Sabbath as Resistance, New Edition with Study Guide

Saying No to the Culture of Now

Walter Brueggemann, Walter Brueggemann

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781611648300
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

In this new edition that includes a study guide, popular author Walter Brueggemann writes that the Sabbath is not simply about keeping rules but rather about becoming a whole person and restoring a whole society. Brueggemann calls out our 24/7 society of consumption, a society in which we live to achieve, accomplish, perform, and possess. We want more, own more, use more, eat more, and drink more. Brueggemann shows readers how keeping the Sabbath allows us to break this restless cycle and focus on what is truly important: God, other people, all life. Perfect for groups or self-reflection, Sabbath as Resistance offers a transformative vision of the wholeness God intends, giving world-weary Christians a glimpse of a more fulfilling and simpler life through Sabbath observance.

Chapter 1

SABBATH AND THE FIRST
COMMANDMENT

INTERPRETATION SERIES EDITOR PATRICK MILLER HAS shrewdly observed that the fourth commandment on Sabbath is the “crucial bridge” that connects the Ten Commandments together.¹ The fourth commandment looks back to the first three commandments and the God who rests (Exod. 20:3–7). At the same time, the Sabbath commandment looks forward to the last six commandments that concern the neighbor (vv. 12–17); they provide for rest alongside the neighbor. God, self, and all members of the household share in common rest on the seventh day; that social reality provides a commonality and a coherence not only to the community of covenant but to the commandments of Sinai as well. For that reason, it is appropriate in our study of the Sabbath commandment to begin with a reflection on the first commandment and, subsequently, to finish our work with a consideration of the tenth commandment that concludes the Decalogue.

The first commandments concern God, God’s aniconic character, and God’s name (Exod. 20:3–7). But when we consider the identity of this God, we are made immediately aware that the God who will brook no rival and who eventually will rest is a God who is embedded in a narrative; this God is not known or available apart from that narrative. The narrative matrix of YHWH, the God of Israel, is the exodus narrative. This is the God “who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (v. 2). Thus the Sabbath commandment is drawn into the exodus narrative, for the God who rests is the God who emancipates from slavery and consequently from the work system of Egypt and from the gods of Egypt who require and legitimate that work system. It is, for that reason, fair to judge that the prohibition against “the other gods” in the first commandment pertains directly to the gods of Egypt (see Exod. 12:12) and other gods of the same ilk in Canaan, or subsequently the gods of the great empires of Assyria, Babylon, or Persia. In the narrative imagination of Israel, the gods of Egypt are stand-ins for all the gods of the several empires. What they all have in common is that they are confiscatory gods who demand endless produce and who authorize endless systems of production that are, in principle, insatiable. Thus, the mention of “Egypt” brings the God of Israel into the orbit of socioeconomic systems and practices, and inevitably sets this God on a collision course with the gods of insatiable productivity.

The reference to “Egypt” indicates that the God of Sinai who gives the Ten Commandments is never simply a “religious figure” but is always preoccupied with and attentive to socioeconomic practice and policy. If we want, then, to understand this God (or any god), we must look to the socioeconomic system that god legitimates and authorizes. In the case of the Egyptian gods (who are in contrast to and in competition with the God of the exodus), we look to Pharaoh’s system of production that is legitimated by the gods worshiped by Pharaoh. In Exodus 5, we are given a passionate narrative account of that labor system in which Pharaoh endlessly demands more production. What the slaves are to produce is more bricks that are to be used for the building of more “supply cities” in which Pharaoh can store his endless supply of material wealth in the form of grain (see Exod. 1:11). Because the system was designed to produce more and more surplus (see Gen. 47:13–26), there is always more need for storage units that in turn generated more need for bricks with which to construct them. Thus, if we follow the required bricks from the slave camps, we end with surplus wealth, taken as a gift of the gods of Pharaoh.

