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

by A.J. Swoboda

If heaven is eternal Sabbath, can we say what hell will be like? The more I reflect on hell, the more inclined I am to see hell as a place that is chosen rather than forced. That is, hell is real. And hell is an option. But one must choose to go there.

While Jesus did do a good deal of spiritual warfare on various Sabbath days in the Gospels, he was keenly aware that alongside doing battle with the devil he needed times of rest with the Father. To war against the devil without rest is something not even Jesus Christ modeled. When you begin to Sabbath and enter into a renewed relationship of worship toward the Father, you can expect the devil will take notice and fight back.

God does not demand what he will not model.

Now when I preach, I will share a story about my son only if I have asked him, he agrees, and I pay him $20. He is getting quite rich.

What effect does this have? Someone once described to me a lake that was being drained. When all the water was drained out, garbage and other debris were found at the bottom of the lake, which could then be cleaned up. Silence is giving space to see what is at the bottom of our souls.

Nevertheless, God just wants to be with us. He simply desires us, present, with him. That is what intimacy—certainly intimacy between two who call themselves friends—is truly all about. Friends do not enter into time together for the purposes of productivity or what we get out of it. Friends simply love to be with one another.

Sabbath, for me, is God’s creative way of entirely undermining my overdeveloped drive to work, which is closely connected to my idolatrous desire to become famous.

Sin is also seeking productivity at a time when God does not desire.

“When a man desires a thing too much, he at once becomes ill at ease.”

“A proud and avaricious man never rests.”

As Augustine said, a picture of food does not nourish. Only eating food nourishes. We do the Sabbath before we understand the Sabbath, before it makes sense. We should remember that in the Old Testament we are invited to “do” before we “hear.”14

But God’s ideal is not always a possibility. In one conversation, Jesus is asked whether divorce is to be permitted. His response is interesting: it is permitted, but it is not God’s design (Matt. 19:1–8). Here we see God giving an ideal and then meeting people where they are.

A fundamental problem resides in this approach. If we spiritualize the Sabbath, it becomes the only one of the Ten Commandments that we are brash enough to do so with.

I dare any pastor who spiritualizes the Sabbath to extend the same hermeneutical approach toward the practice of tithing.

Above all, Sabbath must be undertaken with great grace. Rigidity is not the solution. Whenever we see rigidity in the created realm, it is often a sign of death. As Gordon MacDonald writes, “There is no legalism here—rather a freedom to accept a gift. Frankly, I think some have destroyed the joy of Sabbath . . . by surrounding it with prescriptive laws and precedents. That is not our Sabbath. Our Sabbath was made for us, given to us by God. Its purpose is worship and restoration, and whatever it takes to make that happen, we will do.”32

Graceless Sabbath is legalism. That is why it is better to do the Sabbath poorly than never try. Make Sabbath mistakes. Learn from them. Then enter the next Sabbath with your lesson in hand. Learning how to fail at the Sabbath is a critical part of learning how to Sabbath. Let us have grace for ourselves and for others. Yes, questions about which day to Sabbath are important, but they are never ultimate. “I begin to think,” says Brian Doyle, “that it does not matter how or when or how long we observe the Sabbath; it matters only that we do.”33