Rest Is Resistance

Then [Jesus] said to them, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath.” – Mark 2:27 (NRSV) 

Jesus healed and did other work on the sabbath, and when he caught heat for it, he snarked at his adversaries just as he did in the quote above from Mark’s Gospel.  

And he wasn’t wrong. God made the sabbath into a commandment not to constrain us, but to bless us. Many of us find it hard to stop working without that push from the Divine, fearing the wolf at the door or the guilty conscience if we stop for a minute.  

But even Jesus could have stood a bit more rest. Maybe if he’d had to stay in ministry for more than 3 years, he would have cultivated better sabbath practices. Even when he ran away to pray by himself, the crowds often pursued him, found him, and put him back to work. And he let them. In the midst of dismantling systems of oppression, he let this one stand.  

In Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, Tricia Hersey writes, “Loving ourselves and each other deepens our disruption of the dominant systems. They want us unwell, fearful, exhausted, and without deep self-love because you are easier to manipulate when you are distracted by what is not real or true.” 

If I were Jesus’s Enneagram coach, I’d probably suggest he is a social 2 (The Helper) with an outsized need to be needed that wouldn’t ever let him stand down from his Messiah complex. I’d also invite him to take a cue from Tricia Hersey, aka The Nap Bishop.  

Prayer
God, you needed rest. So do we. Let us be so full of love that we can accept—and share—the command of sabbath. Amen.

About the Author
Molly Baskette is a UCC minister, psychedelic facilitator and author of books about church renewal, parenting, post-traumatic joy and more. Learn more at mollybaskette.com.