A Day of Rest

The Sabbath rest of God is the acknowledgement that God and God's people in the world are not commodities to be dispatched for endless production and so dispatched, as we used to say, as "hands" in the service of a command economy. Rather they are subjects situated in an economy of neighborliness. All of that is implicit in the reality and exhibit of divine rest.  

That divine rest of the seventh day of creation has made clear (a) that YHWH is not a workaholic, (b) that YHWH is not anxious about the full functioning of creation, and (c) that the well-being of creation does not depend on endless work.  

Multitasking is the drive to be more than we are, to control more than we do, to extend our power and our effectiveness. Such practice yields a divided self, with full attention given to nothing.  

Quotes from Walter Brueggemann's Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now. 

Before these above quotes, of course, there was the great Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who said that nothing in the Bible (not even the land) is holy. Only God is holy, and the Sabbath that we are commanded to remember. It is in sanctifying Shabbat as a "sanctuary in time," said Heschel, that we find the holy God.

Christians (especially those with Protestant leanings) are prone to think of what is prohibited on the Sabbath. We do well to remember, though, is given as a gift. And also that the Sabbath is not Sunday morning, given so that people can go to Church without sports conflicts. That understanding came from a place of social privilege in the United States. Rather, Shabbat is a day for something: namely to discover (and rediscover) the living God, and our neighbor whom we are called to love, and our own true selves as God's beloved. In all these things there is holiness to be discovered and uncovered as we remember that we are more than what we do.

I am not an observant Jew and I didn't try to be one today. But  in the midst of this pilgrim journey, today the pace was slower. After a leisurely breakfast, I walked to the Jaffa Gate and then into the old city. With friends, I visited the Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I savored a glass of fresh pomegranate juice.I had lunch with friends at my very favorite restaurant in Jerusalem: the Armenian Tavern in the Armenian Quarter. I took a nap.

It's been a restful day, for which I'm profoundly grateful. As the Sabbath comes to a close we reconvene as a group to study two psalms of ascent together, Psalms 121 and 122.