Sabbath as Sacred Exhale

Sabbath as Sacred Exhale

July 26, 2026

Minister: Rev. JT Smiedendorf

Text: Genesis 2:1-3

Download a printable PDF of this sermon here.

CENTRAL FOCUS:

Sabbath practice is a core practice of the soul; rest, quiet, slowing, appreciating, blessing, enjoying, celebrating, intentional remembering and focusing, valuing, re-creating

“Thus, the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that God had done, and God rested on the seventh day from all the work that God had done.

So, God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it, God rested from all the work that God had done in creation.”

These are the words of our ancient tradition.
May the Living Word of God in Scripture be alive within us, among us, and beyond us.

Breathe. That’s all.
Let’s all take a breath together: inhale…….exhale.
Two more: inhale………exhale……… inhale……… exhale.
It’s a cycle, isn’t it? Both parts are important.

On the seventh day, God rested, says the first Creation story. At least that’s what it says in English in the NRSV translation. What you didn’t hear was that the Hebrew word for rest (refreshed) vaiynafesh literally means exhaled. The Hebrew text is saying that on the seventh day God exhaled.

Our culture seems better at inhaling: Do more, want more, acquire more, be more. Being busy can even be seen as a sign of importance.

But are our lives busy or full?
Did you know that the Chinese pictograph for ‘busy’ combines heart and killing. The Christian mystic Thomas Merton actually went so far as to equate activism and overwork with violence.

Are our lives structured not just to inhale, but to exhale?
Do we know how to exhale?
Do we know how to exhale and rest in the arms of God, in the cradle of Creation?

A big part of the first Creation story in Genesis is the teaching of the importance of Sabbath to the Jewish community. It was a characteristic practice to stop all work, even for animals, on Friday at sundown when the traditional Jewish day ends and enter into Sabbath time until the next sundown.

There is a story told of Jesus walking with his disciples on the Sabbath. They plucked some heads of grain to eat. The Pharisees, who tried to protect the people’s piety and to respect Torah law through lots of rules, accused them of sinfully breaking the Sabbath. Jesus’ wise response was that the Sabbath was made for the people, not the people for the Sabbath.

So how can Sabbath be for us?

How might we learn from and be served by this teaching?

Go ahead, inhale fully again and don’t exhale. Try that and see how it goes. Exhale, and feel the relief. That sense of relief is Sabbath. Sabbath completes the energy cycle of life, re-balances it, and provides relief and renewal. So I’m not talking about a return to dour restrictive rules of Sabbath that drain life; no dancing or card playing or visiting with people or frolicking and such. I’m talking about the wisdom and the necessity of sacred exhaling in service of fulfilling the cycle of life, of experiencing the vitality of life.

In that first Creation story, we are given an image of the earth as void and without form. It is a kind of emptiness. Creation happens out of emptiness. We have to exhale in order to make room for the next incoming of life. The womb has first to be an emptiness in order to be filled with the growing creation of a new life. This emptiness is not so much a denial of life as it is a letting go and a balancing. The first Creation story begins in emptiness and ends in another kind of emptiness, a sacred exhale, a resting, and a stillness, a pause, a Sabbath.

Like a hibernating animal, like a planted bulb or seed in winter, there is an appropriate and necessary time to rest, to lie fallow, to not do.

I was trained as an exercise physiologist after college. It is a basic principle of exercise training that the process of becoming more fit and healthy requires rest after we challenge the body in activity. What is often forgotten is that it is during the rest time that the rebuilding to a better state happens. Activity and rest are a life-giving cycle.

How many of us trust that cycle?

How many of us here are practicing Sabbath rest?

I’m not talking about just laying down on the couch, although that could help. I’m not talking about kicking back and watching TV, although some quality viewing occasionally is renewing. What I am talking about is a Sabbath space and time that has a sacred intention, a certain quality of delightful exhale that puts us back into the blessedness of Creation, that ending part of the first Creation story when God exhales and says, “It is very good.”

In his book, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives, Wayne Muller suggests we embrace, “Sabbath as a way of being in time where we remember who we are, remember what we know, and taste the gifts of spirit and eternity.”

Our worship celebration here could be a Sabbath practice if it helps us remember who we truly are…
as images of God made of the dust of the stars,
as humble mortal beings made of mud,
as a people called to Grace and to justice,
as part of a wondrous Creation with other wondrous Creatures and features.

Our Sunday worship celebration or any practice that we have can be a Sabbath practice if it slows us down enough—focuses us enough toward Spirit—that we remember and feel again in our bodies and souls the Grace of God and the wondrous gift of life. Any practice could be a Sabbath practice if it truly re-creates in us a sense of rest, renewal, gratitude and connection to the GodMystery. It doesn’t have to be Saturday or Sunday, or a particular ritual or prayer, though those things might help.

It’s not that Sabbath time is superior to work time.

It’s that our work time is served by the wisdom and energy of balance and wholeness, which means having the balancing effect of Sabbath rest and its intention to ‘be’ in a different way. The spiritual paradox of Sabbath rest and not doing is that it does create, in its own way. The Rabbinic tradition says that on the seventh day God created menuha: tranquility, serenity, peace, and repose. The Jewish tradition also says that on the Sabbath we are given an extra soul, Neshemah Yeterah, a Sabbath soul, which more fully appreciates the blessings of life and the fruits of our labor.

How are we nurturing our Sabbath soul?

I watched my Dad for years come home from work, empty his pockets and often change his clothes. It was a simple ritual of shifting from work to home. Now, I love the moment I get home and empty my pockets of keys, cell phone, and all the things I use in the outside world of work and marketplace. I empty my pockets and exhale. This can be a Sabbath moment on any day if I use it to really slow down, breathe, and pause to appreciate the gift of the day, of life, of the whole Mystery.

That’s because Sabbath is not just a time or even space that we reserve. It is also a quality of presence or consciousness. It is effortless, nourishing rest. It is stillness that can produce a unique kind of renewal and insight. It is an awareness, a return to perspective, a sacred perspective that is about depth and delight, about re-balancing and re-creating, about remembering and feeling that we belong to God, to the Mystery, and that we are to love each other and all Creation.

There is a poem by Jane Kenyon that may help us feel into Sabbath time and space. The poem is related to the traditional Jewish day beginning in the darkness right after sundown.

Let Evening Come

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

In these extraordinary times, when King Herod has been and is still on the move, as the earth and the peoples have ongoing struggles, there is no shortage of faithful things to do, worthy actions to be taken; volunteering, advocating, parenting, organizing, relationship building. There is an urgency to these times, a present call for response. Yet, this only increases the importance of our vitality and resiliency, of our needing to be resourced and renewed to meet these moments.

That’s why I invite us to remember that there are rhythms and cycles that renew life and make possible our resilient return to acting for compassion and justice, to acting in service and offering a helping hand. No matter our age or stage, in our lives and in our culture, we can distort those life-giving rhythms and cycles and then compromise the life force that sustains us and Creation, not allowing ourselves or the Earth to exhale, to rest, to renew.

God exhaled, says the ancient story, resting and savoring the blessing that is Life. Today, the sacred invitation is simple: Remember Sabbath and exhale. AMEN