You Had Me at Shalom.
God spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai: “Speak to the People of Israel. Tell them, When you enter the land which I am going to give you, the land will observe a Sabbath to God. Sow your fields, prune your vineyards, and take in your harvests for six years. But the seventh year the land will take a Sabbath of complete and total rest, a Sabbath to God; you will not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. Don’t reap what grows of itself; don’t harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land gets a year of complete and total rest. But you can eat from what the land volunteers during the Sabbath year—you and your men and women servants, your hired hands, and the foreigners who live in the country, and, of course, also your livestock and the wild animals in the land can eat from it. Whatever the land volunteers of itself can be eaten.
Count off seven Sabbaths of years—seven times seven years: Seven Sabbaths of years adds up to forty-nine years. Then sound loud blasts on the ram’s horn on the tenth day of the seventh month, the Day of Atonement. Sound the ram’s horn all over the land. Sanctify the fiftieth year; make it a holy year. Proclaim freedom all over the land to everyone who lives in it—a Jubilee for you: Each person will go back to his family’s property and reunite with his extended family. The fiftieth year is your Jubilee year: Don’t sow; don’t reap what volunteers itself in the fields; don’t harvest the untended vines because it’s the Jubilee and a holy year for you. You’re permitted to eat from whatever volunteers itself in the fields. — Leviticus 25: 1-12 (MSG)
In Leviticus, God introduces this idea of the sabbatical year, where every seven years the people are to take a rest from farming and sowing and reaping, and for an entire year the people are to simply stop working and to just eat from the land. And then it mentions something called the “Jubilee.” And during Jubilee, what happens is that all debts against others are canceled, and people are given the opportunity to return to the land of their tribes. The whole nation of Israel is called to take a pause for an entire year—not working as farmers, not trying to collect as much as they can, but rather simply living off of the fruit of the land, whatever happens to be available that day. Your debts are canceled, the slaves are set free, you get to return to the land that you were given by God. It’s like hitting the giant restart button on your economic status.
Now, one of the most interesting things about this passage is the emphasis on the number seven—if you were Jewish at this time and you heard the number “seven,” you immediately thought of holiness and wholeness, because the first time you would have heard about the number “seven” would have been in the book of Genesis, right after God creates the heavens and the earth and rests.
But one of the ways that Jews added emphasis to something was to multiple a number so as to accentuate the particular attribute of that number. So if seven was holy, then fourteen would have been really holy.
What does it communicate when Jubilee is seven times seven?
It communicates the utmost of the holies.
It conveys holy wholeness.
It’s like the Holy of Holies.
(I feel like I’ve heard that before somewhere.)
And then God gives them this command, where they’re not to sow or reap—basically, work—but that they can eat anything from the land. And this echoes something God said to humanity in Genesis, right after he creates them on the sixth day:
Then God said, “I’ve given you every sort of seed-bearing plant on Earth, and every kind of fruit-bearing tree, given them to you for food. To all animals and all birds, everything that moves and breathes, I give whatever grows out of the ground for food.” And there it was. — Genesis 1: 29-30 (MSG)
So if you were a faithful Jew hearing these commands about Jubilee in Leviticus, you would have kept hearing, over and over again, these references and these allusions to Genesis 1. The creation story. That time when God created the Garden.
And it’s almost like God is saying to His people:
When you practice the Sabbath,
When you take time to rest,
When you let the land lie fallow,
When people don’t have debts or are enslaved,
When you eat just what grows out of the ground,
You’ve experienced a glimpse of what life was like in the Garden of Eden.
Jubilee—and by extension, Sabbath—was meant to remind us of what life and earth looked like before sin came into the picture.
It’s almost like God is asking His people, on every Sabbath, and sabbatical year, and Jubilee, to remember and retell their love story with Him.
Every time my wife and I host someone who doesn’t know us for a meal, there’s this phenomenon that happens without fail. The conversation hits a lull, there’s a brief pause, and then the question comes: “So how did you and Grace meet one another?”
