A Full and Complete Stop: Rest, Unrest and What Ails Us
There are thousands, perhaps millions, who have trouble sleeping. Easter doesn’t seem to help. The medications and therapies for the lack of rest, in addition to attempting to improve the rest, abound. I’ll get back to this.
My goodness, we read the Bible through the lens of self-importance. The Creation Story of Genesis 1, we have been taught and told by so many, culminates in the dawning of the human race upon the world’s stage. Actually, no. Read the text. As John Dominic Crossan helps us see, humanity is actually created on a Friday Afternoon, hardly the time of week when the best work gets done! Humanity, thus, is not the crown of creation. Something comes after, something comes at the culmination of it all that completes it all: Sabbath. The Day of Rest.
The crown, the apex, of all creation is not humanity, but Sabbath. Rest. Really? That’s such a strange notion to us, not only because we have been taught that because in the story humankind comes last in the created order, and is given stewardship responsibilities (by the way, and most critically now in light of industrialization and climate change, not exploitative and extracting and eviscerating liberties), but also because naturally we think of ourselves as the most significant part of the story because we are inveterately self-important. I’m thinking here of Paul’s admonition to his Roman readers, telling them to “not think of yourself more highly than you ought to think,” Romans 12. This thinking “not of yourself” is something easier said than done as we know but we think we can change. But we cannot change. No, more than that, we will not change. We will not not be the center of attention, and instead of being that center of attention, trust God. This trusting, here now we have landed to the core of it, is the very definition of Rest. But wait! How is “trusting God” not just another form of our self-centeredness and our penchant not to give up personal agency when it comes to relating to God? It can only be so if this trusting, faith, is done to us and not by us. Oh my, that is key, and certainly related to “rest” since faith is not a product of our own mental or emotional (or other) work. We rest because we are not at work. God is at work. And, such hard work it is in that even God observes the Sabbath (Genesis 2:2).
Sabbath is the crown of creation. It is the most important thing. It is the Big Deal. Those who have hobbled together Genesis as we have it today (they did so in likely the 6th century BCE or so) it seems thought this was the case. They took the two accounts of a Creation Story that they had at that time (see the other one that starts at Genesis 2:4) and put the one with the grand poetry of a seven step (day) sequential development (Genesis 1:1-2:3), culminating as we are pointing out here, not with humanity but with Sabbath, right smack in the front of it all. Sabbath is a very big deal. And we can see its importance in how when the Law Codes were put together Sabbath enlarged, not to say also multiplied by being not only a weekly Rest where all took a deep breath in and out (and note that word “all,” meaning every race, class, gender of humanity and every living species) but then also every seven (7) years a big reprieve and then, the Big Deal of Them All, every 7 X 7 years all human community transactions (economic ownerships) were reset to original factory settings (Leviticus 25, passim).
What we are talking about here is that God’s vision for the world and life is that we would be busy with the wonderful stuff of life, responsibly, and then take a significant break regularly (weekly, then more!) to rest in God. And resting in God does not mean going to religious services or even going to parks and recreational places and thinking nice things about God, but rather trusting God to ensure that all the created order (animals, plants, earth, people) have enough of what they need to thrive. Sabbath is about Distributive Justice. When you stop and rest in God you realize and recognize that all have a place in the world and our job is to ensure that all have the stuff they need. Earth is sustained, people are healthy, animals and plants are nourished. Sabbath, Day 7, rest means that the other six days are just and whole for all. Sabbath is not one day where some get a break but rather Seven Days a week where all get everything they need. Seven Days, not one Day. But God knows (literally!) that we will not do this without the gift of the discipline of coming to a full and complete stop.
So, let me stop right here and take a moment to talk about a stopping that is familiar to most of us. Stop signs. Stop lights. I remember from my Driver Education Days learning of how important it is to understand that a stop sign and a stop light mean coming, not to a meager pause and tap on the brakes or a slowing down and rolling on, but this: a “full and complete stop.” Who does this anymore? Who comes to a full and complete stop at a stop sign or stop light with turn on right? Who, then too, comes to a full and complete stop in life itself? My goodness, when I complete stop in my car I’m afraid the driver behind me is going to run me over.
A full and complete stop in life. Weekly, to say nothing of Jubilee (that every 50 year thing)? Who does this anymore?
And so back to the topic of trouble sleeping and medications and therapies abounding. Who does Sabbath anymore? I’m not talking about attending religious services on a Friday (Islam), Saturday (Judaism) or Sunday (Christianity) or other, but rather taking a full 24 hours and coming to a full and complete stop. No work, no production, no transactions (you mean, what, not even any shopping!?). Regarding religious services let me just say this from my own experience as a Christian, attending worship can be another busy thing to do in an otherwise busy day of getting other chores and responsibilities accomplished. Worship is often anything but rest when you have to squeeze in an afternoon trip to Costco for weekly groceries before you get home to make sure the bills are paid and the lawn is mowed. Sabbath is mostly just the opposite of a “full and complete stop.”
At stop signs and lights when there is a not a stop there are consequences. And so, in life. No rest, not to say also unrest (by the way, not insignificantly, “social unrest” mostly occurs because Sabbath has not been happening! People are not getting the justice that is the “distributive justice” of adequate work, shelter, food, health), leads to breakdowns and breakups requiring interventions (drugs, therapies) that are themselves costly (and so not all get them, simply exacerbating the injustice) and too often target the symptoms, not the causes of the afflictions.
Wow. It sounds like Sabbath is a big deal. Ummm, yes. The Bible writers and editors were on to something. Is it possible to say that God is on to something? Say it how you will, but the text (that Genesis and Leviticus, et. al.) is what it is.
Take a full and complete stop and take a look.
And, get some Rest.
