Keeping Sabbath and Keeping Faith with Kids
By Don C. Richter. Ph.D. Princeton Theological Seminary
Don is an ordained Presbyterian minister and an associate with the Valprasio Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith. He manages the website practicingourfaith.org, administers the small grants program, and coordinates The Youth and Practices Seminar which is developing a book on Christian practices addressed to teens. Don and his family make their home in Asheville, NC.

The end of school recess…???

Yes, it's true. Public schools throughout the city of Atlanta have abolished the time-honored (pun intended) tradition of recess. The metropolis that dubs itself "the city too busy to hate" has also become "the city too busy to rest." Even when you're in kindergarten, and your little body is about to climb the walls from sitting behind a stationary desk all day long. No rest for the weary, it seems. There's just too much to learn, and we've got to prepare those little minds for a whole cafeteria line of starchy tests.

Or perhaps we're preparing those little bodies for those long commutes down the road, sitting behind the wheel in twenty lanes of stalled traffic on I-285.

Or, if you want to take a dimmer view, we're training kids how to survive in a 24/7 economy by piggybacking two or three low-paying jobs in a row… like those MARTA train cars that ferry dream-deprived souls from north to south and east to west ("Commute to work while you sleep!")

A spiritual matter...
The end of school recess may not seem like a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Yet I submit that this modern-day abolition movement is significant because it reverses the spirit of its predecessor - the political movement to end human slavery. Instead of promoting freedom, our society is bent on bondage, even when it's the subtle seduction of imagining that time has no boundaries. There's grace in meeting a deadline, as Garret Keizer has recently observed. It means you've finished your work and are set free for rest and other opportunities.

Our inability to set aside time for worship, play, relaxation, and yes, recess, is an indication that we have come to view time as a foe to contend with rather than as a gift to be received with gratitude (see my colleague Dorothy C. Bass's wonderful treatment of this theme in Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time, Jossey-Bass, 2000). Raising children in such an environment does not promote anyone's long-term physical or spiritual well-being. The good news is that people of faith - Christians and Jews in particular - have been called to a better way of living.

Recovering Sabbath rhythms...
It's been over a decade now that I first became aware of how important -- and subversive -- the practice of keeping Sabbath can be for the life of Christian faith. The book that opened my eyes to this reality was Marva J. Dawn's Keeping the Sabbath Wholly (Eerdmans, 1989). According to Dawn, Sabbath-keeping involves four fundamental rhythms that have largely been abandoned in our contemporary lifestyles.

Ceasing labor...
The primary rhythm is ceasing labor, especially work that requires productivity and that causes tension, stress, and anxiety. Like Israelites in Egyptian bondage, many young people today are trapped in a cycle of endless routine. Some youth work every spare moment they are not in the classroom. When we ask them why they are not attending Sunday worship they are likely to respond: "I have to work to earn money for college" or "If I want to play varsity soccer, I have to show up for Sunday morning practice sessions." The list goes on and on. And who can argue with such legitimate reasons?

The local congregation must argue with such reasoning -- but not with the youth who feel entrapped by it. Like Moses arguing before Pharaoh, pastors, parents, and church leaders must become vocal advocates for youth who are denied a day of rest. This means confronting the "system" and challenging the powers that be in a community, a task that makes many of us squirm in our pews. Unless this happens, however, there may not be anyone left in those pews a generation from now. Youth who have been abandoned to ceaseless routine are not likely to return to Sabbath observance as adults. Activities such as corporate worship will seem pointless because they don't accomplish anything.

Resting...
Unless persons are provided an external structure for ceasing work, and unless they internalize this structure as a spiritual discipline, they will not benefit from the other three Sabbath rhythms: resting, embracing, and feasting. Resting does not follow automatically from the ceasing of labor. Physical, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual rest require a further step of letting go of our compulsive need to fill up time and space, to keep ourselves constantly occupied. Youth group programming that is all high volume and high energy will not promote the rhythm of resting. Youth group may become simply another non-integrated "experience" to chalk up on one's resume.