(This has happened enough where I’m tempted to just record myself on a microphone so I can play it back on my phone when the question is asked. I think it happens right around dessert time—because up until that point, they’ve been trying to figure out how a girl like Grace married a guy like me, and by dessert they’re stumped.)
And now, because it’s happened quite a bit, Grace and I have a routine. We look at each other for a brief moment, and then I start it off by saying, “Well, it all started on May 25, at a friend’s house in Gardena…” and then we begin telling the story. And then, because I’m not a detail-oriented person, I usually get some details wrong, and then Grace corrects me, and by the time we finish telling the story we’re laughing because we’re thinking about how life used to be when I had terrible hair and we were poor but life was so fun because we had the butterflies for each other. (And usually we start laughing because when people ask what attracted her to me, they’re expecting something regarding my jokes, or my questionable choices in fashion; she responds: “He was loud.”)
“He was loud.”
There’s something about retelling your love story.
It re-centers you.
It forms a sense of story and purpose again.
There’s joy and laughter and remembrance.
No matter what kind of day we’ve had before that point, the retelling of the story transports us back in time to the first time that we met. And we’re reminded of what a great story it was.
When God tells His people that every seven days, they’re supposed to take a break from working, and that every seven years, they’re supposed to stop plowing and sowing and to simply eat from the land along with their animals, and that every seventh iteration of seven years, they’re supposed to forgive one another’s debts and set slaves free and eat from the land—it’s almost like God is trying to remind His people of who they are.
He’s telling them,
I freed you from slavery,
I picked you out when you were the underdog,
I blessed you to be a blessing.
“Remember and remind yourself who you’re meant to be.”
In The Gospel of Luke, when Jesus arrives on the scene and he’s about to start his public ministry, he goes to a synagogue in Nazareth and begins publicly reading from Isaiah—the one where he talks about setting the captives free and preaching good news to the poor—and it’s significant because he’s reading that during the Jubilee year. That’s right: the year that Jesus begins his ministry is the year of Jubilee.
So that’s why you see Jesus walking all throughout the Gospels, bringing healing and restoration and joy and glimpses of the kingdom of heaven into creation. He’s bringing it back to the beginning. By the way, this is why he doesn’t seem to be bothered when people accuse him of misusing the Sabbath when he’s healing on the Sabbath and bringing sight to the blind and hearing to the sick and restoration of status to the outcasts—the Pharisees completely missed the point of what Sabbath was for. It was to experience the glory of the Garden all over again, this snapshot in time where God and His people and creation were in perfect unity and harmony with one another.
The whole point is for all of creation to experience the Garden of Eden.
Everyone.
Everything.
You.
Me.
Your neighbor who plays music late at night.
Your annoying coworker.
Your family.
That stranger on the street who cut you off during traffic.
Your dog.
Your cat.
Our land.
Every square inch and mile of our world is meant to experience the blessing of God and a glimpse of what life could have looked like in the Garden.
But you’re waiting for the catch, aren’t you? Here’s the catch: our lives don’t look anything close to like what’s described in Genesis.
Do you know what happens when we’re instructed to take a rest and to stop building and stop farming and stop accumulating wealth for a year and to stop collecting, and we don’t? When we willfully ignore that commandment? Our lives start drifting away from the purpose that God set for Sabbath, and we end up looking very different than the way he intended. God instructs His people to have this rhythm of Sabbath because he knows that when we don’t take the time to remember, to rest, to recollect, that we lose the plot of the story.
Our pursuits and our productivity become the thing shaping our identities, rather than God. And when we do that, we think that we’re the ones responsible for our success and all of the blessings that have been given to us. And when that happens, we forget about God’s importance in our lives and why we’ve been created. We begin forming our identity on the things that drain our life, rather than the One who gives us life.
We forget who we’re meant to be.
We forget what we’re meant to do.
We go wayward.
We start building empires.
We start using people.
We get tired—and when we’re tired, we simply don’t have room to love anyone else. Our whole point of perspective goes towards self-centeredness and selfishness. We don’t have room for the other. All we have is ourselves and what we want.
