Sabbath Day Sacrament
Meeting Talk
September 15, 2013
I’m so
grateful for this opportunity I have had to think about the Sabbath day, and
what it means to keep it holy. It sparked a wonderful conversation on social
media which then bled into a beautiful conversation with my daughter and
family. I believe that talks are for the
speaker to learn, and I have learned.
What have we
been told about the Sabbath Day? On the
Youth page of LDS.org, it says:
“Honoring the Sabbath day includes attending all your Church
meetings. Go to sacrament meeting
prepared to worship the Lord and partake worthily of the sacrament. During sacrament meeting, be reverent and
willing to learn. Refrain from
activities that would distract you or others during this sacred meeting. Be on time for your meetings. As you do these things, you invite the Spirit
of the Lord to be with you.”
It goes on to suggest some appropriate activities:
“. . . spending quiet time with your family, studying the
gospel, fulfilling your Church callings and responsibilities, serving others,
writing letters, writing in your journal, and doing family history”
Then it
lists things it deems inappropriate:
“Sunday is not a day for shopping, recreation, or athletic
events. Do not seek entertainment or
make purchases on this day. Whenever
possible, choose a job that does not require you to work on Sundays.”
In order to prepare for this talk, I followed my good friend, Sarah Williams’, example and asked an open question on Facebook asking for input as to how people feel about the Sabbath Day. What I found was interesting, and not all that unexpected. First of all, atypically, I received input from a darling friend that I met at girls’ camp this year. She said that Sunday is her favorite day of the week. She “view[s] the Sabbath as a day to get closer to family, relax, and feel the spirit.” She continues, “I love spending time with my siblings. . . becoming closer friends while we look and think about all the amazing things Heavenly Father created.” I also heard from another friend, a young man who is a (sort-of) recently returned missionary. He says, “I flippin love Sundays! No work, no school, just a day of rest. I think I’d go crazy without it.” He adds, “I’ve tried to follow the example of the Nephites and use church to be ‘edified and strengthened together.’ Moroni 6 baby.” His words, not mine.
I loved
hearing from these awesome friends!! I’m
so happy they seem to have found a great balance in their lives in their Sunday
worship. What a blessing for them. However, their responses seem to be
atypical, and not the norm. What I found
most of all, was a lot of conflicted feelings about the Sabbath day. One youth said, “I like church, but
sacrament meeting often has speakers that just ramble. It’s kind of boring.” Most moms talked about
how difficult it is to round up little ones and even get them to church. One of my former students said, “I feel that
the season I am in right now, a mom with four kids a dog and a husband . . I
give myself a high five if I can get us all to church on time.” Another friend
said, “My kids will tell you straight up that they hate Sundays.” They feel
their parents are too busy with church callings and don’t have enough time for
family. One responder was particularly astute.
She said, “I like the IDEA of the Sabbath Day – it provides time for me
to study gospel principles, write in my journal, and just relax. In all actuality, [though] when I come home
from church, I’m somewhat burned out as far as gospel stuff goes since I have
just exposed myself to gospel teachings for 3 straight hours. Since I tend to focus on what I’m doing
wrong, Sundays have become guilt days for me of late. All I can think about is what I’m not doing
and how I’d like to be doing [those things], but I don’t have the energy or the
desire. And I get tired of “relaxing”
after about an hour because I feel like I’m not getting anything done.” She had several
people agree with her.
I would like
to focus on her comments for a moment.
If I may, I would like to use an analogy. On Fast Sunday, we refrain from eating partly
to remind us how important it is to feed our bodies, and how much we rely on
food and water to keep our bodies moving and functioning properly. This is also used to remind us how important
it is to also constantly feed our spirits.
That, just like our bodies need continual nourishment, our spirits also
need continual nourishment. So, we
sometimes compare our bodies to our spirits, since they are halves of a perfect
whole. Continuing that train of thought,
let’s say Sundays are a day of spiritual feasting, full of 3 hours of
concentrated church worship, followed by reading scriptures, writing in
journals, doing family history work, writing letters to missionaries, reading
the lessons for the next Sunday, and intense personal prayer and
pondering. Now, since our bodies are the
other half of the perfect whole, let’s pretend Mondays are a day of physical
feasting. To me, this idea is like going
to Chuck-A-Rama, eating for 3 solid hours, then staying at the restaurant
pondering the meal, preparing for the next meal, and continuing to feast for
the rest of the day. That makes me sick
just thinking about it. And I really
really like Chuck-A-Rama rolls smothered in honey butter. However, if I ate that much for that long,
even the rolls would make my stomach turn. In addition to being so full for
that day, do you think the rolls will still sound appealing the next day, or
the next? So, something that was
delicious to me would now become nausea inducing.
May we talk
for just a bit about balance in body and spirit? I love to eat, but I don’t eat constantly one
day, then fast for the rest of the week.
