REST FOR YOUR SOUL
By: JOHN MARK COMER
I got out of bed this morning because I wanted something. I wanted to watch the sun rise, or kind of rise-ish over a cup of Kenyan. I wanted a little time alone in the quiet with God before the three-headed chaos monster of Jude, Moses, and Sunday was out of its layer. God bless them. I wanted to be with you, and recenter my mind and body on the reality of Jesus, and talk about the Sabbath - one of my all-time favorite practices from the way of Jesus. As weird as it sounds, this is actually my job. Sunday is my Monday. I wanted to work and contribute to human flourishing in my own small way. I wanted to make a little money to pay for dinner tonight for my children and myself...and Tammy. My point is, I woke up with all sorts of desires and those desires are what got me out of bed on a stormy, dark winter's morning. Desire is a great motivator. It's essentially the engine of our life. Its function is to get us up out of bed in the morning and propel us out into the world. But if at any point desire is no longer under our control -- we're not at the steering wheel anymore -- and instead, it is driving our lives -- at that point we're in trouble. When you take a closer look at the dynamics of desire -- and you don't need a degree in philosophy to figure this out -- desire is one of those things that is never satisfied. As far back as 1,000 BC, the kohelet of Ecclesiastes said "the eye is not satisfied with sea." A more recent poet just said "I just can't get no satisfaction." Same idea. Thomas Aquinas, which is a name most of us recognize but have not actually read, was a 13th century Italian mind that really gave shape to Western Civilization as we know it. He was a priest, founder of scholasticism. He was kind of an academic, a heady brain. He once asked the question: "what would it take to satisfy human desire?" What would it take to say "ahh, I'm satisfied, I have enough." The answer he came up with was everything. We would have to experience everything and everybody and be experienced by everything and everybody in order to feel satisfied. We would have to eat at every single restaurant in the city -- that's 25 years of our life just for Portland. Have every experience, travel to every country, every city, every natural wonder of the world. Have every experience, every sexual partner, every accomplishment, every accumulation, we would have to experience the universe itself. We would have to experience the universe itself in order to feel satisfied. Karl Rahner, one of the most important Catholic theologians of the 20th century, put it this way: "In the torment of insufficiency of everything attainable, we learn that ultimately in this world there is no finished symphony." I love his word picture of an unfinished symphony, or for those of us are a bit more low brow, a Chance the Rapper song before you get to the end, or something. It's that feeling of when you're right near the end of the song and it's cut off. Ahhhhh. That feeling is the human condition. We live with this, in his language, turmoil of "man, I'm almost there. I'm almost at rest. I just need a little bit more of this, a little bit more of that, him, her, that, the other." It's the unfinished symphony. What all of these bright minds are tapping into is the reality that desire is infinite. Meaning it has no limit. There's no point at which desire is ever satisfied. Because we are finite, we inhabit time and space. In one body, one gender, one marriage, one city, one job, one family, one life, one story. Because we are finite, the end result is restlessness. We live with a chronic state of unsatisfied desire. Like an itch that, no matter how often you scratch it, it just does not go away. The question then becomes: whether you are an apprentice of Jesus who is smart and wise, how do we live with this restlessness? How do we live with all this pent-up, unsatisfied desire? What do we do with that? If to satisfy your desire is not an option, that means at some point you have to take a stand against desire. How do you live with that? Of course, there are all sorts of answers to that question. There are all sorts of religions and wisdom traditions, such as Buddhism, that have grown up around that question. What Jesus and His way would offer as an answer to that question? Listen, human desire is infinite. If you were a Christian philosopher and this was your niche, you'd say this. Human desire is infinite, because we were made to live with God forever in His world, and nothing less than that will ever satisfy us. Buddhism would say: "detach from your desire" and Portland would say "eat out a lot and make sure you're on Tinder and chase after your desire. What Jesus would say is "put your desire in its proper place on God." And all your other desires, put them in their proper place below God where you know -- doesn't mean you don't want them -- you