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.

We fall into the same trap time and again—not knowing how to enjoy a gift from God.

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.

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

While Christians are going to enter into the Sabbath in a unique way, to remember the Sabbath is to remember who we are—children born of the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ. To keep a Sabbath is to give time and space on our calendar to the grace of God.

“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.

the ordering of seven days establishes a distinct relation between the present time and eternity. That is, the seven-day week was created by God to serve as a contrast to the realm of eternity in which God dwells.

The biblical story tells us that to rest one day a week is to be truly human, and to not rest is to be inhuman.

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.

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 becomes the culminating roof of the entire house.

God established a weekly rhythmic reminder of his love—the Sabbath.

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

And in our Sabbath play, we discover that to play is to pray.60

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. Sin turns the world upside down.

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.

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?

Estimations are that a species goes extinct every hour.13 Creation, in Paul’s grieving language, is “groaning” under the weight of our disobedience and dominance (Rom. 8:22).

Tikkun olam is God restoring our shattered bodies, minds, communities, and ecosystems through our letting go of our own mastery over the world and entering into the mystery of God.16

The problem remains that we are not entering into the thing, Sabbath, that very well could begin to repair our lives. Similarly, Joel Salatin, a Christian pig farmer, writes that when people ask for prayer to be made healthy but do not live in a healthy way and eat healthy food, God will not acquiesce to our petitions. In short, “we’re ingesting things that are an abomination to our bodies . . . and then requesting prayer for the ailments that result.”18 God is not likely to answer in prayer what you are unwilling to repent of.

On the Sabbath, when you are no longer attending to the system of the world, you find that it keeps going on without you.

The Sabbath is a boycott against human compulsivity.

Sabbath gives us the rest we need to do the good Jesus calls us to do.

“What do I do on the Sabbath?” Such a question is very American, isn’t it? What do I do? We are addicted to doing. Being is not even a category we are able to entertain.

The Sabbath is a form of resistance against the powers of this world that say that people are mere cogs in a machine.

The wicked ask when Sabbath will finally be over so that people may return to valuing profits over people. The Sabbath reverses that economic principle—people always take precedence over profit.

Jesus came to create not a kingdom of slaves to consumerism but a kingdom of friends.

Jesus’s first sermon—preached on the Sabbath day—was about freeing the oppressed (Luke 4:14–30). Jesus knew he was the second Moses. The exodus foreshadowed a time when people would no longer be slaves. Jesus came to lead this exodus. Sabbath helps us undo the common consumer drives that keep people in slavery. Sabbath allows us to walk in the freedom that Jesus offers.30

A technological society blindly celebrates every technological advance, turning a blind eye to the effects technologies have on creation and the people around us.

He writes, “We witness shameless intrusions on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: ‘everyone is entitled to know everything.’ But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have our divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, and vain talk. A person who leads a meaningful life does not need the excessive burdening flow of information.”

Consider this Sabbath technology principle: the Sabbath prefers natural light to artificial light.

We are affected by the systems and environments we create. How can we honestly think that a society without Sabbath will not affect people? Do we really think we can create a society that treats people as commodities, machines, and slaves who never rest and expect that the systems we are creating will not have an impact on us?

“Sabbath,” quips Samuel Dresner, “is the great equalizer.”8 Sabbath breaks down false walls and powers and any rationale that leads to social stratification wherein one is perceived as more valuable than another. At the Sabbath, like the cross, everyone stands on equal footing and gets a break. We realize that we are all loved and embraced by the love of God as we rest in his presence. Everyone, not just the privileged, is invited into the rich feast of mercy that has been theirs since the creation of the world. A Sabbath is a weekly Jubilee during which the powerful are humbled and brought low, and the poor and lowly are gifted space, love, and generosity.

In the end, if the rich do not Sabbath, neither can the poor. A society’s most well off have a disproportionate responsibility to keep Sabbath so that the poor might also. Too often, our systems do not provide people with one whole day completely off. And so the poor are prevented from resting—especially those who have to work seven days a week just to put food on the table. In many cases, the poor literally cannot afford to rest.13

Through abuse, misuse, and selfishness, humans have been consumers rather than stewards of the created world. As a result, the well-being of creation, its shalom, is harmed. We must be cognizant that things are in disrepair and that humans are the only part of creation capable of reversing the damage done.

“Why does God rest?” They contend that Sabbath is not God’s escape from the world (for if God escaped creation, we would cease to exist) but rather an intimate immersion into it. In other words, when God practices Sabbath, God delights in what God has made. Likewise, when humanity participates in the Sabbath, humanity is to “soak it up, be fully present to it and cherish the goodness of the world God has made.”10 Thus the opposite of rest is not work but restlessness. Humanity has become restless in its consumption, which “leads directly to the neglect of the places we are in and the people we are with.”11

Sabbath is, at its core, an ecological principle.

Global surface temperatures, species loss, rising sea levels, loss of drinking water—these ecologic tragedies are a direct result of human sinfulness. Some well-intended Christians do not believe God would allow us to destroy our planet. Yet I wonder how we could have the capacity to run away from and destroy our relationship with God in the garden of Eden but lack the capability to destroy the garden itself. Could that be possible? Unlikely. Overconsumption, greed, selfishness, and, yes, the environmental crisis are, above all, the result of human sinfulness. Why would God let us have the freedom to go to hell but not to affect the climate?

Sabbath reminds us of our own humanity. We are not, as it were, above creation. We are an integral part of creation and, like the rest of creation, are dependent on God’s rest to survive.

In our insane curiosity to gain knowledge and have power over the world, we have minimized the world.

Evidence points to the fact that the earth, the land, and the creation are deeply exhausted. If we were to pay attention, we would see that what we are doing to the planet is not advantageous to its health—and by extension, to our own.

Scripture does not speak about “environmentalism” as we do, because to live as a person in the ancient world was to live an environmentally friendly life.

When we watch the news and see stories about how creation is being harmed by the way we live, we should feel pain. We should hurt. We should groan.

Sabbath-keeping is earth-keeping.

We must recognize that God’s statement “Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10) applies to creation as well. Sometimes the best thing we can do for the healing of creation is nothing at all. “Who can make muddy water clear?” Laozi writes in the Tao Te Ching. “But if allowed to remain still, it will gradually become clear of itself.”

Be still. Let God do some work. Our culture says that healing can only come by doing. Scripture tells a different story. The world is healed by our stopping.

You do not flip something you plan on living in. And yet, truth be told, for generations humanity has been flipping creation. Real work has been postponed. Decade after decade, for this or that excuse, we have abdicated real responsibility and real care for the integrity of the earth, leaving our children and grandchildren with the tasks that we have put off. In trading stewardship and husbandry of the land for quick profit, we have come to a crossroads. The consequences of our irresponsibility are upon us. Things are starting to fall apart. How could we have done this?

“In America today you can murder the land for private profit. . . . You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops.”12

broken hearted