You are exhausted because corporate capitalism extracts unreasonable productivity from you

[The Great Open Dance]

Sophia, the Holy Spirit of peace, offers rest and restoration.

Sophia is the Spirit of rest and peace. Life in the Spirit is active and engaged, growing and changing, always loving dangerously and never abandoning hope. That may sound exhausting. Indeed, we may want to take a break from her. But instead we can take a break with her, because God too enjoys rest.

After creating the cosmos, “The heavens and the earth and all their array were completed. On the seventh day God had finished all the work of creation, and so, on that seventh day, God rested. God blessed the seventh day and called it sacred, because on it God rested from all the work of creation” (Genesis 2:1–3).

On each previous day of creation, surveying the work of the divine hands, God had declared that work “good.” But after the creation of humankind on the sixth day, God had declared creation “very good,” because God has the company of persons made in the divine image. God has someone to enjoy that good work with.

So lovely is this sharing that God decides to forever dedicate a certain portion of time to undistracted co-celebration. God creates the Sabbath, dedicating one day of the week to rest instead of work, to enjoyment instead of production, to being instead of becoming. We should all be more like God, celebrating time as sacred.

Perhaps we consider ourselves more energetic than God, not in need of rest and recreation. Perhaps we are driven by the need for recognition because we fail to recognize our full recognition in the eyes of God. Perhaps the pressure to produce comes from outside forces that threaten reprisal if we fail them. In any event, the need for both productivity and enjoyment is woven into our being, because it is woven into God’s being, from which our being derives.

Jesus, God as human, rested a lot, most often to pray (Luke 5:15–16; see also Mark 1:35; Mark 6:46; Luke 4:42; Luke 6:12; etc.). He worked hard teaching, healing, prophesying, traveling, surrounded by crowds, arguing for kindness in a cruel world, trying to turn our endemic hardheartedness into compassion. Recognizing his human limitations, he remembered to love himself as he loved his neighbors and took time to recuperate, trusting God’s promise: “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest” (Exodus 33:14).

Jesus, being a good leader, wanted the same rest for his disciples that he himself needed. They traveled with him, worked with him, and became exhausted with him, much like those inspired by and working to implement his teachings today. After sending them into the countryside to minister, Jesus gathered them in again and, noting their weariness, advised them to escape to a deserted place, by themselves, to rest a while (Mark 6:31a). Today, he invites us to do the same: “Come to me, all you who labor and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon your shoulders, for I am gentle and humble of heart. Here you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30).

We have lost time. Sunday as Sabbath has disappeared from modern culture, and regular rest has disappeared with it. Economists once predicted that, as per worker productivity improved, we would be able to work less. Instead, we are working more. No one knows exactly why. We consume more; our houses and cars are bigger and our lives filled with more gadgets. Medical care can save lives that would have been lost half a century ago, but is very expensive. Increasing population on a finite planet makes resources more expensive. Whatever the cause, it feels as if life is perpetually accelerating, like an out-of-control treadmill threatening to exhaust then discard us. We don’t have time, but time has us.

This loss is significant. Stopping and resting helps us notice the beauty that we otherwise overlook. Finding that the world continues without our effort frees us from the anxiety produced by self-importance. Sabbath reminds us that, without our effort, the waves still lap the shore, the wind still rustles the leaves, the stream still makes its way to the sea. The Sabbath clarifies our spiritual vision, making a temple out of time, helping us to see God’s activity by ceasing our own.

Within this temple we find surprising abundance, an abundance that puts the lie to our scarcity mindset. The Sabbath is Spirit as time, and the first step to perceiving her work is to see time as sanctuary. We may doubt the availability of such experience in our age of busyness and distraction, but there is “still a rest reserved for God’s people—the Sabbath rest. For all those who enter God’s rest also rest from their own work, just as God did. Therefore, let us strive to enter into that rest” (Hebrews 4 –11a).

Sophia hallows time because Sophia is a Spirit of peace and joy (Romans 14:17). Indeed, Jesus associates her arrival with the arrival of peace: “The Paraclete, the Holy Spirit whom Abba God will send in my name, will instruct you in everything, and she will remind you of all that I told you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; but the kind of peace I give you is not like the world’s peace. Don’t let your hearts be distressed; don’t be fearful” (John 14:26–27).

The arrival of Sophia, after the ascension of Jesus, is the arrival of Wisdom and the arrival of Peace, because Sophia is the Inner Reminder that God’s covenant of peace cannot be removed (Isaiah 54:10). Secure in steadfast love, we can cast all our anxieties on God, in the confidence that God cares for us (1 Peter 5 ).

Sophia does not resolve the ambiguities of life for us, which would deny us our freedom. She is the Spirit of activity and rest, celebration and lament, freedom and responsibility, desire and satisfaction. Seeking certainty, we may want these tensions resolved in favor of an absolute—annihilating one pole of the relationship to create an artificial and unreliable simplicity. But Sophia denies us this resolution because she is the Spirit of life, and life thrives within generative tensions.

God is not pure simplicity; God is perfectly harmonious, maximal complexity. We are made in the image of God, for balance and harmony, to which Sophia leads us. As our inner guide, she is the uncreated grace of life, the great compassion who is sensitive to our deepest longings. At Pentecost, she enters the church like fire, granting the fledgling community a seething desire for justice, the courage to speak truth, and the hope needed to manifest God’s vision. Today, as we exert ourselves against humanity’s stubborn tendency to self-destruction, even as we are tempted to despair in our efforts, Sophia assures God’s co-creators of our inherent victory, whispering, “The kingdom will come.” (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 173-175)

For further reading, please see:

Heschel, Abraham. The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man. Boston: Shambhala, 2003.

Sanders, John. The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence. Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1998.

[marble falls]

1. It sucks out all the reasonable production, too.

[The Great Open Dance]

2. Like smaller classrooms so students have deeper relations with their teachers

That would be nice . . .

[marble falls]

3. I am shocked how large some of the elementary classes in our town are.