THE SABBATH AND THE QUARANTINE. 2 Chronicles 36:21.

As a baseball dad, I wrestle with the Sabbath.

How many times did we have a game scheduled at 8:00 a.m. on a Sunday? Because we made a commitment to the teams, I encouraged Marshall to play, but he understood (and I explained it to him all over again each Sunday that it came up) that Mom would drive him, but his sister and I would not be going if going to the game required us to miss church.

Marshall could not have been sweeter about it. But it pricked my conscience so much that I’ve been reading a book about the relationship between baseball and the Sabbath: BAT, BALL & BIBLE: BASEBALL AND SUNDAY OBSERVANCE IN NEW YORK, by Professor Charles DeMotte.

The admittedly dull book contains interesting nuggets about the evolution of rules over time: (1)in the beginning, youths playing baseball on Sundays in Brooklyn could be arrested under a noise ordinance; (2)later professional teams could play, but not charge for tickets on Sunday; (3)then it was no pro baseball before noon on Sunday; (4)then no liquor sales at Sunday games; (5)professional women’s teams were allowed to play and were accompanied by uniformed brass bands—but again, no games on Sunday; (6)the fledgling National League prohibited Sunday games, although the American League had no such scruples, etc.

DuMotte explains that New York, particularly Brooklyn (nicknamed the “City of Churches”), observed the strict “Puritan Sabbath”—no opera, no theater, no movies, no blood sports, no ball sports, no fishing, no hunting, no horseracing, no gambling, no drinking, and certainly no work.

But a growing influx of European immigrants, chief among them the Germans, brought with it the more relaxed “Continental Sunday.” The people began doing more things on Sunday, and, as is the way with government, the laws began to change to better reflect the wishes of the people. Sabbath restrictions loosened across New York—and with it, the nation—until finally one clergyman complained no one was sure what to do about the Sabbath anymore: “Now the law is so confused, that one’s conscience does not know what to do.”

That is where I find myself. What is this fourth commandment, and how am I supposed to uphold it?

Yesterday I posed the question on Facebook “which commandment is broken the most?” and no one mentioned #4. Could the oversight be a blind spot—are we so accustomed to it, we don’t give it any thought?

To this day, Orthodox Jews won’t turn on a light or start a car engine on the Sabbath, because they are forbidden to light a fire. I’ve never considered such a strict application of the rule. But I do sometimes wonder how God would have me “remember the Sabbath day,” and how exactly I should “keep it holy.”

God commanded Israel to observe two kinds of Sabbaths. The people seem to have taken seriously the best-known Sabbath, the prohibition against working on the seventh day of the week. But for 490 years they ignored the other Sabbath rule: do not plant crops in the seventh year. After six years of crops, they were to let the land rest during the seventh, trusting God to provide for them as “volunteer wheat” and other crops grew from seeds that had fallen the year before. For 490 years, they disobeyed, working the land during 70 alternating years in which they should have allowed it to remain fallow. In 2 Chronicles 36, the Israelites were taken into Babylonian captivity.

“Those who escaped the sword were carried by Nebuchadnezzar into exile in Babylon…. So the land enjoyed its Sabbath rest all the days of desolation, until seventy years were completed, in fulfillment of the word of the Lord through Jeremiah.” 2 Chronicles 36:21.

“So the land enjoyed its Sabbath rest.” The Hebrews in captivity may have been in turmoil, but I like that phrase: “the land enjoyed its Sabbath rest.”

We live in a culture that no longer gives much thought to keeping the Sabbath day holy. Now it’s: Sunday-Fun Day! I understand the expression. And we all have fun on our weekends.

But during 2020, I remember wondering whether one of God’s purposes during the quarantine might be that He wanted the land and the people to enjoy His Sabbath rest.

God, grant us wisdom as we seek to honor You and to keep the sabbath day holy. Show us what that means under the New Covenant, and remind us to walk in Your Grace.

ΑΩ