Church Sabbatical: A Theology of Stopping

Without stopping our churches become duty-full but sad places defined by our work but not by joy and measured by our results but not God’s presence.  God’s people, created for rejoicing, become like an overworked spouse; full of responsibility and empty of romance.  Our churches become efficient at doing business and balancing the books and counting attendance, but not discerning the Spirit. Sometimes it’s hard to diagnose, this hyperactive lethargiosis.  It is a subtle and silent sickness, but so terminal.  The symptoms are often imperceptible for the roar of activity all around.

  

Stopping is a bit counter-intuitive for the really good church member.  If you ask her to stop, she will tell you with a straight face and a withered soul, “I love what I do!” Or, he might say between gasps for breath, “I love the church and this is what I can do!” But isn’t there also a gnawing desperate motivation? Isn’t there an unspoken concern as well?  We don’t really believe that God will throw the riders into the sea.  We don’t really believe that Mary chose the better part. “If I don’t keep this up and recruit others and generate enthusiasm,” we say to the honest part of our hearts, “the whole thing will come down like a house of cards.”
 

So, while we are out in the field and in the kitchen working, our God has already slaughtered the fatted calf and just distributed the really good hooch to the steward’s amazement and wonder.  It’s not too late.  Edwin play.  The invitation is for all of us. “Stand still.” “Choose the better part.” “Come on in and enjoy the party.” “Keep the Sabbath.” It starts by stopping. 

It is, I am convinced, our punctuated cessation of duty that reconnects us with the one another and allows us to always be falling in love.  The same thing can happen in the unloveliest of churches.  They can fall in love again if they just stand still and let God kneel down and sweep them up and become his bride.  

"The sabbath was reinstated as a sacramental bridging of the abyss, offering immediate relief from the powers of nature and the peril of death. The sixth day would remain under these powers, but on the seventh day there was to be relief, renewal, and restoration as an eschatological “jubilee,” a provisional, but promising, hope of complete reconciliation."

Sabbath rest, therefore, is a recreation of the divine embrace of Eden.  Stopping is the means to the end, not the end itself.  The end, the seventh day, is to rejoice in the other six.  And as unlikely as that may seem when the doctor tells us of a “radiographic opacity” or the basement has flooded or our child is sick, it is possible.  Heaven comes down and kisses this fallen world. We are not called to be dour servants of a demanding church, but rather to be salubrious slaves of a cavorting Christ.

Congregational Sabbath: Less doing...More Being.

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Quote from: Anderson, Ray. The Soul of Ministry: Forming Leaders for God's People. Louisville KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997, pg. 65
Photo from www.sxc.hu 1402892