I am excited to enter into a time of discussion around Walter Brueggemann’s book Sabbath as Resistance. Beginning this Sunday at First Presbyterian Church of Salina, we will have a six-week study (at least) of the book before worship on Sunday mornings (see details at the end of this post). So what is “sabbath,” and why is it important to us today? “Sabbath” originally comes from the Hebrew verb “shabath,” which means to “cease, desist, rest,” according to the Brown, Driver, and Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. It first appears in the Bible in Genesis 2:3, when God rests on the seventh day of the Genesis 1:1 – 2:4 creation narrative. It then appears (as a verb) 71 times in the Hebrew scriptures. The noun “shabbath” appears 111 times in the Hebrew scriptures. Its first mention as a noun in the Bible is in Exodus 16:23. God has led the Israelite people out of slavery in Egypt, where they had worked ceaselessly for generations at pharaoh’s beck and call. God breaks this system of work and introduces sabbath as “a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord.” In Exodus 16, we learn of the manna from heaven that provides sustenance to the Israelites as they wander in the desert, and how they are to gather only as much as they need for each day. On the sixth day, they gather twice as much so that they can rest on the seventh day. For a people who had worked in pharaoh’s system of restless work, this was a completely new notion – trusting in God’s providence to allow a day of rest. Today, if you look up the word “Sabbath” on Google, this is the first definition that appears: “a day of religious observance and abstinence from work, kept by Jews from Friday evening to Saturday evening, and by most Christians on Sunday.” On Google, there’s also an intriguing graph that shows how frequently the word has appeared in books published from 1800 to today. In his preface, Brueggemann also touches on the history of the practice of sabbath earlier in the twentieth century, recalling the codified “blue laws” of yesteryear to a feeling that sabbath has lost its significance today. So how have we gone from a verb “to rest,” to a day of trusting in God’s providence and obeying God’s command, to a part of a religious system, to wondering how sabbath is meaningful today? Is sabbath even possible today? Brueggemann examines a clash between a faith that values and decrees sabbath rest and a society that commands an insatiable drive to “achieve, accomplish, perform, and possess” (Brueggemann, xii). Brueggemann asserts that Christians reclaiming the sabbath is an act of resistance and alternative. It is resistance in that we claim that “our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods” – a definition that leads to a 24/7 cycle of restless, anxiety-producing multitasking (xiii-xiv). It is an alternative in that we rest on the gifts given by God instead restlessly of grasping at the incessant cries for our time, attention, and money. As you read through the preface and first chapter of the book, I invite you to also review the following scriptures:
Further, I invite you to reflect on Psalm 46:10 – what does it mean for us today to “be still” in the knowledge of God? I look forward to our time together! The Sabbath as Resistance book study will take place in the Hope Room of First Presbyterian Church of Salina on Sundays at 9:00 a.m. from Feb. 11 – Mar. 18. A limited number of books are available for purchase in the church office for $10, or you can click here to purchase one from the publisher
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AuthorRev. Keith Phillips, PC(USA) Pastor ArchivesCategories |