blessing, boundaries, and rest

Renée Antrosio – August 29, 2023 1 Comment

When I proposed a weekly pastor’s email in the fall of 2016, I anticipated alternating writing with my co-pastor to provide an avenue of communication between pastors and the congregation. Since he took Mondays off, I chose Wednesdays as my Sabbath. Tuesdays seemed ideal for a message from a pastor’s desk, while Thursdays worked for e-newsletters. 

Looking back at my first note, Praying the Bricks on Sept 27, 2016, I am moved by what has changed and what remains the same. I notice the need for boundaries and new routines. I could not have anticipated that shortly after I began, my co-pastor would take a leave of absence and then resign at the end of the year. Or that for the next six and a half years I would be the only pastor at NCF. Or that a pandemic would close church doors and prompt the creation of a weekly online service. 

On the seventh day God was finished with his work which he had made, so he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. Genesis 2:2 (Complete Jewish Bible) 

These seven years, I’ve never really considered changing my day off. While many pastors take Mondays as their day of rest, for me that is catch-up from Sunday and prep for our Leadership Team meetings. But I’ve noticed that my boundaries around Wednesdays- the ability to refrain from checking email, texting about service planning, attending meetings, scheduling with contractors and congregants- have become porous. People’s work week and prep for Sunday are in full swing on Wednesday; it is an awkward day to opt out. I was surprised to find that the pastors at First Presbyterian take Friday off; hm, would that make more sense? 

Last fall we hosted The Auschwitz Experience in the Art of the Prisoners in collaboration with the Holocaust Education Center, then World Communion Sunday for the Ministerial Alliance, film discussions of Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America, and the Interfaith Alliance. We collected and donated winter wear for refugees and homeless neighbors. We repaired bathroom floors, painted offices, and replaced fluorescent lights with efficient LEDs. And as my sixth full year as a solo pastor drew to a close, I realized that I was tired.

God blessed the seventh day and separated it as holy; because on that day God rested from all his work which he had created, so that it itself could produce. Genesis 2:3 (Complete Jewish Bible) 

Did you know that the word sabbatical comes from sabbath? I didn’t! It never occurred to me. The seventh day, the seventh year, as a time for rest. Not because the work isn’t good and life-giving. It is! God saw that it was good, teeming with life. What an exciting beginning! While in some ways creation was “complete,” God’s work with humanity had just begun. How could God take a day off and let nature run its course? 

When the leadership team and I began discussing a sabbatical, it seemed both impossible and hopeful. Who could step up so that I could step out? The systems in place depend on pastoral organization and relationships. They are particular to our fellowship, without a denominational structure of support. So we prayed and explored and waited; I could not schedule a sabbatical unless I was reasonably sure that New Covenant could maintain well without me for three months. We are beginning to glimpse that possibility, as Melissa builds relationships and we make structures that can themselves produce. Like a cultivated garden with stewards and helpers. 

Returning to the creation narrative, I notice the way God establishes boundaries- day and night, land and water- to encompass a range and a separation. There is dawn and dusk, the in-between times that form the transition between dark and light. There are marshes and swamps, deserts and seas. Work and rest. Every day was not the same. A time to create and a time to allow creation to produce on its own.

This fall, I am again working on my rhythms to define times for creating and plan times of rest. Shabbat requires preparation. Unless we take care, our work lives permeate our days and nights until there is no separation. Perhaps the time has come to change my day off and establish better boundaries for rest. In hope and faith, I am planning a sabbatical Jan 15-April 15, 2024 to retreat to the desert and rest. Read, write, rejuvenate. 

God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good. So there was evening, and there was morning, a sixth day. Genesis 1:31 (CJB)

The work is very good. If God could rest after the sixth day, then we too should be able to rest. We are not more essential workers than God. Sabbath was created for humans, modeled by our Creator. And while God rested, nature’s creatures multiplied as they had been empowered. May we too have faith to trust that while we rest, in the absence of our making, our worlds can also be fruitful and blessed. -Renée