SABBATH AS RESISTANCE Saying no to the culture of now Walter Brueggemann (Westminster John Knox, October 2017) 148pp, paperback, various prices
Brueggemann is a distinguished and prolific Old Testament scholar. If you want to read him but don’t know where to begin, this book would be a stimulating launchpad. You might think that a book about the Sabbath would be obscure and bordering on the irrelevant. But what this Old Testament scholar does is to show how radical the Sabbath is as a gift to freed slaves, conditioned to relentless 24/7 control in Egypt to satisfy the anxieties of a pharaoh who never owned enough or controlled enough to feel secure. Brueggemann takes the metaphor of the pyramid, a vast economic apparatus designed to create wealth and security, which does not and cannot deliver, and reveals how the Sabbath commandment sits in the centre and holds together the commands toward God and towards neighbour.
The chapter headings unpack the different kinds of resistance needed: to anxiety, coercion, exclusivism and multitasking. All of which the Sabbath addresses by making us stop, allowing us to re-imagine our humanity unfettered from work and productivity. I would like Brueggemann to do a revision of this book looking at the influence of the internet: specifically email and social media which have become more intrusive and more oppressive than work ever was. The only digital example he gives is making a grocery list on your mobile during the sermon! But this book lays out the foundational principles, so you should be able to apply them to the internet. Sabbath is so much more than switching your TV off and not playing football. If you are experiencing anxiety or work pressures, this book reads almost like a manifesto for a counter culture to challenge the norm. It will give you a taste for Brueggemann, whose focus was always on supporting preachers and pastors rather than writing for academics. Now then, am I still going to buy milk if I run out on Sunday? Highly recommended.
John Griffiths is a Reader in the Church of England and a trustee of LWPT, the charity behind Preach magazine.
