Sabbath is not simply the pause that refreshes. It is the pause that transforms….
Moses, in Deuteronomy, imagines that Sabbath is not only a festival day but also a new social reality that is carried back into days one through six (Deut 15:1-18). People who keep Sabbath live all seven days differently. So the task, according to Moses, is to “seven” our lives. … Every seven years, in an enactment of “the sabbatic principle,” Israel is enjoined to cancel debts on poor people. The intention in this radical act of “seven” is that there should be no permanent underclass in Israel ….
We often take for granted that debt and interest are normative forms of relationship. For this moment however, consider, is there a person I know who is economically cornered into a status of “under class,” who owes me in one respect or another?
Consider making this personally practical. While there are ways to advocate for those casualties of certain investment funds or to engage “predatory lending” legislation (worthwhile practices unto themselves), consider today one personal relationshipyou could change. Is there a debt that you know someone is struggling to repay, how could you release them from that burden, without creating a savior complex or setting up codependency? If no one comes to mind, could you find a situation to build a friendship with someone experiencing economic isolation? If you don’t know where to start, who could you ask to help you?
Again, the practice is to “seven” our lives in such a way that we do not take debt and interest for granted, and especially to not “bless” debt-based-isolation as socially normative.
…Sabbath is not only resistance. It is alternative. It is an alternative to the demanding, chattering, pervasive presence of advertising and its great liturgical claim of professional sports that devour all our “rest time.” The alternative on offer is the awareness and practice of the claim that we are situated on the receiving end of the gifts of God. To be so situated is a staggering option, because we are accustomed to being on the initiating end of all things. We neither expect nor even want a gift to be given, so inured are we to accomplishing and achieving and possessing. Thus I have come to think that … sabbath is the most difficult and most urgent of the commandments in our society, because it summons us to intentand conductthat defies the most elemental requirements of a commodity-propelled society that specializes in control and entertainment, bread and circuses… along with anxiety and violence.*
…In the desperate context of wilderness, work stoppage is definitional because the God of Sinai wants energy invested in the neighborhood and not in self-securing in order to get ahead, as in the empire. Of course there were cheats who multitasked on Sabbath, thereby to get a leg up on bread. But the provision of Sinai is otherwise; Sabbath is an occasion for community enhancement, for eating together and remembering and hoping and singing and dancing and telling stories—all exercises that have no production value. Israel learned at Sinai, and most especially in the fourth command on Sabbath, that there is a viable way to organize the neighborhood outside the rat race. The Israelites departed Sinai with a new possibility. They were able to dream of enough for all, a dream that refused the common and recurring nightmares of scarcity.*
Sabbath, in the first instance, is not about worship. It is about work stoppage. It is about withdrawal from the anxiety system of Pharaoh, the refusal to let one’s life be defined by production and consumption and the endless pursuit of private well-being. It is easy to imagine that in Pharaoh’s system there never was a sabbath for anyone. Everyone was 24/7! The slaves never got a day off and perhaps had to multitask to meet their quotas. Pharaoh surely never took a day off; he was too busy writing memos and sending out work orders and quotas. As a result everyone was caught up in an endless process of production and accumulation…. Sabbath is an occasion for community enhancement, for eating together and remembering and hoping and singing and dancing and telling stories—all exercises that have no production value.*
In the face of opposition, or evidence that the human or environmental costs are too high, empire adopts these kinds of reform as a guise to pretend it is healing itself. This is called reform, but it is really cosmetic change, which promotes more of what it is. Totalitarian regimes always have to call things by a name of false promise. The corporate commitment to immortality is called “succession planning.” Failures are called “development opportunities.” Innocent civilian victims are called “collateral damage.” Eliminating a thousand jobs is called “right-sizing.” Eliminating a million jobs is called “restructuring the job market.” Development is the watchword of empire, giving a positive face to its penchant for colonization. “Development” means that if you are not doing well there is something wrong with you. If you are a country, then there are financial austerities that you have to follow. If you are an individual, then we make coaching and mentoring available to you.
You must be logged in to post a comment.