Pandemic ... a time to stop.

What if being forced to stop is a good thing? 

It’s Spring Break for our kiddos, so it’s a week we would have been hanging just as a family, anyway, and one I took off of work. As one not trying to figure out how to do the same things we’ve always done just now distanced from other people, it has been interesting to watch the many ways my peers in ministry address this challenge.

 I’m not sure how I’d feel if I were trying to “work” this week … what I would be doing to be productive … What content I would be generating to try to justify my continued paycheck.

But from the sidelines, one of my first thoughts about this forced time of distancing is Shabbat … stopping. The kind of stopping mandated by God’s law in the Torah for the good of humanity.

The weekly Shabbat … ceasing from work to be in the presence of God and family, and the order that those who forced others to labor would also grant that stopping.

The yearly Shabbat of the festival days … ceasing, celebrating together.

The seven year Shabbat where the land is left fallow, allowed to rest and recuperate. No plowing, planting, pruning, or harvesting. Food that grows on its own can be eaten for sustenance, but no hoarding, just take what you need. Debts are to be remitted.

And then the Jubilee Shabbat, the year at the end of the seven year cycles, when slaves and prisoners are freed, property lost due to debt is returned to original owners, families are reunited.

Scholars see little evidence that these were observed prior to the exiles, and perhaps these are the very practices God mandated so that the Israelites would be just and merciful, that they did not abide. (For more on this topic see The Bible Project’s podcast series here.)

As we are inundated with information about what this pandemic will do to stock markets, businesses, and systems around the world, I cannot help but think of it as a forced Shabbat. A stopping. And, possibly, a reordering of creation in its aftermath. As governments and organizations postulate about what supports might be necessary, the solutions sound a lot like making sure everyone has enough, reordering things a bit.*

And some of the most beautiful work of the Church I have seen in this time hasn’t come from doing the same things we do inside the building just from a distance, or via the internet. The church is BE-ing church.

People are checking on their elderly/medically fragile/food insecure neighbors.  

School districts and individuals are mobilizing to make sure kids who rely on free and reduced school lunches are still fed.

Families are in the same space for days on end, eating meals together. Playing games. Laughing. Fighting. Making up.

Food pantries are figuring out how to provide food to those in need while protecting the health of their volunteers and patrons.

And I wonder …. What would it look like to spend our time tapping into what is happening in the world? What would it look like to encourage our communities to look for how God is at work in their midst and create opportunities to share that with one another … via Facebook post comments, or a Zoom hangout, or posting pictures on Instagram with a specific hashtag?

Yes, we still need worship experiences, but we don’t actually need every pastor in every congregation to recreate Holden Evening Prayer every week.

What would it look like for us to live into a season of Shabbat?

And what might our world look like when we re-emerge from a season of forced stopping? After living together in our moments rather than moving and running and seeking the next thing, how might we reprioritize what we see as “essential” activity? When we have spent days on end with our families, might our desires be reframed so that we do not want to rush through our days to the next activity but miss the long days spent with one another?

If the existence of our economy requires that resources are reallocated, how might our economic systems change so that all have the opportunity to thrive?

If we begin to understand that the health of all is dependent on the health of our most vulnerable, how might we rethink healthcare as a right rather than a salable good?

If we explore new ways of being church in a time when we can’t gather, how might we continue to be church in the world, rather than requiring people to come through our doors for “church?”

It is okay to stop. It is okay to rest. It is okay to cease from doing and be. When Moses asked God who he should tell the Israelites was sending him, God replied, “I am who I am…I am has sent me to you,” (Exodus 3:14). 

God is not defined by doing, but being, and so are you.

* One quick note … I am not suggesting that God brought this pandemic in order to force us to stop. Instead, I wonder if we have pushed creation so far and moved so fast, that this pandemic is a natural consequence.