Sabbath

(reflective piano music).

FATHER SIMEON LEIVA-MERIKAKIS: Six days you may labor and do all your work... JUDY FENTRESS-WILLIAMS: But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

BISHOP ROBERT BARRON: Keep it separate.

Uh, keep it set apart from the ordinary rhythm of time.

NORMAN WIRZBA: There's a good reason why, you know, historians are saying that post-WW II we entered the period called the, "Great Acceleration."

It's that people now feel the pacing of their lives has accelerated to a point where they don't have time to care for themselves.

They don't have time to care for family members.

RANDY ROBERTS: I think our culture right now is profoundly burned out.

TRICIA BRUCE: Two-thirds of Americans say that they're working more than 40 hours any given week.

We have to work more in order to sustain the same level of living.

THOMAS KIDD: The labor movement in America is a surprisingly, uh, religious story and it does often converge at the issue of Sabbath.

RABBI AMMIEL HIRSCH: Shabbat is a revolutionary concept.

It actually changed human history, uh.

For the first time it introduced the concept of mandated rest.

JUDITH SHULEVITZ: The very heart of the idea is a kind of workers' rights idea.

RICHARD RICE: Sabbath has ethical implications.

Work should not be what defines us as human beings.

SUSANNAH HESCHEL: It's a commandment.

It comes from God.

That's why we observe Shabbat.

JUDY FENTRESS-WILLIAMS: As a Christian, I don't think we take the Sabbath seriously enough.

NATHAN STUCKY: If Sabbath rest was going to flourish and live in their lives, something else was going to have to die.

PASTOR JEFFREY JOHNSON: And I just never had an appreciation for the Sabbath day or understanding of it.

All of that came to me recently, and I've been pastoring 34 years.

KHALID LATIF: A lot of what it translates into is, I wish I just had more time in which I just pause to breathe.

To think about what it was that I was actually chasing after.

J. DANA TRENT: We realize that time is our only non-renewable resource.

JOSEPH TOMS MCKELLAR: Latino Catholics identify with the story of Exodus, the story of the Israelites wandering the desert.

RABBI MANIS FRIEDMAN: It's like the whole week is hectic and then all of a sudden, you light the Shabbos candles and you're in a different world.

NORMAN WIRZBA: Sabbath isn't simply a pious teaching.

It's not an add-on.

What's at issue is the very meaning of life.

(reflective piano music swells over title).

NARRATOR: Major funding for this program was provided by Lilly Endowment.

Additional funding provided by the Fetzer Institute: Helping build the spiritual foundation for a loving world; Danny and Elissa Kido, The E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, and Skip and Fran Minakowski.

(industry sounds).

(mysterious orchestral music).

TRICIA BRUCE: Americans work hard.

Americans work long hours, but the sheer reality of it, too, is that our wages have stagnated so a lot of the overworking is actually also attributed to the fact that we have to work more in order to sustain the same level of living.

RANDY ROBERTS: People are on edge, they're emotional.

And I would say spiritual tanks are not full.

NORMAN WIRZBA: And in a global economy the worries come at you from every place imaginable, right?

People, even when they are not working, are thinking about their working.

They're worried about what the competition is doing.

JUDITH SHULEVITZ: There's a lot of talk about unplugging.

And there's an unplugging movement.

That we need to be able to not answer emails.

We need to be able to turn off our computers and have time together, which I think is true.

The thing that I think the unplugging movement misses is that we have to do this at the same time.

Because if we don't, we're never really gonna be able to relax.

Because we don't trust that our coworker is unplugging too.

SIGVE TONSTAD: I'm a specialist in internal medicine, somatic diseases, and what do we have in somatic realities that seem to indicate stress?

Well, one of the biggest expenditures in health plans are, are drugs for gastro esophageal reflux that you have heartburn.

It's a huge, huge, uh, expenditure.

And it is a symbol of stress.

TRICIA BRUCE: Overworking or working so much, working so many hours, um, has effects on all sorts of social aspects of our lives, um, including our relationships, uh, certainly our ability to devote time to the people that we love, including our family members, our spouses, our children.

SIGVE TONSTAD: We also have the very big item of, uh, drugs for mood disorders, uh, mild depression or moderate depression.

And I think these are markers of a, a stressed out society where we might have to look for some other reset, some other remedy.

And maybe the Sabbath could be that remedy.

NARRATOR: Sabbath is an ancient practice, rooted in the Biblical story of creation.

God, having made the world and, seeing it was good, rested.

And then in the Ten Commandments humanity was instructed to, "Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy."

Today, Sabbath is practiced by some as a 24-hour period that is both a commandment and a gift.

From a more secular perspective, it offers a respite from the pace of modern life.

For others, it's an invitation to reconnect with creation and to reimagine ideas of community in a time set apart from ordinary time.

All of it can be seen as part of the Sabbath story.

But there was a time not long ago when the Christian majority culture mandated Sabbath rest.

They were called Sunday Closing Laws or, "Blue Laws," designed to afford people time for God, family and rest.

(sound of footsteps).

FATHER EMMANUEL MORINELLI: When I grew up Sunday was sacred.

You couldn't buy liquor, you didn't do any work, you didn't do any shopping.

You couldn't because all the stores were closed... (chuckles).

You know?

JUDITH SHULEVITZ: The history of the word, "Blue," in Blue Laws either comes from the paper that the laws were written on, or it comes from a bit of 18th century slang that means overly strict.

