Sabbath Observance As A Form of Sacred Resistance

Today at Christ Church Cranbrook my new boss , The Rev. Gary Hall, preached about the Commandment to “keep holy the Sabbath day.” He pointed out that few people would brag about their propensity for breaking commandments against stealing or lying or adultery, but it is counted for them as virtue when they work on weekends, don’t take vacation days, and otherwise defy the divine imperative to observe a day of rest and reflection. In the Bible, even God takes a day off. Gary cited the Old Testament scholar Walter Breuggeman’s idea that, for the ancient Hebrews, Sabbath observance was an intentional casting-off of the slavery imposed upon them in Egypt. Pharaoh’s brickyards were an ancient equivalent to modern sweatshops, according to Gary and Brueggeman, and the Sabbath institutionalized Israel’s commitment to an “anti-Pharaoh, anti-Eqypt” approach to economic and religious life. Israel was to function as a community of shared abundance, operating within divinely-imposed limits on individual wealth, debt, land use, and the treatment of foreigners. In Israel, even slaves were to partake of God’s Sabbath rest.

As a new employee of Christ Church Cranbrook, it was very reassuring to hear the boss say publically that we have an ethical obligation to observe a Sabbath, to care for ourselves and our relationships, and to resist the global obsession with productivity, competition, and consumption. I can help with that agenda, because I am very good at modeling non-market behaviors such as fly fishing and psalm-chanting. If you are thinking, “Jonathan is good at those things because he is good at any sort of loafing around,” I object! Sabbath observance differs from loafing around the same way solitude differs from loneliness, and the same way a community differs from a crowd.

Last week I was inspecting my friend Mark Johnston’s new “Guesthouse” that he constructed next to the house where he and his wife Maggie live in the North Alabama woods. “The back porch of your new Guesthouse needs a contemplative to sit on it,” I observed. “It sounds like you have a candidate in mind,” Mark said. I did, of course, and having heard Gary Hall’s Sabbath Sermon I am even more convinced that I should go test out the contemplative potential of that porch.

But the Sabbath is portable, and so can be observed without making special trips to Alabama. So if you see me loafing around, don’t be misled: I’m just doing what my new boss told me to do.