Tag: rest

Inhabiting — Chapter Seven — The King of Rest

This was a sermon preached at City South Presbyterian in 2024. You can listen to the podcast here, or watch it on video. Some of the block quotes were on screen and summarised but have been included in full.

What does your regular week look like?

What are the things you do week in, week out — regular commitments — that are shaping you?

For many of us it will be work, or studying, and some exercise — then some church stuff — church on Sundays, growth group mid-week — your calendar is probably already full — and if you throw kids and their weekly commitments it is overfull.

We have been thinking about inhabiting space; now we are exploring time; learning to number our days; making them count — redeeming the time — so we might live wisely.

The end goal is to construct a rule of life; a pattern of habits to adopt to be formed as followers of Jesus — so we are considering how we are ruled by regular life.

How is your regular week shaping you?

And what regular commitments could you embrace to become more like Jesus?

We cannot make time for everything; we are limited — busy — and this idea of adding more regular stuff — it feels — overwhelming…

We have spent time earlier in 2024 thinking about hospitality and Luke’s Gospel; the idea the kingdom of God is revealed at the table — how do we make time for that? And about living before the throne of God as those raised and seated with Jesus — spending time “in heaven” in prayer and worship? So we can live heaven-on-earth lives — we might want to do this regularly.

But… something has probably got to give if we are going to make time for this stuff…

As we think about the shape of our weeks now — seven days — about our limits; our busyness; how overwhelmed we are — I am going to suggest we should carve out time each week for this stuff, and there is a ready-made category for this in the Bible.

The Bible’s story is the reason we have a seven-day week — our rhythms come from the Genesis story, where God creates and generates for six days, then rests on day seven; naming it holy time; a bit like the garden is marked out as holy space (Genesis 2:2-3) — this becomes the regular rhythm of the week for God’s people in the form of Sabbath (Exodus 20:8-10).

Now. I have preached on Sabbath before — but — I am still not sure I am nailing it as a practice in my own life. And if you know anything about Presbyterians, you will know we have got a tradition of being legalistic about the Old Testament law; a bit keen to apply Israel’s laws to Christians — maybe especially on the Sabbath; which we call the Lord’s Day…

This is not just a Presbyterian thing — my mum’s family were part Methodist, part Anglican and there were all sorts of rules about whether you could watch football on the Sabbath — because you certainly could not play it — and — anyway — my family are reactionaries, so when we moved to Queensland in the late 90s, my dad was asked to MC this annual Presbyterian event called a Celebration Rally; it was on the Lord’s Day — a Sunday night — and at this Celebration Rally there was a sausage sizzle; apparently it was OK for people to cook sausages for hundreds of people on the Lord’s Day, but they ran out — and people were hungry — and rather than breaking bread and fish and passing them around the crowd, dad dared to suggest anyone hungry should grab some drive-through Maccas on the way home — a Lord’s Day tradition in our family… And he caused a mini scandal. Trading on the Lord’s Day is a no-no.

This is the heritage I bring to thinking about the Sabbath — which is mostly “it is a restrictive rule from the Old Testament that does not apply to Christians…”

But.

I am increasingly convinced that I have had it wrong — that the Sabbath is not about restriction — but liberation — that rest is not an imposition but a necessary act of both re-creation and resistance to the patterns of the world we find ourselves surrounded by… that maybe we have reacted against legalism — rightly — but robbed ourselves of a rhythm of refreshment; a habit of time — of coming to Jesus as weary and burdened people and receiving rest (Matthew 11:28-29) — seeing the Sabbath as a practice of grace, not law — learning the way of Jesus as we come alongside him; the Lord of the Sabbath (Matthew 12:7-8).

I am on this journey — and today I want to make the case that our week should be shaped around a regular practice of Sabbath — holy time; time marked out to spend in God’s presence, receiving his gifts — enjoying him and his creation — not just as recreation but as re-creation — not as a legalistic restriction but liberation from a machine world that wants to desacrate time and space and our bodies — make those things less sacred — while we should be learning to see time and space and our bodies as connected to the divine life in whom we live and breathe and have our being.

So we will cover the Sabbath in the Old Testament pretty quickly — we have already seen how the Genesis story sets up the Sabbath as holy time, that reflects God enjoying his creation and inviting people into holy space and time with him —

it also emerges against the contrasting backdrop of Egypt in the Exodus story; Israel’s life without rest; their slavery — their oppression — at the hands of Pharaoh and his slave drivers — where they are an oppressed group of migrants doing back-breaking labour while being treated ruthlessly (Exodus 1:11-14).

