Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

by A.J. Swoboda

more critical than a gift is how we handle the gift.

The Sabbath is a gift we do not know how to receive. In a world of doing, going, and producing, we have no use for a gift that invites us to stop. But that is the original gift: a gift of rest.

When all is said and done, the worst thing that has happened to the Sabbath is religion. Religion is hostile to gifts. Religion hates free stuff. Religion squanders the good gifts of God by trying to earn them, which is why we will never really enjoy a sacred day of rest as long as we think our religion is all about earning.

Sabbath goes against the very structure and system of the world we have constructed. Sabbath, then, becomes a kind of resistance to that world.3 Such resistance must be characterized as overwhelmingly good. In other words, if the Sabbath is hard, then we are doing it right.

I have come to believe that Sabbath cannot save your soul, but it very well may save your life.

Ideas are not neutral, be they religious, philosophical, or scientific. Cultural critic and historian Howard Zinn once wrote, “We can reasonably conclude that how we think is not just mildly interesting, not just a subject for intellectual debate, but a matter of life and death.”7 Christian philosopher Dallas Willard agrees: “We live at the mercy of our ideas.”8 Christ followers, for this reason, must awaken to their calling to critically examine each and every idea, eschewing any false security within the safe harbor of anti-intellectualism.

Ideas

Avoidance of critically examining our ideas, in the end, is the worst (and least Christian) idea of them all.

Ideas

The result of our Sabbath amnesia is that we have become perhaps the most emotionally exhausted, psychologically overworked, spiritually malnourished people in history.

Those two candles are a reminder, the rabbis insisted, that Sabbath observance depended on Sabbath remembrance. To do, one must first remember.

Remember

To keep a Sabbath is to give time and space on our calendar to the grace of God.

Keeping Sabbath

Imagine what Adam and Eve learned about God’s generosity from their first impression of him on their first day. Their first knowledge of God and the world God had made was that rest was not an afterthought—rest was of first importance.

Sabbath is, in my estimation, the first image of the gospel in the biblical story.

Sabbath As the gospel

That is the human condition: to forget, to add, to subtract, or even to bend God’s good word so that it fits our own selfish liking.

Addition and subtraction are simply different ways of forgetting what God has said.

To be a Christian was, and is, to reorient one’s entire life and death around Jesus Christ. Sabbath is an orientation as well—an all-encompassing turning toward the Creator God that changes everything about our lives. Sabbath is that kind of complete reorientation of our lives toward the hope and redemption of Christ’s work.

The prominent role that time plays in the Genesis narrative resulted in time being understood as sacred, or of ultimate importance, for Jewish faith.

Sabbath is a moment of eternal glory momentarily breaking into our finite, present world.

The seven-day week is not the result of human ingenuity; rather, it is a reflection of God’s brilliance.

That is, what God commands us to do tells us something of who God is. God invites us to rest. And God rests.

The Sabbath day is a holy day. Interestingly, the only thing God deems as qadosh, or “holy,” in the creation story is the Sabbath day. The earth, space, land, stars, animals—even people—are not designated as qadosh. The Sabbath day was holy.

Adam and Eve were invited to “keep” that seventh day holy. Do not misread the text: they were not to make the Sabbath holy. Humans cannot make anything holy. The day’s holiness is assumed. They were to keep the Sabbath holy, which was already holy before they came to it.34

Consider the final words of the old English martyr John Bradford, who reportedly declared as he died on the stake: “Look at creation—look at it all! This is the world God has given to his enemies; imagine the world he will give to his friends.”37 Bradford’s point: we cannot even begin to imagine heaven’s mangoes or Indian food.

The Sabbath is celebration, a day of rejoicing over the goodness of what has been made and who made it.

This first “not good” reveals to us something about humanity’s nature. Namely, God did not create human beings to exist with God alone. Adam needed food, water, rest, and relationship. In fact, God’s design for humanity was complete only in relationship with God and others.

If God is sovereign and the “first good” comes before sin invades the world, then why did God wait to create the woman until later? In my mind, there can be only one rationale: God desired Adam to have a deep recognition of his own needs.

Humility is essentially that: recognizing our own needs and our ultimate inability to fulfill them by ourselves.

Likewise, the need for rest, or Sabbath, is not an aftertaste of human sinfulness, unlike our chronic inability to receive rest. In fact, as we shall see, Sabbath is a foretaste of heaven.

[but] human beings can voluntarily wreck their lives by running afoul of the laws that govern their nature. This is indeed a sort of freedom, but it can hardly be the best sort.”

Sabbath and restoration are quite synonymous in God’s vocabulary. To Sabbath is to live as God intended. When we enter into that rest, it is like entering back into Eden.

Sabbath and marriage are similar in that they are legal terms utilized later to establish what humanity needed to do after its created purpose was usurped.

Sabbath day is not merely stopping our work; it is also stopping our thinking and scheming about work.

The Sabbath makes room for us to play outside once again, like when we were kids.

Work was not, and is not, punishment for sin. Work precedes sin.

Although work is holy, the human tendency as a result of sin is to exalt work as the central part of the human vocation. But work, or activity, is not our core identity.

Rather, work is a reflection of Sabbath-keeping. Work is a benefit of our rest.

Sin, in the words of Sandra Richter, causes work to become about “perspiration-inducing fear.”13 Humanity ceases to work as God intended and starts to worry about its work identity.

Work

After sin, work that was originally entered into as an act of worship became the thing we worshiped. I think God knew humanity would sin. And I think God knew we would be prone to worship our work, which is why God initiated rest and Sabbath before the fall.

Work

Sabbath is God’s eternal way of helping us worship our good God and not worship the good work he has given us to do.

Work

But this raises a critical point: Sabbath rest assumes work. That is, the Bible has a word for Sabbath minus any work: laziness. Likewise, the Bible has a word for work without a Sabbath: slavery. Rest is not truly possible without work, and work is not done appropriately without rest. A balance is required for them to both be what they were created to be.

Work/rest vs slavery/lazy

In Matthew’s Gospel, in fact, we find that Jesus calls himself both the “Lord of the harvest” (Matt. 9:38) and the “Lord of the Sabbath” (Matt. 12:8). Personally, that reminds me that Jesus is Lord over my work and Jesus is Lord over my rest. He is not Lord over just one. Both are realms of his lordship and my discipleship. Jesus is Lord of rest and work.

Lord ov rest & work

The rest of God—the rest God gladly gives so that we might discover that part of God we’re missing—is not a reward for finishing. It’s not a bonus for work well done. It’s sheer gift. It is a stop-work order in the midst of work that’s never complete, never polished. Sabbath is not the break we’re allotted at the tail end of completing all our tasks and chores, the fulfillment of all our obligations. It’s the rest we take smack-dab in the middle of them, without apology, without guilt, and for no better reason than God told us we could.

Good quote

Martin Luther writes of Sabbath, “The spiritual rest which God especially intends in this commandment is that we not only cease from our labor and trade but much more—that we let God alone work in us and that in all our powers we do nothing of our own.”32

Good quote

Our family has summed it up like this: Is the activity in question life giving, or is it life taking? That is, does it bring us life, rest, hope, wholeness? Or does it drain us, pour us out, stress us, or load us down?

Rest vs work

John Murray points out that “Sabbath . . . is not defined in terms of cessation from activity, but cessation from the kind of activity involved in the labours of the other six days.”

Other 6 days

Sabbath is a benevolent servant but a malevolent master.

Quote

This much is true: Sabbath is no hall pass from responsibility or compassion.

Still requires care

Psalm 92, known as the “Psalm of the Sabbath Day,” is deeply edifying in this regard. The psalm was written to be read on the Sabbath day and was used in public worship as God’s people gathered to praise the God of Sabbath. While reading it, one is struck by the immediate presence of God.

Psalm for Sabbath

As we think about what to do and not do on the Sabbath, we should be quick to realize that our question should be less about certain activities and more about how we are posturing our hearts. Psalm 92 invites us to bow low and love the God of Sabbath.

Hearts on Sabbath

The devil is most successful, indeed, when he pushes us to feel obliged to be yes-people who have no choice or little ability to say otherwise; he considers his job done when we feel trapped to say only yes to the masses, our closest friends, or even our religious authorities.

Saying no

God’s rest is always more effective than human work. God rests, and the world is finished. Jesus rests in the tomb, and the world is being restored. The Spirit rests on us, and the church is empowered.

God's rest