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

by A.J. Swoboda

Sabbath is escapism from emotional slavery to our world, but it is not escapism from caring for the world.

Cultural philosopher Zygmunt Bauman has discussed the two kinds of community people often enter into in this modern world: “peg communities” and “ethical communities.” Peg communities, Bauman writes, are communities forged by disconnected spectators around a mutually loved experience like a rock concert or a sporting match. Their participation is a feeling or a sense around something shared. Ethical communities, in stark contrast, are long-term commitments that are marked by the giving up of rights and service. In short, ethical communities are built on relationships of responsibilities.7 These are relationships formed by commitment, love, covenant, and even familial fidelity. One of the fundamental shifts in our social matrix is that our relationships are increasingly made up of the peg communities rather than ethical communities.

The Sabbath drew people together not around shared likes or dislikes but around the commitment to God and each other.

True community is not born of our efforts in creating a sense of community—it is the natural outcome from the act of loving other people.

The Sabbath is the gateway to God’s dream community.

We will always pass on our lifestyle to those who follow us.

We often fear what will happen when we are absent. But we fail to recognize that our absence is not the absence of God, and that God loves his church more than we do.

Ironically, fences brought freedom. It was the absence of fences that created fear and apprehension.

Boundaries in relationship around Sabbath bring freedom, not constriction.

The single person should feel free to say no to other requests without having to fully explain. Ambiguity is not a sin. Not everything is everyone’s business. Do not throw your pearls before swine. No matter your situation, God is always a worthy excuse to say no to something.

What the single person can learn is that one has freedom to do on the Sabbath what one’s spirit and soul needs. If being with people is life giving, be with people. If being alone is life giving, be alone.

A technological society essentially replaces relationship with information.

Sabbath is a blessing for all people—not only the ones we understand or who might become like us.

Evil exists because God is not yet fully occupying the throne of human authority.

this is a world that looks like humanity has abdicated its authority to Satan.

For Jesus, however, the greatest commandment was summed up not in one command but two: love God and neighbor. The way of Jesus is that one cannot worship God properly without loving one’s neighbor. Likewise, one cannot love a neighbor appropriately if one is not loving God. Love of God and love of neighbor are never mutually exclusive.

if the rich do not Sabbath, neither can the poor.

If we get Sabbath, we have a responsibility to advocate for others.

The words of Nelson Mandela ring true: “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

The Sabbath cannot be loved as an idea: it must be loved in the doing.

“Human sinfulness, unfortunately, proves highly resistant to cognitive cures.”20 Her point? Sin is not fixed through mere cognitive education.

“Truth is but a rumor until it lives in our bones.” We must start to try truth—we must do it.

True life change does not come by simply knowing the facts. True life change comes by beginning to live out truth in a context of great grace.

Sabbath had far-reaching implications beyond humans to all nonhuman creation.

Because of sin, humanity has increasingly exhibited a short-term, utilitarian relationship with the land, the same way that many of us treat a hotel room.

Enjoyment of beauty should not be rushed.

The problem with a Sabbath as a mere day of activity is not that the activities are bad; it is that the activities replace the time-honored activity of passing along the story of Jesus to those around us.

“The Sabbath command, with its call to imitation, plays on a hidden irony: we mimic God in order to remember we’re not God. In fact, that is a good definition of Sabbath: imitating God so that we stop trying to be God.”