Thomas Kleinert
Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.
Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and asked for time off for their people. “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go, so that they may celebrate a festival to me in the wilderness.’” Pharaoh said, “Who is this Lord, that I should heed him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and I will certainly not let Israel go.” There were cities to be built, store houses to be erected, bricks to be made. “Why are you making the people slack off from their labor? Back to work!” Pharaoh shouted, and that same day he commanded the taskmasters, “Don’t supply the people with the straw they need to make bricks like you did before. Let them go out and gather the straw for themselves. But still make sure that they produce the same number of bricks as they made before. Don’t reduce the number! They are weak and lazy, and that’s why they cry, ‘Let us go and offer sacrifices to our God.’ Make their work so hard that it’s all they can do, and they pay no attention to these deceptive words.”[1]
In Pharaoh’s mind, talk of rest was talk of unrest; talk of worship and sacred time was talk of wasted time, and slaves honoring any Lord before him or beside him — who had ever heard such a thing? Deceptive words, sprung from idle minds! Crank up production! Keep them busy! Let them gather their own straw, and don’t you lower the brick quotas!
It was the clash of two economies — God’s Sabbath economy and Pharaoh’s economy of oppressive, relentless, and exhausting toil. In God’s economy, Sabbath is the crown of creation, the end and fulfillment of all work. In Pharaoh’s economy, Sabbath is a waste of time. In God’s economy, human beings are made in the image of God, persons of dignity, and partners in caring for creation. In Pharaoh’s economy, human beings are the work force.
Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.
The Sabbath is not merely a day off for “recharging the batteries.” The Sabbath is a day of remembering who and whose we are. It is an observance that helps us live into an order of time in sync with God’s own creative and redemptive work. It is an invitation to enter into God’s rest, and to get a foretaste of the completion of creation. “Rest in peace” is what we often write on each other’s grave markers, but it’s more than one final wish. “Rest in peace” is what God does on the seventh day and what we are meant to do, and God will not rest until we and all of creation have been set free from all that keeps us in bondage.
How does one observe the Sabbath, and how does one keep this holy day holy? “Jewish liturgy and law say both what should be done on Shabbat and what should not,” writes Dorothy Bass.
What should not be done is “work.” Defining exactly what that means is a long and continuing argument, but one classic answer is that work is what- ever requires changing the natural, material world. All week long, human beings wrestle with the natural world, tilling and hammering and carrying and burning. On the Sabbath, however, [they’re commanded to] celebrate the created world as it is and dwell within it in peace and gratitude.[2]
The debate over what should and should not be done on the Sabbath began generations before Jesus was born, and people long struggled with how to receive this gift of God. The prophet Amos attests that eagerness to get past the Sabbath is not a recent development. “Hear this,” Amos writes, “you who trample on the needy and destroy the poor of the land, saying, ‘When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale?’”[3] Why let Sabbath memories disrupt valuable market days? Why let talk of divine purposes and God-given human dignity disrupt the selling of goods and services to consumers? Again Dorothy Bass, commenting on our own situation,
Work, shopping, and entertainment are available at every hour. As a result, work and family life are being thrown into new and confusing arrangements … as the United States moves steadily toward a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week, 365-days-a-year economy. Meanwhile, the free time people do have comes as fragments best fit for [screen-scrolling]. It is not the lack of time but rather its formlessness that is troubling in this scenario. One can see human lives becoming ever more fully detached from nature, from community, and from a sense of belonging to a story that extends beyond one’s own span of years.[4]
Fragmentation. Formlessness. Isolation. Exhaustion. “Sundays, once sacred days of worship and rest for Christians, are increasingly crowded with work, home responsibilities, and children’s activities. We need rest but wonder how to fit it in.”[5]
Sabbath in the Suburbs is the title of a book about one family’s attempt at observing Sabbath while balancing two careers, three young children, and the pressures of managing a household. The parents negotiate what Sabbath means to them, and they set intentions for their family’s observance. Rest takes real effort. After their own rules trip them up, the family decides to turn Sabbath into an adverb: if the trip to the grocery store on the Sabbath can’t be avoided, they will do their shopping “Sabbathly,” i.e. slowly and mindfully.[6]
Sabbath is hard, whether you’re a two-career-three-kids suburban family or a single-parent-three-jobs-no-car-high-rent family. Sabbath is hard and vital. The debate over how to keep the Sabbath is not just for religious nerds; it goes to the heart of how we imagine, live, and protect human life.
Jesus insisted, and his good news insists, that the Sabbath is more than a day of religiously observed work stoppage. According to Mark, he began his ministry on the Sabbath, at a synagogue in Capernaum, and folks were astounded, for he “taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” A man was there who was possessed by an unclean spirit, and Jesus told it to leave the man alone and get out, and it did, screaming and hollering, but it did. And no one challenged him for driving out unclean spirits on the Sabbath. People were amazed.[7] Some of them began to understand that Sabbath needn’t be about making lists of what to do and not to do, but, above all, about remembering that God wills our release from any forces that enslave, bind, and burden us.
When Jesus encountered in the synagogue a man with a withered hand, his primary concern wasn’t if some of the other people in the room might perceive his actions as Sabbath violations—such things can be, and have been, and will be, debated. The good news of Jesus is about that man, and how he might be drawn into the fullness of Sabbath peace and joy. For Jesus, the Sabbath is more than an observance; it’s a reality into which God invites people, so we know freedom and fullness of life. For Jesus, keeping the Sabbath holy isn’t just about figuring out how to practice resting in peace, but about drawing all of us into that holy rest.
“The Sabbath was made for humankind,” he said to his opponents, “and not humankind for the Sabbath.” Now, this may sound like I’m contradicting Jesus, but I don’t think I am when I say, Humankind was indeed made for the Sabbath, just as all of creation was made for it. The Sabbath is the crown of creation, the seventh day when all living things share in the peace of God.
Humankind was made for the Sabbath, not for observing Sabbath rules. We were made for the Sabbath, and Sabbath rules have been made to help us remember who and whose we are and what we are made for. We were made for the Sabbath, and that’s why we can’t stop thinking about and debating what observing the Sabbath day and keeping it holy might look like for us: anything to help us remember that we’re not here to toil in Pharaoh’s brickyard; anything to help us remember that we’re here to work together in God’s mission; anything to help us remember that Sabbath-keeping is an act of resistance against the dehumanizing pressures of Pharaoh’s economy.
“Make their work so hard that it’s all they can do, and they pay no attention to these deceptive words,” Pharaoh said, and it sounds to me like he’s talking about folks who juggle two or three jobs just to make ends meet, and many months it’s still not enough to make rent and eat. Something withers when you’re forced to live like that. And something withers when you choose to work all the time and chase the numbers as though they actually affirmed your worth as a person.
“Make their work so hard that it’s all they can do, and they pay no attention to these deceptive words,” Pharaoh said. The Lord of the Sabbath is all about “these deceptive words,” and he speaks them with authority, and in his presence our withered lives are reclaimed and restored, because we are made for the Sabbath.
[1] Exodus 5:1-9
[2] Dorothy C. Bass, “Christian formation in and for sabbath rest,” Interpretation 59, no. 1 (January 2005), 29.
[3] Amos 8:4-5
[4] Bass, 32.
[5] Susan Olson, Connections, Year B, Volume 3, 51.
[6] MaryAnn McKibben-Dana, Sabbath in the Suburbs, as discussed by Olson.
[7] Mark 1:21-31