Radical Rest

Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it. (Exodus 20: 8-11)

Someone has said that in our high-pressure, consumerist, business-driven culture, the most radical thing to do is to pause and do nothing. In fact, it’s not just radical, it is revolutionary. But radical is a good word to use, because it means getting to the root of things. And when considering spiritual things, returning to the Bible is a good way to get back to the root.

So it is that when we return to the Bible we find that the idea of pausing, taking a rest, and not being a slave to “productivity” goes way back, in fact, back to the Beginning:

On the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation (Genesis 2:2-3).

This idea of resting and doing no work extended throughout the Israelite tradition, and was made explicit in the Holiness Code in Exodus and Deuteronomy. It is summed up in the Fourth Commandment quoted at the head of this blog.

The idea of keeping Sabbath, of resting from one’s labors, was extended even to the land, and to personal indebtedness and servitude:

The Lord said to Moses on Mount Sinai, "Say to the people of Israel, 'When you come into the land which I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in its fruits, but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath to the Lord; you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard'" 
(Leviticus 25: 1-5).“You shall count off seven weeks^* of years, seven times seven years, so that the period of seven weeks of years gives forty-nine years. Then you shall have the trumpet sounded loud; on the tenth day of the seventh month—on the day of atonement—you shall have the trumpet sounded throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you: you shall not sow, or reap the aftergrowth, or harvest the unpruned vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you shall eat only what the field itself produces” (Leviticus 25:8-12).

One of the core spiritual issues we all have is thinking that our only worth as persons has to do with how much we produce, or how much we do. I remember when my grandfather was in his late 80s lamenting about how useless he felt. This was a man who had worked hard through the Depression to keep the family ranch together in northern Idaho, who rode miles everyday on horseback, who tossed hay into the barnloft from the ground, who was sought after as a ranch foreman as far away as Montana, and after he retired from farming still mowed the lawn at the nursing home in town. He had never been idle. But as his body was less able to do what he had done for seventy years, he began to wonder about his value and place in the world.

Our nation has been built through the labors of millions of people who focused their energies and abilities to improve their lives and to create a new life. While there is much to show for this, there is also a price that has been paid – and that is at the level of the soul. Jesus addressed it poignantly one day when an ambitious and successful young man came to him inquiring about the kingdom of heaven:

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honour your father and mother.” ’ He said to him, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.’ Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’ And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’ They were greatly astounded and said to one another, ‘Then who can be saved?’ Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible’ (Mark 10:17-27).

The rich young man’s whole identity was wrapped up in his wealth, possessions and accomplishments. Continully Jesus teaches that we are more than the things we possess. In fact, the things we possess can block us from entering into the life of depth, joy and beauty of life that the realm of God represents.

Keeping Sabbath, resting from all our busy-ness helps us to reevaluate who we are, and what our core identity is. In fact, it helps us shift the focus from thinking we make ourselves to remembering that we do not live by bread alone, or by the sweat of our brows alone, “but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:3).

I was ordained a Deacon in the United Methodist Church in 1983, and an Elder in 1989. In 1980 I began my service as a summer supply preacher in western Oregon. During Seminary I served an internship in Portland, and my first appointment was in 1986. I have served churches on and off ever since then, with a break only to attend graduate school. Much of my self-identity has been built around my work as a pastor to the extent that I have come to believe that everything about the success or failure of the churches I serve hinges upon me. I have become identified with the outcomes of everything that happens at church. This identification with my work has become the “possessions” about which Jesus spoke. It doesn’t help that the General Church as well as the Annual Conference hierarchy is looking to scrutinize the “outcomes” of pastoral work in order to determine pastoral “effectiveness.” The denominational embrace of quantifiable measures of “success” and “effectiveness” are hard to square with the teachings of Jesus.

But if I am to be a follower of Jesus first and foremost, I must seek his voice, and consider deeply the implications of his Way for my life. And this requires a Sabbath. This requires time to disconnect my car from the freight train that has been running my life for many years. This is the purpose of Sabbath rest: to disconnect from the out-of-control freight engine of our world as it is today, and reconnect with the One who is in control, and who knows and loves me at the deep places of my life. It is this One who spoke to me many years ago up at Camp Sawtooth, asking me “Who do you think you’re fooling?” and turned my life around. This One is asking me the same questions today, and I need to take time away from the church to dwell in that question.

I will be gone from June 25-September 15 finding places and ways to rest, to ponder, to pray, to be quiet, to paint and to write. All that time I will be listening. God only knows what I will hear – and what I will bring back to share.