Doing Justice by Providing Sabbath for Others

Original article posted on Red Letter Christians here

We often focus on sabbath as a personal practice, which it is. But an equally prominent element of sabbath in Scripture is ensuring it for other people. A core justice pillar is that rest is for everyone. It’s not only for those who can afford leisure and time off.

Taking time to rest matters so much … to our bodies, to our minds and hearts, to our families, to our communities. Rest restores. It’s time and space to connect, dream, play, create, relax. It’s a key to mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health. It makes space for us to be human beings.

This is what God calls us to provide for each other. The Sabbath is not just a gift from God for us, it’s a gift for ALL of us.

God’s justice is holistic – it doesn’t only consider our material and social needs, but also our mental health, our physical health, our family time, and time for creativity. 

“Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.” (Deuteronomy 5:12-15)

One of the beautiful messages of the sabbath is the inherent value of people and animals beyond what they can produce or what they can do. God’s people and creation have value because of being valued and honored by God. God doesn’t want any of his creation to become depleted. 

What do we notice about the Sabbath rest that God designs?

• Regular, predictable days off. Do you remember that just-in-time scheduling that retail outfits were doing a few years ago? It made the news because it was so horrible for employees – they wouldn’t find out until a day or two before what their hours would be and it was very stressful. God’s design for sabbath is the opposite – people would know for the next hundred years what their day off would be. 

• Overlapping with everyone else. Since everyone had the same, predictable day off, my day off would coincide with everyone else’s day off. That means we can easily spend time together on a regular basis. It’s easy to coordinate the “holy convocation” as Leviticus calls it.

• It’s for everyone! “So that your male and female servants may rest, as you do.” There’s a leveling here. Everyone rests. The sabbath is a weekly reminder for employers of the full humanity of their employees. It’s a freedom from and prevention of running your people ragged. It’s a testimony of trust that God is in charge and will provide enough for you.

• Another dent in profit maximization. As with Jubilee and gleaning, God invites us through Sabbath to again sacrifice our profit maximizing for the sake of the wellbeing of our larger community. We won’t be earning or producing every day, just six days out of seven. It’s another part of our economic witness (as Dr. Malcolm Foley calls it) of our devotion to a God who designs community such that all people can flourish holistically. 

How can a predictable weekly day off for all people and animals promote justice? What does Sabbath communicate about all people and animals? How can it promote social connection and a strong social fabric? What is important about a communal Sabbath, a day where everyone is off on the same day? Who is responsible for providing Sabbath and in which ways in our modern context?

But what if people can’t afford to take a day off?

The very first time I taught on Sabbath as a justice issue in my small group, someone raised an objection that you might be thinking now: “But what about those who need to work 7 days a week to make ends meet?” Even if someone has a day off, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they aren’t working a second job or side hustle if their income from their primary job is not enough to support themselves. 

Here’s the thing: In God’s economy, it’s up to the whole community (and employers specifically) to make sure that no one is too poor for a weekly, predictable day off. 

Paying a living wage then becomes not only an economic justice issue, but also a sabbath justice issue. (And it weaves back into Jubilee and the Sabbath years because without debts to pay off, we don’t need as much income to live!)

Employers and business owners need to give people BOTH a 1) regular, predictable day off per week AND 2) enough income to actually take the day off and not need to work another job to make ends meet. 

Sabbath for caregivers and parents of young kids: 

In addition to lower-wage workers, there are two other large groups that I keep coming back to as needing special attention for the community providing rest: family caregivers and parents of young kids. These are folks who often don’t have 5 minutes to themselves, much less an extended, regular rest. In some ways these are the groups that need a break the most to show up refreshed for the people depending on them day in and day out.

I did my master’s degree in London and part of my summer job there was gathering information about types of funding and grants available to nonprofits and community-based organizations. I had done quite a bit of fundraising already back in the US so it was interesting to compare the grants landscapes between the two countries. The huge difference I found is that England has a huge amount of support for caregivers (or “carers” as they call them). They offer respite care, financial support, and other systematic ways of taking care of the carers. We have a friend who was living in England when his wife was tragically diagnosed with a fatal brain cancer. He was her primary caregiver but a couple times a week, someone would come take over for a few hours so that he could go see a movie or do another restorative activity. What a gift! 

In the absence of those kinds of systemic supports in the US, how can we provide Sabbath rest to the caregivers around us, including parents of young children who are often dying on the vine? How can we create regularly recurring rest times and spaces for those doing 24/7 care work – those caring for young children, family members with disabilities, or elders? 

The Cultural Challenges to Sabbath

In California, it’s mandated that every employee has a day off every week – a great example of a policy based on God’s design of justice! But in our high-productivity, wealth-obsessed culture, it’s not only a mechanical and structural issue, rest and Sabbath is also a cultural challenge. 

We live in a production-oriented culture in which overwork is a way we sabotage our own families, health, spirits, and communities. Even when we CAN take breaks, we often don’t. This overwork ethos is reflected in the amount of PTO that American workers leave on the table. Close to half (and up to 75% in other surveys) do not take all their vacation time, in large part because they feel guilty taking time off or are worried about falling behind in their work. This is an organizational culture problem as well as a larger national culture problem. 

How can we change the culture and psychology around Sabbath for our people? 

For employers and business owners, the best practice is to model this for your employees. When they see you take consistent Sabbath (and let’s add parental leave in here too!), they absorb they are “allowed” to take breaks too. It’s also important to talk proactively with your teams about the benefits and importance of rest and restoration. It takes time and intentionality to overcome the fears and guilt your teams may have about taking time off.

What about the rest culture in our homes? When I’m stressed out, I clean. And when I’m cleaning, I want everyone in my family to clean. I get task oriented. When my oldest son was 3, he started to teach me about rest. I had talked to my kids about how important rest is, but when we were almost done cleaning up and Gabriel wanted to take a break, I would urge him to keep going just a little more to get it done. He is a hard-working kid but he was absolutely unmoved by my goading. He forced me to face how much I drive myself to keep going even when I am tired. I learned from him how to take breaks – a process I am continuing to learn in new ways and iterations. 

I know I’m not alone in having a lot of unlearning to do if I am going to be wholehearted in providing Sabbath for others. Tricia Hersey, our much-needed “Nap Bishop,” is here to help. She underscores the importance of rest as a justice issue through the many tenets of her Nap Ministry. Her book “Rest is Resistance” helps us undo the brainwashing we have imbibed around productivity, worth, success, and our humanity. She says we are getting ground up by grind culture. Hersey calls us to do less, resist urgency, create community rest spaces, practice ‘radical community care,’ and yes take lots of naps. She calls rest a ‘love practice,” an antidote to the lie that we are never doing enough. Her work is an example of combatting the cultural barriers to Sabbath and we can do the same in our circles. 

What are the Sabbath orientations that you need to unlearn? What are the barriers that keep you from modeling and offering Sabbath to others? What has helped you unlearn the productivity-motivation that can keep us swirling? 

We are a community called to each other’s wellbeing. What can we do on both micro and macro levels to ensure people can all afford to take time off? How are we ensuring that our own employees have regular, weekly time off and enough resources to not have to fill that time with another job? In our churches, how do we proactively make sure our volunteers and staff are getting regular breaks? 

What spaces can we provide even in our own church building that facilitate rest, creativity, fun, and connection in our communities? 

Who are the people around you who are run ragged and need Sabbath?