You Are Not a Commodity
Lydia Mulkey
August 31, 2021
Therefore the Israelites shall keep the sabbath, observing the sabbath throughout their generations, as a perpetual covenant. It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.
~Exodus 31:16-17
I was watching a show with someone from the tech industry talking about “golden handcuffs.” The expression refers to how well paid folks are in the tech industry in order to make them feel obligated to work 80+ hour weeks. Of course, it is not just the tech industry that applies those golden handcuffs. Our culture treats us as commodities, bought and sold for the monetary value we bring. If you can make money, you are good. If you are not making money, the guilt is laid on thick. Some of our ancestors in the faith upheld ideals that contribute to the capitalist society we live in today. We praise the “protestant work ethic.” But, God has set us free from handcuffs, golden or otherwise. The ancient Israelites had been enslaved, but God insisted that their freedom meant they no longer work as slaves, but that they regularly rest, because of their status as children of God.
In his book "Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now," Walter Brueggemann says, “The Sabbath rest of God is the acknowledgment that God and God’s people in the world are not commodities to be dispatched for endless production and so dispatched, as we used to say, as ‘hands’ in the service of a command economy. Rather they are subjects situated in an economy of neighborliness. All of that is implicit in the reality and exhibit of divine rest.”
The Sabbath is perhaps the most frequently broken of the ten commandments. How many of us truly take enough time for rest? It requires that we live in a way that is so strongly countercultural, it feels nearly impossible. It is not easy, but it is life-giving. I can’t say that I’ve figured out how to keep the Sabbath well, but I’m working on it. I hope you will too.
