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

by A.J. Swoboda

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 cannot save your soul, but it very well may save your life.

1 Sabbath and Time

It is not as though we do not love God—we love God deeply. We just do not know how to sit with God anymore. We have come to know Jesus only as the Lord of the harvest, forgetting he is the Lord of the Sabbath as well.

Sabbath forgetfulness is driven, so often, in the name of doing stuff for God rather than being with God.

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

bowing at these sacred altars of hyperactivity, progress, and technological compulsivity, our souls increasingly pant for meaning and value and truth as they wither away, exhausted, frazzled, displeased, ever on edge. The result is a hollow culture that, in Paul’s words, is “ever learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7)—increasingly

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

To image God is to work and rest as God worked and rested.

Striking as it is, Adam and Eve’s first full day of existence was a day of rest, not work.

Indeed, first impressions matter. 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.

God’s nature always gives rest first; work comes later. This is reflected in all of our lives. Before our lives in this world began, we got nine months of rest in the womb. Before taking up a vocation, we get a few years to just play as children. And before our six days of labor, we receive the day of rest.

Karl Barth famously pointed out that the only thing Adam and Eve had to celebrate on that first Sabbath was God and his creation: “That God rested on the seventh day, and blessed and sanctified it, is the first divine action which man is privileged to witness; and that he himself may keep the Sabbath with God, completely free from work, is the first Word spoken to him, the first obligation laid on him.”

The Sabbath teaches us that we do not work to please God. Rather, we rest because God is already pleased with the work he has accomplished in us.

Not only did a day of rest orient Adam and Eve’s life around God; it also orients our hearts, bodies, and minds toward the Creator. Sabbath reminds us that “our time” was never our time in the first place. All time is God’s time.

Yahweh commands that humanity is to work hard and rest well. In no other creation narrative do the gods provide this kind of rest to creation. No other god gave a break. No other god carries the well-being of creation as close to the heart as this One.

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

So central to God is the ethical imperative to rest that it is established in Scripture before commands against murder, adultery, divorce, lying, incest, rape, jealousy, and child sacrifice.

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.

was good . . . It was good . . . And it was very good” (Gen. 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). In what might appear as pompous, self-congratulatory commentary, we are actually blessed by the knowledge of God’s own recognition of the brilliance of his creation. He is well aware that what he has made is valuable, right, and good. Repeating this refrain each day, the biblical author makes clear that this world is fundamentally made good. The intrinsic goodness of creation speaks to an important practice of Sabbath living—the need of humanity to reflect on and delight in the goodness of what God has made.

Once, when sharing my faith with an agnostic friend, I was asked to make my greatest argument for God’s existence. I uttered one word: mangoes. I was not talking about just any mangoes. I was talking about fresh, ripe, just-off-the-tree mangoes, about have-to-change-your-shirt-afterward mangoes. Mangoes, I explained, were my greatest argument for God’s existence. To this day, I cannot eat a mango and say with a straight face that this is a world that has been invented by a jerk. Or that something so delicious could come from nowhere. Creation is good. Why? Because God is good. And his goodness is reflected in what he makes. A mango, as part of creation, is God’s love letter to humanity.

I cannot count how many times I have heard a well-intended Christian leader say, “I’ll sleep when I get to heaven.” What a lamentably nonbiblical cliché. In the end, we will get to heaven much quicker if we opt not to rest. Sabbath rest is no sign of weakness or sinfulness—God himself rested. Is God weak?

We can violate truth, but by doing so, we will suffer the consequences. God created gravity—not just a law written somewhere, but the actual reality we daily experience. Gravity just is. Our belief or disbelief in it cannot invalidate it, change it, or make it disappear. Gravity always wins. Just like Adam and Eve’s need for Sabbath, our need for rest is like gravity. It just is. Our feelings and opinions cannot change it. Humans need rest. Animals need rest. Land needs rest. And without rest, things will cease to exist as they should.

I think God hates law giving. Why? Because law giving implies intent breaking. Sadly, we love living in ways that God never created us to.

God gave us a world of delight to work and play in, but over time we continued to ignore his way. God had to institute Sabbath law because humanity had failed to live the intent of God’s rest.

