Sabbath Rest

Sabbath Rest

Walter C. Kaiser
One of the great ideas dominating the theology of Deuteronomy is that future moment when God will cause Israel to possess the land of Canaan. Possession, inheritance, and rest function almost as synonymous ideas here. Since the gift is as sure as the word of the promising God, therefore everything waits on this one “until”: “until the Lord has given rest … and until they also possess the land” (Deut 3:20).
Repeatedly, the emphasis is on the fact that Yahweh has promised the patriarchs this gift of the land (Deut 1:8, 21, 35, 38 and 65 other times in Deut.). But with this same promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Lord spoke simultaneously to Moses’ generation in the wilderness (Deut 2:29 et passim). Canaan was to be Israel’s inheritance and resting place.
But this rest was also God’s rest…. So special was this rest that Yahweh would call it His rest (Ps 95:11; Isa 66:1)…. In spite of all the emphasis on the promised land as the rest of God for Israel, the spiritual element also is prominent in this noun form. This finds expression whenever this rest is connected with the themes of the ark of God or the temple. Rest is where the presence of God stops (as in the wilderness wanderings, Num 10:33) or dwells (as in Palestine, Ps 132:8, 14; Isa 66:1; 1 Chron 28:2).

 From “The Promise Theme and the Theology of Rest” (1973)

Charles Ringma
Jesus kept the Sabbath by attending the synagogue and teaching (Mk 1:21; 6:2; Lk 4:16,31). But he also broke the Sabbath rules of his day. He plucked grain and declared that Sabbath was made for humans and he was Lord over the Sabbath (Mk 2:23-38). He also healed on the Sabbath (Mk 3:1-6; Jn 7:22-24). Thus Jesus primarily picked up the liberation theme. Sabbath was bringing people to wholeness and healing.
In early Christianity believers practised both Sabbath and Sunday. But the praxis of Jesus and the Pauline teaching laid the foundations for a different kind of Sabbath, the feast of resurrection (Col 2:16; Rom 14:5; Gal 4:10; Acts 20:7; 1 Cor 16:2; Rev 1:10). By the second century Sunday was the key day for Christians and in the fourth century this was made official in the Roman Empire.
The praxis of the church, while emphasizing the theme of rest, was also that on Sunday “works” of charity should be done. Thus deacons took care of the needy in various works of charity. But what was lost was the liberation theme as key to Sabbath spirituality. Interestingly this theme is being recovered in a renewed interest in the Anabaptist tradition and that of the Liberation theologians.
The challenge facing the present-day Church is how can the people of God recover the passion for justice and healing as a part of their Sabbath spirituality and how can they enter more fully into the rest that God gives….
The rest theme needs re-appropriation today for a Spirituality of Sabbath:

1. Re-think time: not work and then rest, but first rest as a gift. Thus grace and then work.
2. Re-enchantment of time: all time is not the same. Some time ought to be sacred time.
3. This spirituality of Sabbath is revolutionary in that it disengages us from the power of the workaday world and gives us another way of being than simply homo faber (the human as worker).
4. This is to be uncluttered time where we take our eyes off our own activities in order to see the action of God all around us.
5. It is a way of being beyond doing.
6.  As in Picasso’s paintings we are fractured selves, but in Sabbath spirituality we cease our normal activities in order to regain our breath/perspectives and re-orient ourselves to what is truly ultimate/eternal.
7. Sabbath spirituality invites us into “useless time,” playful time, reflective time, prayerful time.
8. Sabbath spirituality helps us to realise our limits, invites us to let go, untangle ourselves from all sorts of co-dependencies.

In this spirituality we are invited to realise again that God is God and we are not.

From “A Theology, Spirituality and Praxis of Sabbath” (2012)