Do Not Fear: Shalom

Exodus 20:8-11; Deut. 5:12-15

I meant for the sermon title to be “Do Not Fear: Sabbath.” Instead of Sabbath, I typed Shalom. Simple enough mistake. Both are Hebrew words, both words start with “S.” Sabbath is work stoppage every 7th day, a day of rest. Shalom is peace—or better translated, wholeness and completeness within the purposes of God. Shalom is what we pray for in the Lord’s prayer when we say, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Sabbath and Shalom are not the same thing, but I’d suggest that Sabbath leads to Shalom…following God’s command to rest leads us to wholeness within the purposes of God.

Within the framework of a sermon series entitled, “Do Not Fear,” I’d also like to suggest something else: we’re not quite sure of what to do with Sabbath. I remember one energy drink on the market a few years back that was actually called, “No Fear!” I used to joke that you knew a drink tasted terrible if the can had to talk trash to get you to drink it. But why are energy drinks so popular in our culture, today? I’d suggest it’s because we live in a culture and society that seems to fear rest, and out of that fear has grown a stigma against work-stoppage. We’re afraid of not being productive. Because if we’re not working, we’re not getting anything done…and if we’re not getting anything done, well, then we feel useless. No one likes feeling useless. When I used to work as a campus minister with college students one of the most common responses to the question, “How are you doing?” was “I’m exhausted.” Students seemed to wear exhaustion as a badge of honor, a sign that they had been sticking it out, and working hard. We see this fear of stopping in the workplace, too: there aren’t many companies closed on Sundays anymore, employees are needed for weekends and overnight shifts, and overtime is rewarded. We don’t think twice as we listen to a commercial for sleep aids while driving past a billboard for a new energy drink. Such products would be foolish in a well-rested culture.

I recently watched an excellent lecture that Old Testament Scholar Walter Brueggemann gave on “Sabbath.” The two texts from which we read today, he claims, were written during this exilic period as a response to the crisis of identity facing the Jewish peoples who had lost their temple, and their homeland. How are we to live and express ourselves as God’s people in a foreign land? Jews had to be very particular about preserving their identity within an Empire that wanted to destroy that identity. “Sabbath,” he said, “becomes a visible performance of Jewish identity that contrasts the way Jews organize their time to the empire that was all around them.”

In Exodus, the Sabbath command is issued with this accompanying reason: “Remember the Sabbath, it says…because the LORD made heaven and earth in six days, but rested the seventh day.” So Sabbath behavior is Godly behavior. In Deuteronomy, however, the reason for Sabbath is slightly different, “Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy…remember you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out.” So Deuteronomy, Sabbath behavior is behavior to resist the empire. Putting both reasons together, we see Sabbath as a practice which restores our lives to the patterns of Creation, a practice which places our lives back on the path to Shalom, to wholeness within the purposes of God.

Shalom is disrupted by the patterns of the Empire, and therefore the command for Sabbath appears as a practice to disrupt the patterns of the Empire. “Sabbath is work-stoppage—,” says Brueggemann, “It is a refusal to be identified by productivity.” A convicting statement, isn’t it? It hit home for me. How much of my identity, my sense of self-worth, do I associate with the work I do? But we’re created in the image of a creative God…isn’t our desire to make, and work, and create paying homage to that? It makes sense that we should feel important when we work hard. Just as God said of his own work, “it is good” for us to work, too. We like to copy God in this. But then God rests, which we have a harder time with. God demonstrates a rhythm of work and rest, “a rhythm,” says Brueggemann, “which cannot be safely violated.” Oh, it can be violated…just not safely. “Our society,” he goes on, “operates largely out of fatigue, which makes us cranky, and inhospitable, and less generous.” How many arguments or fights could be avoided by being rested enough to think straight and treat our neighbor with hospitality and generosity?

This seems to suggest that we to lose a part of our Godly identity when we are not well-rested. That brings us to a third text, also from Exodus, chapter 31, in which God is issuing commands to Moses on the mountaintop. The people down in the valley are getting rest-less, soon to cast a Golden Calf. In this speech to Moses, God again repeats the importance of keeping the Sabbath, and also repeats the reason for this—which as we remember in Exodus is—because God rested, too. But in this particular passage, there is a word added: “on the seventh day God rested, and was refreshed.” This word “refreshed” is an interesting word, because it is only used as a verb only 3 times in the Bible. The word here is a noun, nephesh, which translates as “self,” also commonly translated as soul, as in “Bless the LORD, O my soul.” This word has to do with a wholeness of self, therefore, suggests Brueggemann, the passage might be better translated that “God rested and was re-selfed.” God got God’s self back.

The work of creation is exhausting and depletes God’s self. It takes a lot of energy to be creative and imaginative, to build something new. This is what Sabbath prepares us for, to be a part of the work of a God who proclaims, “See, I am doing something new!” Unlike Pharaoh, unlike the Empire, however, God does not command us to work. God does not require us to deplete ourselves in order to participate in building God’s kingdom…this is because depleted selves are not a part of God’s peaceful kingdom, the kingdom of Shalom. Pharaoh might order the whip, command us to keep working to build his Empire, but God orders rest, commands us to keep the Sabbath.

So what we learn from these Sabbath texts, says Brueggemann, “is that God is not a workaholic, and that God is not anxious about the world working in God’s absence.” This reminds me about a sermon I gave a while back about a wealthy Master who left on a journey, and while he was gone he called three of his slaves and gave one of them ten talents, to another five, and to the third one. While he is gone, two of the slaves work tirelessly to increase their master’s money, but the third buries it in the ground. This third slaves is ridiculed by the master, called a “wicked and lazy slave.” We began, in that sermon, to look at the third slave as being the focus of Jesus’ parable about the kingdom of God, and not so much the master who commands his slaves to work in his absence, and punishes them when they are not productive.

I’m going to quote Brueggemann directly now: “The busy society of commerce wants us to be depleted selves, because depleted selves make good consumers, good shoppers, and are easily administered. Gathered selves, who are re-selved, have some energy and courage and authority and are not so easily managed. So Sabbath is a refusal to live as the Babylonian empire wanted the Jews to live, as depleted Jews who had not much Jewishness left, so that they could function according to their full capacity as agents and administrators of creation.”

There is an element of Sabbath to Advent, and so we prepare ourselves for Christmas by being well-rested when Christ comes. Yet, Advent always seems to exhaust us, and when Christmas comes and all I’m really looking forward to is taking a nap. “Depleted selves make good consumers.” Isn’t this what Christmas has become about in our commercial society? Hustle and bustle and shopping and consuming. We are like sheep being shepherded by the whims of holiday advertisements. In the back of our minds we are driven by this fear that if we don’t have enough decorations, enough gifts, then our Christmas won’t be special enough. Who told us that? Where did that anxiety come from? Advent is about preparing ourselves for Christmas. And what is Christmas truly about? It is the coming of Christ who will lead us into the kingdom of God, a kingdom in which the wholeness and completeness of creation is redeemed. God needs us to be refreshed and re-selved to participate in this redemptive work.

Friends, do not fear Sabbath. Get some rest! Amen.

Walter Brueggemann Lecture on Sabbath, Part I: