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March 29 - April 1, 2019
being is free only when it can determine and limit its activity.”
Limiting my activity does not help me feel holy. Doing more feels holy, which is why I stay so intrigued by the fourth commandment.
Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the LORD your God: you shall not do any work—
In the years since then, I have made a practice of saying no for one whole day a week: to work, to commerce, to the Internet, to the car, to the voice in my head that is forever whispering, “More.” One day each week, More God is the only thing on my list.
The first holy thing in all creation, Abraham Heschel says, was not a people or a place but a day. God made everything in creation and called it good, but when God rested on the seventh day, God called it holy. That makes the seventh day a “palace in time,” Heschel says, into which human beings are invited every single week of our lives.1
There is evidence that for a very little while, early Christians tried to observe both the Sabbath and the Lord’s Day. They rested on Saturday and gathered to remember the resurrection on Sunday.
When Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in 1840, he wrote of the Christian Sabbath, “Not only have all ceased to work, but they appear to have ceased to exist.”
They welcomed the freedom to determine their own activities, and they set about making full use of their newfound sovereignty to work, shop, play, eat out, and haul freight to their hearts’ content. I guess I do not have to tell you how well that went.
What happened to the American weekend also happened to the week.
There is no talking about the loss of the Sabbath, then, without also talking about the rise of consumerism. There is no talking about Sabbath rest without also talking about Sabbath resistance.
The first commandment is based on the creation account in Genesis. You can tell that by the way it ends: “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth and sea, and all that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”
the rest was so delicious that God did not call it good, or even very good. Instead, God blessed the seventh day and called it holy, making Sabbath the first sacred thing in all creation.
That is what the first Sabbath candle announces: made in God’s image, you too shall rest.
The second candle stands for the second formulation of the Sabbath comman...
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“Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the LORD your God freed you from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.”
That is what the second Sabbath candle announces: made in God’s image, you too are free.
rest candle and a freedom candle—
By interrupting our economically sanctioned social order every week, Sabbath practice suspends our subtle and not so subtle ways of dominating one another on a regular basis.
Leviticus 25 as to Leviticus 18, then we might discover that God is at least as interested in economics as in sex. According to that astounding chapter of Torah, Sabbath is not only about getting a little rest but also about freeing slaves, forgiving debts, restoring property, and giving the land every seventh year off.
SABBATH IS THE GREAT EQUALIZER, the great reminder that we do not live on this earth but in it, and that everything we do under the warming tent of this planet’s atmosphere affects all who are woven into this web with us.
Where there is money to be made, there is no rest for the land, nor for those who live on it.
The resistance will have to come from elsewhere, from those who live by a different rhythm because they worship a different God.
In the eyes of the world, there is no payoff for sitting on the porch. A field full of weeds will not earn anyone’s respect.
In the eyes of the true God, the porch is imperative—not every now and then but on a regular basis.
Sabbath is the true God’s gift to those who wish to rest and to be free—and who are willing to guard those same gifts for every living thing in their vicinity as well.
Worshiping a different kind of God, they are shaped in that God’s image, stopping every seven days to celebrate their divine creation and liberation. And yet those who practice Sabbath, a little or a lot, know that there is another kind of resistance at work.
Once you have turned off the computer and hung up the car keys, once you have decided to take one whole day off from earning your own salvation, are you ready to wrestle with the brawny angels who show up?
“Sunday neurosis,”
ANYONE WHO PRACTICES SABBATH for even an afternoon usually suffers a little spell of Sabbath sickness. Try it and you too may be amazed by how quickly your welcome rest begins to feel like something closer to a bad cold.
If you decide to live on the fire God has made inside of you instead, then it will not be long before some other things flare up as well.
In their wake, you discover more room around your heart, a greater capacity for fresh air.
If you flee from the pain and failure, then you run into them everywhere you go. If you can find some way to open to them instead, then they may bring their hands from behind their backs and lay flowers on your bed.
It is hard to be a lone revolutionary, yet that is what you become when you start saying no. You rise up against your history, your ego, your culture and its ravenous economy.
This is a commandment. Your worth has already been established, even when you are not working. The purpose of the commandment is to woo you to the same truth.
It is hard to understand why so many people put “Thou shalt not do any work” in a different category from “Thou shalt not kill” or “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” especially since those teachings are all on the same list.
WHEN YOU LIVE IN GOD, your day begins when you open your eyes, though you have done nothing yourself to open them, and you take your first breath, though there is no reason why this life-giving breeze should be given to you and not to some other.
When you live in God, your day begins when you lose yourself long enough for God to find you, and when God finds you, to lose yourself again in praise.
Necessity bound us together. It was our common language, one that did not require words.
For a taste of real self-denial, just turn off the power for a while and see if phrases such as “the power of God” and “the light of Christ” sound any different to you.
Live as most people in the world live, preoccupied with survival.
Long after the thaw, I stay tuned to the grace of physical labor.
He was so quick, in fact, that it became difficult for him to focus on anything for more than a few seconds before he was off to something else.
When I did, I ate the whole day: the fragrant dirt, the blue sky, the dying potato plant, its golden offspring. I had never tasted anything so nourishing in all my life.
Like many his age, he had never made the connection between what he ate and where it came from.
THERE IS NO substitute for earthiness. From dust we came and to dust we shall return. The good news is that most of us get some good years in between, during which we may sink our hands in the dirt. This is as good a way as any to recover our connection to the ground of all being. Digging down is as good a way to God as rising up, if only because you can feel it in your shoulders.
Still, both of these earthlings come from the same source. Call it ground or call it God. The life they share comes from the same place.
You also remember where you came from, and why. You touch the stuff your bones are made of. You handle the decomposed bodies of trees, leaves, birds, and fallen stars. Your body recognizes its kin. If you have nerve enough, you also foresee your own decomposition. This is not bad knowledge to have. It is the kind that puts other kinds in perspective.
While housework may not offer the same satisfaction, it remains a reliable path to the rudiments of life.
If all life is holy, then anything that sustains life has holy dimensions too. The difference between washing windows and resting in God can be a simple decision: choose the work, and it becomes your spiritual practice.
If you are able to sustain other lives along with your own, then all the better.
