Several months ago I had a conversation with a pastor friend of mine who said that in 2012 he had not taken a single day of vacation and had taken only an occasional day off. The tone in his voice seemed to be one of pride and despair mixed together. The pride was that he loved his church and would give his all for it. The despair was that he was tired and that his congregation considered any time away as goofing off. Lest we think that this is something that only ministers do, consider that the average American will give back anywhere from 2-7 days of vacation time this year; or a whopping 226 million unused days, worth more than $34.3 billion dollars (CNN Money).
The reasons given by individuals for not taking their vacation time/days off include everything from a lack of income to take a meaningful vacation; to I will be fired if I take the time off; to I will be passed over for promotion if I am not constantly in the office; to I will appear to be lazy to my supervisor; to the firm cannot get along without me; to work is where I get my "strokes" so I want to be there; to a fear of being seen as occupying an position that can be eliminated. Even with all of these reasons for not taking time off at least these persons have vacation. I say this because almost 25% of American workers and 31% of low-wage earners in this country get no paid vacation at all (International Business Times). We have been referred to as the "No Vacation Nation" because we are the only industrialized nation without federally mandated vacation and holidays.
Walter Brueggeman, in his book "Mandate to Difference" (Westminster-John Knox Press, 2007), examines this phenomenon of the lack of Sabbath/time off. He argues that Sabbath was originally a gift of God to the people as they left the bondage of Egypt. In Egypt the people of Israel had been slaves working 24/7 to produce bricks and other goods for Pharaoh. They were merely human machines whose value was economic and not intrinsic. Once liberated, the people of God were given the opportunity to rest and refresh themselves as God had always intended. This sense of Sabbath however was lost when Israel moved from being an agriculturally based community to a city centered society. In that move, King Solomon made it clear that the people in the rural areas were to produce not for their own good but for the benefit of the elite in Jerusalem (p. 23). He, and the kings that followed him, were the new Pharaohs demanding that people were to once again produce 24/7, which made the Sabbath an impediment to the work of human machines; thus Sabbath was ignored.
This view of 24/7 work and a lack of Sabbath is still with us because we live in a land of Pharaohs. We have work-Pharaohs who remind us that our only value is in what we can produce and so we are not to take time off. We have love-pharaohs who want us to believe that we have to earn love which requires continual work. We have religious-pharaohs who tell us that because the world does not yet look like the Kingdom of God we need to spend all of our spare time working for the transformation of that world. We have church-pharaohs who tell us that our spare time should be spent at the church because it needs us. We have activity-pharaohs who proclaim that any down time is wasted time. Finally we have our inner-demon-pharaohs that tell us we are not perfect and so we need to work harder and harder for all of our other pharaohs in order to be acceptable.
Jesus said, "Come to me all of you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Jesus is the un-pharaoh. Jesus calls us to Sabbath. Jesus calls us to rest and refreshment. Jesus calls us to not be anxious about anything. Jesus reminds us that we are beloved children of God with intrinsic value. Jesus calls us to embrace the Sabbath because it will help us to become fully human; fully capable of loving God and neighbor. The challenge for us is to not only worship on the Sabbath…but to take Sabbath; to take the time to rest and refresh as God intended.
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