We continue in our Lent sermon series on Sabbath by reflecting on what it means to cease. In the creation story, God creates the heavens and the earth in six days. “And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done” (Gen. 2:2). Have you ever noticed that the wording in verse 2 is awkward and clunky? I think many of us assume God created for six days and then stayed in bed on the seventh day watching Netflix (or some ancient equivalent). But the awkward and clunky wording of Gen. 2:2 seems to give the impression that God created something else on the seventh day. Some Hebrew scholars suggest that the thing that God creates on the seventh day is: menuchah.
Menuchah means stillness, security, peace, and tranquility. In other words, it’s not simply the kind of rest your body needs after a extended period of strenuous physical activity. Rather it’s the kind of rest that brings stillness to our ragged, weary, and anxious souls. On Sunday, we will explore how ceasing, creating spaces where we stop our striving, helps us enter into the kind of rest our souls crave. In the words of AJ Swoboda, “Sabbath is a scheduled weekly reminder that we are not what we do; rather, we are who we are loved by.”
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