Summertime Sabbath

Before I was a campus minister and before I was ordained, I lived in Berkeley California and worked at a little Episcopal church in the suburbs as their lay youth minister. Earlier this week I was remembering how at that church we went through a season of emphasis on the sabbath as necessary and central Christian practice.

This sabbath season was during the worst of the covid lockdowns and in the time when it seemed like we all spent all day on the computer: seemingly our entire lives (school and work and socializing!) playing out on screens, and ending every day a little bleary eyed and headachy and wondering how much more screentime we could endure. The sabbath felt like an antidote to that reality, but also it's about so much more than screentime. In it's modern version, the sabbath is quite straightforward but extensive: no electronics, no cooking, no work, no chores, no shopping, and if you're really hardcore about it, no driving.

Imagine a whole day set aside just to be, no productivity, no tasks, no work, not even TV or video games. It's worth remembering that taking time for sabbath is part of God's instruction to us, being the fourth commandment of ten and being mentioned many many other times in scripture. And though it might be easy to feel guilt or anxiety about taking time to be unproductive, it's worth wondering too why it is that God instructs us to take sabbath, and why God takes it too (on the seventh day of creation) even though God doesn't get tired or get headaches from looking at a screen too long.

The summertime is a ready made season for us to practice the sabbath and to practice giving up feelings of guilt and anxiety over rest-taking. If you're a little less productive over the summer, if you take a couple fewer meetings, if you spend a little longer drinking your coffee and reading your book, if you find yourself just wanting to sit by the pool, I say lean in to that feeling. If you can find the time and space just to be, fabulous, and if you can only find the leeway to carve out slightly less chaos than the rest of the year, fantastic. The question is not "How can I do the sabbath correctly?" but rather "What do I notice about my relationship with God, myself, and the world when I lean in to non-productivity?" Happy sabbathing, and happy summer, Christ Lutheran.