Now, I know we’re not farmers and we don’t have the luxury of simply eating from the land, so we have to translate this well. But if we’re to be honest with ourselves, many of us don’t keep the Sabbath holy. There are some of us who actually work on the Sabbath, and there are others of us who don’t keep the Sabbath holy.
What I mean by that is we don’t mark Sunday as a special ‘day’—it’s simply an extension of our weekend. We go and stuff our schedule on Sundays with lunches and church and meetings and coffee and second coffee and movies, and then we go to bed by midnight and by Monday morning, we’re a complete mess. We haven’t rested ourselves, and as a result we are unable to give of ourselves to the people around us who are “poor”—both spiritually and literally. We simply don’t have room for the other because we have poured out all of our resources on the things that cannot give us life, and we haven’t taken enough time immersing ourselves in the Garden through the willful practice of the Sabbath.
Many of us compartmentalize our time in worship as our “time with God” or “practicing the Sabbath” to the two or three hours we spend at church, and the rest of the day is spent on ourselves and our own pursuits—when God asked that we keep the whole day for him.
I love the way Wayne Muller says it in his appropriately titled book, Sabbath:
“We meet dozens of people, have so many conversations. We do not feel how much energy we spend on each activity, because we imagine we will always have more energy at our disposal. This one little conversation. This one little extra phone call, this one quick meeting, what can it cost? But it does cost… it drains yet another drop of our life. Then, at the end of days, weeks, months, years, we collapse, we burn out, and cannot see where it happened. It happened in a thousand unconscious events, tasks and responsibilities that seemed easy and harmless on the surface, but that each one after the other used a small portion of our precious life. And so, we are given a commandment, which is actually a gift: ‘Remember the Sabbath.’” — Wayne Muller
And what will happen to us, if we are not careful about remembering and practicing and protecting the Sabbath, is that we will find ourselves without life and energy to continue pursuing the will of God.
We will find ourselves disconnected.
We become lifeless.
We find ourselves losing the plot, the story, the trajectory of God’s intentions for us and the world.
So how do we practice the art of Sabbath?
First, we eat from the ground.
(Uh, before you put that questionable thing in your mouth, just wait a minute.)
Do you know why it’s so important to not farm, and to just eat what’s available in the fields? It’s because there’s no process, there’s no schedule, there’s no metric for productivity, there’s no deadlines… when you eat from the ground, you simply eat until you’re full. All you do is eat when it’s time to eat, and finish when it’s time to finish.
This means that our Sundays have to preserved as a time where we slow down… where we quiet ourselves so that we can hear the still, small voice of God. It means that we don’t stuff the day full of activities. We don’t schedule things to the max. It means that we leave room in our schedules for the unhurried moments of grace so that we can actually enjoy ourselves in the things that give life and practice the way that we’re meant to live. We simply take the day as it comes and fully rest in the unhurried pace of life that God meant for us to experience.
What this means for some of us is that we need to actually begin preparing for the Sabbath on Saturday night, not Sunday morning. Our Sundays need to be kept aside as holy. They need to be kept aside as a day wholly dedicated to enjoying Him and His presence.
Next, we sound the ram’s horn. (If you haven’t figured it out by now, these are metaphorical instructions. So delete that shofar from your Amazon cart.)
The ram’s horn was sounded during all of the significant moments and holidays of the Israelite people—it’s not this arbitrary, one-time choice. If you were a Jewish person at the time listening to these instructions, you would have instantly thought, “Aha! This reminds of all the times that God came through for us in the previous occasions and stories when we blew the ram’s horn!” You think about Joshua and the Walls of Jericho, the covenant ceremony between Israel and God at Mount Sinai, the feasts and festivals, the dedication of Solomon’s Temple…
When we gather in the name of Jesus on Sundays, these are not just spectator events. Every Sunday, when we celebrate resurrection corporately, it’s also a time for us to remember individually how God has changed us and moved in our lives. We gather as part of the catholic church, but we also gather as individuals who have our own stories with how God approached us, how He has saved us, how He continues to write a new story. So every week, take some time to meditate and remember how good God is. And remind yourselves of the “love story” that God has written for us all… Remember what drew you to Him in the first place, and let that re-center you in His eternal hope.
But that’s not the end of it—remembering our love story doesn’t just mean what’s happened in the beginning, but what’s happening right here and right now, how God is bringing forth new creation and resurrection life in every square inch of creation as we speak. “Sounding the ram’s horn” isn’t just about what happened back then; it’s also about what’s happening in reality at this very moment, whether we see it or not. We proclaim this as an act of faith.
Our time of praise and singing is meant to commemorate and celebrate the fact that every Sunday is a celebration of resurrection. Even if we don’t “feel” like worshipping, or our current reality does not easily lead us into celebration, we need to know that we live in a deeper, ultimate reality that points to the reality of the kingdom of heaven in the here and now.
“Proclaim freedom all over the land to everyone who lives in it…”
Lastly, the Sabbath was meant as a day in which we proclaim freedom.
The essential part of the Jubilee was for the people of God to make space for those who were in need—particularly those who were underprivileged or disenfranchised. The people who benefited the most from being able to glean from the fields were the orphans and widows who had no one else to provide for them. And how we truly honor the Sabbath is that on our days off, we make sure to rest so that for the remainder of our week, we are able to minister to them out of the overflow of our hearts. God does not bless us simply for the sake of us being blessed—He blesses us so that with our rest, we can go out into the world and show people a glimpse of His goodness.
One of the best ways we can show people the beauty of a Sabbath well practiced is to be people who are unflinchingly generous: whether it’s with our words, or with our time, or with our finances, particularly to the people we know are struggling to keep their heads above water. I’m reminded of countless stories of people from our church community who send meals to those who are having a rough go at life; others who send gift cards in the mail to the family that’s having a difficult time navigating the present moment; the members who come alongside those hosting children from at-risk homes so that their parents can go to rehab and work for the hope of a brighter future. These moments tell a far more meaningful testimony than our words could ever share, because they point to a kingdom reality that’s present in the here and now—a life only accessible from being deeply and truly anchored in the Sabbath.
Back when my daughter Hope was born, my wife Grace got a new job after being on maternity leave, and so for about one or two Mondays out of the month we began doing “Daddy Day Care,” because Mondays were my days off. What this involved was Grace getting ready for work and leaving for the day, while I was at home trying to survive eight hours without my wife while taking care of our baby Hope. And there were some bad days—there were days where I was so exhausted that I put her in the Pack-n-Play while she smushed her face on the screen and wailed like a prisoner, while I laid on the floor and tried to get ten seconds of sleep.
(By the way, women are way stronger than men. But that’s a note for another time.)
Over time, I started realizing that there was a pattern of what dictated a good “dad” day and a “bad” dad day. And there was just one determining factor. That factor was the time I went to bed on Sunday nights, because when you become a parent, all of your free time goes out the window until they go to bed. So Hope would go to bed at around 8:00PM, and then I would see that as my time to catch up on Netflix, or Hulu, and inevitably the time passed by and I would crawl into bed some nights by midnight. And then the days after I went to bed late, I just couldn’t give of myself to my daughter: I had no energy, I had no patience, I was frustrated, I was exhausted…
But do you know what changed this all for me?
On Sunday nights, when I know Grace is going to work, I can feel Netflix calling my name. I can feel my Xbox One staring at me with its judgmental power button. It’s there—the temptation to spend time on myself.
But I remind myself of who I am.
The story I’m a part of.
Who I am representing to my daughter and my son.
And I know I’m called to serve them. To represent God to them on our times together.
But I can only do that when I’ve fully rested and remembered.
When I feel ungrateful, I think back to the times when we had prayed and cried for the opportunity to have a baby, and I can feel the desire to be a good father stir inside of myself.
So I get myself ready—I prepare for bed early, and I do my best to get to bed by 11:00PM (sometimes unsuccessfully). But I go to bed with the expectation that, on Monday, I am going to pour myself into the lives of my children out of the overflow that comes from only resting in Him. A life rooted and anchored in the glimpse of the promise of the Garden, here and now.