They are enslaved by a slave-driving kingdom that gives no rest. The Exodus is their rescue out of this kingdom and into God’s kingdom, and this experience defines their ethical system; their law; their regular weeks — see how the Ten Commandments are framed in the Exodus story: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of slavery” (Exodus 20:1-2).

And when you get to the structure of the week — they are called to keep this day that God declared holy in the beginning holy; to do all their work in those six days, and then enjoy a Sabbath — to God — doing no work; it is a rest day — a holy day given to enjoying God’s rest (Exodus 20:8-10).

And this is for everyone — it is an anti-Egypt — Sabbath includes whole households; including servants — anyone employed or enslaved — and any foreigners — the migrant workforce of their day — it is a day tasting liberation for all. At this point it is tied back to the creation story, to God’s words in Genesis (Exodus 20:11), but as the law expands from the Ten Commandments, Moses says do not oppress foreigners because you know what it was like to be oppressed — their experience of oppression; of work without rest is meant to shape how they live — this regular Sabbath expands from week to year — every seven years (Exodus 23:9-11) — Leviticus calls this a Sabbath year — where they — and all those in their household — and the foreigner — are to live off the land; off God’s provision; rather than their own work; resting the land — and every seventh seven-year period they would have this Jubilee year (Leviticus 25:4-6).

This Sabbath day though — it is to give rest and refreshment to all — including the slave and the foreigner — now — this stuff about slavery amongst God’s people is tricky — but, briefly, I reckon the whole point of Sabbath is that it is meant to shape how you see the people you rest with the way God sees them — and see work differently too — it is a teaching thing (Exodus 23:13). When Moses restates the law in Deuteronomy as Israel is about to enter the land, we get the Ten Commandments again, and the Sabbath command again, with two tweaks — the Sabbath is so everyone — including those who might be oppressed — can rest; and rather than looking to Genesis, the Sabbath is tied to their liberation; the Exodus; their rescue and re-creation — that they were slaves with no rest, so they are not to enslave with no rest (Deuteronomy 5:13-15).

The Sabbath is meant to show them they are not slaves, and teach them not to be slave drivers; to be like the Egyptians.

But once they get in the land they are just like their neighbours; they get obsessed with acquiring wealth; they do not practice the Sabbath year; the prophet Amos says they trample the needy and have done away with the poor — and they spend their Sabbaths daydreaming, waiting to get back to trade; they are dreaming of cheating others out of their wealth, enslaving the poor… buying them with silver or a pair of shoes (Amos 8:4-6)…

The prophet Isaiah launches his condemnation of Israel by announcing their celebration of Sabbath has become worthless to God; because their hands are full of blood; they are not seeking justice or defending the oppressed (Isaiah 1:13-17). Instead, Isaiah lists out their rebellion — explaining why God is not seeing their fasting and holy days as they are facing exile (Isaiah 58:1-3) — because — on the day of their fasting they are not just not defending the oppressed; they are oppressors — they are regularly exploiting their workers; fighting each other (Isaiah 58:3-4); their religiosity is the opposite of what God wants; he wants them to fast from oppression and injustice and set people free, not enslave them.

They should be fasting from hoarding, by sharing their food with the hungry; sheltering the poor; clothing them; spending themselves on behalf of the hungry; satisfying the needs of the oppressed (Isaiah 58:6-10). That is what God would notice; if they do this, then God will guide them to life; they will be like a well-watered garden (Isaiah 58:11) — a people of paradise — Isaiah turns from fasting to Sabbath; he says if they keep from breaking the Sabbath — doing as they please — treating holy time as holy and a delight — not going their own way, but God’s — then they will find joy in the Lord.

This is what the Sabbath is meant to be and produce, then God will bring them into his heavenly feast (Isaiah 58:13-14) — that they have become oppressors; slave drivers means exile; these promises need fulfilment; an Israel who understand the Sabbath, who delight in God and rest in him; enjoying him; practicing justice and love; modelling this new way of living in time.

And we find this fulfilment; this true Israelite in the one who invites the weary and burdened — those overwhelmed by life under the oppressive rule of other powers — in other kingdoms — to come to him — not to buy them for a pair of shoes, and oppress them more — he is not violent and proud, he is gentle and humble, and he offers to give rest (Matthew 11:28-29).

