(Message given at Wayside Friends Church on June 21, 2020)
This is what the Lord says: “Don’t let the wise boast in their wisdom, or the powerful boast in their power, or the rich boast in their riches. But those who wish to boast should boast in this alone: that they truly know me and understand that I am the Lord, who demonstrates unfailing love, and who brings justice and righteousness to the earth, and that I delight in these things.”
Jeremiah 9:23-24, NLT
With nightly protests still going strong, in the middle of a pandemic that has put the most vulnerable at risk and plunged us into massive unemployment and a precarious economic future…why, you might ask, are you focusing on Sabbath? Why not a passage like this from Jeremiah? Why are you taking your enormous privilege and sticking your head in the sand, as if taking some “rest day” is going to do anything at all?
What a couple dozen of us discovered in a book study back in April is that Sabbath is so much deeper than a rest day.
Walter Brueggemann’s book introduces us to Sabbath as Resistance—resistance which overturns oppressive and anxious systems that confine us all. When Elizabeth planned these messages weeks ago, we didn’t know the world would erupt after the murder of George Floyd, but this opportune moment in history is the perfect time to go deeper with Sabbath, with Sabbath as resistance…with Sabbath as trust in a giving God who liberates the oppressed and strives to create in us a community of neighborliness, rather than of competition and oppression.
To see Sabbath in this way, Brueggemann begins the journey in Egypt.
He begins with the people of Israel, crushed and oppressed and used up by a pyramid system, one which demands more and more work from those on the bottom in order to serve those on the top. It begins with a whole system of anxiety and striving. Sabbath doesn’t exist. No one can rest, no one can trust, because there is always a deathly battle to survive and conquer and get ahead. People are seen as things to use, or seen as threats which must be subdued.
We are in times where many of us are looking at our own pyramid system in the United States, a whole system of anxiety and striving. Sabbath doesn’t exist. No one can rest, no one can trust, because there is always a deathly battle to survive and conquer and get ahead. People—particularly black lives, particularly brown lives—people are seen as things to use, or seen as threats which must be subdued.
The parallels to oppressive Egypt are overwhelming.
The values of that system invade our own heads in America, where we value ourselves based on what we produce, what we accumulate, what we accomplish, what power and influence we wield—where our well-being comes at the expense of others.
This is American history: people who came for religious freedom, but took the land from indigenous peoples and built the economy on the backs of slave labor. This is America today: seeing some lives as expendable in a pandemic for the sake of the economy, creating the prison-industrial complex to control those we view as a threat to us having our safe piece of the pie.
And while God is and always has been the One who hears the cries of the oppressed and who acts to rescue and bring justice, we humans show a horrific ability to receive God’s rescue and provision for ourselves with one hand, and then to create systems of exclusion and oppression with the other.
After all God did, Israel still demanded a king “like all the other nations”. They wanted a power structure and luxuries, which brought back the same oppressive system they suffered under in Egypt. As difficult as the wilderness is, it is the place where they experienced rescue, where they daily depended on God’s miraculous provision, where they practiced covenant community with God at the center. It’s in the wilderness where God offers a new vision for a new way of living…unveiled in the ten commandments.
For me, this was the surprise of Brueggemann’s book, the way he re-frames the ten commandments. The call to honor the Sabbath is the fourth commandment, and he shows it to us as the hinge pin of not only the ten commandments, but the key to overthrowing old, oppressive systems.
Let’s look together at Exodus 20, verse 2.
“I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery.”
Exodus 20:2, NLT
Before any command is given, God reveals and roots everything in Their identity, in God’s identity. God’s identity is defined by these people. It is based on the fact that God has already acted on Israel’s behalf. God has already rescued out of Egypt, God has already parted the Red Sea. God has already provided water from the rock, God has already provided manna and quail in the wilderness. God IS rescuer and provider, and not in an abstract sense—no, it’s in a relational, “I’ve actually done this for you” sort of way.
“You must not have any other god but me.”
Exodus 20:3, NLT
This is not God’s arrogance, or pride, or narcissism. It’s the recognition that our relationship with the Divine is the center of a covenant community, a covenant community which must reject old ways, old goals, old systems, old gods. “I’m defined by you!” God says—defined by actions which have rescued you and provided for you. Please, will you define yourselves by me, too? Live into your new freedom by rejecting all the old goals and gods that confined you in it.
