CREEDE HINSHAW: A conductor keeps the Sabbath

I enjoy the radio program “Performance Today” hosted by Fred Child on National Public Radio. Having grown up in a home where Ravel’s Bolero was the only classical music I heard and with a father who dismissed the classical genre as “long-hair music,” I diddled my way through the mandatory college freshman music appreciation class, preferring the sophisticated songs of Freddie and the Dreamers, the Troggs, Question Mark and the Mysterians and other geniuses.

Yes, this is a confession.

Though I’ll never make up for the knowledge of classical music I missed, I find myself now inspired by classical compositions past and present that can touch the deepest places of the heart. As I write this column I am listening to Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4 on Spotify.

Earlier this week, Fred Child spoke about Swedish Conductor Herbert Blomstedt (born 1927), the Conductor Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Blomstedt, a Seventh-day Adventist, faithfully observes the command to refrain from all labor on the Sabbath (for Adventists, from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday) by refusing to conduct rehearsals during that holy day.

This is a challenging decision for one whose primary work day is on Friday and/or Saturday. But though Blomstedt will not rehearse on the Sabbath, he will conduct an orchestral performance on that holy day. He has reasoned that a rehearsal is work whereas conducting the performance itself is a joyful and creative expression of his faith in God.

Here is where the reader might expect the columnist to rip into this distinction. Blomstedt’s distinction might leave him open– in some quarters – to derision. Some critics will self-righteously judge that this conductor is fooling himself and dishonoring the Sabbath. They would say that one either keeps Sabbath completely or not at all.

I disagree. Each person must come to his or her own terms with what it means to work on the Sabbath, even as persons of faith draw different conclusions on which day is Sabbath. In the parallel example of sermon preparation and preaching, for instance, I sometimes found that the sermon preparation was fun, whereas preaching that sermon was hard work. At other times, the preparation was sheer drudgery while the sermon was pure joy. It is not easy to define what constitutes “work” on the Sabbath.

Mr. Blomstedt is to be commended for his effort to reason and pray his way through what it means to take Sabbath seriously. The fact that he is trying to sort out how to honor God and the 4th commandment places him in a slim minority. Far too many otherwise religious people blithely go through their Sabbaths without the least bit of examination of what it means to keep the Sabbath.

How long has it been since you’ve examined your approach to Sabbath keeping? Is it time for a fresh appraisal of what it means to keep that day holy? Such an appraisal can be very rewarding.

Email columnist Creede Hinshaw, a retired Methodist minister, at [email protected].