Not healthy. I love to run, well,
I love to be done with a run. But, I
don’t run 20 miles one day, then not run the rest of the week. It’s not healthy. I will soon hate running, not to mention I
will get injured toot sweet. So, may I
suggest that when we are spiritually full, forcing an extra piece of spiritual
chocolate cake down our gullets is not going to be helpful to us. In fact, it just might make us spiritually
throw-up. Also, is it possible that it
will also make spiritual things sound less delicious, less desirable the next
day or the next? I’m not trying to say
that we should not do those wonderful suggestions on the Sabbath day
checklist. Should we read our scriptures
on Sunday? Yes! May I suggest, however, that we read our
scriptures a little bit every day instead of gorging on Sundays, and then
fasting the rest of the week? It feeds
our spirits in a beautiful way. Should
we write in our journals? Probably! I stink at this particular Sunday checklist
item. But, I know some who are
“religious” journal writers and this feeds them. Should we go to church on Sunday? Yes! It
is there that we partake of the healing sacrament. That is where we are strengthened and
taught. It is where we get to worship
our Heavenly Father with our friends and neighbors, members of our extended
families. There were other “should”s at the beginning of my talk, we all know
them. May I say, though, if we are sincerely trying to be spiritually fed on
Sunday, which this responder sounds like she is, I trust her to listen to her
internal spiritual meter to know when her allotment of should-s are done, and
she is FULL for the day. I’m also not
saying that after she is full, the Sabbath day is over for her. What I am suggesting is that now, she gets to
think about OTHER things that spiritually feed her. What OTHER things can she do?
This is the
slightly dangerous part. The dangerous
part to which I’m referring, is using a word that I have just now used three
times: SHOULD. Should is one of my least favorite words. It is
full of guilt. I just talked about the
big “should”s: going to church, reading scriptures, etc. However, sometimes we use that word to tell
someone what they SHOULD or SHOULD NOT do on Sundays. Remember the young woman that I met at girls’
camp: the one who said she LOVES Sundays
because it is a day of spiritual renewal for her? I’m not going to tell you the specific things
she does on Sundays, because you might be tempted to use your “should” marker,
and use it to mark which things on her list she SHOULD do, and which things she
SHOULDN’T do.
L Tom Perry
said, in a New Era article dated July 2010, “There appear to be three things
that the Lord would require of us in keeping His day holy:
1. To keep ourselves unspotted from the
world. [meaning to] stay away from worldly places on the Sabbath2. To go to the house of prayer and partake of the sacrament.
3. To rest from our labors.”
It sounds to
me that there is a lot of room left open for us to make good decisions as to
what to do with the rest of our Sabbath worship. Here we get to use one of my favorite words: INTENT.
What is our intent? Is our intent
to continue our Sabbath worship, or are we trying to justify something we just
want to do? Is our intent is to refresh
ourselves like it says in Exodus 31:16-17:
16 Wherefore
the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath
throughout their generations, for a perpetual
covenant.17 It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.
Isn’t that
beautiful. The Lord was “refreshed” by
his rest on the Sabbath. Do we feel
“refreshed” by our worship? If so,
wonderful. If not, what can we do that
we can be renewed body, mind and spirit so we are spiritually full and ready
for the coming week?
The
wonderful thing that many responders to the Facebook question said, was that their
favorite part of Sunday is spending time with family. For example, one busy mom offered, “I’ll
confess it’s not my favorite day of the week.
I still have to cook dinner and load the dishwasher, hardly a rest for
me, but at least I don’t dread it like I used to. . . I will say that my
favorite time on Sundays is late in the evening when Dad’s home from meetings
and we get our one weekly sit-down meal as a family.” Or, one mom whose children are grown and who
have mostly left home, said, “At my age, what I enjoy most about Sunday is
sitting next to my daughter during Sacrament meeting . . . just being close for
a few minutes. We rush through life and
I now appreciate more than ever those few and far between moments with any of
my children.” Another busy mom added,
“when [the kids] were a little older, I loved Sundays because they would
snuggle up with me and I’d read to them for hours after church.” Being with family, was the theme, but the how
and where they were with their families was very different. Their intent was to draw closer as a family. Beautiful.
So, I’m not
going to tell my dear friend what she should do with the rest of her Sabbath
day, after she feels full. I trust her
to think about her intent, make a good decision, and let go of her guilt. I’m
guessing that Heavenly Father knows her and knows her intent, that it is good,
as she is good. We have the gift of
choice. We are blessed to not live during the time of the Mosaic
laws, where the children of Israel were given lists and lists of things they
could and couldn’t do on Sundays, with rules galore; but instead, we live with
the higher laws of our Savior, Jesus Christ, where He trusts us to use our good
intent to serve Him, and worship our Father in Heaven in part by keeping the
Sabbath day holy. What an amazing gift. 