10 Thoughts on Sabbath

Thanks to John Mark Comer

A few weeks ago, I finished John Mark Comer’s much heralded book, “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry”, and let me tell you, Beloved, I did not plan on enjoying this book. First off, it’s too popular to be any good. Second, I planned to be annoyed by it, because it sounded like a collection of husks from Christian mystic wisdom culled from its fruit by integrating ancient practices with our modern obsessions over “technique”.

There was a bit of that. But honestly, I found the book to be refreshing and engaging and practical.

One of my favorite chapters - and one, truthfully, I’ve been thinking about almost every day since - was the chapter on Sabbath. I’ve felt for years like I have no idea how to Sabbath, and this chapter gave me just a slightly more granular vision for it, which is something I feel I really need. I know we get down on the Pharisees for this sort of thing, but I feel we’re at another extreme. They may have taken it too far, but Sabbath rules were really onto something. I, at least, feel in need of them.

So, here’s a random assortment of ten quotes/thoughts that have stayed with me through the chapter:

• The word Sabbath comes to us from the Hebrew Shabbat. The word literally means “to stop.” The Sabbath is simply a day to stop: stop working, stop wanting, stop worrying, just stop.

• My fellow Portlander and dear friend A. J. Swoboda wrote this: “[The Sabbath] has largely been forgotten by the church, which has uncritically mimicked the rhythms of the industrial and success-obsessed West. The result? Our road-weary, exhausted churches have largely failed to integrate Sabbath into their lives as vital elements of Christian discipleship. It is not as though we do not love God—we love God deeply. We just do not know how to sit with God anymore.

• The last time a society tried to abandon the seven-day week was during the revolution in France. They switched to a ten-day workweek to up productivity. The rise of the proletariat! And? Disaster—the economy crashed, the suicide rate skyrocketed, and productivity? It went down. It’s been proven by study after study: there is zero correlation between hurry and productivity. In fact, once you work a certain number of hours in a week, your productivity plummets. Wanna know what the number is? Fifty hours. Ironic: that’s about a six-day workweek. One study found that there was zero difference in productivity between workers who logged seventy hours and those who logged fifty-five.15 Could God be speaking to us even through our bodies?

• Recently I read a survey done by a doctor who cited the happiest people on earth. Near the top of the list was a group of Christians called Seventh-day Adventists, who are religious, literally, about the Sabbath. This doctor noted that they lived ten years longer than the average American.19 I did the math: if I Sabbath every seven days, it adds up to—wait for it—ten years over a lifetime. Almost exactly. So when I say the Sabbath is life giving, that’s not empty rhetoric. If this study is to be believed, every day you Sabbath, you’re (statistically and scientifically) likely to get back an elongated life.

• If you were to configure the Ten Commandments as a pie chart, this one command would take up over 30 percent of the pie. And what was the command? “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” I love the opening word, “Remember.” It’s easy to forget there is a day that’s blessed and holy. Easy to get sucked into the life of speed, to let the pace of your life ramp up to a notch shy of insanity. To forget: Creator (not me), creation (me). Remember that life as it comes to us is a gift. Remember to take time to delight in it as an act of grateful worship. Remember to be present to the moment and its joy. Humans are prone to amnesia, so God commands us to remember.

• Eugene Peterson had a name for a day off; he called it a “bastard Sabbath.” The illegitimate child of the seventh day and Western culture. On a day off you don’t work for your employer (in theory). But you still work. You run errands, catch up around your house or apartment, pay the bills, make an IKEA run (there goes four hours…). And you play! You see a movie, kick the soccer ball with friends, go shopping, cycle through the city. And that’s great stuff, all of it. I love my day off. But those activities don’t make a Sabbath. On the Sabbath all we do is rest and worship. When I Sabbath, I run each activity through this twin grid: Is this rest and worship? If the answer is “No,” or “Kind of, but not really,” or “Umm…,” then I simply hold off. There are six other days for that. What’s the rush? After all, I’m not in a hurry…

• Slaves don’t get a Sabbath. They don’t even get a day off. They work all day, every day, until they die. Slaves are subhuman. A line item on a spreadsheet. Bought and sold like a commodity, a means to whatever end the rich and powerful see fit. All that matters is the bottom line. And Egypt, my friends, is alive and well. We live in the thick of it. We live in a culture of more. A culture of gaping, unquenchable lust. For everything. Lust for more food, more drink, more clothes, more devices, more apps, more things, more square footage, more experiences, more stamps on the passport—more…Sabbath, as the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann so famously said, is “an act of resistance.”33 It’s an act of rebellion against Pharaoh and his empire. An insurgency and insurrection against the “isms” of the Western world—globalism, capitalism, materialism, all of which sound nice but quickly make slaves of the rich and the poor. Sabbath is a way to stay free and make sure you never get sucked back into slavery or, worse, become the slave driver yourself.

• The Sabbath is like a guerrilla warfare tactic. If you want to break free from the oppressive yoke of Egypt’s taskmaster and its restless, relentless lust for more, just take a day each week and stick it to the man. Don’t buy. Don’t sell. Don’t shop. Don’t surf the web. Don’t read a magazine: ooh, that bathtub would be nice upstairs…Just put all that away and enjoy. Drink deeply from the well of ordinary life: a meal with friends, time with family, a walk in the forest, afternoon tea. Above all, slow down long enough to enjoy life with God, who offers everything that materialism promises but can never deliver on—namely, contentment.

• Because the Sabbath isn’t just a twenty-four-hour time slot in your weekly schedule; it’s a spirit of restfulness that goes with you throughout your week. A way of living with “ease, gratitude, appreciation, peace and prayer.” A way of working from rest, not for rest, with nothing to prove. A way of bearing fruit from abiding, not ambition. As Brueggemann said so eloquently: People who keep Sabbath live all seven days differently.

• Nine times out of ten, Sabbath is the best day of my week, no exaggeration. Every Friday night, after Sabbath dinner, we bake a giant cookie in a cast-iron pan, a full square foot of chocolate yumminess…To begin, just set aside a day. Clear your schedule. TURN OFF YOUR PHONE. Say a prayer to invite the Holy Spirit to pastor you into his presence. And then? Rest and worship. In whatever way is life giving for your soul. My family and I do this every week. Just before sunset on Friday, we finish up all our to-do lists and homework and grocery shopping and responsibilities, power down all our devices (we literally put them all in a box and stow it in a closet), and gather around the table as a family. We open a bottle of wine, light some candles, read a psalm, pray. Then we feast, and we basically don’t stop feasting for the next twenty-four hours. It’s the Comer way! And, I might add, the Jesus way. We sleep in Saturday morning. Drink coffee. Read our Bibles. Pray more. Spend time together. Talk. Laugh. In summer, walk to the park. In winter, make a fire. Get lost in good novels on the couch. Cuddle. Nap. (The Jews even have a name for the Sabbath nap—the Shabbat shluf! We shluf hard on Sabbath.) Make love. Honestly, I spend a lot of time just sitting by the window, being. It’s like a less stressful Christmas every week. And something happens about halfway through the day, something hard to put language to. It’s like my soul catches up to my body. Like some deep part of me that got beat up and drowned out by meetings and email and Twitter and relational conflict and the difficulty of life comes back to the surface of my heart. I feel free.

Funny thing. Brenna and I took a trip together a couple of months ago, and I used that exact phrase: “I feel like it took a few days for my soul to catch up with my body.” JMC is quoting an ancient tribal practice with that. Must be something to it.

You can read the whole vision here.

Shalom my friends,

Nicholas