Introduction to the scripture (Genesis 2:1-7):
In these times, when it feels like we can never do enough to heal our hurt, sad and broken world, I invite you to find the message of hope in the Creation Story. I am excited to present to you some reflections on rest from the lived experiences of myself and other People of Colour. The second part of today’s reading tells us what constructs a human being and sustains our wholeness and health. Rest is a resource that revitalizes us, much like a spring that suddenly surges from the depths in dry, barren land, allowing us to hope and live again.
Sermon: Experiment With Rest - Even God Rested.
How do you rest? Some people might have a long list of their favourite ways to rest, while others might scoff and say, “I am much too busy to even think of resting!” In your upbringing, in your family, in your culture, in your career, or even after your retirement, what has been the message that has most impacted your relationship with resting? In your life, is resting generally encouraged? What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words rest or resting? What kinds of activities or times and spaces do you associate with rest and resting?
If it is true, as the Bible says, that God rested (!) after all the action-packed creation work of the first 6 days, by saving one last day for God to enjoy an uninterrupted 24-hour full rest, then that just adds to my admiration of God. At BVU, I have been a Co-lead for a year now, and have learned that when you work more, work harder, work without a break, you cannot stop work immediately to break from work and rest. When you work more, it just gets harder to rest. It is counter-intuitive, isn’t it… After working tirelessly, and to the point of exhaustion, one would think that they would naturally want to completely set aside their work, not even wanting to look at it, and take a break from all of it. Ironically, the reality is that, at least for me, I am still picking up the phone, checking emails, checking PowerPoints, social media notifications, finishing up unfinished tasks. It is challenging to take a break, and rest, uninterrupted, deeply and profoundly.
I had times in the past when the work was overwhelming, and still more work was waiting to be done, surrounding me like a storm, rushing and relentless. I believed I could complete all these commitments, all these pressing tasks on time, and the reward of rest would be there at the end, but I learned from this experience that resting should be already integral, part of the process, not the prize or reward that comes only at the end. Resting must be a regular, routine, ritualized, revitalizing spiritual practice already baked into the process of work, planning, ministry - all aspects of our lives. Because we are an embodied being, we are created to have rest, just like God rested.
Tricia Hersey, known as the Nap Bishop, emphasizes that rest is a birthright – a divine right for everyone to be able to access, regardless of which social location, work field, working rank, or economical circumstance you might find yourself in.
Last spring, I had not yet learned this important perspective on intentional resting as an essential spiritual practice. I drove myself to the point of burnout, substituting the idea of future rest for the needed reality of rest in the present. Part of that drive comes from my background and culture: coming from Korea, where the cultural message from the 70’s-90’s was all about building a stronger country through economic development, even at the cost of individual rights – including the right to rest. Workers push themselves to their physical breaking point; students go to school all day and then cram school after that, and then go home to study and snatch a few hours sleep before waking early to start the process all over again.
Students were constantly messaged to improve their scores to enter the higher-ranked university to ensure their success. Capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, and White supremacy, push us all, but especially those at the margins, those who deal with more marginalizing factors in their life and career day-to-day, to work harder, to rest less. Those who are in higher income range positions and jobs — they work more to keep that status; those who are in the lower income range positions and jobs - they work more and more to make ends meet. Full time, plus weekend jobs. Students with a couple of jobs. Those who are unemployed cannot rest either from constant worries.
Last spring when I found myself at the point of burn-out, scraping bottom, I encountered Tricia Hersey’s book on resting: Rest is Resistance. I also listened to some Black preachers’ sermons on resting, inspired by the movement Hersey’s book and message sparked. That first light has become a flame, and the beam of hope and inspiration for many Black spiritual leaders, BIPOC leaders, students and grassroots activists. These young generations and emerging leaders want to reflect seriously on resting as resistance to oppression, and the top item on the list of oppressions is the grinding culture of capitalism.
Before I close this reflection, I ask you search up Tricia Hersey and her book Rest as Resistance, and read her clever reflections on rest. Now, I hope you taste of her words and memoir.
“Everything always starts with the personal. The origins of The Nap Ministry begin with the story of my family… My rest resurrection begins with my desperation to find relief from my own exhaustion via curiosity, experimentation, and self-preservation.
I come from a legacy of exhaustion.
My maternal grandmother, Ora, the muse of this book, a refugee from Jim Crow terrorism, rested her eyes every day for thirty minutes to an hour in an attempt to connect and find peace. My great-grandmother Rhode, I am told, stayed up late nightly on her farm in deep Mississippi with a pistol in her apron pocket to creatively solve any problems from the Ku Klux Klan. The reality for our survival from white supremacy and capitalism is deeply shocking to me. I am in awe at what our bodies can hold. We must lighten our loads. Survival is not the end goal for liberation. We must thrive. We must rest.”
“As a child, I would watch my grandmother Ora as she sat on her plastic-covered yellow couch and meditated for thirty minutes every single day. She fled her home in Mississippi with thousands of other African-Americans during the Great Migration of the 1950s. Ora floated up North on a spaceship built from uncertainty and hope as she landed in Chicago. She magically raised eight children, while dodging poverty, racism and the invisibility of being a Black woman in America. Her commitment to “resting her eyes” every day for thirty minutes was radical. Her ability to demand space to “just be” was a form of resistance.
While my grandmother rested her eyes, I would tiptoe around her home trying not to wake her up. I always thought she was sleeping while sitting up. I was curious about her rest practice and thought she was so eccentric. Whenever I would inquire if she was sleeping, her response was always the same: Every shut-eye ain’t sleep. I am resting my eyes and listening for what God wants to tell me.” While all the world around her was attempting to crush her Spirit, she rested and resisted the beast of grind culture. She taught my mother to rest, she taught me to rest. I am humbled to be a vessel to guide thousands on their own rest journey as we embrace rest as a way to make us all more human.”
Therefore, friends,
Experiment with rest. Even God rested.
Grandmothers rested, and it was resistance.
Jesus rested, and it was subversive and even controversial to the eyes of the disciples.
Experiment with rest, and in the act of radical resting, inspire care for ourselves and one another in the spacious sense of time, not from a sense of scarcity about time, but from the abundance.
When we have silence, breathe deep.
You can just be. You can rest.
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