Sabbath in a time of Crisis
The world is in chaos, the world is on fire, we are afraid, we are angry. And I don’t just mean metaphorically. Civil War. Climate collapse. Political chaos. Injustice that frightens those in our neighborhoods, those on the border, our friends, while the powerful elite hoard and demand even more. White Nationalism is dismantling our value system; extreme racism is the new normal. The news cycles don’t stop. The demands don’t stop. The exhaustion doesn’t stop. And yet I want to write about Sabbath.
Not the sanitized, self-care spa version that capitalism sells us, where rest is yet another commodity to be consumed. Not a special exercise, or lotion or elixir to turn us away from the pain of the world. But Sabbath as resistance as a bold, countercultural act of faith in a world that shovels lies and half-truth, shock and awe, and demands we keep adapting, producing, reacting.
Empire doesn’t want you to rest. Injustice thrives when we are too exhausted to fight. The powers, oligarchs, and principalities would love for us to believe that the world’s brokenness is all our responsibility, so we stay frantic, overwhelmed, and eventually burned out.
But Sabbath? Sabbath says: You are not a machine. You are not Pharaoh’s slave. You do not have to run yourself into the ground to prove your worth. God loves you!
When the Israelites escaped Pharaoh, they didn’t enter freedom with ease. They entered a wilderness, terrified and uncertain. Their first instinct? Hustle. Hoard. Keep striving. And God said, “No.” Instead, God provided just enough manna for six days, with the seventh set aside for rest. No striving. No hoarding. Just trust.
What if in our own wilderness this crisis we stopped scrambling long enough to believe that what we have is enough? That God is enough? That we are enough, we are blessed, even when we stop producing.
Jesus did something scandalous in a crisis He slept. In a storm. While His disciples panicked, convinced they were perishing, Jesus rested. And when He woke, He stilled the chaos with a word.
That kind of peace isn’t denial it’s power. It’s the deep-rooted assurance that chaos, the storm doesn’t get the final word. When we practice Sabbath, we refuse to be ruled by fear. We rest, not because the crisis is over, but because we know who holds us in the storm.
Jesus kept breaking Sabbath laws at least from the point of view of the religious leaders of His time. Why? Because for Jesus, Sabbath wasn’t about restriction; it was about liberation. When He healed a woman who had been bent over for 18 years, He called it setting her free.
If our rest isn’t liberating us or liberating others, then it isn’t God’s Sabbath. Real rest is about breaking chains, not reinforcing them. It’s the kind of pause that lets us breathe again, that reminds us our value isn’t tied to our productivity, that gives us the strength to return to the work of justice without becoming consumed by it.
The Israelites in Babylon were stripped of everything familiar. It would have been easy to despair. Instead, the prophet Jeremiah told them: Plant gardens. Settle in. Seek the welfare of the city, practice Sabbath right where you are, in the middle of exile.
We don’t wait for the world to be healed before we claim rest. We plant seeds of rest now in small, defiant ways. We turn off the news for an evening. We gather around a table with people we love. We pass out food to the hungry. We let joy interrupt the exhaustion. We remember that our rest, our delight, is a form of protest against the forces of evil that want us depleted.
And then, there’s the deepest kind of Sabbath the one that makes no sense. The Sabbath where Jesus lay in the tomb, when hope seemed lost. The in-between space where nothing seemed to be happening, but everything was shifting underground.
Sabbath is that holy pause. The moment between death and new life. The breath before resurrection. We remember to practice resurrection!
When I feel that space, where the weight of the world feels like a stone rolled over my heart I say: Breathe, Hold on. Trust. Resurrection is coming.
The world tells us there’s no time to stop. That if we care, we’ll keep pushing, keep fighting, keep wearing ourselves down.
Sabbath says: Rest is part of the revolution.
We rest so we can rise again with strength. We step away so we can return with clarity. We cease striving to remember that we are already free.
This is Sabbath in a time of crisis. Not an escape, but a faithful response to despair. Not a luxury, but a necessity for the work of justice.
So this is my invitation to you: Dare to rest. Dare to trust. Dare to Sabbath in the storm.
God is Good, All the Time.
Rex
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih. Shantih. Shantih
(Shantih shantih shantih, is a traditional Hindu and Buddhist closing, often translated as “The peace which passeth all understanding.” The final verse from T.S.Eliot, The Waste Land)
