The Sabbath, pronounced Shabbat in Hebrew, begins at sunset on Friday, because the text says that “by” the seventh day, i.e., before sunset, God had finished His work of creation. The creativity continues, when humans create a 24-hour spiritual environment on the day of Sabbath.
Shalom is often translated as peace, not only external physical peace, but also inner spiritual peace. Yet while Shalom includes peace, it includes more - the broader meaning of Shalom is ‘wholeness’ or ‘wellness.’
The greeting for the Sabbath is, then, Shabbat Shalom, while on the other days of the week, people greet each other with simply Shalom. In the family Sabbath, there are roles: the children are blessed, the wife is praised, and the men go to synagogue.
These roles hint at the textual understanding of masculinity. By contrast, spirituality in modern and postmodern North America and Europe is often seen as feminized.
The incarnational relevance is that Jesus is a man. Exploring, but never quite solving, the mystery of incarnation, we recall the axiom that Jesus is 100% human and 100% God. As a fully human man, He takes His place in these roles.
In Paul’s letter to Timothy, he stresses the humanity, not the divinity, of Jesus when he writes that “there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Jesus.”
[These thoughts taken from a talk given by Dwight Pryor on Friday, September 30, 1994]