In this narrative report, Pharaoh is a hard-nosed production manager for whom production schedules are inexhaustible:

–“[W]hy are you taking the people away from their work? Get to your labors!” (Exod. 5:4)

–“. . . yet you want them to stop working!” (v. 5)

–“You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks as before; let them go and gather straw for themselves. But you shall require of them the same quantity of bricks as they have made previously; do not diminish it, for they are lazy.” (vv. 7–8)

–“Let heavier work be laid on them; then they will labor at it and pay no attention to deceptive words.” (v. 9)

–“I will not give you straw. Go and get straw yourselves, wherever you can find it; but your work will not be lessened in the least.” (vv. 10–11)

–“Complete your work the same daily assignment as when you were given straw.” (v. 13)

–“Why did you not finish the required quantity of bricks yesterday and today, as you did before?” (v. 14)

–“No straw is given to your servants, yet they say to us, ‘Make bricks.’” (v. 16)

–“You are lazy, lazy; that is why you say, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord.’ Go now, and work; for no straw will be given you but you shall still deliver the same number of bricks.” (vv. 17–19)

–“You shall not lessen your daily number of bricks.” (v. 19)

The rhetoric is relentless, all to the single point, as relentless as is the production schedule.

It is clear that in this system there can be no Sabbath rest. There is no rest for Pharaoh in his supervisory capacity, and he undoubtedly monitors daily production schedules. Consequently, there can be no rest for Pharaoh’s supervisors or taskmasters; and of course there can be no rest for the slaves who must satisfy the taskmasters in order to meet Pharaoh’s demanding quotas. We may imagine, moreover, that the “Egyptian gods” also never rested, because of their commitment to the aggrandizement of Pharaoh’s system, for the glory of Pharaoh surely redounded to the glory of the Egyptian gods. The economy reflects the splendor of the gods who legitimate the entire system, for which cheap labor is an indispensable footnote!

It requires no imagination to see that the exodus memory and consequently the Sinai commandments are performed in a “no Sabbath” environment. In that context, all levels of social power—gods, Pharaoh, supervisors, taskmasters, slaves—are uniformly caught up in and committed to the grind of endless production.

Into this system of hopeless weariness erupts the God of the burning bush (Exod. 3:1–6). That God heard the despairing fatigue of the slaves (2:23–25), resolved to liberate the slave company of Israel from that exploitative system (3:7–9), and recruited Moses for the human task of emancipation (3:10). The reason Miriam and the other women can sing and dance at the end of the exodus narrative is the emergence of a new social reality in which the life of the Israelite economy is no longer determined and compelled by the insatiable production quotas of Egypt and its gods (15:20–21).

The first commandment is a declaration that the God of the exodus is unlike all the gods the slaves have known heretofore. This God is not to be confused with or thought parallel to the insatiable gods of imperial productivity. This God is subsequently revealed as a God of mercy, steadfast love, and faithfulness who is committed to covenantal relationships of fidelity (see Exod. 34:6–7). At the taproot of this divine commitment to relationship (covenant) rather than commodity (bricks) is the capacity and willingness of this God to rest. The Sabbath rest of God is the acknowledgment that God and God’s people in the world are not commodities to be dispatched for endless production and so dispatched, as we used to say, as “hands” in the service of a command economy. Rather they are subjects situated in an economy of neighborliness. All of that is implicit in the reality and exhibit of divine rest.

Thus the Sabbath command of Exodus 20:11 recalls that God rested on the seventh day of creation, an allusion to Genesis 2:1–4. That divine rest on the seventh day of creation has made clear (a) that YHWH is not a workaholic, (b) that YHWH is not anxious about the full functioning of creation, and (c) that the well-being of creation does not depend on endless work. This performance and exhibit of divine rest thus characterize the God of creation, creation itself, and the creatures made in the image of the resting God. Creation is to be enacted and embraced without defining anxiety. Indeed, such divine rest serves to delegitimate and dismantle the endless restlessness sanctioned by the other gods and enacted by their adherents. That divine rest on the seventh day, moreover, is recalled in the commandment of Exodus 31:12–17, wherein God is “refreshed” on the seventh day. The God of Israel (and of creation) is no immovable, fixed object, but here is said to be depleted and by rest may recover a full sense of “self” (nephesh).