no longer need them. Whatever it is: marriage, the new job, the new apartment, in order to live a happy life. One of the most famous lines of the way of Jesus post-New Testament is from a 4th century African, who ironically was one of the minds who gave shape to Western Civilization as we know it, known as Augustine. He was a bishop from Northern Africa. He said this, right around the time of the fall of the Roman Empire: "Thou has made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee." More recently, Dallas Willard, a Christian philosopher, put it this way: "Desire is infinite partly because we were made by God, made for God, made to need God, and made to run on God. We can be satisfied only by the one who is infinite, eternal, and able to supply all our needs; we are only at home in God. When we fall away from God, the desire for the infinite remains, but it is displaced upon things that will certainly lead to destruction." The default setting of the human condition post-Eden is not atheism but idolatry. It is to aim our desire not at God, but at whatever your desire of choice is: career, marriage, family, children, house, travel, sex, romance, beauty, a stamp on your passport, whatever it is. PhD, an accolade, whatever it is. But ultimately nothing in this life apart from God -- we say this so often it is cliche -- but it's true. Nothing in this life apart from God can ever satisfy your desire, because desire is infinite, and only God is the solution to that problem. So we end up in this chronic state of restlessness at best, or worse, frustration, anger, angst, disappointment, disillusionment, all of that, just railing against our life, which ironically for most of us leads to a life of hurry, busyness, overload, shopping, materialism, careerism -- a life of more. Which in turn makes us even more restless. It's gas on the fire. Then, to make a bad problem worse, and I'm here to just give you a pat on the back tonight, this is exacerbated by our cultural moment of digital marketing from a society built around accumulation and accomplishment. They say we see upwards of 4,000 advertisements a day. All of them are designed -- some of you work in this industry, some of you know behind the curtain, you know what it's about -- to stoke the desire in our bellies. Buy this. Eat this. Do this. Drink this. Have this. Own this. Go here. Go there. Social media takes this problem to a whole new level, as we live under a barrage of images, not just from advertising wing of whatever product company, but from the rich and the famous as well as from our family and friends who, with good intention, curate the best moments of their life as we do ours, and unintentionally play to one of the core sins of the human condition that goes all the way back to the garden of Eden: that of envy. Advertising in particular is literally an attempt to monetize our restlessness. Worth your time is this documentary "Century of Self" from the BBC. It's on Youtube right now for free, feel free to check it out. It tells the story of the rise of modern advertising after the World Wars, and how the power brokers of Washington D.C. set out to repurpose thousands of empty factories with tens of thousands of workers with nothing to do. To do that, the goal was to repurpose our economy from a needs economy to a wants economy. Paul Mazur of Lehman Brothers famously said this in 1927: "We must shift America from a needs, to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old has been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man's desires must overshadow his needs." This is the beginning of the business idea that we now know is planned obsolescence, or why we want a new iPhone every single September. Is that just me? Okay, dang. Fast forward to 2019, and our economy is literally built on people spending money they don't have on things they don't need. We now spend twice, some put the number at upwards of ten times, what we spent in 1945 on goods and services. Per person, after you adjust for inflation. Twice or ten times as many cars, clothing, water bottles, vacations, doughnuts, time out, square footage, all of it. My point is just this: there is a multibillion dollar marketing industry with direct access to your heart through the little computer in your front right pocket that is designed on purpose to fan into flames your desire and make money off of your restlessness. Not to mention that we live in what the German-Korean philosopher Byung-Shul Han calls an achievement society. Where it is all about what you achieve with your life. Especially if you're in a city. Especially if you're educated. Especially if you're at all upwardly mobile. This in particular is a temptation for you. When our innate human restlessness collides with the digital age and culture of accomplishment and accumulation, the result is an epidemic of emotional unhealth and spiritual death.
