Sabbathing
One benefit of a lonely path is thinking and praying freely without interruption. While I've been walking, I’ve been reflecting on the significant challenges and pressures that have weighed heavily on the emotional and spiritual well-being of pastors across America. The data is grim and heartbreaking. Here is what I wrote last week:
Today I want to give you a word — sabbathing — and a set of practices that surround the word. I’ve found the practice necessary, not optional, while living for four decades within the vocation of a pastor. I imagine most of what I write here will help anyone, but I am thinking specifically of vocational brothers and sisters who serve others as a spiritual guide and pastor, sometimes at the peril of their own souls.
The Start of a Practice
In the first years of ministry, I overworked. Honest admission. I was overwhelmed with how much time it took to prepare a weekly message, provide pastoral care, guide a community, and resolve inevitable congregational or interpersonal conflicts. Most of the time, I felt like I was living in a time deficit. Eventually, I mentioned my frustration to my mentor, Dr. Elton Trueblood. He listened, and then said something memorable that made a difference:
The person who is always available offers little value to others.
This simple eleven-word sentence halted the treadmill that was spinning too fast. I knew my shallow theology and practice of ministry had been exposed. I realized that if I wanted to stay in ministry for the long term, I would have to reevaluate nearly everything. I would learn much more later, but I recognized quickly that resilience hinged upon discovering and cultivating a rhythm of involvement and withdrawal, enabling me to contribute meaningfully during my moments of availability. The initial awareness kindled my conviction about spiritual formation and prompted my pursuit of acquiring the practice that I now refer to as sabbathing.
Sabbathing as a Useful Word
Frequently, I observe that the word “Sabbath” does not hold much value in modern discussions about a helpful day of rest. Many of the biblical discussions regarding the sabbath that I notice seem to lack a connection to the idea and practice of rest. Instead, they concentrate on the legal aspects of which day constitutes the proper Sabbath or whether Christians are required to observe the Sabbath. These discussions seem rather abstract to me, as the straightforward truth is that very few people in our relentless, 24/7 culture intend to observe a sabbath day. New York City is no longer the sole place that never sleeps. Everything is almost always accessible, including sports leagues, restaurants, bars, shops, theaters, and car lots.
Consequently, I have turned to a novel term, “sabbathing,” to articulate a practice that pastors (and everyone else I know) would find beneficial and enriching. Allow me to indulge in my word geekery for a while. (I have several family members who taught English grammar; at least they will be impressed!) Sabbathing is a verb form of the noun, Sabbath. While the noun refers to a day of rest, as previously stated, for the majority of us, Sabbath refers mainly to a certain day of the week instead of the activity of resting. I may claim I believe in the Sabbath while frantically pursuing unceasing activities and never resting. That is nonsense. But sabbathing is a special kind of verb that forces me to focus on the activity of resting. It's a present progressive verb. It is a means to describe what I am doing right now. I'm resting. I am discontinuing work. I'm taking a break. When I use the noun, Sabbath, I can continue to work. But when I use the verb, sabbathing, it describes what I am doing: resting.
A Weekly Day of Sabbathing
Not long after Trueblood drew my attention to the importance of unavailability, Eugene Peterson published a little book that is now a treasured, much-underlined, and well-worn addition to my library: Working the Angles. In another edition of Wednesday Wanderings, I’ll describe my own practice of sabbathing. For the moment, I will present Peterson’s account of his practice of sabbathing so you can learn as I did from the master. These few paragraphs initiated my personal journey of exploration, allowing me the liberty to discover methods of sabbathing that would be beneficial to me:
Monday is my Sabbath. Nothing is scheduled for Mondays. If there are emergencies, I respond, but there are surprisingly few. My wife joins me in observing the day. We make a lunch, put it in a daypack, take our binoculars, and drive anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour to a trailhead along a river or into the mountains. Before we begin our hike, my wife reads a psalm and prays. After that prayer there is no more talking—we enter into a silence that continues for the next two or three hours, until we stop for lunch.
We walk leisurely, emptying ourselves, opening ourselves to what is there: fern shapes, flower fragrance, birdsong, granite out-croppings, oaks and sycamores, rain, snow, sleet, wind.
We have clothes for all weather and so never cancel our Sabbath-keeping for reasons of weather any more than our Sunday churchgoing—and for the same reason: we need our Sabbath just as much as our parishioners need theirs. When the sun or our stomachs tell us it is lunchtime, we break the silence with a prayer of blessing for the sandwiches and fruit, the river and the forest. We are free to talk now, sharing bird sightings, thoughts, observations, ideas—however much or little we are inclined.
We return home in the middle or late afternoon, putter, do odd jobs, read. After supper I usually write family letters. That's it. No Sinai thunder. No Damascus Road illuminations. No Patmos visions. A day set apart for solitude and silence. Not-doing.
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Jesus’ Invitation to Rest
Jesus was a master of invitations in the Bible stories about him. He invited people to follow him. He invited people to open the door and he would come in and have a meal with them. He invited people to come to him, promising that when they did, they would find soul rest (Matthew 11:28-30). The invitation in Mark, chapter five, is an invitation to another kind of rest. It is a sabbathing kind of rest. It is a rest from activity. It is rest for the body, rest from exhaustion, rest from being overwhelmed. It is an invitation — and permission — to take a break.
Spiritual Formation Queries
Spiritual formation queries date back at least to the 17th-century. They are simply a series of questions to help you reflect on what your life is doing to you and whether your practices are helping you find a deeper life with Jesus.
Query #1: After reading several times Jesus’ invitation to his followers in the Gospel of Mark, what catches your attention? What do you know now about Jesus because of this invitation? What do you know about the value of sabbathing from this invitation?
Query #2: In Eugene Peterson’s description of his own practice of sabbathing, he described it as a day of “non-doing.” When was the last time you gave yourself an entire day of “non-doing?” If you don’t do this regularly, why not?
Query #3: What is your own practice of sabbathing? Is it strong enough to help you resist the temptation to engage in nonstop activity?
Query #4: If you are a pastor, what are your unique struggles with sabbathing? Does your congregation know you need a sabbathing routine? Does it value this for you as their spiritual guide? What step are you willing to take to model this kind of spiritual practice for your community members who are living in a world of 24/7 nonstop activity?
NEXT WEDNESDAY: The Most-Neglected Commandment