On the Seventh Day, God Rested…

DATE: June 29, 2014
SCRIPTURE: Genesis 2:1–4
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton

Genesis 2:1–4

The heavens and the earth and all who live in them were completed. 2 On the sixth day God completed all the work that he had done, and on the seventh day God rested from all the work that she had done. 3 God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all the work of creation. 4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

“God blessed the seventh day and made it holy…” Can you feel it? The sun warm on your cheeks and on your knees; the sand shifting under your feet, or under your beach chair? Listen: to the call of seagulls, the lap of water, a car in the distance… your neighbor’s heartbeat… your own inhale, exhale. Listen long enough to the silence and you’ll realize that it is flush with sound, the whole earth breathing; life everywhere shuffling, yawning, stretching, greeting the new day – hesitant maybe, or exuberant, plodding or purposeful: All God’s creation is waking up.

Of course, it does that every morning, whether we notice it or not. But this morning is holy. Because on this morning, God is no longer consumed by creating, no longer lost in the soul-absorbing work of rendering creation, every leaf and petal, every fish and fowl… Today, God rests, brushes the dirt from his knees, wipes the sweat from her brow; there God stands, hands covered in clay up to the elbow, a smear of vermillion paint still shining on one cheekbone, and says, “Done. Yes. Good!”

I wish I had more days like that, when I could declare my work done. When I could stand back, awash in a deep sense of satisfaction and admire the product of my labor, marvel at its completeness. Done! Yes. Good.

That feeling is elusive, isn’t it? Our lives are so complex, so piled up with everything we want and need to do; it demands so much of us; we demand so much of ourselves – and of each other. I would gladly leave the office at 5 pm every day, but it seems I’m never done at 5 pm. There’s always more to do. And more after dinner, too. Right? Does it ever really stop? I remember asking that question with some urgency, after the birth of our first child. That hungry baby required that I drop whatever I was doing and go home at the end of the workday, finished or not. Six-month-old Tobey didn’t care whether the piles on my desk clamored for my attention. His tummy was rumbling; I felt his hunger in my own body. So I turned my back on my desk and went home. Thus began my awkward dance with the spirit called ‘Enough.’ Enough, which is different than ‘done.’ ‘Enough’ which calls me away from one worthy but incomplete task, in order to give myself over to another equally worthy task – nursing my child, holding him close, admiring his eyelashes and his tiny toes; reconnecting with my husband; sharing a meal…

It feels like a kind of spiritual discipline, that walking away, that saying, “Enough.” It requires practice, because most of the time, we live in a ‘not enough’ world, at a ‘not enough’ pace – not enough time, or energy, money or prowess or patience. The light doesn’t turn green fast enough; or we don’t read our email soon enough; or we worry that we won’t be able to earn enough to get enough of whatever it is that gives us joy.

It’s a trap, of course, a vicious cycle. And I suspect God knew we’d end up here, that we’d get swept up in our work, our own need to produce. After all, we are made in God’s image, with the same impulse to create. So God declared a hard stop, at least once every seven days. “Remember the Sabbath day and treat it as holy.” (Ex 20:8) It’s one of the Ten Commandments, the basic code of conduct for God’s chosen people; God’s prescription for living in community – with each other and with God. Here’s the baseline, folks, start here: “Love God and don’t take God’s name lightly. Don’t worship idols. Honor your parents. Don’t steal or cheat or covet or murder. And keep the Sabbath holy.”

This is not just good advice, like: “Eat when you’re hungry. Sleep when you’re tired.” (Best in Show). This Sabbath thing has the weight of divine law. Breaking that law was punishable by death. We can debate the finer points of the law, and whether it applies to us. How literally we should take the command to cease from all work; whether it’s realistic in this day and age to take a whole day; or whether we can take our Sabbath in chunks – five minutes on Wednesday morning, or an hour on Thursday afternoon. Bracket all those questions for a minute, because parsing the particulars may just distract us from the most important point: that God is serious about Sabbath. That resting periodically is as imperative as preserving life itself.

“I’m not kidding,” says the Creator of the Universe. “Stop what you are doing. Just stop.” Why?

“Because [says God, according to the book of Exodus, just a bit after Moses delivered those Ten Commandments] because the Sabbath is a sign between me and you in every generation, so you will know that I am the LORD…” (Exodus 31:13) In other words, Sabbath reminds us that there is one God and we’re not it. It’s a sacred exercise in right-sizing, a putting us in our place – that is: right in the midst of God’s glorious creation, but not at its center. This, of course, is Good News: The sun does not rely on us for its rising and setting, nor the tides for their ebb and flow. We can pause from our labor, walk away from all those demands, and the stars will continue to spin in their courses. According to Theologian Eugene Peterson, “If you don’t take a Sabbath, something is wrong. You’re doing too much, you’re being too much in charge. You’ve got to quit, one day a week, and just watch what God is doing when you’re not doing anything.”

When you’re not doing anything. At least, not anything productive, in the economic sense. You might get swept up in a game of hide and seek with your grandkids, or watch a bee collecting nectar, or read the paper cover to cover. You might have your neighbor over for tea, so you can watch the bees together… Then, inspired, you might join a bunch of folks on the beach to praise God and give God thanks.

The point, says the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor, is that “once a week you are supposed to quit being good for anything.”¹ This might be the hardest thing for us to grasp; that despite all our impulses to the contrary, we are not defined by what we produce or consume. We are defined by the One who created us and declares us good. In other words: What we have is enough; who we are, is enough.

God commands us to honor the Sabbath so we remember that – for our own sakes…

And also, for the sake of others. Once a week, God calls us to withdraw our demands, to walk lightly on the earth, to use up fewer resources; maybe even to set aside our electronic devices … which allows others to do the same. So the land exhales, and so do our neighbors. I am convinced of this: that God insists on Sabbath not just because it’s good for us, but because it’s good for the whole planet. We all need to rest, once in a while.

We in New England pride ourselves on our work ethic, our willingness to put in long hours in order to get the job done. I wonder: what if we were equally committed to embracing a Sabbath ethic? What if we were utterly convinced that pausing is not optional, but necessary? How might our world be different?

We might not get there all at once. But here’s what I’ve come to realize about that sixth day of creation: God wasn’t really done, no matter what the text says. God creates something new every morning, creates us new again and again. We are all works in progress. Together, we take up the soul-absorbing work of building community, mending rifts, pursuing peace; nurturing children; tending the land – we roll up our sleeves, we wipe the sweat from our brows…and I have no doubt that God blesses that holy labor… But this I also believe: that we don’t have to finish before we stop. At least once every seven days, God says, “Enough. Look! Good.” Once every seven days, God calls us back to the present moment, says, come on! Bury your toes in the sand, watch the water lap against the shore, take in the details of this most holy day. Today, be good for nothing at all, except praise and play, poetry and pleasure. Today, let others be good for nothing, too. Today we all rest, by divine order.

Embrace that commandment, do our very best to routinely let go and look up, and little by little we might just learn how to carry that Sabbath spirit into the rest of the week; we might just learn to live as though every day – every person, every creature – is holy, created and blessed by God, good and very good. Because it is. Thanks be to God.