HURRY SICKNESS IS A REAL ILLNESS
Psychologists are now diagnosing people with "hurry sickness," which Psychology Today defines as "a behavioral pattern characterized by continual rushing and anxiousness." The phrase "hurry sickness" was coined by Meyer Friedman, a cardiologist in the 1950s who was the first one to connect the dots between stress and chronic heart disease. He defined it as "a continuous struggle and unremitting attempt to accomplish or achieve more and more things or participate in more and more events in less and less time." Some of you are like, wait isn't that just life? Yes it is now! Doctors are calling this a Western disease. Something about the modern Western world is spiritually forming our souls. Remember we've done work on this. Spiritual formation is not just a Jesus thing, it's a human thing. You are being spiritually formed whether you want it or not. Question is by what or by whom? Something about our city is spiritually forming our souls into a condition of hurry and overload and busyness and chronic stress, and in one word, restlessness, that is toxic. My friend A.J. Swoboda, who is just a mile away on the other side of the river, will be here in a few weeks to teach from his new book, The Subversive Sabbath, which is on our recommended reading. He writes this: "Our time-saving devices, technological conveniences, and cheap mobility have seemingly made life much easier and interconnected. As a result, we have more information at our fingertips than anyone in history. Yet with all this progress, we are ominously dissatisfied. In bowing at these sacred altars of hyperactivity, progress, and technological compulsivity, our souls increasingly pant for meaning and value and truth as they wither away, exhausted, frazzled, displeased, and ever on edge. The result is a hollow culture that, in Paul's words, is 'ever learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.' (2 Tim. 3:7) Our bodies wear ragged. Our spirits thirst. We have an inability to simply sit still and be. As we drown ourselves in a 24/7 living, we seem to be able to do anything but quench our thirst for the life of God. We have become perhaps the most emotionally exhausted, psychologically overworked, spiritually malnourished people in history." How are you feeling? Just here to cheer you up tonight.
JESUS COMES TO OFFER REST
No, seriously. Brothers and sisters, family, I have gospel for you. I have good news for you. Into this human condition of restlessness, exacerbated by your phone in 2019, Jesus of Nazareth comes to offer you rest. Not just for your body -- you can get that from a prescription or a pill -- but rest for your soul. Read Matthew 11:28 with me: "come to me all you who are weary and burdened" -- that can be translated 'exhausted or stressed out' -- "and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." I love Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of Matthew 11: "Are you tired? Worn out? Burnt out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me -- watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." However you translate Jesus' invitation, it's clear that His way, His vision for how you and I are to live in God's kingdom is grounded in rest. I recently put John 15 to memory with my community in last Fall's memory, the scripture memory week. John 15, a famous teaching of Jesus, "I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me you will bear much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing." Beautiful. It's in my mind's eye right now, every single day, and I just keep thinking about it. Jesus' word picture for how we are to bear fruit, which in the Gospel of John is defined as love, joy, and peace, and later in the New Testament is expanded to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, goodness, self-control. His word picture for how we are to grow that in the soil of our life is not of ambition but of abiding. Not of working our tail off and just striving to just be more loving and be more joyful and be more peaceful, but rather of resting in the Father's presence. This is the way for Jesus, to bear the fruit of love and joy and peace. If we break off that restful connection to the Father, or in His word picture, the vine, whether it is through sin or full-on unbelief or just through hurry and busyness and the phone and too much entertainment and a crazy schedule, either way the result is the same: you are cut off from God and you bear no fruit. In the place of love, joy, and peace is burnout, compromise, defeat, anger, sadness, etc. And that is obviously not Jesus' heart for you. Think about it: Jesus is not glorified by unhappy, exhausted people. You ever met somebody who's just like way over the top stressed out and kind of in and out of sleep in a conversation, and thought to yourself: "man, I just really want what they have." No, not at all. This is from my friend Jon Tyson: "If you imagine your soul as kind of a power bar on your phone, and 100% is rest, like full to the top, or what Jesus calls Life to the Full. You are just brimming over with love and joy and peace and just generosity and just full attention to the moment and to God all around you. To the people in front of you. You're just at ease in your own body and your own life and have this sense that life is hard, but it's still good. That's life to the full." Most of us don't rest. Say 0% is suicide or death or just out on the couch for weeks at a time. Most of us don't rest until we don't get way down to 20 or 10%. We don't rest until we have to. Most