This brief essay explores naming the goal of catechesis as Sabbath. What benefit may be found in describing the goal of catechesis as Sabbath? Sabbath opens the Christians’ eyes to their life in Jesus Christ in a two components: liturgico-ecclesial and politico-economic.[1] The liturgico-ecclesial sense derives from the plain reading of Luther’s Small Catechism: “You are to hallow the day of rest. What is this? Answer: We are to fear and love God, so that we do not despise preaching or God’s Word, but instead keep that Word holy and gladly hear and learn it.”[2] The politico-economic dimension recognizes the all-encompassing nature of the Sabbath: “all our life and work must be ordered according to God’s Word, if it is to be God-pleasing or holy. When this is done, this commandment is in force and being fulfilled.”[3] This writer suggests that catechizing toward the Sabbath addresses the whole person.

A liturgico-ecclesial emphasis devotes itself to teaching that where and when Christ bestows His Presence in Word and Sacramentis the Sabbath.[4] Word and Sacraments reveal how the individual apprehends, or is apprehended, by Christ and thus participates in the Sabbath. The individual’s daily appropriation of Baptism signifies the existence of this present perfect, the presence of the Sabbath; for the Christian’s new identity, though lived out in physically in what seems at time indistinguishable from the world, is destined to be transformed into the new identity.[5] The life of Baptism, living the life by the power of the Spirit, demonstrates that though God’s promises are completely accomplished in Christ, the Baptized still await the final revelation and consummation of the event: the incarnational fulfillment by the future of the returning Christ.[6] Furthermore, communion in the Lord’s Supper denotes that the reign of God, consummately exhibited in the mission and resurrection of Christ, is present and that the consummation of all has already begun;[7]“the Sunday celebration of the Lord’s Day and his Eucharist is at the heart of the Church’s life.”[8] Finally, the Word bestows the eschatological Sabbath, for the Word points to the action that God has taken on behalf of His creation and of man in particular.[9] In the Sabbath of Word and Sacrament is the Church united with Christ,[10] and she enter the eternal Sabbath proleptically.

Christ’s Presence radically alters the Church’s life in this present world, a life that assumes a different form because it already partakes of the eternal Sabbath through the resurrection of Christ. Since Christ creates fellowship with Himself and with other believers in Baptism and the Supper renews the same fellowship by repeating its grounding in the Lord, the Church, in her gatherings, will display a form dissimilar to the world. The Church, as corporation in time, yet requires a unique, specialized religious institution because man’s destiny “is not yet realized in the general life of society.”[11] Within this temporal manifestation, the Church demonstrates who she truly is, though it is a provisional representation of the mankind’s “eschatological fellowship in the future of the divine reign.”[12]

Sabbath is a communal sign that Church’s essestands under the being of another, namely God in Christ. The Catechism of the Catholic Churchspeaks to the community-based aspect of Sabbath:

“The parish initiates the Christian people into the ordinary expression of the liturgical life: it gathers them together in this celebration; it teaches Christ’s saving doctrine; it practices the charity of the Lord in good works and brotherly love.”[13]

Here a liturgico-ecclesial dimension immediately unfolds into a politico-economic dimension. As much as Sabbath was intended for all creation and not simply for the Hebrew nation, Sabbath, therefore, is elemental for the created order and not merely the redemptive order. “We need emancipation from sin both individually and collectively;”[14] The Church cannot rest until all is at rest. Hence, a concern for Christian maturity implies that catechesis is not simply charged with making religiously orthodox disciples, i.e, only liturgico-ecclesial issues, but also with creating, developing, and sustaining a full-bodied relationship with the Father in His Son Christ Jesus.[15] As Thomas Groome wrote:

“The Kingdom of God invites a response of constant conversion, metanoia. That inner conversion must turn us outward toward God in our neighbor. This love requires, in turn, that as individuals we strive to live justly and for justice, peacefully and for peace, equally and for equality; that we live by and to promote the values of the Kingdom, God’s will for the world.”[16]

If catechesis teaches the Word as the “text of life,” then Sabbathis the climax of that text; for in Sabbath does life celebrate and rejoice in the fulfilling work of God. In fact, catechesis seeks to replace the text of the world, i.e., dramas and scripts that trivialize and marginalize God and ways of knowing God, with the Sabbath narrative, a full life lived under God’s transforming grace and mercy.

An intentional politico-economic component strives to solve the chronic social, emotional, and class disease of alienation by incorporating the whole person into the community in God’s time and place, a participation in the fruits of the work of God in creation: Sabbath. When an anthropocentric “sabbath” or community fails, an individual must search for another community in time and place. A politico-ecclesial component, with its twin liturgico-ecclesial component, imports Sabbath to the person’s life; that individual’s life becomes inculturated with Sabbath.