“You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea. You must not bow down to them or worship them…”
Exodus 20:4-5a, NLT
I know you hated the slavery and oppression in Egypt. But I want you to understand you must also hate the idols and philosophies that drive the whole system—the wealth and the striving and the power. Not only must you long to throw off slavery and oppression; you must also throw off wanting to be Pharaoh. He is the representation, the “god” of a system of anxiety and striving that is binding everyone from the bottom to the top.
You can’t chase those things. I am a new kind of God, and we are making a new system with new goals.
The last six commandments guide our activity, and are the basis of a new structure.
They command us to act as if everyone is our neighbor. Pharaoh’s system didn’t even have a concept of neighbor. People were tools to be used, threats to battle against. But these six commandments call out an utterly new way. Don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t lie against others; don’t desire your neighbor’s things, your neighbor’s relationships, your neighbor’s wealth and work.
You’re all neighbors. You’re all going to live together in a place I will provide. There’s enough—stop striving for more at the expense of people.
This is exactly the framework Jesus used to sum it all up: Love the Lord your God with all your heart (first three commandments), and love your neighbor as yourself (last six commandments). Human systems can’t seem to manage it. Israel failed, and we look around our country and see we have failed, too.
We must clearly say: the white privilege we who are white experience is not a gift from God.
It is a product of the corrupt system that we have created. If there is any God-given privilege, the Bible says over and over, it lies with the ones who are oppressed and on the margins.
We examine our privilege, we dismantle our privilege, because our God invites and makes space for every person on the planet within this covenant community. We dismantle our privilege by cultivating humble dependence on God. And we actively strive to ensure ALL have a place in this covenant community where ALL stand on their own, receiving from the fullness of God.
White privilege rests on the lie, the Egyptian-system lie that we have made ourselves who we are by our striving and our hard work. It’s a lie that ignores the oppression that allows us to live as we do. Healing comes from practicing our humble dependence on our Giver, Provider, Rescuer—our God.
Practicing Sabbath is our way out.
Sabbath rest is for EVERYONE. Sabbath is dedicated to God.
“Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day God rested. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.”
Exodus 20:8-11, NLT
Sabbath is for everyone. Sabbath isn’t a reward for the rich and powerful at the top of the system. Sabbath is for everyone, because ALL practice trust in the God of Enough.
I’m realizing that the essential part of Sabbath is dedicating it to God. It isn’t so much about the activity as it is about the underlying system of thinking. Joining the protests downtown might be an act of Sabbath resistance—and it also may be something you need to take Sabbath from, trusting that God is the worker of justice, bigger than what you are able to bring by your efforts.
I must plunge into the risk of trusting in the Giver, the God of Enough, and not rely on my own striving to provide security for myself. Israel experienced this in the wilderness. They were given manna and quail morning and night, with enough on Friday to take a Sabbath Saturday off from gathering. But they could never accumulate! They could only hold just enough for the day, or it would spoil.
In the young adult group, we’ve been experimenting with an idea to tangibly break accumulation and practice neighborliness.
We’ve set up a fund where people who recognize they have “enough” can put money in for the group. For Elaine and I, we’ve kept our jobs and our paychecks all the way through this pandemic, while not everyone else has. So if any in the group need a dinner date or a coffee, need help with a bill, they can request money from the fund, no questions asked.
It’s been great to see people use it as needed, mostly with a $15 request here, $25 requests there. In fact, after several weeks I can encourage those young adults (and even some of you young adults who haven’t yet been part of our group) to think about bigger bills you might need help with.
If you’d like to access it, or if you would like to contribute to it for others to use (no tax deduction receipt, I’m afraid), you can contact me for the information.
Practicing Sabbath and sharing Sabbath with everyone is resistance.
We began with Jeremiah, and now we see all the echoes of Sabbath as resistance in his words:
This is what the Lord says: “Don’t let the wise boast in their wisdom, or the powerful boast in their power, or the rich boast in their riches. But those who wish to boast should boast in this alone: that they truly know me and understand that I am the Lord, who demonstrates unfailing love, and who brings justice and righteousness to the earth, and that I delight in these things.”
Jeremiah 9:23-24, NLT
Our identity and our value aren’t in wisdom, or power over others, or in the wealth we accumulate. Our identity and value are in our living, breathing relationship with God. We long to receive the transformation which makes us more like God, which makes us givers, makes us loving, makes us ones who bring justice and righteousness over the earth.
May our trust and dependence on God grow. May we break the striving which causes us to use others or see them as a threat. And may we actively build new practices of neighborliness which bring dignity and health to everyone.