The second commandment is closely related to the first. The commandment against “graven images” (idols) is a prohibition against any artistic representation of YHWH, for such representation would serve to “locate” YHWH, to domesticate God and so to curb the freedom that belongs to this erupting God (Exod. 20:4–6; see 2 Sam. 7:6–7). Such images have the effect of drawing God, in imagination and in practice, away from covenantal, relational fidelity and back into a world of objects and commodities. The temptation to produce an “image” of God in artistic form is always, everywhere a chance to produce a commodity out of valuable material, at best gold if it is available, or lesser valuable material if there is no gold. When a god is fashioned into a golden commodity (or even lesser material), divine subject becomes divine object, and agent becomes commodity. We may cite two obvious examples of this temptation in the Old Testament. First, in the narrative of the “Golden Calf” in Exodus 32, it was gold that was fashioned into the image that readily became an alternative god who jeopardized the covenant. The ensuing narrative of Exodus 33–34 tells of the hard and tricky negotiations whereby covenantal possibility is restored to Israel after its foray into distorting images (Exod. 34:9–10). Less dramatically, it is evident that Solomon’s temple, designed to “house” YHWH, became a commodity enterprise preoccupied with gold (emphasis added):

The interior of the inner sanctuary was twenty cubits long, twenty cubits wide, and twenty cubits high; he overlaid it with pure gold. He also overlaid the altar with cedar. Solomon overlaid the inside of the house with pure gold, then he drew chains of gold across in front of the inner sanctuary, and overlaid it with gold. Next he overlaid the whole house with gold, in order that the whole house might be perfect; even the whole altar that belonged to the inner sanctuary he overlaid with gold. (1 Kgs. 6:20–22)

So Solomon made all the vessels that were in the house of the LORD: the golden altar, the golden table for the bread of the Presence, the lampstands of pure gold, five on the south side and five on the north, in front of the inner sanctuary; the flowers, the lamps, and the tongs of gold, the cups, snuffers, basins, dishes for incense, and fire pans of pure gold; the sockets for the doors of the innermost part of the house, the most holy place, and for the doors of the nave of the temple of gold. (7:48–50)

Even as YHWH was honored by such extravagance, the temple was clearly intended to reflect honor on Solomon and on his regime. The attention to gold objects clearly skewed the simple and direct matter of covenantal possibility. Commodity desire has, for the most part, crowded out the covenantal tradition.

In the modern world, Karl Marx reflected most deeply on the compelling power of commodity. He took his famous phrase “commodity fetishism” from current study of the history of religions in which it was judged that “primitives” had such fetishes that occupied their desire and their devotion. Marx transferred that idea from “primitive” practice to modern market fascination and came to see that possessing commodities of social value generated a desire for more such value so that commodity took on a power of its own that consisted of desire for more and more. It is easy enough to see Pharaoh’s compulsion for more grain (a measure of wealth) beyond anything he could have needed, simply so that he could exhibit his great wealth and power. His desire for more created a restlessness that could permit no Sabbath rest for himself or any in his domain. And clearly Solomon is sketched out as the one who would possess all of his available world in his insatiable need for more (see 1 Kgs. 10:14–25).

For good reason the book of Deuteronomy ponders the force and danger of “images of God.” In what is likely a late exposition of the first two commandments, this sermonic chapter looks back to the danger done by “commodity religion”:

Since you saw no form when the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire, take care and watch yourselves closely, so that you do not act corruptly by making an idol for yourselves, in the form of any figure—the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth. And when you look up to the heavens and see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, do not be led astray and bow down to them and serve them, things that the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples everywhere under heaven. (Deut. 4:15–19)

The danger is to compromise the peculiarity of YHWH and of Israel.

After this inventory of possible images, the rhetoric of verse 20 ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Also by Walter Brueggemann
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Sabbath and the First Commandment
• 2. Resistance to Anxiety (Exodus 20:12–17)
• 3. Resistance to Coercion (Deuteronomy 5:12–14)
• 4. Resistance to Exclusivism (Isaiah 56:3–8)
• 5. Resistance to Multitasking (Amos 8:4–8)
• 6. Sabbath and the Tenth Commandment
• Study Guide
• Excerpt from Gift and Task, by Walter Brueggemann