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 “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy.” Exodus 20:8

Our daughters are back at school, with homework, sports, and competitive dance in full swing, and work seems to pile up faster than it used to (I’m fairly sure I said the same thing last year, and the year before). The world keeps asking for more: more hours at work, more emails, more texts, more activities to squeeze onto the calendar. Even my “free time” feels like something I need to optimize, lest I fall hopelessly behind.

Amid all this, I find myself thinking about Walter Brueggemann’s Sabbath as Resistance. Brueggemann argues that we are caught up in a culture of restlessness, where the goal of life is to produce more and consume more: a self-perpetuating system of endless desire and endless production. Keeping the Sabbath, Brueggemann says, is a radical act of defiance against our 24/7 consumerism.

“The Sabbath rest of God is the acknowledgement that God and God’s people in the world are not commodities to be dispatched for endless production… Rather they are subjects situated in an economy of neighborliness.”

The Sabbath, then, is not simply one day off in seven. It is a refusal of Pharaoh’s economy of endless work, anxiety, and accumulation, and in that refusal we make space for God and for each other. I haven’t managed to keep Sabbath as fully as Brueggemann hopes, but I try to carve out moments each day to rest, give thanks, and listen for the Spirit.

Believe it or not, one of the most fulfilling of those moments is our monthly Vestry meeting. Every fourth Wednesday, we gather upstairs in Fowler Hall for fellowship and bible study, to hear financial reports, and to make decisions about how to use our resources; in other words, to decide who we are and who we want to be as a parish. For those few hours, the work fire drills, text messages, and other competing priorities wait.

We don’t always agree. At our best, we slow down and truly listen. When we reach consensus, it’s not because someone out-argued everyone else, but because we made space for the Spirit to work among us. In those moments, even a budget discussion becomes a space for community and grace.

I hope each of us can take a page from Brueggemann: to make regular space to rest in being enough, and to turn back toward God and our neighbor.

And if you’ve felt a nudge toward Vestry service, please reach out to me or any Vestry member. No special expertise is required, just a love of St. Mary’s and a readiness to quiet the noise long enough to hear the Spirit.

Matt Bartlett, Vestry Member