The backbreaking toil of simply staying alive on the rocky hillsides of ancient Israel was unremitting. And yet, the Israelites knew how to rest. Exodus 20:8-11 and Deuteronomy 5:12-15 go on at length about the Sabbath, one day every week, when God's people did nothing. Wesley and the first Methodists were rigorously observant of the Sabbath. People my age and older remember "blue laws" that prohibited much happening on Sundays, but those days are long gone. Sunday is now the prime day for golf, shopping, or catching up on work.
A strange commandment, to do nothing at all. The Sabbath (the word means to sit, to rest) is an open space, you take your watch off, you take a deep breath and let it out slowly. You sit with others, you don't flit off to stay busy, you don't even have to talk. Without fail you show up at worship; you reflect, and calm down enough to hear God say "Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10).
We do not know rest, for we gullibly fall for the lie that more is better, that my life is defined by how much work, fun, travel, purchasing and achievements I can cram into the time allotted. But the Sabbath is a great act of faith when I say I am not the sum of everything I get done. Not everything depends on me and my feverish activity. Even if I am stressed, bouncing chaotically the rest of the week, for one day I stop and remember who I am, whose I am. God rested! so why can't I? God wired the universe with a rhythm we steamroll over at the risk of our souls. God knew we needed rest, to find our pace, to be refreshed, renewed. People complain to me in counseling that they are weary, fatigued... but working hard and then playing hard isn't the solution. We have Sabbath; we rest; the seventh day is "the mine where the soul's precious metal is found" (Abraham Heschel). If we forget God every other day, we remember God on this day which is God's, no matter what - and the Sabbath them stretches like a canopy over the rest of the harried week, and we notice God's mercy.
As Barbara Brown Taylor wrote recently, we need practice to learn to rest, we need each other, and we need to notice there is something subversive about the Sabbath. The Sabbath is the great day of equality: slaves and kings, queens and concubines, rich and poor, lazy and zealous, even the cows, roosters and the ground you walk on, all must rest, nobody can take advantage of anybody else, the peasant gets as much done as the entrepeneur.
For Jews, the Sabbath runs from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Christians bumped it up through the dark night into the wee hours of Sunday at dawn... so our rest begins Sunday morning, when Jesus was raised from the dead.
James
james@mpumc.org
**Question: I've scheduled 4 more emails specifically on the Old Testament (see the list of "Coming up" below, eBibleQuestions20-23). Are there other questions you have which we can cover together before we turn to the New Testament? Or perhaps that I could answer with you one on one?
Coming up:
eBibleQuestions20 - How did Israel worship?
eBibleQuestions21 - Why all the bloody sacrifices in the Old Testament?
eBibleQuestions22 - Who were the Prophets?
eBibleQuestions23 - Did Israel believe in life after death?
eBibleQuestions24 - What went on between the Old and New Testaments?
The complete email series on Bible Questions can be found at
http://www.mpumc.org/mpumc/dr__howell_s_ebible_questions_series
