Walter Brueggemann - Sabbath as Resistance, New Edition With Study Guide: Saying No to the Culture of Now

SABBATH AS RESISTANCE

NEW EDITION WITH STUDY GUIDE

Abiding Astonishment: Psalms, Modernity, and the Making of History

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The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann, Volumes 1 and 2

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Living Countertestimony: Conversations with Walter Brueggemann (with

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SABBATH AS RESISTANCE

NEW EDITION

WITH STUDY GUIDE

Saying No to the Culture of Now

WALTER BRUEGGEMANN

2014, 2017 Walter Brueggemann

Study Guide 2017 Westminster John Knox Press

Portions of this book were previously published as a downloadable study

titled Sabbath as Resistance, The Thoughtful Christian, August 1, 2007,

www.TheThoughtfulChristian.com.

Revised edition

Published by Westminster John Knox Press

Louisville, Kentucky

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 2610 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Scripture quotations from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible are copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. and are used by permission.

The Study Guide may be photocopied for educational use in a local church setting.

Book design by Erika Lundbom-Krift

Cover design by Dilu Nicholas

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Brueggemann, Walter, author.

Title: Sabbath as resistance : saying no to the culture of now / Walter Brueggemann.

Description: New Edition, with Study Guide. | Louisville, KY : Westminster John Knox Press, 2017. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2017029410 (print) | LCCN 2017032186 (ebook) | ISBN 9781611648300 (ebk.) | ISBN 9780664263294 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Sabbath. | Sunday. | Rest--Religious aspects--Christianity.

Classification: LCC BV111.3 (ebook) | LCC BV111.3 .B77 2017 (print) | DDC 296.4/1--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017029410

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

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In memory of my mother, Hilda,

and Charles,

the son she loved first

1.Sabbath and the First Commandment

2.Resistance to Anxiety (Exodus 20:1217)

3.Resistance to Coercion (Deuteronomy 5:1214)

4.Resistance to Exclusivism (Isaiah 56:38)

5.Resistance to Multitasking (Amos 8:48)

6.Sabbath and the Tenth Commandment

FOR THE MOST PART, CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIANS PAY LITTLE attention to the Sabbath. We more or less know that the day came to reflect, in U.S. culture, the most stringent disciplinary faith of the Puritans which, in recent time, translated into a moralistic prescription for a day of quiet restraint and prohibition. In many, somewhat-pietistic homes that amounted to not playing cards or seeing films on Sunday, and certainly not shopping. I can remember each year debates in our rural community about farmers working on some few Sundays to harvest wheat in the face of devastating rains that were sure to come. I can remember from my earlier days, moreover, that because of Blue Laws, Sunday home baseball games for the Phillies and the Pirates in Pennsylvania could not begin a new inning after 6:00 p.m. The sum of all these memories of restraint was essentially negative, a series of Thou Shalt Nots that served to echo the more fundamental prohibitions of the Decalogue. This context did not offer much potential for seeing the Sabbath in a positive way as an affirmative declaration of faith or identity. And, of course, as church monopoly in our culture has in many places waned or disappeared, the commitment to Sabbath discipline has likewise receded.

As in so many things concerning Christian faith and practice, we have to be reeducated by Judaism that has been able to sustain its commitment to Sabbath as a positive practice of faith. The magisterial book of Abraham Heschel continues to be a lead voice in a Jewish awareness of Sabbath. In our present context, perhaps it is Michael Fishbanes eloquent probe of Jewish practices that has the most to teach us about Jewish understandings of Sabbath. Fishbanes discussion is in the larger context of his splendid book concerning the maintenance of Jewish mindfulness in a society that is increasingly mindless. The Sabbath, along with the other practices he exposits, concerns the maintenance of a distinct faith identity in the midst of a culture that is inhospitable to all distinct identities in its impatient reduction of all human life to the requirements of the market. In contrast (and contradiction) to cultural mindlessness (that can hardly be underestimated!):

The Sabbath and its observance may cultivate a theological mindfulness....

How so?

The Sabbath sanctifies time through sanctioned forms of rest and inaction. On this day certain workaday activities and ordinary busyness are suspended and brought to a halt. In their stead, a whole host of ways of resting the body and mind are cultivated. These are of a special cultural type. For though we have a natural notion of work, and think of it in terms of physical exertion or compulsory performance done in order to sustain ones livelihood, these kinds of labor relate to our Adamic selves: the physical self that is sent forth into the world and must work the earth to provide sustenance, while losing body strength on ones life-course toward death. By contrast, our Mosaic selves are enhanced through the teachings of the Oral Torah, which bring other notions of work and categories of labor to bear.