MENTIONS
Subversive Sabbath – http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/subversive-sabbath/385240
Bushnell University – https://www.bushnell.edu/
Social – https://twitter.com/mrajswoboda
Marcion – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcion_of_Sinope
TRANSCRIPTION
Currey – 00:16 What is going on? Everybody, welcome to a theology of apostle. I’m your host Currey Blandford. And today I’m talking to A. J. So this episode is a little different from me. What’s you’re probably used to from theology of hustle normally. Uh, we go through a person’s story, kind of walked through their vocational history, see how they sorta got to where they are. Uh, and how God sort of shaped all that. I, I brought A. J. on for a little different reason today. Uh, so A.J. (Swoboda) is a, a professor, a Bible and theology professor has been, uh, a pastor for a little over a decade and is now, uh, but has written a book called subversive Sabbath. And as you have probably heard in this podcast at some point, Sabbath is something that’s become very near and dear to JJ and I’s hearts that we’ve been practicing the Sabbath for. Uh, maybe coming up on a year here pretty soon. And it’s just been pretty transformative to our lives. And I keep feeling like I can’t have a podcast about work if I’m not willing to talk about the Sabbath because they go hand in hand. I mean that’s like literally from the, from the Genesis one. I mean that’s, that’s part of what God institutes and it’s this work Sabbath, sort of a back and forth that goes on. And I think it’s just such a really important topic. A.J. does a great job covering, uh, covering the Sabbath in this episode. You’re going to love hearing from him. He is very pastoral and preaches in this episode and I think it’s something we need to be preaching on. And so I think you’re really going to love hearing from him. So I’m excited for you to hear it. Uh, just a quick reminder to make sure you are following me on Instagram and Facebook at theology of hustle and on Twitter at Currey. Blandford. Uh, if you could too, I always appreciate a rating and review. You can leave those on iTunes or whatever podcast app you use just to help get the word out about the podcast. And yeah, I can’t wait for you to hear about the Sabbath. I’d love to hear your feedback on this episode. Um, you know, if you’re convicted or if this leads you to, to practice the Sabbath or, you know, if you have questions, I’d love to hear about it does too. So feel free to always reach out and enjoy hearing from A.J. Swoboda.
Currey – All right, well, J I can’t say thanks enough for, uh, being willing to come on the podcast and chat with me a little bit, man. It’s kind of fun.
A.J. Swoboda – Absolutely. Thank you for having me. It’s a joy to be here
Currey – for sure. Hey, uh, let’s just get started and have you just do a quick intro to who you are.
A.J. Swoboda 02:44 Yeah, I live here in Oregon. Uh, I, um, am a Bible theology professor at one of the Bible theology professors at Bushnell university here in Eugene, Oregon. Uh, and I, and my wife Quinn and my son, uh, live here in the Pacific Northwest. We’ve all kind of, uh, been a part of this culture, uh, for a number of years. For about 10 years, we lived in Portland and planted a church. And, uh, now our, our, I’ve relocated handed the, the leadership responsibilities, the pastoral work off to um, uh, the next, uh, next leader and are now back in Eugene and it’s, uh, awesome to live here in the Pacific Northwest. I do some writing, uh, written a couple books. Uh, we’re hoping to get chickens again really soon. Uh, we had to give those up when we left Portland and I’ve been grieving that process tremendously. Um, yeah. And I love playing Legos with my son and I’m really excited for the new star Wars, uh, this Christmas.
Currey – I love it. That’s a great intro man. It like had everything that you’d want in an intro, so I appreciate that. Um, okay, so normally we do the deep vibe, dive into sort of your story and all that stuff and your story is valuable. I definitely value it, but I have you on because I want to specifically like deep dive into this Sabbath thing. You know, it’s been something that’s sort of, uh, my family, his, excuse me, my family has adopted over the last probably nine or 10 months. Uh, it’s something that’s like I’m really convicted about and we’re on a podcast about work. Um, and I think we have to be talking about Sabbath, uh, in this conversation. So does that, does that work for you? The deep dive. Okay. So, uh, not sure where to begin. Your book subversive Sabbath, um, is awesome. I really enjoyed it. Can you just talk about why you wrote that book? What was the, what was the reason behind all that? Yeah.