of us don't rest very well. We confuse rest with entertainment or distraction. And most of us don't rest very long. So, most of the time we just get back to solvent. We just get enough rest to go "okay, I can show up for work tomorrow at 8 a.m. Maybe if I'm lucky, drinks after with Bob." Bob? Where did that come from? If you're here, Bob, that's fantastic. My point is normally we just get back to management level. What do we miss between management level and rest all the way? What we miss out on is life to the full. What we miss often in that margin is love, and a joyful, happy life. A sense of peace and calm and repose from your heart. A sense of generosity and gratitude and contentment. And wisdom and contemplative skill that comes from living in the quiet from God. We miss out on all the best stuff that Jesus has for us. All the best stuff comes when you're at 90% +. My point is, without rest, and without lots of it, we simply cannot be the people that Jesus has in mind. We cannot live the life that Jesus has to offer. This is why rest is essential to apprenticeship to Jesus. Do you view rest, Sabbath, or how many hours a night you sleep, or margin as essential components in your life with Jesus? Or is that something separate. Is that from a self-help podcast or weird people that aren't type A like you and don't get a 4.0? Or do you view it as central to your apprenticeship to Jesus? Here's why I would argue why, one of many reasons, it's central: Jesus said the greatest commandment in all of the library of scripture and the universe is to love. To love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. In my experience, and this could just be my personality -- I'm introverted, I'm a bit high-strung, 80% of loving well is being emotionally healthy and spiritually awake. In my experience, again, most of you don't have children yet, I have three. If I get up tomorrow morning at 5 a.m. and I fast and I pray and I speak in tongues, naked on the roof, asking God for revival, and I pray the Examen and I read all the way through Leviticus and I do all the stuff, all the Jesus stuff, and then I walk out of my study and there's Moses with our new dog. We have a dog. And he's just walking in after the morning walk and just dragging mud into the house, and I just instantly go ballistic. It's like three hours of Jesus and all of a sudden I'm just Satan, like "how could you? How many times do I have to tell you?" The poor kid is 10. It's muddy, it's Oregon. When I'm rested and you catch me at the end of the Sabbath, after just plenty of sleep and time in the quiet, which I need a lot of. After time to pray and journal and hear from God and get his vantage point on my life at this moment. After time with my family, my friends, soul connection with my wife, time one-on-one with my children. If you catch me then, I'm at my best self, and honestly loving is pretty easy. Not that I kill it, but I'm pretty good at it. When I'm not rested, it doesn't matter how much I pray, or how many times I read through the Bible in a year (I only do it five or six times in a year). It doesn't matter how much scripture I memorize, how many Bible studies I go to, how much I podcast -- I'm church three times a week! Take that! Doesn't matter. My point is, emotional health matters not just because we're happier, but because we're more loving. We're more joyful, and we're more at peace with God. Again, that could just be me. I don't think it is. When I do not rest, I don't love well. When I do rest, love comes out of my life, almost like Jesus said it would, and bears much fruit. With all that said, is there a practice from the life and teachings of Jesus to work against the cancerous restlessness of our condition and culture and tap into his rest for our soul?
SABBATH: REST FOR YOUR SOUL
The answer, of course, is heck yes. There are many. At the top of list is Sabbath. Notice in your Bible that the very next line after "you will find rest for your souls...my yoke is easy, and my burden is light," is two stories about the Sabbath. That's not a coincidence. Biographer Matthew has that for you the reader to connect the dots between Jesus' open invite: rest for your souls. What's next? Two stories about the Sabbath. Rest for your soul and the sabbath go together. Now, the word Sabbath is from the Hebrew Shabbat, which literally means to stop. The Sabbath is a day to stop. Stop working. More than that, stop wanting. More than that, stop worrying. Just stop, and rest. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Think of the pictures that come to us through lifestyle advertising. From a new throw for your bed, or a picture frame, or a bathrobe, or a new set of tiles, or a tray for wine and cheese, or a lamp or a table or a new bonnet for your boy or girl. Or a couch for your dog, whatever it is. Almost all of these images are images of Sabbath. Of stopping. Unless the advertisement is for a car or for hard alcohol, nine times out of ten -- pay attention -- it's almost always an image of Sabbath. It's an image of stopping. We'll talk more about this in a few weeks, but the irony of this is that the marketing wing of Kinfolk, or Snowy, or Blue Dot knows you ache for this and you don't have it. They know you look at that couple in bed -- and of course, they're gorgeous and all that stuff -- and you think, "ahh, breakfast in bed? With that cool little walnut tray? And the thread count on the sheet? And the candle with the essential oil that's soy-based? Like uggggh." They know you're tired, you're stressed out, and