Rest is Resistance

Something surprising happens when the people of God go outside to gather manna on the seventh day, the Sabbath day – there is no more food.

They assumed the manna would appear daily, and even though they gathered twice the normal amount the day before, they were still surprised not to find any that morning. God has to remind the people of the principle of Sabbath. They do not need to gather on this day; it is set aside for rest. God has given the people this day of rest.

It is especially jarring for us to see this invitation for the Israelites to rest in the middle of the wilderness. They are in crisis! Likewise, when we constantly feel the weight of injustice and crisis in our world today, the invitation to Sabbath feels completely oppositional to our work. It is tempting to think of Sabbath as a luxury, that is, something we do when we have extra time to spare. We feel guilty for pausing to rest when so much in our world needs doing. How can we rest in light of the injustices and inequities in our world? How can we truly rest when the forces at work against us seem so relentless?

The Nap Ministry, as it is called, began in Atlanta, Georgia, with a young Black woman named Tricia Hersey as a prophetic act of resistance against despair. [Tricia Hersey has now published a book entitled Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto (Little, Brown Spark, 2022).] In 2013, Tricia had just enrolled as a seminary student at Emory University, and the pace was rigorous. She woke up at 3 AM to study, left her apartment by 6 AM for her 8 AM classes, and sometimes would not get home until after midnight. Tricia was also a single mom to her 6-year-old son.

Even more challenging was that Tricia felt overlooked by her seminary colleagues. The news of increasing police brutality against Black people only intensified her weariness. She became active in the Black Lives Matter movement and a key leader on the front lines in Atlanta protesting for justice. One day, she was robbed while walking home with her son, losing her class notes, her research, and her very first sermon, which she was scheduled to preach in two days.

At that point, Tricia was ready to quit school and give up. Instead, she started napping. She napped in the campus quad, in the library, in the upholstered balcony pews of her seminary Chapel. “I was healing,” she said. “Naps really saved my life in that way.” Hersey speaks of naps the way others might describe a spiritual experience—because for her, that is what they are. “Sleep is such a vulnerable place,” she says. “You have space to talk and vent, to hope, to dream. You can work things out you can’t work out when you’re awake.”

The idea inspired her to begin to research rest as both a healing mechanism for trauma and a form of resistance against oppression. She writes, “How can we resist these toxic systems that want us to be disconnected, that want us to work 80 hours a week, that want us to feel like we’re not worthy unless we’re producing something? This isn’t just about naps.” She began guiding local justice groups through various meditations and nap talks. [All the quotes in this paragraph are from an article about The Nap Ministry in Atlanta Magazine, "The Atlanta Nap Ministry preaches the liberating power of rest"]

Jesus also knew about the power of rest and renewal. Jesus knew the powers and principalities he faced. He knew the world's constant needs. And yet, perhaps as an act of resistance seemingly foolish to everyone else, Jesus stopped to rest. Jesus went off to be by himself to pray, even when people still needed his help and came looking for him (Mark 1:35). Jesus slept in the bottom of the boat, even when a storm was raging outside and the disciples thought they were going to drown (Matthew 8:23-34, Mark 4:35-40; John 4:5-6).

Jesus took time to rest in ways that were shocking, and at times infuriating to
those who were following him. And he offers us this same invitation: “Come to
me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you
rest” (Matthew 11:28).

We are called to see sleep and rest as a form of contemplative practice that nurtures our spiritual life.

Sabbath

The invitation for the Israelites to rest in the wilderness was a new concept after their former life in slavery, working themselves to death in the land of Egypt. Walter Brueggemann notes that we have no evidence Pharaoh took a day for rest or allowed his workers to do the same. (Walter Brueggemann, “The Liturgy of Abundance; the Myth of Scarcity,” The Christian Century, 24 March 1999.) Pharaoh forced a relentless lifestyle upon the Israelites, and the wilderness offered its own set of relentless challenges. Suddenly, the Israelites are faced with the question: Are we going to trust in the skills and strength we developed for ceaseless work and striving throughout slavery? Or, when everything else has been stripped away from us, are we going to stop and rest, and trust in God to provide?

Perhaps we face a similar question in our modern-day wildernesses, and more often than not, we choose working and striving over resting. In his book, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives, Wayne Muller says,

Our culture invariably supposes that action and accomplishment are better than rest, that doing something–anything–is better than doing nothing. Because of our desire to succeed, to meet these ever-growing expectations, we do not rest. Because we do not rest, we lose our way. We miss the compass points that would show us where to go, we bypass the nourishment that would give us succor. We miss the quiet that would give us wisdom. We miss the joy and love born of effortless delight. Poisoned by this hypnotic belief that good things come only through unceasing determination and tireless effort, we can never truly rest. And for want of rest, our lives are in danger.
Wayne Muller, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in our Busy Lives. (New York: Bantam Books, 1999), 1.

Muller points out that this sense of constant striving and never-ending work isn’t just a personal problem. It affects our communal work for justice as well: “It colors the way we build and sustain community, it dictates the way we respond to suffering, and it shapes the ways in which we seek peace and healing in the world” (page 3). He notes that after a career of working in the fields of community development and public health and well-being, he has seen, time and time again, that “the way problems are solved is frantically, desperately, relatively, and badly. Despite their well-meaning and generous souls, community and corporate leaders are infected with a fearful desperation that is corrosive to genuine helpfulness, justice, or healing” (page 3). This description does not sound restful or sustainable!

Throughout our time in Exodus, we have talked about how the work toward justice is hard and lifelong. Those in places of privilege are eager for a quick fix or an easy solution, wanting to check “ending systemic racism” off the to-do list and move on to other items on the agenda. However, injustices are complex, intersectional, entrenched, and multi-layered. They result from generations of faulty systems at work. None of them will be fully resolved within our lifetimes. The challenge and invitation is to become uncomfortable enough to take brave steps forward, and to be willing to get into good trouble, while remembering to rest and take care of ourselves along the way.

We need to remember Cole Arthur Riley’s words:

“Rest is not the reward of our liberation, nor something we lay hold of once we are free. It is the path that delivers us there.”
Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us (New York: Convergent, 2022), 151.

The work of justice is far too important to lose steam and burn out along the way. Sabbath, then, becomes an intentional faith practice to curb our desire for an easy solution and allows us to maintain our presence and participation in the work of justice as we seek long-term answers.

**This essay is a revised version of pages 78-82 in Hard and Holy Work: A Lenten Journey through the Book of Exodus, which I co-wrote with Mary Alice Birdwhistell.

A Benediction (Or Miscellaneous Thoughts)

Uncle Ishmael will be exploring the biblical book of Exodus in alignment with the Revised Common Lectionary. The lectionary begins on August 23 with Exodus 1 and concludes its journey through the book on October 11 with Exodus 32.

Here's a list of the Sundays and the Exodus scripture lesson:
September 27 2026 Exodus 17:1-7
October 4 2026 Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
October 11 2026 Exodus 32:1-14