(fiddle folk music).

THOMAS KIDD: They are descendants of the old Puritan laws about Sabbath observance.

You start to see references to the Blue Laws referring to these, uh, especially Sabbath regulations with regard to business on Sundays or prohibiting business on Sundays.

NARRATOR: For some, the Sunday laws were always seen as a violation of the First Amendment, the forcing of a religious practice onto the wider society.

ALAN REINACH: Sunday laws have always been rooted in religious tradition.

They have always been a form of favoritism of the majoritarian religion.

And they've always really violated the spirit of keeping church and state separate.

(slow pensive string music).

NARRATOR: In the early 1960s, the Sunday sales laws were challenged all the way up to the Supreme Court.

The court upheld the laws, claiming they had evolved into a secular custom with benefits for everyone.

Judge Felix Frankfurter, one of the first Jews appointed to the Supreme Court, called the Sunday Sales laws, "A secular, civic institution."

JUDITH SHULEVITZ: "The Sabbath is a cultural asset of importance, a release from the daily grind, a preserve of mental peace, an opportunity for self-disposition," which is I think the best argument for a secular Sabbath you could possibly have.

NARRATOR: Yet over the next decades the Sunday closing laws would start to look like a relic from a bygone era.

They became a reminder of the Puritan age that now seemed out of touch with a Sunday culture of leisure, sport and shopping.

ALAN REINACH: The demise of Sunday Blue Laws in this country, the real story is the, the, the triumph of commercialism.

That car dealers insisted on the right to sell cars on Sunday.

The, the mall stores, they were paying the same rent whether they were open or not.

NARRATOR: While the Sunday sales restrictions are mostly gone, one of the outliers is Bergen County, New Jersey, just across from New York City.

With a population of nearly one million people, Bergen County has kept Sunday sales laws on the books for centuries, and officials argue it has nothing to do with religion.

RICH LABARBIERA: Paramus in the '50s said, "Look, we're going to allow for very large malls, which is something that was new to this country.

In consideration of that we're going to make sure that they're not open seven days a week."

And it works.

And the thing I'd point out is that not only do we have so many malls but some of the most successful malls in the country.

On Sunday, it's the one day we could actually catch our breath and say, "Relax."

VINCENT VICARI: Citizens love the Blue Laws because it alleviates the traffic patterns on Sunday.

RICH LABARBIERA: Some people have attacked the, uh, basis for it and they've said it's based in, uh, religion, which may have started that way, but I've never associated our Blue Laws with, uh, religion.

Granted, the roots might go back, uh, in history to religion, but at least here in Paramus, that's the day that's always worked for us.

People want that Sunday off.

The last time the voters had a chance to vote on the Blue Laws, uh, it was back in the '80s.

And I believe by a margin of 12 to one, people wanted to keep their Blue Laws.

NARRATOR: Yet for many, across the ages, Sabbath or Shabbat has come to mean something far more important than closing the shop.

(singing in Hebrew).

SUSANNAH HESCHEL: The Sabbath doesn't come when you get home from work, finish cooking, go to the table, and then you begin the Sabbath.

Sabbath comes with, with the sunset.

The Sabbath arrives.

We don't make it arrive.

(Daniel Singer singing in Hebrew).

(Daniel Singer singing in Hebrew).

DANIEL SINGER: My name is Daniel Singer, I'm the cantor at Steven Wise Free Synagogue.

My title, cantor, is commonly known to be a musical term, but the original term for our profession is, "Hazzan."

(Daniel Singer singing in Hebrew).

Hazzan has the meaning of vision, a vision of a worship and bringing light to people through music.

(Woman and Daniel singing in Hebrew).

NARRATOR: Shabbat begins as the sun sets Friday evening with prayer and song in the synagogue, ending with the blessing.

DANIEL SINGER: The blessing over the bread is a reminder of our connection to the Earth.

(speaks Hebrew).

The drawing forth of bread from the Earth.

(family singing "Shabbat Shalom").

NARRATOR: And then each week, cantor Singer returns home to welcome in Shabbat with his wife, Lauren, and their sons.

(more singing "Shabbat Shalom").

LAUREN SINGER: Nice.

DANIEL SINGER: Nice.

You want to light some candles up?

I think we breathe a sigh of relief at the end of the week when we light the candles, and we just feel that kind of... (sighs).

It's good.

Shabbos is here.

RABBI MANIS FRIEDMAN: The magical transition from a weekday mentality to a Shabbat mentality begins with lighting the candles.

SUSANNAH HESCHEL: The candles themselves are so important.

It says in the Bible that the souls of human beings are candles of God.

(Singer family singing in Hebrew).

SUSANNAH HESCHEL: Everything is made to be beautiful, because that's also part of the Sabbath.

(Singer family singing in Hebrew).

DANIEL SINGER: Shabbat is not only for us, it's for our planet.

It's for us to heal the world, heal ourselves.

It's about smells, the smell of Shabbat.

There's light on Shabbat with the candles, there's tastes with the wine, with the challah.

The, the sustenance it brings us and it reminds us of our connection to one another and to the Earth.

RABBI AMMIEL HIRSCH: Shabbat is a revolutionary concept.

It actually changed human history, uh.

For the first time, it introduced the concept of mandated rest.

Shabbat shalom, everyone.

Shabbat shalom.

DANIEL SINGER: Shabbat shalom rabbi.

NARRATOR: At the morning Shabbat service, the community welcomes two young men for their bar mitzvahs.

RABBI AMMIEL HIRSCH: Evan, as you know, this is symbolic of the transmission of our tradition from Sinai until now.

It's about 3,500 years and counting.

You're the next link in the chain.

First of all a bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah is a rite of passage.

It marks the transition in Judaism from being a minor to being an adult of responsibilities in Judaism.

DANIEL SINGER: We mark the full recitation of the Torah by bringing out the Torah and dancing with it.

We do that every Shabbat at Stephen Wise.

We try to get everyone dancing.

We're going to be like Moses and Miriam and all the Israelites.

We're gonna dance and we're gonna sing the same song they sang, with timbrels in hand and we sing this song.

(clapping and singing in Hebrew).

(clapping and singing in Hebrew).

RABBI AMMIEL HIRSCH: They do appreciate the significance, the higher significance, the spiritual component of chanting Torah, uh, in front of the community.

And on behalf of the community for the first time.

RABBI AMMIEL HIRSCH: Religion is supposed to inject in people a sense of awe, a sense of marvel, a sense of wonder, a sense of sanctity.

All of those concepts, we try and bring out on Shabbat.

May God be with you all your days and grant you a lifetime of happiness, contentment, joy, creativity and peace.

Mazel tov.

DANIEL SINGER: Mazel tov!

(applause).

MICHAEL FISHBANE: And then we are given over to continue the work of cultivating the world, sanctifying the world, and living within the divine order that we don't undo this work of creation through our own human folly.

By placing ourselves within a spiritual consciousness of the Sabbath.

(birds chirping).

(peaceful music).

NORMAN WIRZBA: So we live in an industrial food system.

In which food just appears.

We have no idea of its coming to be.

We have no appreciation for its fragility, its vulnerability.

But agricultural people have known from the beginning, you can't ever take food for granted.

Right?

With the shopping experience you don't have a moral obligation to what you purchase.

It's mine.

But when you're in a garden, when you're on a farm, if you're a hunter or a gatherer, you know that you live by receiving life rather than grasping and purchasing life.

At the end of the day food is a gift.

NATHAN STUCKY: Farm plus seminary.

Smash it together.

You get Farminary.

The Farminary is a project at Princeton Theological Seminary Princeton, New Jersey.

And the big idea of the Farminary is to integrate these two things, the farm and the seminary.

So it's an integration of theological education, which is what typically happens at a seminary, and small-scale regenerative agriculture here at this 21-acre farm.

NARRATOR: For these seminary students, many of whom will be the next generation of pastors and church leaders, the Farminary is a hands-on way to confront deeper theological concerns that tie directly to the Biblical story of creation.

NATHAN STUCKY: We find ourselves living in the context of an exhausted world.

A world that bears the wounds of extraction, exploitation and alienation.

What difference does faith make in an exhausted world?

DENISE CARRELL: Wasn't it you that said, "I don't know how to listen to the land, not really?"

And I thought that was really a profound honesty.

EMMA LIETZ BILECKY: So earthworms are a good sign.

That mean our soil's alive.

I think about, like, limits.

You know, like limits to kind of the amount that we're able to take and making sure that's in proportion with what we're giving back to the ground.

For me, the Sabbath principle here is not taking too much from the soil.

NARRATOR: What better place than a working farm to experience up close nature's never ending cycles of birth and rebirth, life and death?

(squawking) NATHAN STUCKY: Oh, they're so excited!

MAN: Oh, yeah, that's a little gruesome.

NATHAN STUCKY: If somebody with a glove wants to just pitch the chicken head into the woods, somewhere, then it can feed other members of creation.

NARRATOR: And the natural world can also be unpredictable, and at times unforgiving.

Hurricane Ida in the fall of 2021, the Northeast hoped it might escape.

NATHAN STUCKY: But it just hammered us with rain.

And so we had flood waters up to here.

You can see the water mark on the sign right here where it changes color and then it settled right there for a while.

Water in all the buildings.

We lost probably 125 chickens.

All of the produce in the garden was, was rendered contaminated by FDA standards 'cause it came in contact with flood waters.

The impulse I think is to, like, "Well, we've gotta do something.

We've got to fix it."

And I think the Sabbath invitation is, "No, we probably just need to stop for a second."

WESLEY ROWELL: There was something about soil that felt really deeply ancestral to me.

And I think for people of my generation, like, "Let's stay away from that," because it also brings back that memory of like that forced labor, that plantation labor on a farm.

But I'm like, well I feel like I need to reclaim that... Just for myself.

NATHAN STUCKY: One of the things we have been painfully slow to recognize is that our exhaustion and the exhaustion of the broader creation are two sides of the same coin.

MAN: Mm-hmm.

NATHAN STUCKY: The creation is exhausted because we don't know how to stop.

There's not a single instance that I can find anywhere in Scripture where God gives Sabbath to an individual.

WOMAN: Mmm.

NATHAN STUCKY: It's always to the community.

It's to the whole of creation.

It's to the, the, the gathering of God's people.

Sabbath in all its fullness is an exercise of a community.

The resources to accept this may not live inside of us.

If they exist anywhere it's only in relationship with ourselves, with the broader creation, with the Creator.

(sound of receding footsteps).

(nature sounds).

SIGVE TONSTAD: The most important Sabbath text in my view is the story in Genesis.

God created, God completed, God rested on the seventh day and hallowed it.

(pensive guitar music).

