The Sabbath Sleep

What hard travail God does in death! He strives in sleep, in our despair, And all flesh shudders underneath The nightmare of His sepulcher. The earth shakes, grinding its deep stone; All night the cold wind heaves and pries; Creation strains sinew and bone Against the dark door where He lies. The stem bent, pent in seed, grows straight And stands. Pain breaks in song. Surprising The merely dead, graves fill with light Like opened eyes. He rests in rising. (Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir: Sabbath Poems)The Gospel of John begins by linking itself to the book of Genesis with its first words, “In the beginning…” The attentive reader will be on high alert for further connections.Like the synoptic Gospels, John has the sabbath controversies between Jesus and the religious leaders play a big role in the narrative. But with John’s strong connection to Genesis we may be able to discern more layers in the controversies. The command to remember the sabbath day finds its grounding in the creation narrative of Genesis. On the seventh day God rested from all his work. And, notoriously, Genesis doesn’t mention any conclusion to this seventh day. God continues to rest. Or, at least, that’s the implication many have taken.John Behr, in his book John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel, notes that in John 5 Jesus heals a sick man on the sabbath. The religious leaders “started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath.” Jesus’ response to them is curious: “My Father is still working, and I also am working” (Jn. 5:17). The Son and the Father are not resting, but still working. Just a few verses later Jesus tells us specifically what the works of his Father are: “The Father raises the dead and gives them life…” (5:21). This is God’s work. And he is still working. The creation week of Genesis 1 is not finished yet.Just as in Genesis, so also in the Gospel of John: God works until the end of the sixth day. And in John it is on the sixth day of the week that Jesus is crucified. In the Genesis creation account it is on the sixth day that God creates human beings as his final work before resting. And now on the sixth day in John’s Gospel Pilate brings Jesus before the crowd and says, “Behold the human being” (ho anthropos; Jn. 19:5).And when the sixth day is nearing its conclusion, Jesus says, “It is finished.” What is finished? The works of God—dying with the dead in order to give life to them. The sixth day of John’s creation week is over. Only now does God rest from his work.Startlingly, this would make the seventh day the day that Jesus’ body lay in the tomb. The deep truth of the sabbath is that it is actually Holy Saturday, when Jesus rests from his work of creation—of giving life to the dead.And, if I can hazard this thought, I don’t think John means to say that the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is the beginning of a new creation or re-creation. But that this is God’s first work of creation. The Father is still working. In John’s telling the sixth day of the first creation week has not concluded yet.To put it another way: the sabbath rest of God that Genesis tells us about is happening right before our eyes in John’s Gospel. Jesus in the tomb is God resting on the seventh day of the creation week.This is the sabbath sleep we are called into. For God to finish his work in us, we are called to rest in the rest of Jesus. To sleep with him so that we may also rise with him. Stop striving. Stop working. Just rest. God’s greatest work begins when you and I sleep (Ps. 127:2). The God who brought Eve out of Adam’s side while he slept; the God who made the covenant with Abraham while he slept; the God who was at work in the sleep of Jesus will do what you and I cannot do.As Wendell Berry says, “What hard travail God does in death! He strives in sleep.”Trust yourself to his work and sleep his sabbath sleep with him. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com