The liturgy or ritual language of a religion often can tell us a great deal about the system of belief of the religion. Liturgy is the shared language of prayer, thanksgiving, blessing, and sanctification (blessing). Since liturgy is repeated and standardized language, it can express the repeating events and themes that make up life. There is a liturgy for every morning, every afternoon, and evening in Judaism; there is a liturgy to accompany the holidays of the year; there is a liturgy for circumcision, marriage, and death. Jewish liturgy expresses the idea that life can be molded to conform to a repeating pattern, and that the repeating pattern is God's system for leading a holy life.
Perhaps the most important liturgy in Judaism is that for the Sabbath day. The Sabbath in Judaism is not just a day of rest, but a day on which to experience life in conformity with God's holy pattern. On the Sabbath the Jewish people are supposed to "step back" from the "busyness" of their lives, and look at the whole of time as God's work, from the creation of the world to the creation of the Jewish people (as described in the Bible, when Moses took the people to Mt. Sinai to receive the law) and finally to the hoped-for redemption of the Jewish people and all humanity. On the Sabbath, the Jewish people have a chance to see all of time from God's own perspective. They are not supposed to start new projects or bring old ones to completion; they are not supposed to do anything that brings something new into the world by virtue of their active will (of course, if, for example, a baby is born on Sabbath that is considered a welcome interruption in the routine of the Sabbath). They are only supposed to view time from God's perspective, where everything is finished and complete.
The Sabbath liturgy expresses praise, thanks, and sanctification of the past, present, and future of all time as the perfect pattern designed by God. In this perfect pattern, three apects, roughly corresponding to the past, present, and future, stand out: creation, revelation, and redemption. Creation is what God accomplised in the first six days of the world according to the Bible (although it is believed that every new day is a renewal of creation). Revelation took place when God gave the Jewish people the law at Mt. Sinai, but it is believed to continue on into the present when the Jewish people study the law. The Jewish people live in the present in conformity with God's revelation. Redemption is the promise of peace and the end of suffering expressed in the Bible in the words of the prophets, and it is what the Jewish people hope for in the future. So, creation, revelation, and redemption are God's patterning of time past, present, and future. The Sabbath liturgy takes the Jewish people through these three aspects, from the evening litury, to the morning liturgy, to the afternoon liturgy, one full day. (The Jewish day begins at sunset and ends at sunset.) In one day, all of time is "summed up."
In order to see how this is so, you need to look at the central piece of the liturgy for each of these three times of day, the Amidah or Standing Prayer. It is found complete on pages 6-13 for the Evening Service, and one section of the Amidah is found on pages 24-25 for the morning service, and one section on page 26 for the afternoon service. (Page numbers refer to the numbering of the Course Reader pages.) If you examine the section in the center of the Amidah which changes from evening to morning to afternoon, the section which I have placed brackets around for the evening Amidah and which is the only section I included for the morning and afternoon Amidahs, also with brackets, you will see how the themes of the Sabbath day move from Creation to Revelation to Redemption.
Questions:
How does this central section reflect the movement of time itself from creation, through revelation, to redemption? How is the Sabbath itself seen as the ultimate meaning of each of these three aspects of time? How would you describe the significance of the Sabbath for the Jewish people in the light of the words of the Sabbath liturgy?