He does not come with a heavy yoke of slavery, but an invitation to come beside him and receive rest, to learn to rest; so that we find rest for our souls — Sabbath rest with our creator, who invites us into his Exodus, the fulfilment of Isaiah — paradise and a feast. Matthew follows these words with a picture of two visions of Sabbath — a miserly legalism, and the enjoyment of God’s provision — I reckon we have often tossed both in order to avoid oppressive legalism. Jesus feeds his disciples on the Sabbath — they are tasting a sort of Jubilee year; picking from the field — but the Pharisees — well — they have never seen Jubilee, so they just see work — rule-breaking — they want the hungry to stay hungry (Matthew 12:1-2). Jesus condemns them for missing the point of God’s law; his heart — and condemns the innocent — missing that the king of rest — the Lord of the Sabbath — is in front of them modelling fulfilment of the law (Matthew 12:7-8).

And then, as another image of the contrast, we meet this man with a shrivelled hand — and the Pharisees do not see a human; they see a test for Jesus; they want this guy to stay unable to work… excluded… poor… to prove a point. But Jesus declares it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath; and he heals the guy — he brings life — complete restoration — while the Pharisees — well, they are happy to plot a murder on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:10-14).

Later the one who has an easy yoke and light burden says these Pharisees load up heavy, cumbersome burdens on people’s shoulders and do nothing to ease the burden (Matthew 23:4). They oppress. They enslave. They walk like the Egyptians. So what does this all mean for us as we seek to follow the Lord of the Sabbath?

What are we to do with this way of shaping our week?

The miserly legalism of the Pharisees has no appeal to me at all — but maybe it is not a choice between working to eat, or to do good, and legalistic rest… but between coming to Jesus for rest, or being team Pharisee.

Maybe the Sabbath is not meant to oppress, but to liberate; maybe it is a chance to follow a different rhythm; to live differently in time as we come to the Lord of the Sabbath and receive rest; the fruits of the new life of God’s people promised in the prophet Isaiah — whose writings Jesus fulfils.

Jesus is the one who does away with the yoke of oppression; replacing it with a yoke that is light; giving on behalf of the hungry — liberating the oppressed — bringing people into garden-like rest.

Jesus is the one who delights in God’s Sabbath; the king of Sabbath — and brings people to feast at God’s table. Jesus is the one who, on the cross — launches a new Exodus; liberating humanity from sin and death and Satan and from life under oppressive rule into life where he shoulders our burdens — telling the rebel there with him “today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43) — a promise for us as well, as those raised and seated with him now — so that our Sabbath rest is not just shaped by God as creator, or by Israel’s Exodus rescue, but our own — so, in the same way, the practice of Sabbath is a chance for us to learn from Jesus, and, like for Israel, a chance for us to not oppress others; to give rest to others as we embrace the pattern of the kingdom.

Sabbath is a chance not to be a slave or a slave driver; to not live like Egypt, or embrace the patterns of our world, but to delight in God’s goodness; to taste paradise today.

The rest the king of rest invites us into is the garden; not just to look back to Eden, and not just to look forward to paradise, but to remember we are in paradise with him today; it is a day to shape ourselves to live as heaven-on-earth people as we work the other six.

In the Practicing the Way resources on Sabbath — it is one of the practices they suggest might become part of your rule of life — they break down how to think about Sabbath not as a legalistic restriction but as this way of life with four headings — Stop. Rest. Delight. Worship.

Stop working and participating in the systems we live in that are inevitably violent and oppressive; disconnect from the grind; not just reluctantly, like in Amos — where we are plotting and scheming how to game that system. Resting from our work; and trusting that God provides what we need and will keep the world ticking over even when our shoulder is not pushed against the wheel.

And as we do this we are invited to use this time we have carved out to delight in God; his goodness to us in our rescue and in creation; enjoying abundance; anticipating paradise — feasting, practicing hospitality — enjoying one another as we live as the household of God — and worshipping God together; spending time “dwelling in the heavenlies” as part of the rest Jesus has entered into that he invites us into as those united with him.

The issue with that Celebration Rally was not so much that my dad suggested people go to Maccas — it was in the lack of abundance at the heart of the celebration — that was a picture of a certain sort of miserliness. The Lord’s Day is a chance to join the leisure of the garden — to play in anticipation of the new creation; to taste and see that God is good; to feast — and to do this as both the culmination of each week and a practice that shapes our week… to plan and prepare ahead of time in order to experience fulfilment and contentment in God’s generosity that remind us we do not need that Sabbath experience every day; as we work; a rhythm that is deliberate and focused on receiving God’s goodness that keeps us from chasing that same satisfaction from idols…

And… here is a surprising reason to embrace the Sabbath that I like — grounded in the prophets and the life of Jesus — and not just in “what is good for me personally” — Sabbath is political; Sabbath is an act of resistance — a liberating practice for us — and for others — we are not just celebrating not being slaves; it is where we learn not to be slave drivers.