A.J. Swoboda – Um, and thanks for reading it. Um, I wrote the book, um, over the course of about a year and a half, two years, uh, uh, about five years ago wrote the, wrote this book, um, largely as a response to, um, seeing, uh, having an experience of, of doing pastoral work. We, we had planted the church in Portland about about 10 years ago and we, uh, a few years into planting the church began to see the church kind of get real, real tired, uh, which is natural and normal, I think for, for any congregation that’s getting off the ground. And we, I decided, you know, the right thing to do would be to, uh, do a sermon series. That’s what pastors do when there’s a problem in the church. We did a sermon series, so I, um, said, well, let’s talk for this app about the Sabbath for three or four weeks. And, um, I preached on it and I have preached, um, you know, in, in pastoral ministry about a lot of things. I preached on all sorts of things that have made people mad. I’ve preached on, you know, sexuality. I preached going against marijuana once. I appreciate I’m polyamory. I mean, it’s Portland, you’re going to talk about this stuff. And I preached on the Sabbath and I don’t think we ever had more people leave the church. Um, it was this very odd experience of talking about this biblical principle. And it, um, it seemed to really bug people. Um, we had, I actually remember this one experience after that series, I was meeting with our elders and we were talking about the 10 commandments. We were talking about the Sabbath. And I had a, an epiphany in that meeting with our elders. It dawned on me for the very first time that if as a pastor, I broke nine of the commandments. If I stole money from the church, I lose my job. If I committed adultery, I’d lose my job. If I committed murder, I would, you know, I would hopefully lose my job. Um, and it dawned on me for the very first time that if I don’t keep a Sabbath as a pastor, uh, these people, they’re going to give me a race. Um, and it, it, it all of a sudden clicked for me that this is the one, like the one biggie that we celebrate people breaking. And that I was working at the time with a guy named Matthew Matthew Sleeth, who’s written a number of books on the Sabbath. And I knew that I needed to write on this stuff. So I’ve been practicing it for over a decade, but I finally felt like it was important to start putting some stuff on paper.
Currey – Yeah, that’s great. Uh, that’s an incredible story. It is. It is shocking. It is shocking how, um, unknown or undervalued that piece of, of the 10 commandments is, and it’s not just the 10 commandments, right. The Sabbath, literally from the beginning. Uh, and I would argue to the end of scripture is a, is a, um, is a thread that goes throughout, uh, the entirety of scripture. And yet it is something that I don’t know that I’ve ever heard somebody preach on, you know, or most churches I would say, don’t, don’t have that as a piece of their, their teaching in any sort of any sort of way.
A.J. Swoboda – Oh, 100. Yeah, without, without question. And it’s not, this is not something that we should, um, be little, um, or beat up the church for, I mean, the, the truth is our entire culture is miss this one. It’s not just the church, but you’re absolutely right from beginning of creation as though it couldn’t be clearer. Uh, Adam and Eve were made on, on day six a day. Seven was a day of rest. Their very first day of existence was a day of rest. And then to, as if that wasn’t loud enough, God in the Hebrew story always begins the day with evening. So you begin the day of rest by resting. Uh, you see, you start rest with rest and then, yeah, heaven is described as Sabbath in Hebrews. And then on top of that, Jesus says, uh, when I come back, pray that it doesn’t happen on the Sabbath, making it really clear that his hope was that even upon his return, uh, that this would be something we would still be doing. Currey – Yeah. Yeah. It’s amazing. So, um, let’s, let me ask you this question. This may be way too, too deep just to like dive off here, but I think many people who don’t know, who haven’t studied the Sabbath or maybe those who have, would not initially consider the Sabbath to be something subversive. You know, something sort of a counter to what’s going on. Why did you choose, why did you choose to name the book subversive Sabbath? And you know, what’s the, yeah, behind all that?
