terrible troubles that greet us in the bold headlines of each morning's newspaper. A delicious break from the incivilities of human society, a society that often incarcerates the powerless while rewarding the tyrants of unspeakable greed. A break-a wonderful break-for those who have an ineradicable longing for justice and who, at least for a moment, can find relief from the mounting oppression of their daily lives.

Oh, yes! We need a break! But that break should not deny the scriptural injunction to love God and our neighbor. The Sabbath should not be kept in a void; and it's important to recognize, even as we view the Sabbath as a time for the purification of our own nature, that the Sabbath is also a time to remove barriers erected in the way of others-barriers of hunger, emotional sickness, chronic disease, oppression, exploitation.

A Mirror for Service
I believe that the Sabbath worship experience is most meaningful for those involved in addressing the problems and needs of society. For them, the Sabbath becomes the climax and consummation of their witness to God's eternal loving care. In other words, the spirit of the Sabbath should be taken into the marketplace to display its incomparable effect on life.

Jesus made it clear that no one can be great whose life is not focused on service. His dictum was "Whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all" (Mark 10:44). Our Master demonstrated a deep sense of fulfillment through genuine service. This same spirit of self-sacrifice provides us with the opportunity to serve.

The compatibility between the Sabbath and our responsibilities to the community during the other six days of the week is vividly expressed in Luke 4:16-20. It's noteworthy that this first Sabbath sermon Jesus preached after His temptation by Satan in the wilderness was, indeed, a powerful evangelistic statement of His mission-namely, "to preach the gospel to the poor, . . . to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised" (verse 18). It was as if He were saying, "After you leave this service, what are you going to do? How concerned will you be about a society torn by the unfair conditions of life that leave some people poor, unemployed, homeless, hungry, insuranceless, unhealthy, and plagued by a system that often regards them as socially unacceptable?" To understand and appreciate the Sabbath fully is to walk in the footprints of Him who is the Lord of the Sabbath.

All of us, even those who would consider themselves crusaders for justice, are constantly caught in the whirling world of our everyday cares and concerns. It's so easy for us to get trapped in an unregulated rat race to get ahead. By nature, we're so rooted in the ebb and flow of our own self-interests that we shield ourselves from the horrible circumstances of life that surround us. It's not the easiest thing to be a true disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ, because He asks of us the same radical, revolutionary, self-sacrificing spirit by which He Himself was animated. Jesus lived with unrestrained enthusiasm for others.

A Sanctuary Without Walls
To understand how we got the Sabbath is not enough. We need also to understand why we got it, why it's imperative that we continue to keep it, and how best to keep it in the days ahead. The Sabbath does not exist in a vacuum. As we marry our daily practices with our theology, we should also include the Sabbath. Christ's teachings do not terminate in the individual; His teachings also involve society and its reconstruction. The Sabbath is not self-serving, inquiring exclusively about its own salvation, locked in the sanctuary of its own "isms." It is a sanctuary without walls, extending outside of itself, with its gaze fixed on others and its supreme desire to serve.

Our mission on this earth is well laid out for us-it's before our very eyes. For those upon whom God has bestowed His richest blessings, that mission is to fight fear and suffering, hate and inhumanity, misery and hunger, oppression and cynicism.

So where do we begin? We need to begin by thinking once again about our mission as a church. Christianity is about making changes in people. We need, as Christians, to think about ways in which our Christianity can have a positive effect on society. Sometimes our attitudes and programs seem only to perpetuate the inhuman social conditions and unjust structures we inherited. How does the church respond to those structures in society that systematically destroy family relationships? How can we be clear that the message of Jesus Christ does not restrict us to the private (so-called nonpolitical) sphere, attending only to evangelical or ecclesiastical affairs? Can Christianity be vibrant if it separates Christian faith from Christian action? It seems we have failed to capitalize on the socioethical potency and social relevance of the gospel itself.

Moving Beyond Self
It doesn't take much imagination to see that things would be different in people's hearts, and in society's structures and institutions, if Christianity were really practiced as it's preached. The distinguished German theologian Hans Kung made the following remark: "There is nothing wrong with Jesus Christ himself. It is entirely the fault of Christians if too little is changed in the world. Christians themselves are the strongest argument against Christianity-Christians who are not Christians. Christians themselves are the strongest argument for Christianity; Christians who live a Christian life."⁴

You have to be a thinker, a believer, and a doer to make things happen. Society has fairly well established that self-preservation is the norm for human conduct. We insist on the rights of the individual. We promote, reward, and give prominence to those in society who compete and strive to outdo and take advantage of others. It's a conservative perspective of the survival of the fittest, a philosophy fueled by a belief in the natural aristocracy of talent, breeding, and wealth. The belief that certain people (who we know to be victims), deserve their particular station in life for sociobiological reasons-genetically inferior, as some would have us believe.

The message of Jesus extended beyond the inward pulsating aspects of selfhood to the vibrant, all-embracing aspects of servanthood. He declared that he who is greatest among us should be the servant of others. The commandment of love had no legal or judicial underpinnings. It was a consummation of that which was revealed in the moral law. Scripture clearly implies that we are our "brother's keeper" (Gen. 4:9).