RABBI MANIS FRIEDMAN: And what does it mean that God rests?

He likes the world.

He's content.

(waves crashing).

NORMAN WIRZBA: The Sabbath is actually the key that unlocks the meaning and significance of everything that God's doing in those six days making the world.

Because if you make a beautiful world you still have to answer the question; "Why?"

And Shabbat answers that by saying, "The point is to learn to love, delight in the goodness and the beauty that God has made."

And the reason you do that is because that's what God did.

(mysterious music).

NARRATOR: And yet out of that creation story came the harsh reality for the Israelites of years of enslavement by Pharaoh.

WALTER BRUGGEMANN: What we are told in the Exodus narrative is that Pharaoh kept imposing more and more severe work requirements on the Hebrew slaves.

So it seems to be that the commandments of Mount Sinai, the Ten Commandments and the Sabbath commandment are provisions for how to live life beyond the requirements of Pharaoh.

NARRATOR: But after centuries of captivity, the waters parted and Moses led his people to freedom.

PASTOR MICHAEL MICKENS: "Let my people go."

And one of the first things that you see being reinstituted there in the post-Exodus world of the Hebrews is this notion of Sabbath.

Sabbath essentially becomes, for all persons in the Hebrew community, a memorial of freedom.

NARRATOR: The rabbis would set about to codify what should be the structure of rest.

JUDITH SHULEVITZ: The rabbis propose, in the Talmud, 39 categories of work which are forbidden on the Jewish Sabbath.

They're called 39 Laws of, "Melachot."

If you look at the work that was forbidden, it's threshing, plowing, reaping, tying.

All kinds of things that a farmer would do.

RABBI MANIS FRIEDMAN: All of the labors that were necessary to construct the tabernacle are forbidden on Shabbat.

NARRATOR: But at its core, the laws of Shabbat were meant not only to cease from transforming the physical world, but to actively transform oneself.

MICHAEL FISHBANE: I don't go to work.

I have to dress differently.

I have to walk differently.

I have to speak differently.

The rabbis emphasize that those are aspects of Sabbath behavior.

It's a resting from constructive changes in the world.

At the same time, is allowing a, a space for spiritual consciousness to unfold.

(reflective orchestral music).

SIGVE TONSTAD: When Jesus comes, he makes a big deal of the Sabbath and he seems to have a preference for healing on the Sabbath, to deliver on the divine commitment, not divine commandment, as maybe his critics think about the Sabbath, but as divine commitment.

It's like he knows that he is inside a Sabbath story.

BISHOP ROBERT BARRON: It's the perfect day because the miracles of Jesus are not just...

They're not magic tricks.

"Watch me do something amazing."

What he does is he heals people.

He restores creation.

And so it's altogether appropriate that he would do that work precisely on the Sabbath.

NORMAN WIRZBA: So rather than saying Jesus abolishes the Sabbath and all of the teachings of the Sabbath, I say what Jesus is doing in his ministries is helping us understand, what would a Sabbath way of being look like when it encounters trouble, pain, suffering?

BISHOP ROBERT BARRON: But when Jesus says in regard to himself that the son of man is Lord of the Sabbath.

That's one of the most extraordinary claims he ever makes about himself.

You can't say anything higher than that.

In other words, he's saying, "I'm not just one more prophet among many.

I'm the creator God."

NARRATOR: But when Christ, who was a Sabbath keeping Jew, leaves Earth, those who followed faced a decision.

J. DANA TRENT: Do we remain a sect within Judaism or do we differentiate ourselves?

And the person who made that decision is Paul.

And Paul consistently sought to differentiate what became Christianity from being a sect of Judaism.

JUDY FENTRESS-WILLIAMS: Then we have the celebration of Christ's resurrection, which Scripture says happened on the first day of the week.

So we think there's a practice where the first Christians who were Jewish were going to, um, worship on the Sabbath.

That was when they worshiped.

And then on Sunday they would have a Eucharist, have a feast, if you will, celebrate the resurrection of Christ.

NARRATOR: Yet for the next several centuries, Christianity remained illegal throughout the Roman Empire, and acts of public worship could be severely punished.

But in the fourth century, the Emperor Constantine converted, and he transformed an ancient practice of honoring the Sun God into the Christian Sabbath.

JUDITH SHULEVITZ: So Constantine was no fool, and he understood that if he was going to Christianize his nation, he had to kind of build it on a scaffold that already existed, not try to fight against the practice of the Roman Empire.

So he sort of layered it on to, yes, a day that was set aside for the worship of the Sun God, hence Sunday.

J. DANA TRENT: Embedded in all of this is the ethos that Jesus is coming back right now.

And so each Sunday in this Christian movement became a little Easter.

It became a memorial to Christ's death and resurrection.

But more importantly, it was an urgency, an urgent gathering of prayer and study to bring about the second coming of Christ.

(vocalist singing in church).

TRICIA BRUCE: There are some 350,000 congregations in America.

Congregations are critical infrastructure for community life in the United States, and they have been historically, uh.

They still are today.

But a lot of congregations are struggling.

They're small.

I mean, some of the recent data says that the average congregation in the United States has only about 65 members.

But congregations increasingly see themselves as going out, going out into the communities, helping to meet needs and they see that as integral to their mission as much as they see filling the pews in their worship space.

(country sounding music).

PASTOR MICHAEL MICKENS: Welcome to Jackson, Mississippi.

It's a very historic, uh, city here.

Many of the families that are located here in this area here that we're getting ready to drive through are located immediately around our local church here.

We went, uh, door to door.

We went through every street of this local community and we did a community needs assessment.

And as we knocked on each door and we asked the local residents that live here, you know, what some of the needs were.

The number one need that seemed to come up the most over and over again, uh, was a need for improved, uh, health resources, health services.

Glory, glory Glory, glory Hallelujah Since I lay Since I lay My burden down Burden down PASTOR MICHAEL MICKENS: Father God, we thank you so much for this unique moment in time, this cathedral in time that you have stilled just for us when we keep the Sabbath the way that God intended by practicing righteousness, justice and compassion toward those most in need.

Then the Bible helps us to understand that we will experience all of the blessings of Sabbath that God has fashioned into the day.

WOMAN: Yeah!

PASTOR MICHAEL MICKENS: So many of Jesus's miracles were performed on the Sabbath.

And so we find that healing and health ministry on the Sabbath are beautifully aligned, uh, because they, they essentially reflect the healing ministry of Jesus.

NARRATOR: And that is why this congregation, in addition to building a food pantry and a clothing center, has launched its own community health clinic and announced the opening on Sabbath during its annual health fair.

PASTOR MICHAEL MICKENS: Every year for the last four and a half years, we have had a health fair in order to reach out to our community, reconnect with persons who may have fallen out of the healthcare system, individuals who may not have access to health care.

PHYLLIS JOHNSON: For the church from a cultural perspective in the, uh, Black community has always been important, uh.

There is that element of trust.

The church was always the safe haven.

It was the place where we could go, where we could get the correct information.

We could be told the truth.

NURSE: How long have you been a diabetic?

PATIENT: Oh, about 12 years.

NURSE: Okay.

So you kind of know what you can and can't eat.

And what affects your sugar?

PATIENT: Yeah.

COLLEEN MICKENS: The overall health situation here in Jackson, Mississippi, is, is pretty poor, to be completely honest.

The things that we're focused on here were prevention, such as for your diabetes, your high blood pressure, your various cardiovascular diseases, um, your cancer preventions, um.

And I particularly focus on exercise.

Some of them didn't necessarily realize the importance of exercise.

TRICIA BRUCE: So that social justice orientation absolutely plays out in how people choose congregations, find congregations, and then also how congregations find people and find ways to connect to their communities.

PASTOR MICHAEL MICKENS: There's a crisis happening in this neighborhood, every day when we keep the Sabbath the way that God intended, we will be practicing truth and love.

We will become a church with the heart for the city and our Sabbath worship experience will go from being a special day of worship just for us to a Sabbath for the city.

(gospel choir sings and voices fade out).

(adventurous music).

(sound of waves and ship creaking).

NARRATOR: To look closely is to discover a Sabbath theme underlying so much of the American story dating back to the beginnings.

JUDITH SHULEVITZ: One of the forces driving the Puritans from England to America was the opportunity to practice the Sabbath as strictly as they wanted.

They felt that in England, uh, it had become much too loose.

There was drinking.

There was dancing that was allowed on the Sabbath and they didn't agree with that.

THOMAS KIDD: Most notoriously, James the first, King James the first, in the 16-teens, had issued a book of sports where he permitted English people to, in, in free conscience, to engage in sporting activities on Sundays, which the Puritans didn't want to have happening at all.

So they thought that not only is this just strictly unbiblical, uh, but that it was, in, in effect, kind of inviting the judgment of God on, on England.

And so the Puritans think we have a unique opportunity, uh, almost unique in human history, to start over fresh and to see what it would be like to base a whole society on the moral law of God.

JUDITH SHULEVITZ: They were in church for four to six hours a day, even if it was really cold.

They had laws on the books that said if you violate the Sabbath, you can be put in stocks, which usually didn't happen.

Anybody engaging in commerce was violating the spirit.

Because if your competitor was selling on the Sabbath, then you would probably feel the need to sell on the Sabbath and you would lose that opportunity to enter the different order of time.

THOMAS KIDD: You take care of the poor.

Uh, you, you're, you're responsible to your neighbor, and you don't provoke God by violating the Sabbath.

(soft piano music).

Starting in about the 1790s, there is an outbreak nationally of what we generally call the second Great Awakening in America.

And this is a, a massive increase in religious adherence.

And that's the time when you see especially the Baptists and the Methodist denominations come to the fore.

And it's really, in a way, the most remarkable time of Christian growth in all of American history.

(blues like guitar music).

NARRATOR: But there is a parallel story because this was still a time when slavery was legal in many states.

And while the majority of the slaveholders were Sabbath-keeping Christians, a Sabbath day of rest for those they enslaved was never guaranteed.

JUDY FENTRESS-WILLIAMS: It, it should not be lost on us that these folks who practiced the Sabbath did not necessarily or always extend those rights to the people who worked in their households.

And we could argue, in fact, that their observance of the Sabbath was supported by those folks who worked in their households.

NARRATOR: One of the sad ironies in 18th century America comes in the form of the Philadelphia Liberty Bell.

Carved into it is the saying, "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."

It's taken from the Book of Leviticus, referring to the Sabbath idea of a Jubilee year when, according to biblical practice, all slaves are to be set free.

RABBI AMMIEL HIRSCH: Every living creature is entitled to rest on Shabbat.

We even have a, uh, a concept in the Bible of the sabbatical year and the Jubilee years that are connected to Shabbat.