you're busy. You don't have this! And you ache for it. Guess what? Here's the irony: they offer to sell it to you. But the crazy part is, do you need to pay $99.99 in order to Sabbath? Tammy just got me one for Christmas, I'm 64 all of a sudden and it's glorious. It is glorious. Ahh, the bathrobe life. Hashtag that. But...do you need an organic Canadian down comforter to Sabbath? Okay, yes, maybe that one. Do you need the candle with essential oils? No, you don't need any of it. It's all great stuff -- you don't need any of it. You don't need to buy anything. You don't need to look like a model. You don't need to reinvent your life. You don't need to hire an interior designer. You don't need to be rich. You don't need to be cool. You just need to Sabbath. You just need to stop. This is an ancient practice long before the invention of the Lifestyle Magazine. In fact, it actually predates Jesus of Nazareth. It actually predates Israel. Next week we'll lay out a Biblical theology of the Sabbath. Do you know where it starts? It doesn't start in the Ten Commandments, it does not start with Israel. It starts on Day 7 of creation. Genesis 2:1. It predates Cain and Abel. This is an ancient practice. It is not new, but tragically, it is new to many of us. I grew up in the church. It was not even remotely on my radar until my mid-twenties. Again, our friend A.J. writes this: "Sabbath has been largely forgotten by the church, which has uncritically mimicked the rhythms of the industrial and success-obsessed West. The result? Our road-weary, exhausted churches have largely failed to integrate Sabbath into their lives as vital elements of Christian Discipleship. Notice: vital elements of Christian discipleship. It is not as though we don't love God -- we love God deeply. We just don't know how to sit with God anymore. It makes sense that commandment number four of the ten is "remember the Sabbath." Why? Because we are prone to amnesia. We often forget the things that matter the most. I would argue -- this is an ancient practice from the way of Jesus, and even from before, from creation itself -- that we desperately need to remember, especially now in our cultural moment. Now, before we talk about a few steps to begin, there's just one more key idea that you need to get. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter four, to the right. Again, this Sunday is a kind of high-level, 30,000 foot overview for the next few months. Hebrews chapter four. I don't normally read from Hebrews. Not because it's anything less than spectacular, but because if you're not a first century Jew it's really complex. So, we'll read a few paragraphs. If at any point you're lost, don't stress at all. Just keep reading. The gist is clear by the end. Hebrews 4:1: "Therefore, since the promise of entering His rest still stands…" Right, think of Jesus' promise: come to me, rest for our souls. That is on offer to all of you. "...let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it." Remember, he's writing to the church, not to a city. He's writing to you and to me, and He's saying "listen, watch out. Make sure you're careful that none of you in the church miss out on this promise of rest." "For we also have the good news proclaimed to us, just as they…" Just in context, the Hebrews in the wilderness did, but the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed. In context: they did not go into the promised land. He's saying, it's one thing for you to hear about the rest on offer for you. It's a whole other thing for you to obey and experience the rest He has for you. He's saying don't be like the Hebrews, who had a path forward into this rest and were always on the outside of it. On the wrong side of Jordan. "Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said." This is a quote from Psalm 95."'So I declared an oath in anger that they shall never enter my rest.' And yet His works have been finished since the creation of the world. For somewhere, He has spoken about the Sabbath in these words." Next is a quote from Genesis 2. If you ever don't know where scripture is in the Bible, this will make you feel better right there. One of the authors doesn't know where it's at, and it's from Genesis, alright? "On the seventh day God rested from all his works." And again in the passage above, He says "they shall never enter my rest." "Therefore since it still remains for some to enter that rest, and since those who formerly had the good news proclaimed to them did not go in because of their disobedience, God again set a certain day, calling it “Today.” The patience of God. Second chance, a third, a thousandth. "This he did when a long time later he spoke through David, as in the passage already quoted: 'Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.' For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest." Now there's a lot here we don't have time. This is like exegetical, rabbi ninja stuff. Don't have time. This is basically him teaching a story from Genesis 2 about the Sabbath, the story from Deuteronomy about the Exodus, and all through this vantage point of Psalm 95, a poem. It's a long story, but the point of it for the writer here is: Sabbath is more than just a day; it's a spirit of restfulness that comes as a result of living in God's presence all week long. You can frame it like this: restfulness is margin over busyness. It is a life of slow, presence to the moment over a life of hurry. It's quiet over noise. It's deep relationship with family, friends, and community over isolation and