Radical rest

 

Mark 6: 30-34, 53-56
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
July 18, 2021

More than eight years ago, when I was searching for this church, I had more time on my hands than I wanted. I had finished a two-year interim position, I had filled in for a colleague who was on sabbatical, who explicitly told me that one of my main responsibilities would be making sure she had a position to return to, and I was ready for a break. And yet I was also restless to find a church. Both children were in school during the day, so once a week I volunteered as a chaplain at a local hospital. I read books that interested me. I looked at church openings almost every day and interviewed with search committees and dealt with disappointment. But I also did a bunch of nothing. I ping-ponged between activity and inactivity.



One of my favorite ways to spend my free time is at the movies. For about 2 hours I can let go of the world and immerse myself in a good story. If I need a good laugh, I laugh; if I need a good cry, I cry. But movies can be expensive, so because we didn’t have cable TV, every two or three weeks I would go to the library and get a handful of DVDs to watch (remember the days of Netflix red envelopes in your mailbox?).



During one of these trips to the library I bumped into a woman who was a long-time member of our church. We hadn’t seen each other in a while since I had been away serving in other churches, so she asked how I was keeping busy. Knowing that disapproval was headed my way, I sheepishly glanced down at the four or five movies I had in my hand. Before I could say one word about anything else, like how I felt about the search process, she shook her head and said, “Oh, Cynthia”, as if I had made a bad choice, as if I was wasting my time.

We guilt and shame ourselves and others if we are not busy enough, productive, doing something to contribute or to improve ourselves. In his book Sabbath, Wayne Muller writes, “Our culture invariably supposes that action and accomplishment are better than rest, that doing something—anything—is better than doing nothing. Because of our desire to succeed, to meet these ever-growing expectations, we do not rest. Because we do not rest, we lose our way. …And for want of rest, our lives are in danger.”



Does that sound like hyperbole to you? “For want of rest, our lives are in danger.” The ability to take sabbath, to rest, is a justice issue. It is tied to how we value work and human lives. For example, the Pepsi corporation is worth $211 billion dollars. Its revenue has increased by 14% year to date, its stock value has gone up by 19%, and in 2020 it raked in about $70 billion in sales. And yet one of Pepsi’s subsidiaries, Frito-Lay, gave its drivers a total raise of 77 cents over the last 12 years and they are now required to work 84 hours a week because Pepsi has refused to hire more people. Workers in Topeka, KS are currently on strike.



On the flip side, the owners of a restaurant on Cape Cod, Massachusetts gave their employees a morning off, a “day of kindness”, after customers had been verbally abusing employees, one to the point of tears. To say that the customer is always right can do violence to workers and exploit them. Instead, the owners centered their employees and their value as human beings, many of whom are younger and working to pay off college debt. Many restaurants are struggling to hire workers and some customers have yet to not only adjust their expectations but also their behavior.

We are all living with a hair trigger on our fight or flight response because of the trauma, grief, and exhaustion of this pandemic, not to mention the fanned flames of a cold Civil War, climate extremes, and the apparent inability to truly rest from any of this. I heard it said that we’re not working from home, we’re living at work. Healthcare providers and those deemed essential workers have borne the brunt of this pandemic. Drivers are more impatient and reckless on the road, speeding and tailgating other cars as mere obstacles. We’re even more tense and critical on social media and other platforms, talking across one another, interrupting to get our point across. We’re taking risks, traveling, gathering, attempting to grasp some of what we all have missed, to escape from what cannot be avoided.



In this morning’s gospel reading, the disciples are worn out from their time on the road, not even having enough time to eat. Jesus invites them to some time away to rest, to a deserted place, but the crowds follow them everywhere they go, arriving ahead of them. The people that needed healing were inescapable because empire had cast them aside and they had no one else to turn to. And the chunk we didn’t read between these two passages is the story of the feeding of the 5,000. Jesus may have had compassion for these lost ones without a shepherd, but he also didn’t seem to be able to draw a healthy boundary at least for his disciples, if not for himself.

Seldom do we think of sabbath as something we do collectively, save for family vacations and worship on Sundays. We call Church ‘the body of Christ’ and yet when do we give this body a rest? Some congregations will abstain from committee meetings during Lent, focusing more on self- and community-care, spiritual practices, and faith formation. Other churches close for the summer because of low attendance, plus it gives everyone respite to avoid burnout of church leadership. Others take one Sunday a quarter or more and devote it service projects followed by a potluck or picnic. Many of you have told me how much you appreciate the brief time of meditation as part of our prayer time.



What would happen if we gave ourselves some kind of sabbath as church? Some of us are probably ready to give Zoom its eternal rest and gather in person, and yet others have been able to connect with this church more often because of it. This pandemic has taken a toll on all of us. How can we honor the sacrifices that have been made with a balance of restorative Sabbath? Are we worried that some may not return, that you might not return? Is the pressing need for healing and justice so never-ending that we think cannot turn away for one moment? What does that say about how we care about the health of our collective body?

Psychiatrist Dr. Chase Anderson at the University of California San Francisco tweeted earlier this week, “Sometimes I sit there and I’m like ‘Holy f*ck, we’re still battling sh*tty conservatives for a nonracist world, not being sh*t to LGBTQ+ people, no more misogyny, and basic decency. All while the world is literally on fire and billionaires do nothing. Then I go get a pizza.”



Sabbath rest is a form of resistance against the worship of busyness, against a culture that rewards us less, exploits and devalues us the harder we work, especially if we are young or old or disabled, queer or transgender, female or a person of color, or a combination of these. Trauma can give us a high tolerance for emotional pain. Just because we can take it doesn’t mean we should. How can we fight oppression when we oppress ourselves? Empire thrives on and profits from our exhaustion.

We can’t get into good trouble, dive into our imaginations and be creative, listen to that still, small voice, be the healthy body of Christ if we do not take time to rest as a body. We need Sabbath rest so we can do Sabbath justice. Every living thing requires periods of dormancy, fallow times in which balance is restored, and Church is a living, breathing body. The commandment regarding the Sabbath uses the word “remember”: Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. Remember, because we take too much for granted. Remember, because we will neglect to rest, to eat, to appreciate, to give thanks, to delight in our lives. Remember, because empire is counting on us to forget what we’re worth. Remember, because it’s time we normalize this radical rest.



Benediction – enfleshed.com


When ruthless systems take and take,
we will not join them, nor give into despair.
We will spread out blankets for one another
so we can nap. Out of an overflow of Love,
we will organize and say: no more!
We will remain steadfast in our faith
that new heavens can abound here and now
where exhaustion is no more
and rest is ripe as rain.