The sabbatical year is every seven years, there's a year of rest, and then on the seventh of the seventh year, the 49th year, there's a year of rest.

And then there's a Jubilee year on the 50th year.

It's the Sabbath of Sabbaths.

NARRATOR: Yet for African-Americans held in bondage, somehow the idea of a Jubilee year, a year to be set free, rarely comes to pass.

THOMAS KIDD: There was a debate in the antebellum period about the morality of slavery in general, of course, and critics of slavery in America often pointed to the Jubilee expectations about freedom for slaves and criticized American slavery for being perpetual.

And they said, "Well, you say you're Christians, but you're not attempting to observe the Jubilee regulations about freedom after seven years for the slaves."

I am not aware of instances where Christian slave masters decided to free their slaves after seven years because of the Jubilee, uh, regulations.

JUDY FENTRESS-WILLIAMS: On different plantations, people were able to worship.

Um, often there was what we would call the official worship, right?

So that there would be a slave preacher who would come and essentially say to the slave, "Slaves, obey your masters and you'll go to heaven."

But I think one of the most powerful things that enslaved people did was worship on their own, um.

To sneak out into the woods late at night after working 12, 14, 16 hour days to worship freely in what they called the hush arbors or the brush arbors to call out on their God, on their own terms.

PASTOR MICHAEL MICKENS: And so in a lot of ways, Sabbath was the one day that they experienced some dimension or element of freedom.

Uh, they had a freedom to worship the God of their fathers, the God of their ancestors, and to call out to Him together in corporate solidarity.

(driving music).

(industry sounds).

NARRATOR: At the dawn of the 20th century, as the rights of workers began gaining ground.

Labor unions and Sabbath proponents found support in each other.

THOMAS KIDD: The labor union movement was usually very supportive of the idea of workers having Sundays off because they were so committed to the idea of limiting the maximum hours of work for, for individual workers.

So in many ways, uh, the, the labor movement in America is a surprisingly, uh, religious story, and it does often converge at the issue of Sabbath.

NARRATOR: But that was for Sunday Sabbath observers.

For those whose faith called them to honor a day other than Sunday.

It could be a very different reality.

RABBI MANIS FRIEDMAN: For the Jewish people, it is not an option.

It's a commandment.

And in many cases, Jews gave up their jobs, even gave up their lives rather than violate the Sabbath.

(organ music).

NARRATOR: And into the 20th century, Black people continued to turn to the church and the Sabbath observance as sanctuary from legalized segregation and Jim Crow laws.

JUDY FENTRESS-WILLIAMS: So that over time church for Black people became everything.

This is the place where I'm not wearing a uniform.

So, for some people, dressing up on Sunday was a huge deal.

You weren't wearing whatever you had to wear to work in someone's house.

In worship or in church on Sunday, African-Americans had dignity.

They not only got to dress up, but someone who was a nameless, faceless worker out there in a field somewhere got to be Deacon so-and-so, and he got to sit up front and have a role of authority and assume a role that he could not ordinarily.

So people who had to make their way through the world with their heads down and their shoulders hunched over, got to sit up straight.

PASTOR JEFFREY JOHNSON: We had Black churches because Black people were not allowed into the White churches, but it became a place of community, a place to be loved.

So the Black church, as that's a part of our history, but is also a part of who we are right now.

(sounds of cars driving on road).

I never had a right understanding of the Sabbath, ever.

I never thought much about it.

I never applied it to my life.

All of that came to me recently and I've been pastoring 34 years.

NARRATOR: Jeffrey Johnson is senior pastor at Eastern Star Baptist Church in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Eastern Star has three large church locations about 20 miles apart.

So every Sunday, Pastor Johnson rises early and drives from church to church to church.

It's precisely timed to arrive at each site just in time to deliver the sermon to thousands in the pew and online.

He's been doing it for over 30 years.

And this Sunday is Easter, Resurrection Sunday.

My Jesus died Died on On Calvary He didn't have to do it I'm so glad that he did I didn't have to do it No, no, no, no Surely, surely He reigns over All the Earth He reigns over all PASTOR JEFFREY JOHNSON: I want us to understand the reality of the resurrection.

That it is, it is not some metaphor.

It's not some allegory.

It's not some illustration.

Jesus literally died.

He physically got up.

That God did raise Jesus from the dead.

I, I like the different locations and I don't mind the driving.

But in that 25 minutes, uh, I'm editing the sermon.

But it's not just peace with God.

We have the peace of God.

Well, Pastor, "What is the peace of God?"

That means whatever is going on around you.

All hell could be breaking loose around you.

But inside of you, there is calmness.

You have this coolness.

Woke me up this morning Started me on my way Put food on my table PASTOR JEFFREY JOHNSON: On a normal Sunday between the three worship services, I'm probably going to hear anywhere from 15 to 20 gospel songs, uh, between those, those three services.

But you need to know I'm the only one at my church that can't sing.

Everybody at East Star Church has a gift of singing.

(gospel music) I got pulled over one time by the police and, uh, and I'm, I'm moving, you know, and he, and he just, he pulled me over and I said, "Officer, I'm just trying to get to these services."

He said, "Pastor, can you just slow down?

That's all."

And he left me alone.

The people out in, in Fishers, Indiana, they're not necessarily wealthy, but they're not struggling to pay their mortgage.

And that's different from in Arlington Woods, where you got people making $25,000 a year trying to raise three kids.

