Living Lightly: Rediscovering Sabbath in a 24/7 World
readings
A course outline and package of readings (marked * below) will be available at the course venue. Further readings will be added during the course. The readings are complementary to and should enrich the sessions.
The main course book is Norman Wirzba Living the Sabbath (Brazos 2006), available at a discount on January 15.
Other recommended books include:
Marva Dawn The Sense of the Call: A Sabbath Way of Life for those who serve God, the Church and the World, (Eerdmans 2006)
Abraham Heschel The Sabbath, (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2005)
Jürgen Moltmann God in Creation, (SCM 1985)
coffee break
Please bring your travel mug for the refreshment break.
visible outline
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January 15 Patterns for Person and Planet
David Lyon, Queen’s Research Chair and Professor of Sociology.
Ever had that panicky feeling you’ve forgotten something really important? Our multi-tasking, mobile, global, 24/7 liquid society careers along, suffering from a chronic amnesia; the loss of Sabbath. Don’t think starchy Presbyterians holding out against Sunday shopping, or rigid rule-keeping legalists! Think deep about the basic architecture of creation: Sabbath as the limits of human control in time and space and as the moment and the place for delight, joyful celebration, reorientation, healing and hope! Starting with the Jewish Shabbat, then exploring Sabbath in creation, in command and in Christ, we move to Sabbath as a radically different way of life. A counter-cultural adventure.
Reading: Wirzba chapters 1, 2. ‘Principles of Embracing the Sabbath’ ccojubilee.org/resources/theology/Sabbath/3.html/ Heather Menzies and Janice Newson ‘No time to think’ Academic Matters December 2006.*
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January 22 Risky Rest: Going Against the Current
Susan Norman, Graduate and Faculty Fellowship, Queen’s.
‘Busyness is my business’ seems to be the ironic tagline of many today. However did we allow ourselves to think that constantly increasing productivity is a good thing? Employer expectations, dual career upwardly mobile lifestyles and the whole massive machine of global capitalism militate against Sabbath. The tensions are real but some businesses have recognized the problem. Paradoxically, Christians may have to struggle to get rest. Could 24/7 lifestyles count as idolatry? What about under-employment? Is rest a recess (hole-to-be-filled) or recreation? Sabbath raises awkward and unsettling questions: what am I doing all this for? Is there another way, that does not place human ambition at the centre of life?
Reading: Wirzba chapters 3, 7.
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January 29 Fallow and Fruiting: Land-Sabbath
Loren Wilkinson, Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Philosophy, Regent College, Vancouver; Mary-Ruth Wilkinson, Sessional Lecturer, Regent College.
If Sabbath is a creation pattern, this is good news for the earth as well as for persons. God delights in creation; do we? Human futures, biblically, are bound up with the destiny of the planet. In their way, agribusiness, GM foods, over-fishing and Clear-Cuts are just another side of the same processes and practices of late modernity that tend to obliterate Sabbath for the earth, the land, as for humankind. But there’s hope here too and fresh starts can be and are being made. Do Levitical Laws have any relevance for today? How far can we have global menus and local food? The basic question is, whose earth is it anyway? Right questions set the scene for appropriate answers.
Reading: Wirzba chapters 9, 11; Wendell Berry ‘Out of your car, off your horse…’ (from Sex, Community, Freedom, Economy, (Pantheon 1994)*; Mathis Wackernagel ‘The Ecological Footprint’* (see also www.footprintnetwork.org).
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February 5 Healed and Whole: Sabbath and Right Relationships
Janet Clark, Academic Dean and Associate Professor of Counselling, Tyndale University College and Seminary, Toronto.
Jesus, notably, healed on the Sabbath, to the disgust of the legalists. This suggests that joyful liberation from the burdens of physical life in a fractured world is an important part of the ‘Sabbath made for humans’ (not humans made for Sabbath). Where does this take us in ‘light living’ terms? What counts as Sabbath ‘working’ and why? Luke 13: 10-17 seems key: the bent-over woman, pronounces Jesus, is a daughter of Abraham. Mind-blowing. Sabbath is inseparable from mending what’s broken, especially repairing relationships at all levels; reflecting on what really matters – priority-therapy – and making practical differences. Families, friendships and neighbourhoods can express the hospitality and delight of God!
Reading: Wirzba chapters 6, 8.
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February 12 Free at Last! Living Lightly in New Earth
David Lyon
What is the ‘rest that remains’? This is the Sabbath as goal of life (which it should be each week, too). Living lightly in New-Heaven-and-Earth is a pattern pulling us into the future. It’s already but not yet. Not escapism but engagement! We live as foreign residents now but we don’t dream of ‘returning’ somewhere so much as finding the local regime changed such that we’re totally at home at last. The Sabbath is also jubilee – freedom and justice for the exhausted, the excluded, the trapped, the forgotten. Jesus calls us to live the future now to bring God’s delight, God’s goodness into everyday life at every level. What’s holding us back?
Reading: Wirzba chapters 4, 12.