Ann Marie Mongoven suggests that this move in catechesis “urges the community as community to do some concrete action that will relieve the suffering of people;” the Church ought to ask “What structure of society breed injustice and how can one change those structures?”[17] Mongoven, it seems, would conclude that the Church’s (personal and corporate) actions of justice in society are symbolic of fidelity to Sabbath.[18] As the General Catechetical Directory, Article 29, states:

“A person mature in the faith directs his thoughts and desires to the full consummation of the kingdom in eternal life. Catechesis, therefore, performs the function of directing the hope of men in the first place to the future goods which are in the heavenly Jerusalem. At the same time, it calls men to be willing to cooperate in the undertakings of their neighbors and of the human race for the improvement of human society.”[19]

The priesthood of all believers works out salvation to show that the Church signifies the presence of the Kingdomof Heavenalready; the faithful exercise of vocation signifies rest in God, Sabbath. While the Church cannot ensure the presence of the Kingdom, her labors of love and all that promotes the Kingdom indicate its leavening presence; faithful vocation testifies what is to come. Hence, to participate in the Sabbath is to renounce independence and confess dependence, in body and spirit, upon God in Christ. One might say that the priesthood of all believers cultivates the new creation brought about by God’s grace; that new creation, epitomized in Sabbath, surrounds His presence in time and space.[20]

As in the liturgico-ecclesial component, a politico-economic component denotes that Sabbath is a communal sign that the Church’s being stands under the being of another, namely God in Christ. The present proclamation of the eschatological Sabbath speaks of the completeness of God’s work in Christ. The Church “will have to harness its ministry and whole way of being in the world toward helping to create social/political/economic structures that are capable of promoting values of the Kingdom;”[21]for “Only by embodying within itself the truth of its own message can the Church be a credible sign of the Kingdom in the midst of the world.”[22]

In conclusion, Sabbath as a goal for catechesis chiefly delivers an intensely personal eschatological hermeneutic, that is, a guiding influence manifesting the Person of Jesus Christ in Word and Sacrament, manifested in worship, a liturgico-ecclesial focus, and work, a politico-economic focus. Sabbath creates no vague, mystical experience but is itself a proleptic participation in the eternal future fellowship with Jesus Christ, worked out presently in concrete fashion. Sabbath “is the microcosm for the macrocosmic purpose of God.”[23] A liturgico-ecclesial dimension of catechesis makes present the work of Christ, present in Word and Sacrament; this catechesis deposits the arrabon of the Sabbath, for by the Spirit the Church has her eschatological assurance of salvation; and this catechesis embodies, albeit in veiled manner, Sabbath.[24] A politico-economic dimension of catechesis, receiving its definition from God’s Word, both spoken (Word) and visible (Sacrament), demonstrates that Sabbath is more than an ethereal, non-corporeal Christian hope but has concrete ramifications for every single dimension of creation. “How the Church prays is how the Church labors.” For by the Spirit the Church will teach and work in these days, so ordering all life in a God-pleasing manner and thus have all men and creation brought into the rest of God.[25]

Bibliography

Book of Concord. Edited by Robert Kolb and Timohty J. Wengert. Translated by Charles Arand, Eric Gritsch, Robert Kolb, William Russell, James Schaaf, Jane Strohl, Timothy J. Wengert. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000.

Carson, D.A., editor. From Sabbath to Lord’s Day. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1982.

Catechism of the Catholic Church. Liguori Publications. 1994

Dawn, Marva. Unfettered Hope: A Call to Faithful Living in an Affluent Society. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003.

Dunning, James B. Echoing God’s Word. Formation for Catechists and Homilists in a Catechumenal Church. The North American Forum on the Catechumenate, 1993.

Eskenazi, Tamara, Daniel J. Harrington and William H. Shea, editors. The Sabbath in Jewish and Christian Traditions. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1991.

Groome, Thomas H. Christian Religious Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1980

Hofinger, Johannes. The Art of Teaching Christian Doctrine. Revised and enlarged edition. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1962.

Luther, Martin. The Christian in Society IV. Edited by Franklin Sherman and translated by Martin H. Bertram. Philapdelphia: Fortress Press, 1971. Volume 47. Luther’s Works. General editor, Helmut T. Lehman.

Mongoven, Anne Marie. The Prophetic Spirit of Catechesis. New York: Paulist Press, 2000.

Pannenberg, Wolfhart. The Apostles Creed in the Light of Today’s Questions. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1975. Translated from the German by Margaret Kohl. SCM Press, 1972.

______. Systematic Theology. 3 volumes. Translated by Geoffrey Bromiley. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company / Edinburgh: T&T Clark Ltd, Volume 1, 1991; Volume 2, 1994; Volume 3, 1998.