This comes with a challenge as we build our own practices; seeking to enjoy abundance in this sanctuary in time — it is to hear the words of Amos, and step out of consuming others — actively, or in our daydreaming about our own little kingdoms… to refuse to act like an Egyptian slave driver, relying on the exploited labour of foreign workers to deliver for us — and, instead, to make space and time for these very folks to enjoy liberating rest — and this practice is meant to shape the rest of our week too.

You might not notice, but we participate in systems of oppression — particularly the oppression of migrant labour, or foreign labourers — we are not slave drivers… but maybe we enslave drivers.

I wonder how many of you have ordered food using Uber Eats, rather than cooking yourself… what about ordering from Amazon?

There are plenty of other forms of modern slavery embedded in our supply chains… but Amazon has got a track record of exploiting its workers — this story from the Guardian is about delivery drivers so desperate to stick to their delivery schedule — which is so tightly monitored drivers cannot take bathroom breaks…

“I saw no effort on Amazon’s part to push delivery service providers to allow their drivers to use the restroom on a normal human basis, leading many, myself included, to urinate inside bottles for fear of slowing down our delivery rates… ”

Many of them will use bottles in their cars. In Australia, Amazon has gamed the employment regulations so they can overload drivers’ schedules and erode safety practices; by calling drivers “hobbyists” or contractors.

“Serious safety issues like dangerous overloading and pressuring drivers to rush through deliveries is not something to brush off as insignificant, implying that this gruelling work is little more than a paying hobby with drivers in full control.”

People caught up in this system talk about being treated like robots rather than humans.

“I feel dehumanized. I feel like they resent the fact that I am not a robot and that I am made of flesh and bone.”

Enslaved; dehumanised to deliver according to quotas — like Israelite slaves making bricks in Egypt — not just set by their corporate overlords, but the consumer expectations of the market…

Deliberately not consuming on the Sabbath is a chance to lift our eyes so we are not swept up in making money, or planning how we might buy a person for a pair of shoes… to make time to see the way our consumption impacts migrant workers, or the poor.

One of the coolest things I read on Sabbath comes from Tricia Hersey — who gets called the Nap Bishop — she wrote this book Rest Is Resistance — where she argues that the conditions of the modern market were actually born in slavery; in the plantations that built the wealth of the west; and where our bodies — especially those of marginalised and oppressed people — when we are working in a system that celebrates 24/7 productivity and rewards hustle and always being on — what we see in the spirit of Amazon — we are still working under Egyptian conditions; brainwashed by a violent culture that does not see us as humans but as machines — she reckons that is at work across the economy — where we work, and where others work for us — and we will not see it unless we carve out time to notice. She sees naps — resting — Sabbath — as acts of resistance against a world that always wants more from you — liberation; a path back to our true nature.

“ …this violent culture that wants to see us working 24 hours a day, that does not view us as a human being but instead views our divine bodies as a machine… The Rest Is Resistance movement is a connection and a path back to our true nature. ”

Sabbath is a chance to deliberately step out of other kingdoms that claim our time, and our bodies, and reorient ourselves to the kingdom of the king of rest; as we come to him, and receive rest — because it is a path back to being human; as we stop and rest and delight and worship — maybe we would find life in a weekly rhythm of Sabbath, not just on that one day, but in a way that will shape our work on the other six days; as we experience freedom from the patterns of sin and slavery and slave driving so we find rest for our souls; learning life with him in paradise.

On rest as re-creation

Last weekend our church had a weekend away. Our theme for the year was ‘Re-Creation’ — I gave two talk type things. One on rest and one on play. Here’s the one on Rest. The one on play will need slightly more tidying up to be in anything like article format. But I’ll post it eventually. We read Matthew 11:25-12:14.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” — Matthew 11:28-30

Jesus starts by talking about God’s sovereignty and control (Matthew 11:25-27); God reveals what he reveals and calls who he calls; but part of what we’re called to is rest that satisfies and restores our souls.

There’s a little bit of Psalm 23 in here; and Psalm 23 is in some ways a re-creation Psalm; a good shepherd — God — restoring life to a people who have been exiled — if you were here for Doug Green’s talk last year you might remember that he reads this as being about Israel and Exile, and about Jesus and the resurrection and ascension being the fulfillment of that — but in a bigger sense it’s also the story of our humanity — Adam and Eve were given life by water in a garden when the Sabbath was created; made to rest with God… the good shepherd in the Psalm promises a restoration of that, and here Jesus says he will provide that rest… he is Lord of the Sabbath.

