The Second Sabbath Compromise

Breaking Bread, Not the Sabbath

To my fellow/former SDAs: did you ever run into a weird instance where everyone agreed to bend the rules together, almost like, “if we all do it, how mad could God get?” kind of thing? What was the rationale for that?

I’ll give you an example: from sunset Friday to sunset on Saturday we ‘voluntarily’ would not work, buy, or sell. We also wouldn’t make you work, buy, or sell (as a stranger within our gates, wherever those gates were that day)¹.

This meant that if you were going to eat on Saturday, the food needed to be prepared before the sun set on Friday. You couldn’t cook on Saturday, and you couldn’t make someone else cook for you on Saturday. No cooking. No restaurants. No takeout. It’s inconvenient, but you get used to it at home. It only becomes complicated when you’re away.

Once a year, we would have Camp Meeting for the Southwest Region Conference at Lone Star Camp somewhere between Athens and Tyler, Texas from the second weekend through the third weekend of July (shout out to any Southwest Region alumni out there!) After a week of eating in the camp cafeteria - all vegetarian, all the time - or whatever you brought with you in coolers, by the ‘second sabbath’ many of us were done with Veja-Links.

So we came up with what I will call the Second Sabbath Compromise.

Around 20 miles away from camp, back in town (whether it was Athens or Tyler, I do not remember), there was a Golden Corral. If you are unfamiliar, Golden Corral is a magical place that provides you with food that looks like popular foods from all around the world. It’s sort of like a highlight reel of scenes from your favorite films, but when you look, it's all just Frank Caliendo. (Whether that is an insult or a compliment really says more about your opinion of Frank and Golden Corral than it does mine. It's simply a great analogy.)

Anyway, at the Golden Corral in Tyler or Athens, they serve this cornucopia of culinary accomplishment to everyone all at once; buffet-style.

Meaning:

1.) No one is taking your order or cooking the food especially for you. You are not asking a restaurant to be open at a time it would not otherwise be, and they’re cooking that food anyway.

2.) It’s a flat fee: the buffet costs what it costs, no matter what you eat, which means you can pay for it in advance! You could pay for 4 buffets (2 adults and 2 kids until that second kid couldn’t possibly still be under 12 because I saw him park the car) the day before and have them mark the receipt as a coupon to come back Saturday after the big tent sermon. In fact, it’s a wonderful opportunity to witness about the Sabbath by telling the person at the counter about how you’re about to skirt right around it.

You may think, why would Golden Corral agree to such a strange arrangement? Why do people rob banks?

The third Saturday of July, the Second Sabbath of Southwest Regions Camp-Meeting was by far the best business that restaurant saw all year. Every year. They saw a steady stream of cars from the Lone Star campgrounds to their serving trays and back, starting 20 minutes after the choir stopped singing after the first service, to when the band started back up that night for the service in the evening. In a couple of hours, the Adventists that didn’t cheat the system would show up. Every booth and table were full; every person on staff was on shift; and every patron was an Adventist. There wasn’t a local in sight. The cars in the parking lot were from the six different states that make up this Regional Conference, and most had Adventist-themed vanity plates. Every person eating inside this rural Texas town on a Saturday afternoon looked like they’d just come from church.

Year after year you’d see the same faces. The kid who stole the youth choir solo from me cut me in line for the chicken legs. The guy my sister was flirting with on the swings on Wednesday held the door for us on our way in. The line to wait for a table was...well, buffets aren’t even supposed to have those.

I can’t say the entire camp went out there. Obviously not. But enough of these families had come up with this idea and passed it along that kept that Golden Corral humming all Sabbath long. They definitely had to work harder that Saturday than any other day that week, if not all year, but somehow we hadn’t broken the Sabbath or made them do it either.

Because we’d all paid for it on Friday, and it was a buffet. It somehow wasn’t ‘breaking the Sabbath.’

Now, did we ever go to a buffet, using this same rationale, on any other Saturday throughout the year?

No.

Not once.

But in a sizeable group? Already at Camp Meeting? After a week of sending up praise and worship?

What was He going to do?

Who else did He have to save?

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^{1Exodus 20:8}“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.⁹Six days you shall labor and do all your work,¹⁰but theseventh day is a sabbathto the Lord your God. On ityou shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter,nor your male or female servant, nor your animals,nor any foreigner residing in your towns.¹¹For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.