A.J. Swoboda 09:38 Yeah. Um, there’s a, uh, a principle in the Bible that was handed to me by, uh, uh, Dr. John Golden gay, who teaches at, uh, fuller center. He’s an old Testament theologian. He’s written a number of books on, on a kind of old Testament theology. He’s brilliant old Testament guy, and he has this concept in that he writes about called, uh, ideal and condescension, which is this idea in the Bible that God always gives us his ideal, his dream picture of the way it’s supposed to be. And then, uh, he also comes to our level, he condescends to our level. Um, so in the Bible, Sabbath is built into creation. It is God’s ideal. It is the, it is gravity. Like if you disobey, you will eventually come down. Pastor say, I don’t need to take a sabbatical. That’s not possible. You’ll get a sabbatical. It’s called retirement or burnout or death. You’ll get the retirement, you’ll get there, you’ll get the Sabbath. So in the Bible Sabbath is like God’s ideal. It’s built into creation. And if we don’t live into that rhythm, I mean an atheist needs to Sabbath as much as a Christian. Every human being needs rest. If you don’t do it, um, you’re going against the fabric of nature. Um, HH farmers have a philosopher who says that if you go against the grain of the universe, you’re going to get splinters. And the grain of the universe is that rhythm is the rhythm of rest is built into it. And our entire cultural structure right now is ignoring gravity. It’s pretending as though gravity doesn’t exist. Our entire culture is 24/7 constantly. No stopping, no, no anything to practice. The Sabbath in that context is in highly subversive. It undermines everything about our cultural value. Um, you know, and there are really, really, really inter interesting and heartbreaking and beautiful stories of the Jew, the Jewish people practicing the Sabbath in places where it wasn’t welcomed. I mean in the Holocaust, you have all these stories of Jews practicing the Sabbath during the Holocaust and they had to go out of their way to do it because the Nazis figured out that when the Jews practice the, that they got their hope back. And so that the Nazis would actually do everything to keep, make their Sabbath and possible. Um, I was reading this one Nazi soldier writing to his, uh, to his boss and he said, we’ve learned by time and tradition, uh, to disrupt the Jewish Sabbath because every time they take a day off, it’s like they get their spirits back. Too. I mean, this spirit, I don’t know your theological paradigm, but the spirit of the demonic is alive and well in our culture and has created an environment that just is ignoring gravity and it’s killing people. It’s killing us. We are in a suicide machine careening off of, uh, uh, off of a cliff. And this Sabbath is entirely against that entire framework.
Currey – 12:41 Yeah. No, I, I very much agree. And uh, it, yeah, it’s amazing how fast it’s switched though. I mean, this was not true of the fabric of society. I mean, even, even 50 or 60 years ago, or even at the beginning of the, uh, of, of America, right? I mean, it wasn’t, I mean, America, uh, according to subversive Sabbath was sort of this place where the Sabbath was practiced regularly. It was almost known for that sort of thing. Yep.
A.J. Swoboda 13:09 Well it didn’t, that is all true. And America is without question, the were complicit and, and a big part of the problem. Uh, but I, um, Dr. Matthew Sleeth has, has helped me with this one. Uh, when you go back to Genesis one and two and three, um, you have this as a Wheaton grad. I’m sure you dealt with this yourself. You have these, this very interesting situation in Genesis one and two where you have two creation stories, um, two entirely different creation stories. Now they coalesce, they coalesce and work together and, but to have two Christian stories and Dr. Sleeth pointed out to me the difference between the two is one thing. Uh, Genesis one in that creation story, uh, is the, uh, that is the ideal picture and it involves Sabbath. But in Genesis two, um, uh, all of a sudden Sabbath disappears and it’s almost as though it’s almost as though God’s ideal immediately as a result of sin was thrown out the window. This misses the point. The point is that America did not invent workaholism. We did not. America did not invent a world without the Sabbath. This is literally the problem of sin. We do not want to stop and be with God. We are running through the trees, hiding ourselves with leaves and doing anything to not hear the voice of the one who’s saying, where are you? So it’s not America, it’s evil. That’s what our battle is, not against America. It’s against the forces of evil and darkness that have been at work since Genesis three to re to utterly whitewash out of our culture and our world. God’s dream of having a day to just walk through the garden with God. Yeah.
Currey – 14:55 It’s a powerful argument. I a very powerful argument because it goes back to that original sin, which is that breaking in relationship, right? It’s the like searching for something else to fill that void that God, that God is right, the tree of knowledge, good and evil. And so, uh, so, so the argument isn’t like, Hey, we’ve gotten to this cultural moment where it’s impossible to Sabbath and like we have no choice but to rest the, the argument is that literally from the beginning, this is how people have responded when God invites them into rest, right?
A.J. Swoboda – 15:26 One and yeah, so you’d talk about work a lot and um, when you read at the end of Genesis three, when God banishes Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, the text at the end of Genesis three says that as they were banished, they had to continue to work the ground. They got to give it to them, but they were no longer doing it in the presence of God. That word for banish in Genesis three is the same Hebrew word for divorce. And the idea is now our work is divorced from the presence of God. And immediately work now becomes the God. Uh, but Sabbath is intended by God to be the thing that protects us from worshiping our work. Um, Mary Bell says that work is the alcohol of our culture because point being that we’ve, we have turned work into, um, in the, in the God. Sabbath protects us against that. Otherwise we’re just, everything becomes what we’re accomplishing. There’s a play on words in the Hebrew text to when God created Adam and Eve when God said, let us make man in our image. It is not a mistake that when the BA in Babel, they say, let us build a tower. They’re using the same language of Genesis one, but it’s a play on words. So it’s no longer the divine creative act. It’s humans. Self-creating themselves to make a name for yourself, uh, is very different than to be given a name by God.