Now, Lord, you know what each person is going through.

You know what we're up against.

You know what's happening in our lives.

NARRATOR: So after three decades of pastoring and a discernment process of ten years, Pastor Johnson, along with his wife Sharon, committed to taking a sabbatical.

PASTOR JEFFREY JOHNSON: The, the way I came into taking a sabbatical was listening to other pastors, some of my friends, some, uh, I, I would say my, my mentors and just hearing their take on the Sabbath.

And for some of them it was a negative.

I never took one, and I saw what not taking one did to them.

I just, I had not seen it modeled in front of me.

I have not heard anybody put emphasis on it.

So before I left, I spent a year preaching and teaching.

Then we had to prepare the staff and we prepared the congregation so that when I left, they were ready for it.

So we spent a month in a mountain.

And then my wife and I spent a month on a rural beach.

And then the last month, uh, we had our family to come and spend time with us.

When I was gone for six months, our staff, they went from a five day workweek to a four day workweek.

And, uh, so to give them additional rest as well.

NARRATOR: And after six months, the Johnsons return.

WOMAN: Welcome back, pastor!

PASTOR JEFFREY JOHNSON: Good morning.

WOMAN 2: Good morning.

WOMAN 3: Wait, you're back!

You look well rested.

(applause).

PASTOR JEFFREY JOHNSON: I was glad when they said unto me, "Let us go into the house of the Lord."

(cheers and applause).

PASTOR JEFFREY JOHNSON: Bless the Lord with my soul and with all that is within me.

Bless his holy name.

My soul will be...

These are the, the homes that we built.

We provided the land and the volunteers and Habitat for Humanity came in and did these two.

NARRATOR: The neighborhood around the main church is the very community where Pastor Johnson was born.

PASTOR JEFFREY JOHNSON: This has been a community that has been one of the most economically deprived communities, not just in Indianapolis, not just in the state of Indiana, in the nation.

And so you talk about a food desert, an economical desert, an employment desert, a educational desert, a financial desert.

And so now we're starting to make a difference in this community.

NARRATOR: And by pulling together support from across the community, Eastern Star has opened its own grocery store, and the new Rock Community Center that will care for and educate young people throughout the area.

PASTOR JEFFREY JOHNSON: You can change a neighborhood, but you've got to do it one block at a time.

We can't change all of Indianapolis, so we're going to do a mile radius to start.

We worship together.

We praise God together.

We serve together.

And we rest together.

We Sabbath together.

To Christ in this church.

RABBI MANIS FRIEDMAN: I've got to tell you this story.

We're at a hotel for, for Shabbat.

And we made all the arrangements with the hotel telling them that we can't use the electronic doors and the elevators and escalators and.

But one of the staff, one of the rabbis, ended up in a room on the 12th floor.

So he has to take the steps.

He can't use the elevator or the escalator, and then he has an electronic door and he can't use that either.

So he asks one of the staff members to meet him on the 12th floor and open the door for him.

So the staff member takes the elevator to the 12th floor and he climbs 12 flights of stairs and he meets him at the door.

And the rabbi is totally exhausted.

(laughs quietly).

So the, the staff member says, "What is it about today that you can't open the door?"

And the rabbi says, "Well..." (pants).

"Today..." (pants).

"Today is our, our day of rest."

(laughs).

(applause).

JOSEPH TOMS MCKELLAR: I'm really compelled by what Pope Francis says about the Sabbath.

And Pope Francis says that if you have the right to work, you also have the right to rest.

And as a community organizer, as a Latino Catholic, um, I am concerned, as the Pope is, about the things that get in the way of people's ability to practice Sabbath, because more and more, our economy is designed to keep people in a constant state of work just in order to survive.

THOMAS KIDD: America has always been classically a, a nation of immigrants, but immigrants have always also been disproportionately religious.

You're in an unfamiliar place.

You look for people who are like you, who have common values and that, that story, uh, endures through present day America.

CHARLIE ECHEVERRY: If you look at the entire church in the U.S., um, you know, both Protestant and Catholic together, or even Orthodox.

The percentage of those believers of those Christians that are Latino is about 20 to 23%.

In the Catholic Church, it's double that.

40% of all Catholics in the U.S. right now are Latino or Hispanic.

The younger you go, the more Hispanic it gets.

The Latino population is growing very, very quickly.

But the great irony in this is that that's also the group that's leaving the church the fastest.

(lively mariachi music).

(lively mariachi music).

NARRATOR: In downtown Los Angeles, across the street from the historic city plaza is Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church.

Because of its long association with the square, the church has come to be known as, "La Placita," the Little Plaza.

ELISA NEVAREZ: La Placita is a landmark.

It's a landmark in many ways.

Not only is it one of the oldest churches in California, but it's a place where people still come to continue their faith.

This is where they bring their children.

JOSEPH TOMS MCKELLAR: La Placita is a significant part of Los Angeles history.

And to this day, it continues to be kind of a place of migration, a place of refuge and rest, a place of community.

FATHER ARTURO CORRAL-NEVAREZ: Most of the people that we have in our congregation are Hispanic people.

And most of them are Mexicans from different areas, and especially from Guatemala and El Salvador.

NARRATOR: Outside on the church wall is the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, one of the most iconic religious images in the Western world.

For many, it's the first stop on the way to Sunday mass.

