We now find ourselves definitively in late July and so at the height of vacation season. COVID-19 continues to make going on a vacation tricky, but people are still heading out of town. If you’re not on vacation at the moment, you likely know someone who is.
Reading last Sunday’s Gospel passage, I found myself contemplating our current cultural attitudes towards rest. On the one hand, we twenty-first-century Americans get less rest than many of our previous counterparts did. Our electronic devices allow us to be on call 24 hours a day and keep us up late into the evening hours. If we try to go on a getaway, we can take our work with us easily—and often, we do. Some of the most disadvantaged among us get the least amount of rest because they have to work multiple jobs, lack adequate help with childcare, or travel a greater distance to and from work.
However, while many of us arguably don’t get enough rest—or perhaps because many of us don’t get enough rest—we seem absolutely obsessed with getting more of it. We talk constantly about how much or how little sleep we are getting, about the vacations we will be taking or wish we could take, about how easy it is—or isn’t—to take a break from work. Apps on our phone—the very phone that causes us to stay up into the wee hours of the night—have the sole aim of helping us shut our eyes. From my earliest days as a priest, mentors and colleagues alike proselytized to me about the importance of keeping the Sabbath as a spiritual discipline.
I sympathize with the desire for more rest, but I wonder if all of this talk about rest is truly helpful for us in the long run. In the past decade or so, rest has become just another thing to achieve or fail at, or stress about. If I answer a seemingly pressing email on my day off, I feel guilty. If I go to bed late, I stay up worrying about how little sleep I’m getting and get even less sleep as a result. Now highly driven people can compete not only over how much they can get done but also over how much rest they can achieve while simultaneously getting things done!
Jesus understood the importance of rest. He traveled to deserted places multiple times during his ministry to escape the pressing crowds, and in last week’s Gospel reading Jesus encouraged his disciples to join him for a period of rest. Yet when their rest was interrupted by something important—people in need of teaching and healing—Jesus was not a Sabbath fundamentalist. He started working again. He recognized that the needs of others trumped his own need for a break.
I do hope you’ll get some rest this summer. I also hope that you’ll give yourself a rest from the incessant pressure to rest. Rest is important, and sometimes rest can and should be interrupted. I think we would benefit from treating ourselves gently when it comes to the imposition of Sabbath time. Vacations and days off need not be enforced with an iron fist. If you have to answer a work email on vacation, it’s really not the end of the world. I promise.