1

[1] Neither term advocates a particular theology, hermeneutic, or structure of governance; the nomenclature, used didactically, generally correlates to the foundations of “Remember the Sabbath” as variously explained in Deuteronomy 5:12-15 and Exodus 20:8-11, respectively.

[2] All quotations of the Book of Concord are from The Book of Concord. The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, edited by Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, translated by Charles Arand, Eric Gritsch, Robert Kolb, William Russell, James Schaaf, Jane Strohl, Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000). Luther explicates this with “… when we can concentrate only on these matters and deal especially with the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer, and thus regulate our entire life and being in accordance with God’s Word. Whenever this practice is in force, a holy day is truly kept” (Book of Concord, Large Catechism, ¶89).

[3]Book of Concord, Large Catechism, The Third Commandment, ¶92

[4] Cf. Hebrews 4:9,10. “In this case, however, a work must take place through which a person becomes holy. This work, as we have heard, takes place through God’s Word,” (Book of Concord, Large Catechism, Third Commandment ¶94). See also Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 3, translated by Geoffrey Bromiley, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company / Edinburgh: T&T Clark Ltd, 1998), 320.

[5] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3.253. Daily the “new person is to come forth and rise up to live before God in righteousness and purity forever” (Book of Concord, Small Catechism, Holy Baptism ¶12).

[6] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3.352-353.

[7] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3.291, 324.

[8]Catechism of the Catholic Church (Liguori Publications: 1994), #2177#2175.

[9] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3.334.

[10] Wolfhart Pannenberg, The Apostles Creed in the Light of Today’s Questions, translated by Margaret Kohl, (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1975), 125.

[11] Ibid., 157.

[12] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3.292.

[13]Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2179

[14] Thomas H. Groome, Christian Religious Education, (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1980), 94.

[15] Though disagree that Lord’s Day has replaced Sabbath as a day of obligation, this I could agree to: “The institution of the Lord’s Day helps everyone enjoy adequate rest and leisure to cultivate familial, cultural, social, and religious lives” Catechism of the Catholic Catechism, #2184.

[16] Groome, Christian Religious Education, 50.

[17]The Prophetic Spirit of Catechesis, (New York. Paulist Press, 2000), 132, Italics in original.

[18] Mongoven defines a “symbol” as “an expression of the reality which makes the reality present to itself and to others” (Prophetic Spirit, 100).

[19] As found in The Catechetical Documents (Archdiocese of Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1996), 26. See also Johannes Hofinger, The Art of Teaching Christian Doctrine, Revised and enlarged edition, (Notre Dame, Indiana. University of Notre Dame Press, 1962), 19; Mongoven, Prophetic Spirit, 26; and Groome, Christian Religious Education, 25.

[20] Marva Dawn captures the spirit of Sabbath quite well: “We miss the Sabbath’s hope when we embrace instead our socieitiey’s paradimg and turn the day itself into a device to produce certain commodities of feelings and peasures or when we embrace a way of life that keeps others from rest and well-being” (Unfettered Hope (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 162). Compare James B. Dunning, Echoing God’s Word. Formation for Catechists and Homilists in a Catechumenal Church, (The North American Forum on the Catechumenate, 1993), 75-79.

[21] Groome, Christian Religious Education, 47.

[22] Groome, Christian Religious Education, 47.

[23] John H. Primus, “Sunday: The Lord’s Day as a Sabbath – Protestant Perspectives on the Sabbath,” The Sabbath in Jewish and Christian Traditions, edited by Tamara Eskenazi, Daniel J. Harrington and William H. Shea, (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1991), 120. See also A.T. Lincoln, “Sabbath, Rest, and Eschatology in the New Testament,” From Sabbath to Lord’s Day, edited by D.A. Caron, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1982): Sabbath is the framework of the movement from creation to consummation (199). Commenting on Isaiah 66, Martin Luther offers this: “…there will be one Sabbath after another and one new moon after another, that is, that all will be sheer Sabbath, and there will no longer be any particular seventh day with six days in between. For the sanctifying of the word of God will enjoy full scope daily and abundantly, and every day will be a Sabbath” (Martin Luther, The Christian in Society IV, edited by Franklin Sherman and translated by Martin H. Bertram, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), Volume 47, Luther’s Works, general editor, Helmut T. Lehman, 93).

[24] This “sabbatical” catechesis is akin to Mongoven’s symbolic catechesis, if one were to regard Sabbath as the primary symbol (Prophetic Spirit, 119). It also seems that in Groome for “kingdom of God” one could substitute “Sabbath” (refer to Christian Religious Education, 46-51).

[25] However, inasmuch as the Church anticipates the coming of the Christ, she cannot retain any present form or organized or individual life as a definitive expression of the Sabbath; she will see “every positive achievement only as a provisional stage which must be left behind and which in addition is threatened by the dangers of regression and decay” (Pannenberg, Apostles Creed, 155).