Sabbath and Rest
“Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.
On it you shall not do any work. . . .” Exodus 20:9-10
SABBATH Part 1 opens with a montage of different commentators addressing the sense of fatigue and exhaustion that permeate much of contemporary American culture. Norman Wirzba notes that historians sometimes refer to the period of American history after World War II as “the great acceleration.” Adventist pastor Randy Roberts describes contemporary American culture as “profoundly burned out.” Author Judith Shulevitz notes the recent “unplugging” movement in response to technology driven busyness. And writer J. Dana Trent reminds us of the limitations of time as “our only nonrenewable resource.”
Do you share this sense that contemporary American culture is breeding burnout and exhaustion? If so, in what ways have you experienced it? To what do you ascribe this, both on the individual and societal levels?
Are you aware of the unplugging movement that Judith Shulevitz references? You may wish to visit our partners at the Unplug Collaborative to learn about how they are encouraging people to explore the benefits of occasional Sabbaths from technology.
Commentators in the film, including those mentioned above, see Sabbath practice as a possible antidote to the pervasive burnout in our culture. Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue describes Sabbath, or Shabbat, as “a revolutionary concept” that “changed human history. For the first time it introduced the concept of mandated rest.”
If you have a regular Sabbath practice, does it include time for rest? To what extent is rest part of how you think about and observe the Sabbath? Is Sabbath rest emphasized in your religious tradition, or not? Finally, do you think Sabbath rest should be codified in some way, so that it is part of every Sabbath observers’ routine?
Imam Khalid Latif of the Islamic Center at New York University, says many of the students with whom he engages express this sentiment: “I wish I just had more time in which I just pause to breathe. To think about what it was that I was actually chasing after.”
Author J. Dana Trent expresses a similar idea when she says that the recent pandemic was “in many ways . . . an invitation to examine our lives and to review and reflect on whether or not we were actually living before the pandemic. Were we living an authentic life or where we just crazy busy running from one thing to the next to the next to the next, taking our time and our health and our gatherings and our Sabbath practices all for granted?”
Do you share the feeling that you don’t have time to reflect deeply on your life and what you are doing with it? Does or could Sabbath offer you time to do that? How important might such time for reflection be in Sabbath observance? Should more religious denominations and traditions offer and encourage time for personal reflection as a central part of Sabbath observance?
In SABBATH, Part 2, Rabbi Manis Friedman asserts that “the essential word for Shabbat is not rest. It's a poor definition, a poor translation. The real word is contentment. If you're really experiencing Shabbos, you're experiencing a true contentment.”
Do you associate Sabbath with contentment, as does Rabbi Friedman? In what ways, might Sabbath and the theologies and practices around it promote contentment? In your mind, what characteristics of Sabbath make for a sense of contentment?
In Part 1, we meet Reverend Jeffrey Johnson, senior pastor of the multi-campus Eastern Star Baptist Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. As he drives between church campuses, Pastor Johnson makes a surprising revelation: “I never had a right understanding of the Sabbath ever,” he admits. “I never thought much about it. I never applied it to my life. All of that came to me recently, and I've been pastoring 34 years.”
Were you surprised by Pastor Johnson’s revelation? Why, according to what is shared in the film, had he not stopped to think about certain aspects of Sabbath?
In the film, we also follow Pastor Johnson and his wife as they take a six-month sabbatical---the first he had taken in his 34-year career. During the sabbatical, Pastor Johnson also encouraged his church staff to rest by transitioning to a four-day work week in his absence.
In what ways would you say Pastor Johnson exemplifies how leaders – both religious and secular – can model practices of Sabbath rest for their communities? How did Johnson come to his own understanding that he needed to better incorporate Sabbath rest into his life - going so far as to take his first sabbatical?
In SABBATH, Part 1, we also meet Joseph Tomas McKellar, a community organizer and Executive Director of PICO, California, the largest multi-racial faith-based community organizing network in the state. A Latino Catholic, McKellar points to Pope Francis’ teaching about the Sabbath to the effect that, “if you have the right to work, you also have the right to rest.”