Currey – 16:49 Yeah, man, that’s good stuff. Good stuff. Uh, indeed, that is a, it’s very convicting and I think, uh, I mean, and the argument holds true as you look through scripture. I mean, even the, the Jewish people there, the issue that they kept kept coming back to was a lack of Sabbath. Right? It’s even argued that they’re exiled from the land. Uh, as many sort of Sabbaths as they had missed, you know, yearly, uh, sorta Sabbaths. And how, uh, this over and over again becomes like the, the issue, right?
A.J. Swoboda – 17:21 Yes. So much so that some of these principles, uh, do cannot work in our world. And well I should say, uh, yeah. So for example, the, uh, the Jubilee command, every, you know, 49th year, you know, all the debts are, are undone, land is returned to its original owner. There’s all this Midrash on, you know, the fences were all torn down so that people could walk home. And, um, and so we, we preach on that. We love it. And it’s, and we’ve got, you know, this idealistic kind of Wendell Berry in view of what that could have been like in, it could have been a dream and whatnot. Um, but historians are very quick to point out that there is zero evidence that anybody ever did the Jubilee, um, that it was never actually done. And had it been done, uh, that the entire world economy would have crumbled to the, to the, it would have ended because you can’t create a world economy, uh, as we want it based on the Jubilee principle. It is, it undermines everything. So there’s the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. I’m not entirely sure that they can, they can work alongside each other, uh, nicely. God’s kingdom seems to be, uh, pretty, uh, upside down from, from what we, what we want. And so the Sabbath, it’s so funny having a non-Christian asks you why you Saba, um, because there’s no rationale in our world. Uh, for a day of rest where you turn your phones off and you pancakes with your family and you stop and you pray. There’s no reason to do that. Um, but man, when it’s done, it’s, it’s, I think, I think the best evangelist keeps Sabbaths. Um, the best evangelists keeps up with because they, the Sabbath constantly forces you to not live according to the rhythms of the world. It’s a counter cultural approach to life that makes you different, makes you weird. And part of being a Christian in our world, it’s about we need to be weird. Keep Christians weird. That should be your thing.
Currey – 19:26 I love it. Yeah. I told, I mean, I very much agree. Not so weird, you know, I mean there’s a, there’s a level of, there’s a certain extent. Yes. No, that’s good though. I totally agree. I think we’re not weird enough. Like we fit in a little too much. A lot of times, and I’m speaking for my myself when I say that it’s, yeah. Um, speaking of counter-cultural though, one of the biggest moments in this whole theology, biblical theology sort of of, of the Sabbath is, is the 10 commandments, the deck, a log where, um, where they’re given an Exodus and then give it and Deuteronomy. And the one difference between the two is the reason behind the Sabbath, right. In, in Exodus, it is because God created seven day or arrested in the seventh day in the Deuteronomy account. It is because you were slaves in Egypt. The Lord your God brought you out of Egypt. And, um, so, so there’s this interplay with the Sabbath and Pharaoh, right? I mean, um, Pharaoh’s economy, the way that Pharaoh, uh, runs his, his thing. Can you talk a little bit about the countercultural moment of the Sabbath in
A.J. Swoboda Uh, in the Exodus event? Yeah. Yeah. My goodness. Um, well, certainly the Exodus event had such an impact on the Jewish state of mind. I mean, the state of mind of God’s people. I mean, they, they had become in the, in the decades that they had in the years that they had lived in, in Egypt. Um, they had developed, uh, an identity that was around slavery. Um, and there’s all this, for example, when Pharaoh, uh, w when he speaks about the, the Israelites, he makes us fascinating comment. He says they’re wicked lazy servant servants. Um, my counselor calls that projection, which is projecting on the people your own crap. Um, and the, the I the irony that we have a slave owner telling the slaves that they’re the lazy ones, you know, but, but the PR, you know, the problem was that they, the Israelites took that identity to them, to them, to their heart, that they, that they were slaves and then God didn’t have something greater. And so when they finally do get out, um, God gets kinda harsh with them around the Sabbath. And I mean, there’s this really great story. I don’t know, I don’t know anybody would preach on it, but the guy who picked up sticks on the Sabbath and God killed him. I mean it’s, I don’t, I don’t, I didn’t put that in my book cause I, I don’t, I don’t know how to deal with that. But I have seen people who come out of addictions and I’ve seen people who’ve come out of alcoholism and heroin addiction. And when you, when you walk out of an addiction that you’ve had for years, you have to go cold Turkey. There’s no you, you can’t just have an appropriate relationship with alcohol. You’d have no religion about. You have no relationship with heroin. You gotta have no relationship. You got cut off. I see that God dealing with an addict as God, looking at somebody who’s saying like, I’m not kidding. You’ve lived in your mind as a, as a slave all these years and I am not messing around. You are not a slave. You are mine and that Sabbath, so it takes work to undo the psychology of slavery. Yeah, and it does not come easy. It is hard to, it is hard to come out of the ways of thinking and we see immediately when Israel comes to Mount Sinai and is worshiping a golden cap. That is interesting. The golden calf was a sign that was was a deity, total Egyptian deity. These Israelites are worshiping now in their freedom, the sign of their slavery, NT Wright’s classic line that it’s not hard for God to get Israel out of Egypt, but it’s really hard for God to get Egypt out of Israel They’ve been, they’ve been in Egypt and now they’re worshiping the Egyptian God in freedom. Moses comes down the mountain with the law in his hands and finds all God’s people worshiping a golden cap, which is incidentally why pastors don’t take sabbaticals. That is exactly why they don’t take sabbaticals, is the fear of what’s gonna happen if I leave. Um, and then the real fear is we come back down at everybody’s still worshiping God and we realize we’re not near as important as we thought we were. Um, but the irony that they’re worshiping the gods of slavery in their freedom, we say, man, alive, we, this Pharaoh would love the way we run our country. We say we are a nation of freedom, man alive. We really do think we are a free nation. Uh, there is nothing further from the truth. We worship the golden calf better than anybody. This is Pharaoh’s economy. We’re not talking about an ancient economy. And this economy says the same thing to us, that Pharaoh does. Your wicked, lazy servant. You’re not accomplishing enough. You’re not cool enough. You’re not famous enough. You don’t have enough Twitter followers. And it’s just the voice of the demonic who only knows how to project. The Satan has no other way to talk about his problems other than than toward them on us. Basically Satan’s a counselor and the Lake of fire. I don’t know if that’s, that’s going to purge them of, but I’ll tell you, Satan just loves to put on all of us, um, his own insecurities and it is free and to be a Christian because I, anytime I have that voice in the back of my head that says, AGA, you are not writing enough A.J. You’re not teaching at the right institution. A.J. you, you don’t, you don’t have a podcast yet. All that little, that stuff I get to say to that stuff, I get to say, get outta here because I’m not, I’m, I’m a child of God. I’m saved in the blood of Jesus and Satan. You don’t get to project onto me your own insecurities. You don’t get to. When Jesus said to that that one time when the woman was healed and he says that the demon left her and ran through arid places looking for a place to rest. The entire narrative of the Bible never portray Satan at rest. He can’t rest. The demonic can’t rest. The irony in the Bible is Satan doesn’t respite. God does.
Currey 25:53 Gosh, I needed to hear that today. A J. I appreciate that. That’s a good stuff and you’re preaching. I mean that was a, yeah, I, yes, thank you. That’s good stuff.
A.J. Swoboda 26:03 Here’s something I really don’t like about the Sabbath conversation. Here’s what I don’t like about it. I’m going to tell you the greatest thing that I hate about this is that all this stuff that I maybe have just said or that we’re talking about or whatever, a lot of this stuff is really good and important and yet it does preach, but that’s the problem is that is when we use the Sabbath because it’s a new cool topic. That’s bologna. We need to not make this the cool new topic. We need to repent to God and do it and not make this a cool, sexy, new topic. That’s what Evan, we’ve been doing that for so stinking long. We just take these cool theological ideas and we write books on them and we get popular and we get invited into people’s podcasts because it’s a cool slick thing to do and God does not, is not interested in the Sabbath thing, a sexy idea. He is interested in single mothers with eight kids having a day to stop and be with God. He is interested in the poor being cared for. He is interested in people with money and power learning to not worship their wealth and to worship God. This is not a sexy concept. This is, we should be heartbroken over this. It’s killing people. It’s killing people. I I, look, I don’t know how many pastors we have seen in the last few years take their own life over and over and over again. And by God’s grace, the church would be a place where we take things like mental health. Seriously, we don’t have mental health because there’s no chance to stop.
Currey – Yeah.
A.J. Swoboda – 27:43 So all that to say I’m not, I want to just make it really clear to your audience. Please don’t make this just a topic we preach on. Let’s repent to God. Let’s come back to God.
