Planting Sabbath
April 28, 2025
Biblical rest demands a different relationship with the Earth and one another
“You can’t be Christian unless you’re taking care of the Earth. You don’t get to claim this faith and abdicate your responsibility to care for creation.” The intensity of rev. dr. abby mohaupt’s eyes increases ten-fold as she names humans and the natural world’s interdependence. The Director of the Garrett Collective recently finished co-teaching an adult education class at First Presbyterian Church in Deerfield, IL, with Dr. Brooke Lester, Garrett’s Associate Professor of Hebrew Scriptures. In their class “Bible, Sabbath, and Ecology,” the pair guided reflection on the religious obligation to honor Sabbath, but also helped learners understand that cultivating ecological balance is a fundamental part of following God’s command to rest.
There are, in fact, two different biblical formulations of the Sabbath commandment, which must be understood collectively if we wish to be faithful to God’s word. “The first, in Exodus, is grounded in the fact that God created the world but rested on the 7th day, so you will also rest on the 7th day because you are created in God’s image,” Dr. Lester observes. “The version found in Deuteronomy, however, has a different motivation: To protect the Sabbath not only for yourself but for your slaves, because you were slaves in Egypt—it’s an obligation to not only safeguard your own rest but the Sabbath of anyone who depends on you.” That Deuteronomic exhortation in Hebrew is worded in the second-person singular, which contextually means it is directed toward the person who holds power and therefore moral responsibility. In our context, “we have to think expansively about what that means, and who depends on us,” he continues. “It’s not just our neighbors, it also includes the Earth itself and future generations.”
Together, they steered the class’ focus away from individual practice and toward the deep connection between Sabbath, and Christian identity. Too many classes on the Bible and earth-careend up so laser-focused on actions like recycling, composting, or switching to green energy, dr. mohaupt says, that they don’t nurture the theological roots that should feed those righteous commitments. “People understandably focus on climate change or Trump withdrawing from the Paris Accords as reasons we need talk about how we care for the Earth,” she explains. “But that’s the simpler stuff. What’s harder is grappling with our ecological identities: we are connected to and required to tend the Earth whether or not it’s in crisis. How can we make sure the Earth can rest, not because it’s in crisis — which of course it is– but because from the beginning, all of creation was meant to rest.
As focus shifts away from ecological action as a problem-oriented strategy toward how Sabbath reformulates identity, it carries myriad ancillary benefits. “It undermines exploitative capitalist messages that people are worth only what labor can be extracted from their time,” Dr. Lester notes. “’Sabbath’ means it should not be a luxury to have space in your life that isn’t controlled by your employer. Everyone and everything deserves rest, just because we exist.” It exposes the moral hollowness of prosperity gospels and the protestant work ethic. “Believing that we have to work all the time because ‘the more money we make the more saved we are’ is intimately connected to extractive industry and the destruction of the planet,” dr. mohaupt says. “The earth matters because it is created by a God who loves all parts of creation, not because it has resources that can be extracted. Us too. We can see ourselves as part of creation and therefore commanded to rest. So, if we overextend ourselves that is bad, then it’s not a big extension of that to say if we do not let the Earth rest—if we take too much from it or push too hard—that’s catastrophic.”
Drs. mohaupt and Lester were delighted to watch how congregants embraced this perspective shift. “One of the Garrett Collective’s big premises is that nontraditional theological education invites people into deeper study,“ she says. “One student came back every week with increasingly deeper questions, and eventually told us, ‘I need to confess that I really want to go to seminary.’” Regardless of whether she chooses to apply, it offered an opportunity to invite the whole class to join the Collective, a new online theological education platform that will offer classes like this one to learners around the world. Currently in beta testing, the Collective will launch in the next academic year. It’s exciting to witness how this educational model bears fruit. “It’s so fun to test the Collective’s premise,” dr. mohaupt says with a wide grin. “We’re inviting folks to explore the resources we have now, and people are thrilled by the vision for who we will be in our fullness.” In its own way, the Collective has Sabbath stitched into its fabric—theological resources made broadly accessible, offered at whatever time works for its users, unmoored by any burden of geographic proximity.
Ultimately, ethical education and Sabbath share incredibly important values: Both are grounded in empathy and accountability. Transformative learning meets students where they are, seeks to understand and nurture their unique contexts, and reciprocally benefits both parties. “Part of being made in God’s image is that our bodies look like God’s body,” Dr. Lester says. “But an important part is that our empathy is supposed to look like God’s empathy, and our accountability to those who depend on us is created in the image of God’s own self-chosen accountability to those whom God created.” Regardless of whether we’re discussing ecology or new educational models, right relationship sits at the heart of who we are called to be as Christians. And right relationship builds in rest, so all creation can be whole.
Drs. Lester and mohaupt will offer a webinar version of this course on July 24 from 7-8:30pm Central Time. Register here to join live or receive the recording: