Reading: Isaiah 58:9b-14
If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in. If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. Reflection When was the last time you had Sabbath? And I mean a real Sabbath—24 hours uninterrupted by your job or house work. And let me up the ante: vacation time doesn’t count. I’m talking about a regular old Saturday or Sunday. When was the last time you had Sabbath? We American Christians are not good at Sabbath. From what I’ve seen, we seem almost incapable of resting. Maybe it’s our regrettable “protestant work ethic;” whatever it is, we fill our lives with activity after activity, labeling them either “necessary work to make ends meet” or “leisure time.” I’ve seen how a lot of people spend their day off and nothing about mowing the lawn or repairing the gutters or going grocery shopping seems restful to me. Rest is central to the divine life. After God created, God rested. Did God need rest? Of course not. But God did anyway. When God does things God doesn’t need to do, we should sit up and take note. Maybe God is setting an example for us. Maybe God is committing an act of grace. Now, there are a great many workaholics out there who would proclaim, “Yes! Sabbath is a good idea! Actually, Sabbath improves productivity! Give an employee a day off each week and they are a better worker during the week!” But that completely misses the point of the Sabbath command. In his important book Sabbath, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel says, “The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of the Sabbath. It is not an interlude but the climax of living.” Heschel argues that we do not have Sabbath so that we can work better; rather, we have Sabbath to remind ourselves that we are not our work. Your life’s work should not mean that work is your life. Walter Brueggemann writes that Sabbath “is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods” (Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now). Despite what our economy might lead you to believe, your value is not in what you produce. Through Isaiah, God promises that if we observe the Sabbath (24 hours of rest without work of any kind), then “I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth.” Doesn’t that sound good? Don’t you want that? If you observe Sabbath, you will ride upon the heights of the earth because you will suddenly become free of the anxious burdens of expectation, performance, and perfection. If we take Sabbath rest, we will come to see our value lies not in what we do, but in who we are—God’s beloved. And if we take a Sabbath rest, we will come to see that our neighbor’s value lies not in what he or she does ,but in who he or she is—God’s beloved. So I encourage you: adopt a Sabbath practice. It doesn’t have to be Sunday, but set aside one day a week, one 24 hour period where you abstain from work of any kind. And then we can ride on the heights of the earth together! --Jim Vitale Prayer God of Sabbath rest we give you thanks than you create space for us to stop and remember that we are not cogs in the wheel of production but rather your beloved children. Help us to do as you command, to take a Sabbath rest and rest in you. Amen.
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