We often think of the Sabbath as legalism; a law we don’t have to keep because of Jesus… but maybe a Sabbath is part of experiencing God’s kingdom; literally a chance to be ‘re-created’ — to get a taste of Eden (as much as is possible) and a taste of our eternal, glorious, future.

Rest has been damaged in two directions by us Christians; Christians in the ‘reformed’ or protestant tradition… first because we have treated the Sabbath as a law; as part of the moral law that has to be obeyed in order for us to be righteous… and then second, the ‘Protestant work ethic’ — which was developed by making all work sacred — not just the priesthood — a product of the Reformation where Luther famously says:

“A cobbler, a smith, a farmer, each has the work and office of his trade, and yet they are all alike consecrated priests and bishops, and every one by means A cobbler, a smith, a farmer, each has the work and office of his trade, and yet they are all alike consecrated priests and bishops, and every one by means.”

This ended up making work holy, which it is, but so holy that we forget to rest, or we devalue rest by over-valuing work.

The 24/7 hyper-connected disenchanted working world we live in and the challenge for Christians

The Reformation had some unexpected knock on effects to a bunch of things — not all of them good… we Reformed types tend to be less sacramental than our Catholic neighbours; less likely to see spiritual realities overlapping physical ones even though we’ve declared all reality spiritual or sacred (with the priesthood of all believers). We’re less likely to see our bodies as significant because we tend to focus on the brain — on faith as belief from the head alone (and not so much on participation in rituals and practices), unless we jump to a sort of law-based legalism or morality. There’s a philosopher, Charles Taylor, who talks lots about the modern conditions of life in a book called A Secular Age. He — I think rightly — sees the Reformation contributing to what he calls a ‘disenchanted’ world; a world that has closed in so that only the here and now matter; a world that ultimately said that if the sacred isn’t present in a special way on the Sabbath or in ‘priests’ then it really isn’t anywhere… we want to say the sacred or spiritual realm is everywhere and that we are witnesses to that; that we’re a people who have restored souls because we have come to follow the Lord of the Sabbath.

One of the other things that has emerged through the Protestant work ethic — and an individualism that came as people stopped believing our lives are divinely ordered and that we’re born into a sort of caste system — where kings and queens give birth to kings and queens and cobblers give birth to cobblers — where we’re free to work hard to make ourselves — and we have the rise of the ‘self made’ man or woman instead of the God givenness of reality — is a sort of market approach to the self that rewards hard work and ability; it creates this drive to be constantly working to make yourself; to be in control; we all become ‘kings and queens’ and so have to build and defend our little kingdoms of independence.

The world we live in now is hyper-connected; 24-7 and disenchanted. Our challenge is, as Paul puts it in Romans 12 — to ‘not conform’ to the patterns of the world, but to be ‘transformed’ by the renewing of our minds; and rest is part of this; part of both resisting and being formed, or re-created.

Here’s an interesting thing about the way stories in the Old Testament worked alongside practices; the whole Old Testament law is designed to have Israel perform a different story to the nations around them. They are embodied ‘image bearers’ of what it means to be God’s priestly people; the food laws, the ceremonies… and the Sabbath were what marked them out as different. Now these were important while Israel was in the land; they were meant to be part of what drew the nations in to worship God at the temple…

But they’re arguably even more important in exile; lots of Old Testament scholars think exile is when Israel’s stories are finally written down as a unit, not just collections of different books, or stories that have been passed on and retold in the feasts and on the Sabbath; Sabbath was important in Israel, but there everybody did it; it’s even more important in Babylon where the pressure to be like the nations is greatest. I quoted Brian Walsh’s book Subversive Christianity last Sunday… here’s a little more from him after he talks about our buy in to the myths or religious stories about progress, and science and technology, and the economy… he says for Christians being shaped by those stories about what’s good and what it means to be human:

“Our experience is in many ways not unlike the experience of exile for the Jews in sixth-century BC. We live in Babylon. Babylonian definitions of reality; Babylonian patterns of life, Babylonian views of labour, and Babylonian economic structures dominate our waking and our sleeping. And, like the exiled Jews, we find it very tempting to think that all of this is normal…”

We’re in danger of being sucked in to the Babylonian vision of what it means to be human — the vision shaped by exile from God… so our stories and practices are meant to be counter cultural; not just a culture of our own; but distinct and different… Here’s more from Brian Walsh:

“This was also the central problem for the exiled Jews in Babylon. One of the ways in which they dealt with this problem was by constantly reminding each other of who they really were. In the face of Babylonian stories and myths, Jews told and retold their own stories. In fact, it was most likely at this time that they first wrote down one of their most foundational stories—the creation story.”

Justin Earley is a lawyer who runs a ministry called The Common Rule — which focuses on practices and habits that might form us — he’s got a book of the same name, he says when it comes to modern life we think:

“We can work our way to significance. This is what we’re doing when we prove our busyness to ourselves and each other; we’re trying to show that we matter, that the world wants us, that the world depends on us.”

I don’t know if that resonates with you; but I think even our leisure time is often rushed and busy — especially if you’ve got kids and you’re starting to structure your weekends around extra-curricular formative activities likes sport and music (which we might come back to tonight on play).

The world we live in bounces between busyness (and business) and restlessness — even our ‘down time’ is full. We have silence and blank space. You might’ve seen this story from blogger Andrew Sullivan. He was one of the world’s biggest tech bloggers, a hyper-connected internet junkie until he realised it was killing him, his technology addiction was hard-wiring him towards restlessness.

This restlessness comes from our disconnection from God, from the garden, and from Sabbath — it’s a restlessness answered by the Lord of the Sabbath and what he gives us — as Augustine said once his ‘heart was restless until he found his rest’ in Jesus. Sabbath — Rest — then is part of how we show ourselves, and others, that we have been restored; it’s both restorative and formative and performative. It’s also how we teach ourselves that we are not Lord, but Jesus is. Justin Earley says:

“Practicing sabbath is supposed to make us feel like we can’t get it all done because that is the way reality is. We can’t do it all. Sabbath protects us from acting out the lie that we can. Sabbath helps us discover the restless soul of which Augustine wrote.”

He also says:

“None of us like our limits. Like Adam and Eve in the garden, we are not content to be like God; we want to be God. The weekly habit of sabbath is to remind us that God is God and we are not.”

The Sabbath as a way out of the disenchanted world

The Sabbath — Rest — is part of how we show that we worship — and serve (or serve — it’s the same word in Greek) the “Lord of the Sabbath” not the gods of this world; or the things of this world. It’s a way we say “I don’t have to be in control” or “I am not the king or queen of my own little world”… it’s how we disconnect from the idolatry of our age and form ourselves, but also part of how we hold out an oxygen mask to our neighbours because the idolatrous air is toxic. We were made to rest and without rest we’re not living our ‘best life’ — and we will die. Idolatry kills.

Alan Noble wrote a book called Disruptive Witness, it’s one that I’d highly recommend — he talks about rest or Sabbath as a ‘disruptive’ practice that stops us being formed by the world, but also that offers an alternative vision of life and work and God… he says:

“Setting aside the Sabbath for fellowship, rest, and acts of service deeply contradicts the standard way we understand the modern world. Thus it works to cut through the buffers we are inclined to erect as participants in modern culture, and presents a disruptive witness of the Christian faith… the Sabbath is actually an imposition on our modern lives, in which we work fervently to flatten the distinction between all days. When no days are holy — set apart — then each day and each moment is raw material for us to do as we will… ”

He says this practice of keeping the Sabbath teaches us that time has a meaning; it’s not just a resource that we use for our own ends — and especially it denies ‘the dominant cultural belief that we must always be working and doing…’ he says “a Sabbath rest is an act of spiritual defiance against the ideal of ‘justification through production and consumption.’

We want to say every day is holy; just as we want to say every Christian is a priest… but we end up offering ourselves as sacrifices to the world and its patterns. So deliberate rest — a Sabbath — is part of countering this; and it’s not just a day of doing nothing that does this; that doesn’t push us out of the ‘here and now’ bubble; it’s a day of rest ordered towards the reality that God is sovereign and Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath who came to give us rest and restore our souls. Rest has a purpose beyond just recharging our physical batteries; it is to recharge our bodies and our soul.

One issue with how Christians have sometimes legislated the Lord’s Day and the idea of church being part of what you do is that church becomes another sort of work; a proper approach to rest will resist that.

It’s worth saying too that part of rest is actually the daily practice of sleep; the temptation our world serves up — whether in the name of rest or leisure — is to sacrifice sleep for the sake of distraction; sleep feels like missing out. There’s a book I read a while back on burnout in ministry — and that’s a real thing — but I think the 24/7 hyper-connected world we live in means burnout is a thing for all of us; whether because we’re over-stimulated (and research shows that’s creating all sorts of mental health dramas), addicted to the dopamine hits we get through our screens — whether through gaming, social media, constant new information, Youtube videos, or porn… or just work emails, taking work home, being available after hours… burnout is a real risk… anyway, Christopher Ash who wrote Zeal Without Burnout has two key practices for ministers, that are true for all of us, maybe because we’re all priests.

One. We need sleep. And two: we need a Sabbath.

Ash points to Psalm 121 which reminds us that God does not sleep, and to Psalm 127 that reminds us that we do, and that sleep is a gift from God.

He says both sleep and Sabbath are designed to remind us that there is lots in this world happening beyond our control; that God is at work in every moment. They are practices that remind us that we aren’t king or queen, and that the world is not mechanical — that it is enchanted; or that things are held together in God’s hands — not ours.

There’s something about the way technology reinforces disenchantment and works against both sleep and rest that is interesting too; as we think about what this might look like. Technology — especially phones — stop us resting by keeping us constantly stimulated and distracted. The blue light our screens emit stop our brains shutting down properly when we try to sleep… From the moment we wake until the moment we sleep — this is a point Alan Noble makes in Disruptive Witness — he says the age we live in is both ‘secular’ and ‘distracted’ — and we need practices that deal with both, because both stop us doing the ‘deep spiritual formation’ that is required for us to be a different sort of people to what we might call ‘Babylon’ or the world… if we’re always distracted we don’t or won’t notice that we aren’t different to the world around us.

That blogger I mentioned earlier — Andrew Sullivan — found himself longing for disconnection from the 24/7 world and reconnection with something enchanted, or spiritual… and he sees technology and its constant ‘connection’ as part of what did away with the Sabbath in our cultural rhythms…

“But just as modern street lighting has slowly blotted the stars from the visible skies, so too have cars and planes and factories and flickering digital screens combined to rob us of a silence that was previously regarded as integral to the health of the human imagination.”

He has some ideas about how to respond that are a challenge for how we think about being the church and what we do as we gather on our ‘Sabbath’…

“If the churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, perhaps they might begin to appeal anew to a frazzled digital generation. Christian leaders seem to think that they need more distraction to counter the distraction. Their services have degenerated into emotional spasms, their spaces drowned with light and noise and locked shut throughout the day, when their darkness and silence might actually draw those whose minds and souls have grown web-weary…”

Alan Noble makes some really similar points — that if we adopt the tools of distraction and make them how we rest we’re actually not resting; we’re just maintaining the stimulating busyness we experience outside the church.

What rest looks like

Our practices are formative and our practices — whether alone, or together — are performative — they teach us and others something about who we are and what story we live in.

The Goal here in busy, distracted, work and productivity worshipping Babylon is to be an alternative community with an alternative king. To come to Jesus and receive the goodness of the rest he offers. It’s for us to be a community that realises that we are creatures, that we have senses for a reason, that we have bodies that get tired and need restoration — and souls that long to be broken free of the limits of a ‘disenchanted’ machine like existence; we, and everything we, do have a ‘telos’ — a purpose — existence is shot through with the supernatural world. Whether that’s work, rest, or play…

Some tips.

Allocate time for Sleep.
Even if sleep doesn’t come straight away, you won’t sleep at all if you don’t make time for it… Christopher Ash says:

“It is worth considering how best to wind down later in the evenings, perhaps avoiding stimulants before bed, keeping away from flickering screens, caffeine or things that stimulate the mind and heart too much. Just as a runner winds down after a race, so we need to wind down after the day, to commit people and troubles that are on our minds to the One who does not sleep, and then to go to rest.”

Disconnect.
Physically make space that is technology free, not just time. Here’s Sullivan:

“That Judeo-Christian tradition recognized a critical distinction — and tension — between noise and silence, between getting through the day and getting a grip on one’s whole life. The Sabbath — the Jewish institution co-opted by Christianity — was a collective imposition of relative silence, a moment of calm to reflect on our lives under the light of eternity. It helped define much of Western public life once a week for centuries — only to dissipate, with scarcely a passing regret, into the commercial cacophony of the past couple of decades. It reflected a now-battered belief that a sustained spiritual life is simply unfeasible for most mortals without these refuges from noise and work to buffer us and remind us who we really are. But just as modern street lighting has slowly blotted the stars from the visible skies, so too have cars and planes and factories and flickering digital screens combined to rob us of a silence that was previously regarded as integral to the health of the human imagination.

Imagine if more secular places responded in kind: restaurants where smartphones must be surrendered upon entering, or coffee shops that marketed their non-Wi-Fi safe space? Or, more practical: more meals where we agree to put our gadgets in a box while we talk to one another? Or lunch where the first person to use their phone pays the whole bill? We can, if we want, re-create a digital Sabbath each week — just one day in which we live for 24 hours without checking our phones. Or we can simply turn off our notifications.”