Currey– 27:56 I definitely appreciate that. No, that’s, that’s, that’s good stuff. I mean, what if the church was known as the place where you could go to find rest? Right
A.J. Swoboda 28:07 in history, seen a time where more people, young people in particular are coming to church and falling asleep during services. I see young people come to church all the time and fall asleep and in years past I used to get so mad. How could they ignore this great biblical teaching that I’m bringing to them? I might not a good preacher and for the first time in my life I’m beginning to celebrate when I see somebody sleeping and nodding off in the back because the church should be the one place in the world where you can come and be at peace and not have to produce to make somebody happy. It has to be the one place mate, would we, the next great awakening will be when we can learn to sleep in the presence of God.
Currey – 28:51 That’s good. I very much so. I mean, that’s a good news, right? God, God has this taken care of. You’re not in control. You can rest because of that. Right? It’s like good news man.
A.J. Absolutely.
Currey – 29:06 Ah, okay. So because of that, so we just preached this, I just preached a sermon series or the pastors in my church on the Sabbath, right? We sorta did a biblical theology from, from Genesis through the new Testament. And one of the big issues that I ran into while preaching this is that people don’t practice the Sabbath because it’s a, it’s an old Testament law. Right? And I think the new Testament, while it mentions the Sabbath doesn’t have explicit, thou shalt rest concepts. Exactly right? Like we can’t prove texts our way into the Sabbath from the new Testament per se. Right? So how do you handle a sort this new Testament
A.J. Swoboda – theology, uh, of the Sabbath NT Wright talks about, uh, Tom Wright talks about, uh, the same as you when it comes to, uh, creation. Uh, when you look at, when you look at the new Testament, there’s very little about, uh, uh, the theology of creation. There are small elements. You have Romans one, uh, humans turned to creation over the creator. Uh, Romans eight, creation groans. Um, you know, John’s language for God so loved the world, the cosmos he loves, loves, loves everything he’s made. You do have elements of it, but it’s by and large quiet about Christian. Now forget this. That’s actually what I did my PhD on is environmental theology. That’s a problem because I want Jesus to have talked a lot more about it than he did any dead. You know, he said, Jesus, no Sparrow falls from the sky without the father’s Karen and Jesus loved birds and he loved creation. But the new Testament is largely quiet about the topic, right? Well, Tom, right? Uh, absolutely is right about this one. The reason the new Testament is so quiet about it is because the old Testament is so loud about it and that the new Testament doesn’t have to address it because the old Testament nails it as well as it does. Aye. Aye. Some would say, well the new Testament doesn’t explicitly state, I don’t know. I don’t, I don’t know if the new Testament has to explicitly state it. The old Testament is so stinking loud about it that the entire new Testament is basically re-tweeting everything in the old Testament. Not to mention that there is a ton in the new Testament about the Sabbath. Jesus kept a Sabbath and we follow Jesus and Jesus said, when I come back, pray, it doesn’t happen on the Sabbath. Um, and you do without question. You have sections in the new Testament that make it very clear that we are, uh, not to, uh, practice circumcision, which is a part of the mosaic code. But then elements of the mosaic code that we continue principles Jesus, uh, through and through, uh, identified the 10 commandments as things that we should live. You said that to the rich young ruler. So it is, it is complex. No question, don’t get me wrong, but I would ask any of your readers if they can find one statement in the new Testament that claims that the Sabbath is over. Um, there is a passage in Hebrews that that spiritualizes it and says that in Christ we rest. But there is nothing in that text that suggests for a moment’s notice that that means that we no longer need a day of rest. Nothing, right? Nothing. By the way. Um, uh, there were two distinctive marks of a Jew in the old Testament. Uh, there were two distinctive marks, a Sabbath and circumcision. Circumcision was a sign for you. It was not assigned for everybody else. It was assigned for you and the Sabbath was assigned for everybody else. The Sabbath was your sir. It was the circumcision of time, essentially that it was, you’re showing the world that you are God’s people. The new Testament goes out of its way to say that the days of circumcision are no longer necessary those days. Now it’s interesting. Paul’s still circumcised Timothy. And that’s a different conversation. But, but he did it. It goes out of its way. Galatians is an argument against circumcision. Huh? Show me one text in the new Testament where the same argument is made about the Sabbath. It’s not there. Right. Yeah. No, I appreciate that. Yeah, that’s good. And by the way, we don’t, we do not obey the Sabbath. We obey the Lord of the Sabbath and to follow the Lord of the Sabbath means to follow him into the Sabbath. Um, so this is not an issue of keeping the rule. This is an issue issue following Jesus. Yeah.
Currey – 33:45 Yeah. I mean, Mike dropped there, right? Like, I mean, uh, because we have a tenuous relationship with the law in general, like, right. I mean, the reformers had this issue, right? Like we’ve been talking about this for 2000 years. Uh, yeah. But to but to claim that like all that stuff just doesn’t matter anymore. Like, uh, that we’re only new Testament Christians or something, I think misses out on a large part of like what God is doing. Like God doesn’t change. Right? Uh, yeah.
