3.2

A whole and holy time 

At the beginning of her freedom in the desert, God told Israel to remember to keep the Sabbath and to live differently in it.

In the beginning, God created the universe. Day by day He separated this from that, here from there, pronouncing His good and blessing over it all. With the most intimate of embraces, God’s Spirit hovered over formless chaos and penetrated it with His words, speaking living order into it. God knew the unknown and spoke it into being, separating and setting all things in their given places where they could flourish and fulfill His good. Day by day He detailed divisions between light and dark, earth and heaven, luminaries of the sky, land and water, plant and plant, creature and creature. God gave unique natures and places to all things, forbidding even the smallest of them to be overtaken by the great cosmos and lost or forgotten by Him. But on the seventh day, God spoke nothing into being. No new shapes or substances were formed. On the seventh day God separated the invisible realm of times: the time of His making from the time of His rest. One time is the medium in which God’s blessings make the cosmos fruitful and multiply. The other is holy and in the nature of His rest 

The creation story reveals something about God’s way of knowing. God spoke and brought forth shape and substance from an indistinct chaos. The time of space speaks God’s invisible order to our senses through His creation. In nature’s cycles, in the growth and decay of things both organic and inorganic, time reflects its laws and order in all things. The unique nature and laws of Sabbath time, however, is not reflected in the cosmos for our senses to apprehend. The Sabbath’s nature is described in the fourth commandment as primarily a time of negations. Sabbath time excludes all work by both Creator and creation, and cannot be identified with anything God made. These negatives help to outline its distinct shape and describe something of its holy substance 

The shape it assumes with these negatives begins, paradoxically, with the Sabbath’s absolute inclusivity. The Sabbath excludes anything that would separate or exclude from its all inclusive time. Work is excluded for all that is associated with Israel: her family, servants, fellow travelers and animals. All are equally accountable to His rest. God’s rest does not discriminate. All must assume the same position before God in His rest. The Sabbath’s command is to all and speaks God’s perfect justice at the foundation of His works, a justice that is perfectly balanced because it settles equally on all things. On the Sabbath, God’s relation with all things is the same. He is Creator of all. At this level of God’s rest as Creator, no one is preferred and no one is refused 

The Sabbath’s authority is in the nature of God’s authority over all He created. As water is commanded to be wet or the sun to give light, so the Sabbath commands all to rest before God who has established all things by His works that He alone completes. It would seem that the Sabbath law would require no apparent effort or sacrifice for us to observe it. What more do we need to do than what God has already done for the sake of His creation? But the Sabbath’s paradox is, its simplicity is impossible to keep. The Sabbath does not command what we must do but how we must be in relation to God. God’s rest is His mysterious holiness that commands our holiness. As simple as the Sabbath command appears, the more carefully anyone tries to keep it, the more elusive it shows itself and the clearer it becomes that God’s rest is not natural to us at all 

Rabbis ask how is the Sabbath to be like other days and how is it to be different (A Shabbat Reader, p. 21). The Torah answers by not even considering their similarities. The Sabbath is entirely defined by its differences. It is sanctified, set apart and not to be confused with the rest of the week. This is the special law of the Sabbath: all work is prohibited to keep the day holy in His rest. Not working gives way to God’s rest, and God’s rest enables work to cease. We cannot rest if we are still working. We dare not stop working until there is assurance that some thing or one will take over. We dare not let go of the stick in a relay race until the next hand is near to grab it. We cannot stop paddling until we know the water or something else will keep us afloat. God’s rest takes up when work is laid down. Not working and God’s rest collaborate as one to keep the Sabbath holy 

These general outlines of the Sabbath begin to give shape and words to the central question that is at the heart of this day: what is God’s rest? What is this holy dynamic that takes over when work stops? The positive presence of the Sabbath can’t be found in what it isn’t, in the absence of work. Not working is a precondition, the removal of a central obstacle to God’s holiness. Not working is God’s chosen way to be with Him. When we are no longer entangled with the world’s pushes and pulls, with expectations and obligations and ephemeral hopes, we are free to be with the One who made us and keeps us. God’s rest is as the calm hovering over a great body of water, whose peace penetrates and settles the water fully upon its foundations. In God’s rest, we settle into who we are made to be, because we are engaging with our Creator 

Something of this divine dynamic is described in the Torah when we read that God not only rested on the seventh day, but He also completed His work on the seventh day (Genesis 2:2). For six days God shaped and formed creation, each consecutive day building on the previous ones with richer complexities and abundance. By the sixth day, God made all things that were made, things both actual and potential. In six days the history of creation ended. But on the seventh day, God completed His work. No new thing was created, but this day is more honored than all the other days combined. God in His rest is much more to His works than any whole is to the sum of its parts. God in His holiness shows Himself far greater than His creation. In His holiness, God reveals Himself as the ever-present Creator who sustains all. The Sabbath manifests the nature and order of God’s relationship with all He made. For this reason, the seventh day far surpasses the sum of the previous days. In six days God expressed His will in His works but on the seventh day, He expresses His will in His relation to His works. God as Source of all is continually completing all as He created all to be, in His rest 

The Sabbath’s paradox is that it binds together by separating, unites by excluding, makes whole by dividing. Its commandment separated Israel and all that had to do with her from work, so that all can together be established in God’s restoring rest. God’s rest is His way of sanctifying in the world, to live in the world in His way that does not derive from it. A recurring theme in the Bible is the reciprocal relation between living with God and with the world. Those who don’t know God are engrossed in the world and live as if from it. Those who know God must learn to return to the present truth that He continually distinguishes them from the world, so that He can mediate between them. God separates us from the world so He can translate and transform it for us, make His sense of it for us. When God mediates life for us, we find that He wants to bring all things together in Him, unite all things in the pleasure of His will. Some things in His will are meant to endure; other things aren’t. This present world is not designed to be a permanent home, and so we all die in it. We are all travelers passing through and that is all we will ever be to this earth, no matter how much we insist otherwise. “I am a stranger with You,” said the Psalmist, “a sojourner like all my fathers” (Psalm 39:12) 

A whole’s relation to its parts explains something of God completing His work in His rest. God does not, however, complete His work like someone who finishes a job and moves on to the next job. The complete work of God’s rest is more like that of a complete marriage. When two people seal their vows, they don’t put their marriage aside because they finished getting married. They continue in marriage, even though nothing more is needed to be married. The purpose of getting married is to stay married for love and good and for life. We may want to leave a work once it’s finished, but when marriage is done, husband and wife want to stay and grow together in it. So, too, does God want to stay on with His finished works, only much more so. If He left His works for an instant, their substance and value would cease. Completing His work on the Sabbath is not in the past tense. It is the very present reality of God continually creating and sustaining all He made. He is always “. . .the God in whose hand are your lifebreath and all your ways…” (Daniel 5:23)