Title: Resistance to Exclusivism (Isaiah 56:3-8)
Date: 03/15/2015 
Key Speaker: Amanda Wagoner-Meade 

From the book Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now by Walter Brueggemann: “In our own contemporary context of the rat race of anxiety, the celebration of Sabbath is an act of both resistance and alternative.  It is resistance because it is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods.  Such an act of resistance requires enormous intentionality and communal reinforcement amid the barrage of seductive pressures from the insatiable insistences of the market, with its intrusion into every part of our life from our family to the national budget…But Sabbath is not only resistance.  It is alternative.  It is alternative to the demanding, chattering, pervasive presence of advertising and its great liturgical claim of professional sports that devour all of our ‘rest time.’  The alternative on offer is the awareness and practice of the claim that we are situated on the receiving end of the gifts of God.”

The temptation and tendency for God’s people has long been to understand ourselves as an exclusive bunch with regards to God’s love and blessing.  The results have historically been disastrous.  Sabbath in scripture has a history of challenging this tendency as prophets and poets point out that anyone can practice it and all can benefit from it.