JOSEPH TOMS MCKELLAR: And I think the people who worship at La Placita carry all kinds of burdens and all kinds of hopes as people who are either immigrants themselves or are not that far removed from the story of their families being immigrants, which is to have one foot in one world and another foot in this world, in the city of Los Angeles.

(piano and operatic singing).

JOSEPH TOMS MCKELLAR: I think it is the case that immigrants, Latino Catholics identify with the story of Exodus, the story of the Israelites wandering the desert for 40 years under a brutal empire dictated by Pharaoh.

And I think there's a role for the church in helping people connect back to the story of, of a, of a people who collectively cried out to God in their suffering.

NARRATOR: Weekends at La Placita will mean eight masses, all in Spanish, and half of them celebrated by Father Arturo.

And it's not unusual to perform as many as 60 baptisms over several days.

BISHOP ROBERT BARRON: What we're savoring there is eternal life.

What we're savoring is this new life in Christ.

These children are brought into the mystical body of Jesus.

Of course, it's, it's hyper appropriate on a Sabbath day.

CHARLIE ECHEVERRY: The rubrics of the Liturgy of Baptism actually call for wherever possible, baptisms to happen in the context of the Sunday liturgy.

The Sabbath for, from a Catholic perspective is so meaningful and why it should happen in Sundays, because that's when the community tends to be there.

And you're not only just being baptized into Christ, but you're being baptized into this broader community.

(mariachi music).

(singing in Spanish).

(singing in Spanish).

ELISA NEVAREZ: We try to keep one mass with a mariachi at all times.

There's nothing more cultural to the Hispanic community than to hear a mass with a mariachi.

(Woman sings in Spanish).

(Woman sings in Spanish).

(Woman sings in Spanish).

NARRATOR: La Placita offers a window into the Sabbath story at the intersection of the Old World and the new America.

ELISA NEVAREZ: Coming to Mass on Sunday is something mandatory if you're a Catholic.

Your parents teach you this, on Sunday, you go to church.

You think of Sunday as a day to go worship God, thank God.

And it's something that families have done for generations.

CHARLIE ECHEVERRY: And so the drawback of growing up in that really deeply woven, uh, Latino culture is that some of the aspects of the faith can be very cultural, very much about a family custom or, "This is just the way we do it," but there's not the kind of intellectual grappling with, "Well, what are we doing and why are we doing it?"

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia JOSEPH TOMS MCKELLAR: And many of the people who go to La Placita are there as people who are workers.

They are laborers.

They work in the service and entertainment industry.

They work in restaurants.

They're the people who are the backbone of our economy.

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia FATHER ARTURO CORRAL-NEVAREZ: Most of the people who are coming to our parish are workers.

When they receive communion, they extend the hands and most of the hands are worker, worker hands.

FATHER ARTURO CORRAL-NEVAREZ: Some other people needs to hear stories of salvation or because they are struggling with some stories in family and, and the society.

And they find also a point of reference through the, the readings.

(lively Latin music).

ELISA NEVAREZ: There's a lot of people that the church has become their family and that's where they eat.

They eat out in the courtyard after mass or before mass.

And it's just part of what Sunday means to us.

TRICIA BRUCE: A part of what we've seen in the Catholic, uh, parish landscape in particular is Catholics increasingly taking ownership over where they want to go to church and, and what that experience looks like.

And there's data on Catholics driving farther and farther to get to a parish where they feel at home, where they feel like they can rest.

And oftentimes that means at home, among others, that they feel comfortable around.

FATHER ARTURO CORRAL-NEVAREZ: Hispanic, uh, people, most of the time, we arrive a little late for celebration.

And I saw when I am already inside of the church celebrating how many people's are arriving and struggling with the kids because they are late.

And there is a transformation at the end of the mass that at the end the families go in peace.

(mariachi music).

JOSEPH TOMS MCKELLAR: So the question during the Sabbath is not, "What should I do?"

And in many ways, I think that's the question for us as a society.

It's not, "What should we do to solve all of the inequalities, injustices in the world around us?"

But, "Who do we need to become?"

(mariachi music and singing).

(mariachi music and singing).

(applause) WOMAN: Que viva la Virgen de Guadalupe!

ALL: Que viva!

NARRATOR: Coming up in part two of Sabbath...

RABBI MANIS FRIEDMAN: There's a famous saying more than Jews have kept the Shabbos, the Shabbos has kept the Jews.

NORMAN WIRZBA: We're living in a profoundly anti Sabbath culture.

RON PICKELL: They either like really go deeper in their faith or they walk away.

CHARLIE ECHEVERRY: There was a time when every parish, for the first time in American history, every parish was closed.

BISHOP ROBERT BARRON: I think Catholics have, have lost a lot of the sense of the Sabbath.

FATHER SIMEON LEIVA-MERIKAKIS: The whole way of life is kind of sabbatical.

DAVID SEIDEBERG: And the Sabbath is made to teach humanity something.

KHALID LATIF: What is the act of beauty that's going to come for me today?

Who am I going to be a source of light for?

ANNA SERVIANSKY: You're learning about Shabbat by experiencing Shabbat.

(gentle music).

NARRATOR: For more information about this film or the practice of Sabbath visit journeyfilms.com.

(gentle music over credits).

(gentle music over credits).

Major funding for this program was provided by Lilly Endowment.

Additional funding provided by the Fetzer Institute: Helping build a spiritual foundation for a loving world.

Danny and Elissa Kido, The E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation and Skip and Fran Minakowski.