And some more from Disruptive Witness:

“We might choose to rest from screens or just smartphones and computers, and so create space for contemplation, reflection, and conversation. Alternatively we might restrict our screen time to activities that are intentionally communal: watching a movie together, playing a game together, sharing photos and memories, or video chatting with family.”

Connect rest to the love of God and his work sustaining all things. It’s not a law, it’s just good for us…

What we do as we rest should not just be pointed at the thing we’re doing itself, but we should be able to ‘look along’ our inactivity and remind ourselves that God is at work; that Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath.

Place habits before love, and you will be full of legalism, but place love before habits, and you will be full of the gospel. God’s love for us really can change the way we live, but the way we live will never change God’s love for us.

Deliberately see rest as an important habit that will form you against the busyness the world commands.

“In our own contemporary context of the rat race of anxiety, the celebration of Sabbath is an act of both resistance and alternative. It is resistance because it is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods. Such an act of resistance requires enormous intentionality and communal reinforcement amid the barrage of seductive pressures from the insatiable insistences of the market, with its intrusion into every part of our life from the family to the national budget. . . . But Sabbath is not only resistance. It is alternative. It is an alternative to the demanding, chattering, pervasive presence of advertising… The alternative on offer is the awareness and practice of the claim that we are situated on the receiving end of the gifts of God.” — Walter Brueggemann

Set routine to begin with. Get ‘in a rut.’ Plan your rest.

“One of the first things we learned was that proper sabbathing is much more about doing than not doing. It’s about doing restful things… An ideal sabbath looked like this: sleep in, worship, long lunch with friends, go home and rest, maybe nap, maybe make love, go out and explore some part of the city we hadn’t been to yet or take a walk in a park, and bring a book that is pure pleasure reading. What all these things had in common was not that they involve “not doing” but rather that they involved doing worshipful or engaging activities. They were things that drew us closer to God and others. The rest I needed was not only more sleep, but it was also the rest that comes with unfolding in good friendships or sitting still in God’s creation.”

Rest by doing the opposite of how you work…

Justin Earley quotes rabbi Abraham Heschel, who says: “A person who works with their mind should sabbath with their hands, and a person who works with their hands should sabbath with their mind.

This has implications too, for parents… figuring out how to rest as parents is very difficult, which means Earley suggests:

Balance between resting alone and resting in community.

“You can’t just take a break from children. Consequently we’ve realized two things. First, there are seasons of sabbath. There are seasons when a sick parent, a newborn, a tough new job, or something else will make sabbathing really hard. But remember, one of the most important things to be done in the pursuit of habit is to focus more on the rule than on the exceptions. Developing the background rhythm of sabbath is the foundation. That means that the tough times—where we get out of our routines—become the unusual times, not the norm. However, it’s really important to pursue sabbath precisely in those tough times, for those are the times we’re most likely to run ourselves ragged. Second, communal sabbaths change everything. Community can help you bear burdens in tough seasons so that you can sabbath even though a human life depends on you (for example, new moms). When Lauren and I didn’t have kids, communal sabbaths often meant having a big meal with friends and lingering long to talk.”

Manage ‘togetherness’ in ways that allow extroverts to recharge in company, and introverts to withdraw (this might allow introvert parents some time to re-charge kid free).

Work, Rest, Play and utility

Al has done some thinking about the concept of play. He wrote a good essay on the subject of play where he introduces his view that play can not, by its nature, contain utility. He reiterated that in the comments of my post on utility. Given my views on utility it seems likely that I’ll disagree on his conclusion. And I do. Here’s why, in Venn diagrams.

My friends Kutz and Simone differ on whether we should look forwards, or backwards, when approaching such questions of ethics. So I’ve covered both.

I think play is of most value the more overlaps that occur in these diagrams. Rather than of least…

While I think the externalities in the current situation are of merit, for example, I enjoy sleep (which is just rest) and playing computer games (which is just play). But I enjoy sport more – which is fun (play) and exercise (work). I think areas of overlap are of greater value as rest. We intrinsically know this in our approach to finding a job. We look for, and get the most out of, jobs that are a combination of work and rest (something menial where we can let our minds focus on things that give us pleasure), or work and play (something that we actually enjoy), otherwise we need to be financially compensated in order that we can enhance our experience of play and rest outside of work.

So if I take pleasure from cooking and end up with a meal for myself and others at the end of an enjoyable, and restful, process, I think that’s better. If I give that meal to somebody else it also nicely fits in with my gospel utilitarian framework.

I think taking the things that give us rest, and using them for the service of others, is pretty much the best way to rest.