Giving it a rest

 

Matthew 4: 1-11
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
February 26, 2023

Photo of an orange tabby cat asleep in a white fluffy fleece bed, laying on its side with one paw over the side, on a light colored surface with a white background.

On average a human being will spend over 227,000 hours or almost 9,500 days or about 26 years or roughly a third of their lives sleeping. Which makes sense because the recommended amount of sleep in a 24 hour period is 7-9 hours, excluding teenagers, children, and infants, when our bodies are changing and growing the most. 35% of adults in the U.S. say that on average, they sleep less than 7 hours a night. Getting less than 7 hours of sleep night on a regular basis can lead to things like heart disease and depression.



The most sleep-deprived people are people of color 25-44 years old, those with the least earning power, who often must work 2 or more jobs or have one or more side hustle just to afford the basics. And if you’re queer or disabled or both, it’s even worse. Stemming from racism and White supremacy, this grind culture affects all of us and creates unhealthy outcomes for everyone. We’ve become accustomed to urgency. We’re attuned to high speeds, high frequency, instant gratification. We’re addicted to adrenaline. We’re impatient, we’re frustrated, we’re under pressure. We’re in fight or flight mode almost constantly.



Recently the results of a study were published that showed a 92% success rate of a four-day work week. Not 40 hours in four days but 32 hours in four days, without any reduction in pay, and productivity actually increased. In fact, some participants said that there was no amount of money that would make them return to the 5-day, 40-hour workweek, which has only been in existence since the Great Depression. Because of the pandemic many workplaces had to shift to employees working from home and found that productivity was hardly impacted at all but mental health and work/life balance was. It wasn’t so much we were and are working from home so much as living at work. We’re not just sleeping less but resting less as well.



When Jesus fasted in the desert, he was pushing his body to its limits, not for exploitation or productivity but to purge his relationship with power by making himself weak and vulnerable. Which is precisely what the devil uses to tempt him. Easy access to food and water is a source of power – just ask anyone who has to use public transit to get to a grocery store or who uses food stamps or a food closet. Power also comes from the ability to sleep and rest to the point of feeling refreshed. The gospel of Matthew says that after Jesus fasted for 40 days and nights (which is Biblespeak for a really long time) he was famished but I would bet he was also exhausted. We’re all more likely to do things and make choices we normally wouldn’t when we’re worn out.



It’s no coincidence that going without enough rest long-term is a proven brainwashing and torture technique. The devil tries to get out of Jesus whatever abuses of power he can, from turning stones into bread to submitting all power and authority to the devil. Throughout the whole ordeal, Jesus remains steadfast to God, to the source of his power, the Upholder of his life. The devil tries to not only sever but subvert that connection to life-giving, life-affirming power in favor of power that exploits and abuses.



Make no mistake about it, rest and sleep are a source of life-giving, life-affirming power. And yet we have created and live in a system that not only doesn’t allow for this power but actively works against it. I recently met a UCC pastor who spent the last four years living and working in Hawai’i. He said that the hardest part of the transition back to the U.S. mainland hasn’t been the weather or the landscape but the pace of life. Hawai’i isn’t without poverty or problems but the people there do know when to rest. We might say, it’s the warmer climate. And yet some of the most sleep-deprived people in our country live in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida – places where racism and White supremacy still thrive openly.



It all comes back to empire, to capitalism and its roots in slavery and the plantation, in the dehumanization of Black, brown, Asian, and Indigenous people, and thus the dehumanization of all of us. Author and activist Tricia Hersey writes that to rest is to resist dehumanizing ourselves as well as others. Often we expect others to operate at our level, not checking in with ourselves or those around us as to whether this is sustainable. When we give ourselves permission to rest, we let others off the hook as well.



Thinking about our Lenten fast in connection with power and rest can make giving up chocolate look rather performative. And yet what if we fasted from chocolate produced with child labor and chose to eat only fair-trade chocolate which costs more but pays a living wage? What if we fasted from the notion that our exhaustion, our busyness, our filled days are a badge of honor? What if we fasted from the idea that the world will fall apart if everyone rests more, if we only work 32 hours a week? What if we fasted from consuming so much and accumulating more wealth than we need? What if we fasted from words like “should”, “must”, and “have to” and instead made choices and behaved from a place of mercy and compassion for ourselves and others?



Rest is resistance against a system that exploits us. Rest is repentance in that we turn away from that which does not give life and love and turn toward that which does. Rest disrupts our ego and makes it possible for us to disrupt our lives for each other. Rest is liberation, especially for the marginalized and criminalized – rest from oppression, rest from violence, rest from threats. Rest is power because it restores us and prepares us. In truth, rest is grace, in that we do not earn it. Rest is mercy, in that it is not something we have to deserve. Rest is not a privilege; it is a human right, like clean water and air. Rest reminds us that our bodies, our lives belong to us, and no one can undervalue them without our permission.



When we rest, we are living in the seventh day of creation, when all was finished but not yet complete, a day declared holy, a day that reminds us that rest was created for the good of human beings. In the words of the poet Wendell Berry:



"When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."


Amen.

Benediction – adapted from Matthew 11: 28-30 (First Nations Version)


Jesus said, "Come close to my side, you whose hearts are on the ground, you who are pushed down and worn out, and I will refresh you.”

Follow the One who is gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest from your troubled thoughts.

Walk, journey side by side with the One who took naps, who will share your heavy load and make it light.