What is interesting is that humanity is not created on the final workday. What is the culmination of creation? In Genesis 2:2–3, there are three sentences of seven Hebrew words each, and the middle word of each sentence is the word for the seventh day. This textual feature is utilized to state that the seventh day is the goal of creation.42 The climax of creation is not humanity, as we have so arrogantly assumed. Rather, the day of rest is the climax, when creation all comes together and lives at peace and harmony with one another.

Sabbath is a scheduled weekly reminder that we are not what we do; rather, we are who we are loved by.

We must distinguish a biblical day of rest from the world’s way of rest—a biblical Sabbath should be distinguished from vacations and “days off,” although even those we are not proficient at. Studies reveal that 37 percent of Americans take fewer than seven days of vacation a year. In fact, only 14 percent take vacations that last longer than two weeks.43 Americans take the shortest paid vacations of anyone in the world. And 20 percent of those who do, often spend their vacation staying in touch with their jobs through their computers or phones.44 The point? Even when we do vacation, we do it poorly. But even if we did vacation well and took great amounts of time off for restorative rest, vacations are a poor substitute for a weekly day of Sabbath rest. I think the devil loves taking that which is of God and giving us cheap knockoffs. When God invents sugar, the devil makes Sweet’N Low. When God makes sex, the devil comes up with adultery. The devil always twists the goodness of God. The Bible is silent on vacations. Why? Because if we kept a weekly Sabbath, we would not need vacations. Vacations are what Jürgen Moltmann has called the “Coca-Cola philosophy” of Western life.45 In the 1990s, Coca-Cola had a well-known campaign depicting people doing hard work, then popping open a cold bottle of Coke and taking a swig. We yearn for the “pause that refreshes.” Unfortunately, we try to refresh ourselves with empty calories, or vacations, which are not what we really need. Our ...

would be fascinating to watch someone go about their life holding their breath all the time and breathing only when they absolutely had to—a difficult life that would be. A Sabbath is like breathing. Imagine a life where you breath once every sixty seconds. Or, can you think of what life would be like if we opted to breathe for only two weeks out of the year? It is interesting that God’s invitation to rest once a week is so hard for us to grapple with, yet we do not blink at the notion of breathing all the time. A rest is not the only thing that matters. What matters even more is the consistency and rhythm of rest that we enter into.

Because of the modern rhythms of work that are mediated through personal computers and phones, people, in the words of one cultural commentator, “leave the office, but they do not leave their work. They remain attached by a kind of electronic leash—like a dog.”46 More often than not, our “days off” are days where we are spatially at home, but emotionally and mentally at work. Do these “days off” constitute a Sabbath day? A biblical Sabbath is a day when we are spatially, and emotionally, not at work. “Days off” are actually, in the words of Eugene Peterson, “bastard Sabbaths.”47 They are days when we are technically at home but really at work.

A “day off” cannot sustain the human soul. Only a Sabbath can. By contrast, Sabbath is a day when our hearts are at rest from striving, doing, producing, and—most important—responding to emails. A Sabbath day is not merely stopping our work; it is also stopping our thinking and scheming about work.

Sabbath, likewise, should not be understood in merely useful or pragmatic terms. A Sabbath is done out of obedience to God, not to get something. While there are endless benefits to keeping a Sabbath, we do not do it for the benefits, in the same way that we do not enter a marriage in order to make love. Sex is a benefit of marriage, not the reason for marriage.

Marva Dawn has said that Sabbath is about four things: ceasing, resting, embracing, and feasting.59 It is in Sabbath that we enjoy, we delight, we relish in the goodness and generativity of God. We play. We feast. We rest. We echo with God, “It is good!” And in our Sabbath play, we discover that to play is to pray.60 Hear the words of Donna Schaper: “Sabbath keeping is a spiritual strategy: it is a kind of judo. The world’s commands are heavy; we respond with light moves. The world says work; we play. The world says go fast; we go slow. These light moves carry Sabbath into our days, and God into our lives.”

