Shabbat Shalom

I quite appreciated the thoughts that Simon posted many moons ago on this blog in which he basically told the world to sit down and shut up (that is a very rough and decidedly poor summary…I suggest you read the post).  The main idea which I took away was that words abound in our culture, but very often little of substance is said or acted upon in the midst of the verbal onslaught.  The call was for a greater simplicity of lifestyle and better interfacing between theory and practice.

This notion of simplicity has been on my mind and heart much lately.  In fact, I doubt that there are many people (probably Christians in particular) who would disagree that we generally live very busy lives and could use a strong dose of simplicity, rest, leisure, etc.  Yet admiting that we need to rest and actually making progress in this area of two very different kettles of fish.  You could look at this simply from the angle of outward practice: we say we want to slow down, but when push comes to shove, phones are never switched off, free time is never prioritized, the outdoors is never relished, Facebook is never neglected, etc.  But even if we do carve out some sense of leisure time in our schedule, does this mean we are truly resting?  Miroslav Volf, in his excellent book Work in the Spirit, observes, “…it seems that work values have permeated [our culture's] leisure values.  Increasingly, people lives today alternating between frenzied work and frenzied play.  Rest has been driven out of leisure” (135).  This is an important observation (I think it could be taken deeper still, but we’ll get to that).  Getting at rest is apparently not as straightforward as one might think it to be.

This point is discussed quite well by Judith Shulevitz in her insightful 2003 New York Times article titled “Bring Back the Sabbath” (yes, it is the “S” word I am getting around to).  Shulevitz, writing of her return to Sabbath practice after her Jewish upbringing had, for years, turned her off it, has this to say about rest:

Most people mistakenly believe that all you have to do to stop working is not work. The inventors of the Sabbath understood that it was a much more complicated undertaking. You cannot downshift casually and easily, the way you might slip into bed at the end of a long day. As the Cat in the Hat says, ”It is fun to have fun but you have to know how.” This is why the Puritan and Jewish Sabbaths were so exactingly intentional, requiring extensive advance preparation — at the very least a scrubbed house, a full larder and a bath. The rules did not exist to torture the faithful. They were meant to communicate the insight that interrupting the ceaseless round of striving requires a surprisingly strenuous act of will, one that has to be bolstered by habit as well as by social sanction.

So if Sabbath rest is not merely a stopping of work, then what is it?  If physical rest is not the only or deepest experience we need, then what do we need?  I think the creation account in Genesis 1 may provide an intriguing suggestion to answer these questions.  This creation account is famously structured according to a seven day week: six days of creation ‘work’ and one final day of rest, a day blessed and made holy by the Creator.  But why did God rest?  It rightly seems absurd to suggest that he was in some sense tired or his strength depleated.  There was something else.

I’d like to echo a thought that Tim Keller voiced regarding this passage, that God’s rest was to signify completion of his work and satisfaction in his completion at that (cf. 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31).  At the heart of true Sabbath rest is satisfaction in a job well done.  Keller here relates this to what he deems to be the incessant, for many constant, work which humankind attempts in a particular sort of task, namely, establishing in the eyes of themselves and others their own personal value and worth; the right for their existence to be deemed worthwhile for the universe to sustain.  The work which Shulevitz describes as a “ceaseless round of striving” bears resemblance.  We want to know who we are and that, furthermore, who we are is justified.  So we work, even when we are off the employer’s clock, our phones are switched off and we are two thousand miles away getting a snorkeling sunburn.

But the Sabbath is not meant to hang over our heads, taunting us with the rest we will never attain.  It is rather an invitation, as we learn later in the biblical narrative.  The invitation, however, is not so much to rest like God, but to rest with or in God.  The ceaseless striving for self-significance must point us to the fact that this is not a work which we can complete.  Instead, we look to God’s creation work which was completed and deemed “very good.”  And we look, most importantly, to God’s completed work in Christ.  At his crucifixion, Jesus uttered the words, “It is finished,” a work which God looks upon with total satisfaction.  Our rest, then, is not to be gained through our own striving, but in Christ who alone pronounces over us our significance and value.  This is the freedom we need to rest.  To know who we are and that who we are is worthwhile.  To know that who we are is not defined by our work, but by Christ’s.

So how do we access this sort of experience?  As a Christian I can point to times when I have more deeply experienced the rest of knowing who I am in Christ and times when this awareness has waned.  How do I find my way back when I’ve gotten lost in work?  Through the lens of Jewish religious practice, Shulevitz offers what I think is a very helpful comment:

…not even our group leisure activities can do for us what Sabbath rituals could once be counted on to do. Religious rituals do not exist simply to promote togetherness. They’re theater. They are designed to convey to us a certain story about who we are without our even quite noticing that they are doing so…The story told by the Sabbath is that of creation: we rest because God rested on the seventh day. What leads from God to humankind is the notion of imitatio Dei: the imitation of God. In other words, we rest in order to honor the divine in us, to remind ourselves that there is more to us than just what we do during the week.

Much by way of practical suggestion should be made about these things (and may come in a future post), but to begin I will take my cue from Shulevitz.  How do we access in experience the rest we have in Christ and his finished work?  Let us begin by coming together and breaking the bread and drinking the wine.  Let us be reminded of Him and that who we truly are can only be seen in Him.  As Keller suggests, worship must be at the heart of rest.  If you miss that, you can try all the relaxation techniques you want and still be rest-less.  When you get it, then you’ve finally learned how to rest.