A.J. Swoboda 34:12 Yeah. And it undermines, I, I think, I think the church has been fairly consistent that the old Testament still counts as Bible. I think that that that’s been kind of clearly stated from like the beginning.
Currey – 34:25 Yeah. There was that arc awkwardness with Marcion, I think back in the day. Awkward
A.J. Swoboda – 34:30 and things were, it was complicated. Um, but I think we made some decisions there and I think the decision stand that the old Testament ain’t that old. It’s, it’s, it’s the, in the words of Philip Yancey, it’s the Bible. Jesus used the Bible, Jesus read and there ain’t there, man. You want to talk about Jesus gave some pretty harsh critiques of people that undid any jot or tittle of what has been spoken. Uh, the old Testament is what is undone. That that’s the interesting thing. Jesus actually did break the Sabbath. He broke the Sabbath. He did not break the biblical Sabbath. He broke the Pharisaic Sabbath. And the reason he broke the first day at seventh was to bring people back to the original seven. He broke the laws to reveal that the laws were already broken. Right? And they were, the traditions of people had been broken. The minute we start going down the road and start saying, well, if you’re going to SAB, it has to be Saturday. It has to be Sunday. It has to be done. No, no, no, no. That’s where we get funky and weird is when we start creating human traditions around God’s heart. We need to undermine the traditions and go to God and Sabbath in the way that God has invited us to seven.
Currey – 35:48 Yeah, that’s good. No, there’s, and there’s a real fine point there, uh, that I thinkis missed in the new Testament is that uh, there is the old Testament law which God said, justsimply says, thou shall, you should not work. Right. And that had to be explained, uh, later in, inthe history of the Jews, right? They, they had this whole set of laws called the Mishnah that theyput together. And this is what Jesus is critiquing, not the old Testament. Exactly
A.J. Swoboda – 36:12 Jesus did not critique the old Testament. When God created the world, the first thing he did, he created the world. So let, let there be light. The first thing God did was he created light. Um, and then God started to garden and the Bible goes out of its way to say that God planted the trees, that God planted the trees in the garden. The very first thing that God does is he is a gardener. Now, when Jesus resurrects and the women come out of the tomb, they see a guy and they say it’s the gardener. And we always preach. And we go, Oh, that’s those silly ladies they saw. No, it wasn’t a gardener. It was Jesus. They weren’t that wrong. Speaker 5 The gardener has come back and the same guy who started everything and rested on the seventh day, took the seventh day and rested in a tomb. It’s the same guy. Yeah. And the same God that knew how to rest in Genesis seven is now teaching us to rest, uh, in, in our time, the Gardner’s back and the, he’d never went anywhere, but the gardeners here and he’s kicked death’s butt and he’s inviting everybody to come in and take a rest. He is, he’s calling all of us. He’s calling all of us. For anybody that would say that the, the Bible, that the, that we no longer need to keep the Sabbath. I guess my response is, okay, are you saying that we should work seven days a week in burnout in Jesus’ name? Is that the response that we should have? And if their answer is yes, that’s just a different Jesus than the one I see in the new Testament.
Currey – 37:55 yeah, no, I, I think that’s a great point. Yeah. Uh, very good. So can you just briefly sort of describe, uh, what a Sabbath day looks like for your family? I want to be conscious of your time here, but you know, just, yeah.