We have two rules on the morning of the Sabbath. First, nobody makes their bed. Second, pancakes.

some Jewish fathers, on the morning of the Sabbath, would give their children a spoon of honey. What a beautiful tradition! The idea was simple: that they would always remember the sweetness of the Sabbath for the rest of their lives. It is similar to the way the earliest Christians took Communion: with milk and honey. This symbolism was to remind them that in Christ they had come to the promised land.

2 Sabbath and Work

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

The new Jerusalem is a renovated, not replaced, city. Indeed, this raises countless theological possibilities and problems. What of our bodies? What of our artistic creations? Will we have tattoos in heaven? I have long surmised that we may retain our tattoos in the world to come. I wonder if our tattoos—like the “ships of Tarshish”—will continue into glory but be sanctified of their old purposes, resurrected into the glorious presence of Christ. Why would this not be the case? Jesus had the marks of his death on his resurrected body. Other possibilities of the eschaton remain to be teased out.

I dont like his idea here about tattoos remaining on our resurrected bodies. God commanded us not to mar our bodies, which in my mind, includes tattooong them, even if it's a supposed God-honoring tattoo. Not an issue for the adults in our church, but for our kids.

Miroslav Volf echoes Mouw by contending that human work and cultural flourishing must be understood not as being destroyed in the coming of God’s kingdom but as being purified. In fact, Volf argues that our technological advancements that have changed human culture for the good, such as Gutenberg’s press, may actually be included in the renewal of all things.

What, then, does one do with texts regarding a coming worldly destruction? For example, 2 Peter 3 says the “present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly” (2 Pet. 3:7). This does not necessarily mean that the world must be destroyed for God’s kingdom to fully come. Evangelical biblical scholar Douglas Moo points out that the thrust of 2 Peter 3, among other texts, describes a world being renewed rather than destroyed. Moo points out that throughout Scripture, fire is an image of purification, not of destruction. Fire retains things of value but annihilates the worthless.

this is to suggest that God will take elements of the present creation and resurrect them while purifying the new creation of worthless elements.

close to their human function was work that the biblical author uses the same word for “tend” as “worship.” To care for the garden was to worship the Creator.

Eden was a divine domain of work and worship, not a world of sedentary laziness or unproductivity.

Our work is valuable, and it matters to God. 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. At the heart of the human vocation is to be with God, not to do anything. It is tempting to think of Sabbath as the intrinsic result of a job well done, but it is not. Sabbath is not a wage for our hard work. Sabbath is not a benefits package. Rather, work is a reflection of Sabbath-keeping. Work is a benefit of our rest.

“Achievement,” once wrote Mary Bell, “is the alcohol of our time.”8 Work is our drug, our numbing agent, escape hatch, and anesthetizing behavior. Achievement makes us feel the semblance of some glow of heightened, idolized identity where we are what we do.

In the ancient world, to name something or someone was to have a sense of authority over it. Naming the animals implied Adam’s God-ordained authority over God’s creatures and his responsibility to them. But he is to name the animals and the animals alone. Thus, the woman is given no name in Genesis 1 and 2 when she is created. She is simply called “woman.” The implication is profound: Adam had authority over the animals. But with the woman, who was his helper, he was to walk side by side.

Sin changes everything, turning the good world upside down.

Immediately, we see a change in the relationship within humanity’s first family. The very next thing Adam does reveals that something is shattered in their relationship. Adam names the woman “Eve.” Her new name meant “mother of the living.” In fact, naming the woman becomes the very first thing Adam does after God names their punishment. Immediately. Remember, God never instructed Adam to name Eve. When God created Eve out of the side of Adam, Adam sang a song over her—“this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” But Adam did not name her at first. She was his partner, his wife, his “suitable helper.” Adam had permission to name the animals, but Eve was not an animal. From the beginning, man and woman were to work together, side by side, in the garden, tasked with loving and serving God, each other, and creation. This act of Adam naming Eve initiates, I believe, a perversion of God’s desire that Eve would work alongside Adam in loving, mutual harmony to work and care for the garden. In fact, God saw it coming when sin entered the world. When God tells Eve that Adam will “rule over her,” he is simply lamenting what is to come. God is not commanding it. His language is descriptive, not prescriptive.

Adam naming Eve, putting her in her place, was neither what God ordained nor desired. It is interesting that he names her for what he sees she is good for—having babies.