A Communal Commitment to Sabbath Rest

Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. —Exodus 20:8

Remember the day of rest, and keep it holy. The Fourth Commandment might be the most difficult of the Ten to keep. Not only is our Western World way of living steeped in anxious consumerism—where one’s worth is determined by the degree to which they can produce—remembering the sabbath day of rest appears to be pushed to the margins in the biblical narrative of the Creation stories.

In our 48-week Bible study that is carrying us through the entire Bible in a year, this week’s collection of readings has the theme of Creation. Taking a closer look at the two Creation stories in the Book of Genesis, we notice that God does all of God’s creating work in six days in chapter 1, but that God’s day of rest on the seventh day is relegated to the first three verses of chapter 2. So, if all we read is Genesis 1, all we learn about is how the God, in whose image we human beings are made, worked and worked and worked, and called the products of that work good.

Maybe it’s a reach, but it seems like pushing the seventh day into the next chapter deemphasizes the sabbath; as if taking a page from the Creator God and carving out a day of rest in our workweek is an aside.

Whether we read into it that way or not, by and large we live that way: producing, performing, working to the detriment of the sabbath day of rest that we are commanded to keep holy by simply remembering it—honoring it by observing it with intentional and unapologetic rest.

Cole Arthur Riley, the creator of Black Liturgies and the executive curator for the Center for Dignity and Contemplation, writes in her powerful book, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us, “Rest is an act of defiance, and it cannot be predicated on apology. It’s the audacity to face the demands of this world and proclaim, ‘We will not be owned.’” To rest is to claim our freedom from the relentless routine of a consumeristic world, and to be delivered once again into God’s hands that provide for our most basic needs: acceptance and belonging, forgiveness and affirmation, wellbeing and wholeness. Being filled with that kind of rest not only gives us the energy to face another six days of work, but to go about that labor knowing in the depths of our being that we are not worthy because we produce, but that we are worthy because we exist in this world, because we were pulled from the cosmos for the living of these particular days and called good by a loving Creator, and because that Creator—in whose image we are fearfully and wonderfully made—carves out space for rest.

“Rest as did the creator God!” says the late Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann in his book Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now, “And while you rest,” he writes, “be sure that your neighbors rest alongside you. Indeed, sponsor a system of rest that contradicts the ‘system of anxiety’ of Pharaoh, because you are no longer subject to Pharaoh’s anxiety system.”

In other words, take time for individual rest and renewal, but include your community in that liberating act of defying the world’s anxiousness. Commit to communal sabbath rest by nurturing places and spaces that encourage relationships based on mutual care, vulnerability, and trust. Whether it’s church or a small group or within your own family, your circle of friends, or even a book club, a run club, a bridge club, or your Dungeons and Dragons group, remember the sabbath by observing acceptance and belonging, forgiveness and affirmation, wellbeing and wholeness in those shared environments. Through your commitment to these sabbath-keeping acts of resistance, God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.