McKellar says he’s concerned, as is Pope Francis, “about the things that get in the way of people's ability to practice Sabbath, because more and more, our economy is designed to keep people in a constant state of work just in order to survive.”
This is especially true of immigrants, who are often disproportionately represented in industries that require overtime and weekend work, and who must often work more than one job to make ends meet.
Can you identify economic structures in our society that keep people from being able to observe a Sabbath day of rest? How do you think this issue could be addressed? How is this inequality in access to Sabbath observance related to other inequalities in our society?
In this segment of SABBATH, we are also introduced to Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church (La Placita) in downtown Los Angeles and the largely immigrant community that it serves. Noting that La Placita is a place of refuge for many people, some of whom have been forced by political or economic circumstances to leave their native countries, Tomas McKellar says the church “continues to be . . . a place of migration, a place of refuge and rest, a place of community.”
McKellar adds that Latino Catholics identify with the story of the Exodus, in which the ancient Israelites wandered in the desert after their release from captivity in Egypt.
In what ways might Sabbath-keeping and Sabbath rest offer “refuge” for people whose lives have been disrupted – like those of the ancient Israelites - by political, economic, or social circumstances? How might a weekly Sabbath day of rest and a place of community such as La Placita become part of a process of restoration for people whose lives have been upended? If you are part of a faith community, does your community offer hospitality or services for immigrants or displaced persons, similar to the programs at La Placita?
In SABBATH, sociologist Tricia Bruce notes that the development of new technologies, such as the Internet, has enabled Americans to work more efficiently and, often, with more flexibility. However, such developments have also led to a blurring of the line between work and leisure, so that many Americans work more, or they take their work with them wherever they go.
Does this correspond with your own experience? Do you feel that technology has contributed to a blurring of the lines between work and leisure in your own life? In what ways?
Bruce argues that this “blurring effect” often translates into Americans working all the time and not taking or demarcating formal periods of rest.
Is this true for you? Do you have established boundaries around “work time” and “leisure time,” or “non-work time”? If not, how would you go about establishing such boundaries? Do you think you need them?
Bruce also identifies negative effects of overwork or working too much on our social relationships. Parents can feel that they are neglecting their children, spouses and partners can feel that they don’t spend enough time together, and opportunities for building relationships of all kinds can be lost when work takes over other parts of our lives.
Have you experienced times when your work negatively impacted your social relationships or simply limited your ability to engage in them? If so, how did you deal with these situations? What could you do to create better balance between your work life and your social relationships?
Following on Abraham Joshua Heschel’s famous image of Sabbath as “a cathedral in time,” Bruce asserts that it is important for postmodern Americans to approach Sabbath rest as an otherworldly, perhaps magical time---a time full of possibility. This is especially true, Bruce argues, as the boundary between work and leisure becomes ever more blurred, and time is flattened---all time looking much the same.
Do you typically think of Sabbath as a “magical” time, full of possibility? If not, how would your life or routines change if you began to think of it that way? In your experience, does time seem largely flattened, with little to distinguish one day or week from another? How would thinking of Sabbath as “otherworldly” time change that?
Another thing Bruce points out is how Americans tend to correlate their work with their identity and sense of self. “We have a culture that valorizes work in ways that tie it very closely to our identity,” Bruce says. What we do, what we earn, and our status in the workforce may all contribute to how we see ourselves and how others see us. Yet, Bruce says, these things are often beyond our individual control.
Do you agree with Bruce that there is a danger in closely aligning our identity and sense of self to our jobs? Do you believe American culture encourages this way of thinking about oneself and others? What are some of the problems with closely identifying one’s sense of self and of self-worth with one’s job? How can we avoid this way of thinking? Is it even possible in our culture?
Consider this statement made in the film by Adventist theologian Richard Rice: “Sabbath has ethical implications. Work should not be what defines us as human beings.”
In what ways could regular Sabbath observance change how we think about ourselves and who we are? Could regular Sabbath observance help us redefine who we are and our reason for being in a more positive or expansive way?