Rest

Sunday 21st February 

When despair for the world grows in me
And I wake in the night at the least sound

In fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake

Rests in his beauty on the water,
and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things

Who do not tax their lives with forethought

Of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
Waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.1

Wendell Berry’s evocative poem makes resting in “the grace of the world” an enticing prospect. So why is it that I so rarely seek that place of rest. I have plenty of excuses – busy mind, busy heart, too much to do. An ego trip really, and it is a kind of slavery.

The Israelites in Moses’ time escaped the slavery they had endured in Egypt and, a generation later, Sinai appeared in the distance; the Holy Mountain, an “awesome, dread-filled place that signalled divine presence that was in no sense user friendly.”  2In Brueggmann’s description it “surged and shrieked with divine presence”; upon which dwelt the “hidden, inscrutable savage God” who, “like a fairy tale ogre, threatens all who approach”.

Speaking for the God of the Mountain, Moses told them that this mountain was, in fact, the offer of a new identity, a life in covenant with God. That is all he said – no detail. Israel, without reservation, and one might say a little too readily, answered as one: “Everything the Lord has spoken we will do.” (Exodus 19.8)

Low and behold, this new God turns out to be the one who “outmatched and outmuscled Pharaoh, terminated the brick quota, and ended the hot demanding brickyards” 3 of slavery. This new God offers a charter for an alternative existence outside the categories of Pharaoh, a charter for freedom. And strikingly, this new God actually speaks directly to them.

As you no doubt know, the mountain God of freedom speaks at Sinai but ten times, after which God communicates only through Moses. Of the ten utterances, the first group of three concerns love of God, love in this context being a covenant word for honouring treaty commitments. Another group of six concerns parents – killing, adultery, stealing, false witness and lying. The first three, then, concern love of God and the latter six concern love of neighbour. Sandwiched in between is the sabbath command, which links the first three and the God of restfulness with the last six concerning the neighbour who needs restfulness.4

 So, in between these two groups of commands, the great God of freedom places the central provision of a charter for freedom that prevails to this day.

Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God: you shall not do any work – you, your son, or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it. (Exodus 20.8-11)

 Patrick Miller Jr commented that this striking command not only stands at the centre of the decalogue but “dominates the horizon of commands at Sinai.”5 It is pivotal to the covenant of freedom. And it remains pivotal to our way of life.

Further to this, the end of this exciting meeting at Sinai, culminates in a repetition of the earlier oath of allegiance and obedience.

All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient. (Exodus 24.7)

Israel signs on gladly and without reservation to God’s proposition, but this time it is informed consent. The commands of YHWH were infinitely kinder than Pharaoh’s, and even included a day of rest!

 It is also clear that the sabbath command at Sinai (in Exodus 20.8-11) refers to the litany of creation at the beginning of Genesis. (1 – 2.4a) This litany attests that the Creator God is a God of blessing, capable of assigning life and well- being to every aspect of creation. Firstly, God blesses sea monsters and winged creatures, bringing order from chaos; secondly God blesses humans as God’s regents in maintaining an order of abundance; and thirdly God blesses the seventh day, which God made holy as a day of rest intrinsic to the structure of the created order of fruitfulness. 6

So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it because on it God rested from all the work that God had done in creation. (Genesis 2.3)

 The day of rest is, I repeat, intrinsic to the structure of the created order of fruitfulness – Brueggemann’s words. But we rarely take in the idea that God rested on the seventh day. Is it too difficult to imagine that after six days of extraordinary labour, God might have been tired?

We are used to a different God, the God of the catechism, the God of classical theology, in both of which God never rests; that God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, without whose constant activity creation would vanish. But our God rests! Walter Brueggemann is pretty blunt about this:

God rests because the world will work, because the tasks of creation have been delegated, and because creation, blessed as it is, knows the will and energy of the creator … God rests because God engages in self-care … 7

Furthermore, the human creature, in the God-like responsibility of regent, is in the image of God. “It belongs to the image to reflect the sabbath of the creator, and where it is not so reflected, the image is violated and distorted.”8

 The final iteration of the sabbath command in Exodus has a fortissimo coda to the music of creation. Following the Sinai adventure, God addresses Moses about the priesthood and the construction of a tabernacle, a holy place for the indwelling of God. The tabernacle, says God

 … is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed. (Exodus 31.17)

 “And was refreshed.”9 That tabernacle is both a reminder and a sacrament of a holy reality, as is our church building, as is our sanctuary, as are the wide-open spaces of our beautiful world. They are keys that open the door of the cathedral of the heart, the personal holy space in which the indwelling God resides, where sabbath rest and refreshment are ours to keep forever, and by which grace the music of creation is preserved.

As Wendell Berry wrote, “I come into the peace of wild things … I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

Amen.              Doug Bannerman © 2021