THIS SACRED MOMENT (2020)

There’s a word in the Old Testament for something we really, truly need, something that God models for us, instills in us, offers us freely as a gift. It’s the word shabat, an action word (mind you) meaning to cease, to stop, to be absent, to come to an end, to perish, die, rest, and to celebrate. It’s a pretty diverse word in the Hebrew language, but essentially it is an active elimination of the human hustle. You can see that the word gets harsh sometimes (perish, die, eliminate), and that’s usually defined that way when YHWH is the active agent, particularly in the prophets. It’s often when Israel is so distracted by other human pursuits, other definitions of success, or what Abraham Heschel refers to as “the conquest of space at the expense of time,” that God himself has to put an end to their plans, to destroy their hurriedness, to eliminate the distractions, and so restore a season rest, even if he must do so drastically. God’s intent to shabat is very important to him. 

This action, this verb of ceasing and celebrating and resting, came to be known as a particular day, set aside just for human renewal and revitalization. It came to be known as Sabbath. And while we come to church on Sunday and many of us take off a day or two of working every week, but actually, conscientiously practicing the sacred art of Sabbath? Do we have a built-in pattern and practice of resting in the very presence of God the healer and redeemer? Or are we merely taking a break every so often because we are simply, utterly exhausted from all of our work? Is Sabbath an active resistance to the bondage of hurry and busyness, or a passive vegetative state we fall into when we have literally run ourselves empty?

What if the church—what if our church—practiced Sabbath, the sacred art of stopping, the way God always meant for us to? Would that change anything? Would that communicate anything to the rest of society? Would that profoundly, eternally, change the nature of our spiritual life and community?

One more question for you: would it hurt to try?