We must offer young people opportunities for resting: for becoming centered and receptive, for contemplating beauty, for engaging in wonder. The "Godly play" model, pioneered in this country by Jerome Berryman and Sonja Stewart, respects children's need for Sabbath rhythms in their learning. The grassroots "workshop rotation model" includes sabbatical elements as well, especially in the way children are invited to explore the same scripture passage for several weeks in a row.

The primary purpose of the fourth commandment is to provide a release, a rest in the midst of labor for all, not just for those who have power and can afford it. The list includes the sojourner, the resident alien, and even the animals. In Exodus 23:10, the Sabbath is extended to include care for the environment:

For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of the people may eat; and what they leave the wild animals may eat. You shall do the same with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard.

Perhaps the most radical extension of Sabbath is the Jubilee Year described in Leviticus 25. After every 49 years, the people of Israel were commanded to observe a year when land was returned to its original ownership, when long-standing debts were canceled, when slaves were set free. In this 50th year, the ongoing chain of events was broken; time stopped and began anew.

Throughout scripture the sabbatical principle is about more than rest; it is also about release, liberty, and forgiveness. Jesus was the Sabbath incarnate. Jesus came "to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to liberate those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke 4). Because he was the Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus was not reluctant to feed or heal people on this day. "The Sabbath was made for humankind," Jesus reminds us, "and not humankind for the Sabbath."

The angry, destructive, and self-destructive outbursts of teenagers indicate an inability to release and forgive in appropriate ways. We must reclaim Sabbath rhythms as the heart of non-violence and reconciliation. That's why schools need to reinstate recess - to give kids a break and teach them to give others a break.

Embracing...
When young people have learned to how cease from constant labor and rest, they can engage in the rhythm of embracing the hopes and values of Christian faith. The experience of grace comes as gift; the discernment of vocation comes as invitation. Youth will not be able to name and own such moments unless they internalize the stories and images of faith. That is why Sabbath-keeping involves as much "taking on" as it does "letting go." Congregations need to pay attention to the overall shape of a Sunday, including how families prepare for and observe this day. The larger family liturgy is the context in which the meaning of church activities is held and reinforced. Young people will learn to embrace what their families celebrate.

Feasting...
The Jewish tradition of Shabbat underscores the importance of the family holding environment, as it does the rhythm of feasting. Every Friday evening, observant Jews gather in their homes for a time of food, prayer, music, and conversation. Lacking the formal ritual of the Jewish observance, many Christian families have abandoned the attempt to structure meaningful family time around the dinner table. Feasting is not frivolous; it provides youth and adults with a release from fast-food monotony and information-byte exchanges with one another. It teaches us that there is more to life than constant achievement and hectic schedules. It gives us a foretaste of that time when we shall all feast together at God's banquet table.

Pointing the way...
I grew up during the era of "Blue Laws" when stores in Alabama were required to be closed on Sundays. So as a child, I learned early on that this day was different than other days of the week. It was special, set apart. The school I attended also had recess periods, and I recall fondly playing kickball with friends in a large, open field. I grew up learning that there were times to work, and times to quit working and rest or play.

Those days are over, and young people today are fortunate indeed if they grow up with any sense of Sabbath as a liberating life principle. There are promising signs here and there, however. The website www.FreeOurTime.org, for example, features literature, organizations, and movements (such as the "slow food movement") that promote people time over commercial time. Our own website www.practicingourfaith.org has sections devoted to the practice of Sabbath-keeping and related practices such as forgiveness and honoring the body.

The real challenge for most of us will be to become committed Sabbath-keepers ourselves. To accept the wisdom that we can do a week's worth of work in six days but not in seven. To say "no" to the constant clamor of the marketplace on at least one day a week, and to say "yes" to all those activities which bring us joy and help us to be re-created as free people in the image of God - who also knew how to take a break after a full week's work of creating the cosmos:

So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation (Genesis 2:3, NRSV).

Sure sounds like recess to me!

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