A.J. Swoboda – 38:13 What are the practical I’d be happy to. Yeah, it’s more changed a lot. We’ve had to learn a lot of lessons and we’ve made just about every mistake that one can make when it comes to the Sabbath. So I want to be clear that there are a lot of Sabbath mistakes to be made. And, um, if we want to talk to people who’ve been doing this for a long time, we’ve got to go to the, to the Jewish people who have so many beautiful practices and so many beautiful ways of doing it and some things that are not helpful, but some ways that we can learn. So I’d be willing to share out of my scant 15 years of keeping a Sabbath. But I think going to the Jews who have been doing it for 3,500 years, it’d be wise to, um, yeah, so a couple of things that we do. Number one is, uh, we, uh, we do Sabbath on Saturdays, although we used to Sabbath on Wednesdays when I was in pastoral ministry. Speaker 3 38:56 Uh, Friday evening, when I come home from work, we light some Sabbath candles. Uh, this is kind of a nerdy tradition that we have where we light, um, these Sabbath candles and we sing the Shabbat Shalom, which is just a little song that goes Shabbat. You name everybody in the family. So you go Shabbat Shalom to Elliot, Shabbat Shalom to Quinn and Shabbat Shalom to a J and you name everybody in the family. And then, uh, we light the candles and then I turned my phone off and that’s a big deal. Uh, it’s a hard thing for me to do. It’s, it’s a very challenging part of my week and I need to do it every week. Uh, and then we go to bed and, uh, we have a meal. We go to bed Saturday morning we’d wake up and we make, we make pancakes and we make a lot of bacon, which should comfort those who are worried that I’m trying to bring back the mosaic covenant a law or something like that. Um, I eat far too much bacon for anybody to argue that I’m going that road. Um, we buy bacon and pancakes and coffee and waffles and mashed potatoes or mashed potatoes, but, uh, um, uh, hash Browns and we have a feast. And the reason we do the pancakes is actually there’s a kind of beautiful old Jewish tradition that on the morning of the Sabbath, uh, the father was to get up before all the kids and get every child a spoon of honey. And the idea was that, um, that, that if they eat the honey, that they would never forget the sweetness of God’s rest. And we don’t, we don’t do honey, we do maple syrup. But the goal, the goal is that we are trying to train our spirits, our souls and our adrenal glands, that the Sabbath is worth remembering. And we eat a meal And my son, we, we hang out together. We watch a movie, we’d go for a walk. Um, my son, when he takes, uh, what gets to watch a movie, my wife and I get to take a nap in scare quotes. We take a nap together, um, and it’s always the best nap of the week. Um, and we eat together and we spend the day together and we play Legos and play games. We’d go to the zoo, we walk around. I usually about four o’clock. Every Sabbath gets super depressed and I get sad because I miss being needed. Uh, I miss being on my computer and seeing all the emails flood in and tell me that I’m important. I missed that. Uh, I don’t like to Sabbath because, uh, I actually start feeling my feelings and I start getting mad about the things that happened during the week that I didn’t think about and pray about and attend to. And so the Sabbath becomes a space to reflect on the pain of the week. And I don’t like that. I don’t, I wanna I want to keep doing stuff to shove that down. I don’t want to feel that. Um, so about four o’clock I start getting kind of antsy, scared, nervous, sad, all sorts of things. And, but we fight through that and we stay together and we usually get together with our family or friends, uh, on the evening of the Sabbath. And then we go to bed and then we wake up in the morning and it’s, and it’s back to, um, the work week. And I, you know, we’ve been keeping a Sabbath there. Had been weeks that the Sabbath is absolutely horrible. I mean, keeping a Sabbath with, with, um, by yourself as easy cause you do everything you want, but when you’ve got a family, uh, that makes it sound like that makes it sound like you get everything you’re wanting If you don’t have a family. That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that when you have other people in the family that have other wants and needs, then you, you, you don’t, it’s frustrating to not get everything you want in the Sabbath is what I’m trying to say. And so, um, you’ll, you’ll lose out on some stuff. And so some Sabbaths are hard, some are awesome, but, but always without question. Um, God always is faithful to enter in. I love that Genesis one says that the garden of Eden was good. It never says it was perfect. It says it was good. And, um, the Sabbath is always good. Amen. Amen.
Currey – 43:14 Well, I love it. Thanks so much. Uh, I know you got to get to your, uh, to a meeting and I want to be cognizant of that. So thanks so much for sharing though, man. This is great stuff and I, I really appreciate it.
A.J. Swoboda – 43:24 Yeah. Thank you for hosting this, this podcast and God’s grace to you in this work and what you d may, may we all be blessed by the rest of Christ.
Currey – Well, I hope you enjoyed hearing from A.J. and getting a little bit of a deep dive into this Sabbath conversation. For some of you, this may be like brand new and I just encourage you to, you know, lean into this. I think it really is important, just like Aja is talking about, this is, this is big stuff and this is stuff that’s been around from the beginning, you know, and, um, yeah, I think there’s resources like a subversive Sabbath. Uh, I’ll link a couple more in the show notes there, uh, that you could check out and just, I, I just, I asked that if you, you know, do feel convicted in some way that you would lean into that, that you would look into it, that, uh, you know, that this might be something that could be a part of, of how you live life. Uh, every day. Uh, I did want to tell you also the next magic table that comes out in a few weeks. JJ and I are actually covering the Sabbath once again, but we’re covering it sort of from our perspective, what our journey’s been, what it looks like for us to practice the Sabbath. And so now you can look forward to that. That’s another resource coming out. And so, yeah, uh, share away, share about the Sabbath, and I’d love to hear about your experience with it. So, um, yeah. Uh, until next time, get out there. And Hustle