A Gospel With Teeth
The Sabbath should be a party to learn of God's will, to be arrested by the thrust of the gospel as He taught, preached, and lived it. His gospel, if applied to earth today, would be concerned about the destructive overtones of pollutants that poison the biosphere and the material greed, prosperity, and selfishness of a few at the expense of the many. Jesus' gospel would be shocked by the catastrophic speed at which our earth's resour-ces are used to satisfy the extravagant taste of those who have too long exploited the soil and riches of the developing world.

Jesus' twenty-first-century gospel would disdain and discourage the violence that is raping the fabric of many nations-the violence of race, both inter and intra; the hated pitted against the alienated. His gospel would fight the ravenous advertising industries that seduce children and adults with a middle-class ethos that bows down before the altars of to-bacco, alcohol, drugs, and gangsta rap industries-all at the same time.

We have another Christian score to settle in order to reinforce the fact that Christianity cannot exist in a void, in isolation from life. Some years ago I read Henry Zylstra's essay "Christian Education" in his classic volume Testament of Vision. In substance he reminds us that Christianity should not be a facile dualism between the church and its observances and its practical life. He declared: "Our Christianity does not exempt us from being human, nor exempt us from cultural activity, nor exempt us from social and political obligations, nor render reason superfluous, nor permit an indifference to art and literature, nor lift us out of history."⁵

The question is have we become so holy, so set apart in our holy days, so arithmetical in our attitudes, that we have cut ourselves off from the creative curiosities that would allow us to consider old questions within a new framework? Are we to be both isolated and insulated, insensitive, unfeeling, and uninvolved in those travesties that stymie liberation? I think sometimes intentionally, and at other times unintentionally, we misinterpret what it means to put one's foot on the Sab-bath. I believe we raise the Sabbath to the highest level when we seek ways, even within the context of Sabbath worship, to help society take its foot off of the necks of the least of those among us, because all are precious in His sight.

The Sabbath is not only a time to tell our adherents about the evils of society; we need to become religious, scholarly, and social activists in order to make a difference. We need to show, to demonstrate, and employ how-to strategies that will take the gospel into the streets of our urban areas. I know for some of us this is no easy quest. There are some in organized religion who by their words and actions seem to suggest that it's dangerous and sinful to discuss and de-velop strategies for dealing with everyday problems within the confines of traditional Sabbath worship.

To Enhance Our Mission
Robert Franklin, president of the interdenominational theological center in Atlanta and author of the challenging work Another Day's Journey, suggests five levels of faith-based community activity.⁶ First, congregations engage in basic charity when they provide direct relief to the hungry, homeless, those needing medical care, and so on. The second is sustained support to help people become self-reliant and capable of securing and holding employment. The third level is social service delivery, which involves a long-term institutional commitment to providing services such as child and elderly care, literacy skills, and job training and placement. The fourth level is political advocacy; this involves a congregation or coalition of faith communities representing the need of the least advantaged in society before government entities that have budget responsibilities and before the media. The fifth level is comprehensive community development in which churches take the lead or serve as partners in the revitalization and development of a community.

Our mission is both historic and prophetic. Historic in the sense that Jesus came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. Prophetic in the sense that "he that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked"
(1 John 2:6). On Sabbath we come to worship, to repent, to praise, to pray, to testify, to fellowship, and to become spiritually reinforced and find grace to enter the fray of the marketplace. No challenge is more daunting than that of giving sacrificially of ourselves to help lift the hopes of those whose lives are steeped in the quagmire of unfulfilled expectations. The attractiveness of the Sabbath will reflect our earnest and untiring efforts for those marginalized citizens dwelling in the remote corners of society.

Ellen G. White offers reality in this wonderful passage: "The effort to bless others will react in blessings upon ourselves. This was the purpose of God in giving us a part to act in the plan of redemption. He has granted men the privilege of becoming partakers of the divine nature and, in their turn, of diffusing blessings to their fellow men. This is the highest honor, the greatest joy, that it is possible for God to bestow upon men. Those who thus become participants in labors of love are brought nearest to their Creator.

"God might have committed the message of the gospel, and all the work of loving ministry, to the heavenly angels. He might have employed other means for accomplishing His purpose. But in His infinite love He chose to make us coworkers with Himself, with Christ and the angels, that we might share the blessing, the joy, the spiritual uplifting, which results from this unselfish ministry."⁷

Perhaps we might even say at the conclusion of the worship service on Sabbath, "Now that the service is over, let the service begin."

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1 Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath: its meaning for modern man (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1995), p. 28.
2 Ibid., p. 29.
3 Ibid.
4 Hans Kung, On Being a Christian (New York: Doubleday, 1976), p. 559.
5 Henry Zylstra, Testament of Vision (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961), p. 93.
6 Robert Franklin, Another Day's Journey: Black churches confronting the American crisis (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997).
7 Ellen White, Steps to Christ (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1956), p. 79.

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Frank W. Hale, Jr., is vice provost, professor emeritus, and distinguished consultant at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.