individualism. It's time alone over crowds. It's delight over distraction on your phone or whatever. It's enjoyment over envy -- what he has or she has, or they have. It's clarity about who you are. What you're made to do, what you're not made to do, over the confusion, and the fog, and the tyranny of the urgent. It's gratitude. I can't believe this is my life, thank you, over greed and the lust for more. It's contentment. I'm okay with my life as it is. More than okay, I'm good -- over discontentment, that nagging sense that I need more. It's working, but it's working from love, from a sense that your self-worth is grounded in God's love. Your identity is who you are loved by, not what you do, or what you have, or how cool you are, or what other people think you are. Rather than working for love. It's working as a contribution; to play your part in the human story rather than working for accomplishment and accumulation. Above all, it is a life of trust in God over its opposite, which is not doubt, but anxiety. Which list best describes you? Do you resonate more with being so busy and being in a hurry all the time? Like "I'm around people all the time, but I just feel so alone?" Or envy: "I wish I had his life or her life, and I'm not really sure what I'm doing with my life. I don't feel like I have enough." Or is it… "I have one word to describe my life, and it's margin. I'm just a click above lazy but I love my life. I just feel present. I get out of rhythm, but overall I just feel present to the moment of each day, I receive it as a gift. I just have so many deep relationships. I do life in community and yet I feel really comfortable alone and more and more crave the quiet with God alone, which is weird for my personality, but I just love to hear from God. I just have this sense of gratitude more and more each day. I just find myself saying 'thank you' first thing. I feel really content. I used to feel like my life is out there, but more and more I realize it's right here. I just trust God with the stuff that's really hard." I make it sound really idealistic, but my point is, which one do you resonate with. Really, my point is guilt and shame. (Laughs) No, I'm kidding. My point is, most of us, I'm guessing, resonate more with restlessness than we do restfulness. Ronald Rolheiser, my favorite Catholic writer, has it like this: "We are a restless people. Restlessness is the opposite of being restful. Restfulness is one of the most primal cravings humans have. We crave rest to the point where we identify it with heaven: 'Grant us eternal rest.' Today, as our lives grow more pressured, as we grow more tired, as we begin to feel burned out, we fantasize more about restfulness. We imagine a peaceful, quiet place: we see ourselves walking by a lake, watching a peaceful sunset, smoking a pipe in a rocker by the fireplace. But even in those images, we make restfulness yet another activity, something we do...then we return to normal life. True restfulness, though, is a form of awareness, a way of being in life. It is living ordinary life with a sense of ease, gratitude, appreciation, peace, and prayer. We are restful when ordinary life is enough." Is your ordinary life enough? Today. Not when you graduate, not when you get into a new apartment. Today. Is your ordinary life enough? One of the key tasks of our apprenticeship to Jesus, especially in our day and age is to find the goodness of God in our actual life today. Not in our idealized life tomorrow. But our actual life today. Trust me, your life no matter how hard it is, is full of goodness. It's full of the love of God. It's full of restfulness that is on offer for you. But notice the irony of Hebrews, that last line. "Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest." Did you catch that? Work your tail off. That's my translation. Do everything in your power to enter that rest. To live from the spirit of restfulness. Honestly, many people don't sabbath because, with all due respect, they're lazy. Or it's too much work. It takes a plan to sabbath, especially if you adopt a number of the best practices that come to use from the tradition. They are not a to-do list, not a rule. Just best practices. Like turn off your phone and things like that. There's a discipline to the Sabbath that is hard for a lot of us. But Sabbath is the primary discipline by which we cultivate the spirit of restfulness in our life as a whole. It's like Sabbath is to restfulness for what a soccer practice is for a match on the weekend. Or what band practice is to a show on Friday night. It's how we practice for the best moments in our life as a whole. Walter Brueggemann has this great line: "people who keep Sabbath live all seven days differently." I love that. Some people take this idea of a spirit of restfulness in Hebrews 4 in particular and use it to justify not practicing the Sabbath. Okay. I would just say as a general rule, beware of any teaching in the church that wants to allegorize the literal and literalize the allegorical. So when you read a story about a talking snake, and people want to die on a hill that there's a talking snake -- okay. Just be a little wary. And when you read a story healing on the Sabbath, and people want to make it about how we have a spirit of rest because we're loved. It's not about earning favor. It's about what Christ has done. And then [they are] a workaholic for Jesus who's just on their phone all the time. Be wary of that too. Sabbath is more than a day but it is not less.
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