MANNA FOR MILLENIALS

by Amy Crouch

Last year, millennial burnout went viral.

In a Buzzfeed essay, Anne Helen Petersen argued that millennials are distinguished not by avocado toast or minimalist home décor, but by burnout: constant exhaustion and frantic busyness that render the simple tasks of daily life practically impossible. [1] Some saw this as proof of millennials’ stereotypically terrible work ethic, but many of her younger readers found the essay an eye-opening mirror. Why, they had been asking, are our lives so hard? And Petersen offered a simple answer: work.

Petersen argued that as debt has increased and financial uncertainty has spread, we have become convinced that we have to work all the time, producing a uniquely poisonous work culture. In many startup jobs, it’s not uncommon to go to work at 7am, work out and have breakfast there, eat lunch and dinner in the office, head home at 9pm, and then answer emails until we fall asleep. It seems designed to wear us down and burn us out.

While most Cornell students aren’t (strictly speaking) millennials, Petersen’s essay captured a crucial truth about life at Cornell (or indeed, any prestigious university): that work seems like the only way to an acceptable life. How can I be happy? Get a job that pays for whatever I need. How do I get a good job? Get great internships during college. How do I get into those? Get a good GPA. We’ve come to believe that our work rules our happiness. If we don’t work, we won’t eat; neither will we achieve the promised reward of a satisfying career. Our lives are in jeopardy. 

Is this a new problem? I think it’s a very, very old problem.

It’s at least as old as 1500 BC, when the God of Israel dramatically rescued his people from slavery in Egypt. [2] Yet just days after God had parted the sea, defeated the Egyptians, and brought the Israelites out into the wilderness, his people complained to him that they would die of hunger: “Would that we had died ... in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full!” [3] God, in his divine patience, promised that they would not starve; he would send miraculous bread from heaven, enough for each day.

But despite God’s demonstrated faithfulness, some Israelites, scarred by slavery, could not trust his word. They sought to hoard bread for the next day, in case God couldn’t provide (which, incidentally, he could). 

When I look around during a late night in Olin Library, I see Israel’s attitude. And honestly, it seems to make sense. Many of us are already in debt; many of us can’t expect plum jobs from family or friends. The only solution, it seems, is doing everything ourselves — scrambling daily to provide for our future, because we fear that nobody else will. So we hoard our bread, but it comes at a price. We become miserable and anxious: burnt out. 

How can we break this vicious cycle? How can we escape this futile effort to save ourselves?

The Bible offers us another way. But to understand it, we have to go back to the beginning. The very beginning.

***

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. For six days, he did what we’d recognize as work — dividing the waters, creating stars and trees and animals, and finally making human beings: created in God’s image and crowned with glory and honor. [4] But the final day was different. “On the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.” [5]

God rested. Why?

We humans sleep when we’re tired, and take vacations to recover from work. But this can’t be what rest means for God — who never gets tired. “Behold,” says one psalm, “he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” [6] If God never becomes weary, then God’s rest isn’t for recovery. In fact, as Genesis says, this seventh day of rest is when he finishes his work. It is part of the process of creation, not a break from it. 

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel argues that just as God created a holy cosmos on days one through six, on this seventh day he created holy time. The work of the first six days of creation was not done until the seventh day, which he blessed and sanctified. God, being an eternal being, has made minutes and hours as precious as mountains and magnolia trees; “time,” says Heschel, “has a significance and sovereignty of its own.” [7]

This may not be intuitive, because it is far from how we live today. Rabbi Heschel observes that in our modern world, we associate holiness with spaces and things. Think of how we designate certain places as holy; when we walk into a church, mosque, or synagogue, we’re cued to worship God. Even our holidays tend to center on material things, like Christmas presents and Thanksgiving feasts.

God anticipated this; after all, as finite beings who move in space, it makes sense that humans are more attuned to the physical world. So he commanded us to avoid this fallacy. In the Ten Commandments, alongside not murdering and not blaspheming, God instructed Israel to rest every seventh day, which he named the Sabbath. This wasn’t mere human rest, centered around recharging our batteries. God explicitly connected the command to his own work and rest: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy… For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.” [8]

This Sabbath does offer rest for our weary bodies. But in God’s command, the Sabbath does something more: it reminds us that God, not material goods, gives happiness. “Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul.” [9] Perhaps we will get that promised job, the one that pays for our mortgages and cars and vacations. But if we have not God’s Sabbath rest, we have nothing.

God designed us to be like him, living in a sacred rhythm of rest and work. He invited us to see that our moments are as holy as our cathedrals. By obeying his Sabbath command, Heschel argues, we can catch an even greater glimpse of God’s own majesty. “For where shall the likeness of God be found? There is no quality that space has in common with the essence of God. There is not enough freedom on the top of the mountain; there is not enough glory in the silence of the sea. Yet the likeness of God can be found in time, which is eternity in disguise.” [10]

***

But the Bible tells us that humans turned from God’s holiness in every way. We began to steal and lie and kill. And by grasping greedily at the world, we desecrated his holy creation of time, and set up idols in God’s place.

Like the Israelites in the wilderness, we’ve trusted in our own efforts to save ourselves. We’ve believed that all that matters is material survival and prestige, and the way we satisfy that idol is through relentless work of our own. But as we can see every day at Cornell, this idol is a cruel master. Once we’ve burned ourselves out working as hard as we can, we turn to medications like Netflix and alcohol to numb the pain. 

But there’s a worse outcome to this idolatry. If we seek to load our burdens onto others — to gain materially without lifting a finger — we further pervert God’s design for work and rest. The result is what God hates most: injustice.

In the apostle John’s apocalyptic visions, he sees the judgment of a great city called Babylon. This city is renowned for its monster economy, producing “gold, silver, jewels, pearl, fine linen,” and other fine goods — but its wealth, John reveals, depends on a monstrous crime. Amidst the “wine, oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots,” the Babylonians traffic in “slaves, that is human souls.” [11]

John’s Babylon (borrowing the name of an infamous ancient city) almost certainly represents  imperial Rome, the great slaveholding city of his own day. But any society which embraces this idol of having and making enough things is open to the same charges, worthy of the same name, and deserving of the same judgment. For every time, this idolatry leads to systems of oppression and slavery like in Babylon, Rome, and Egypt: humans, too, become objects to be bought, sold, and beaten. 

And while some would like to think that we’ve progressed in three millenia, our modern world remains uncomfortably Babylonian. We depend on the power of work to bring us the material comforts we desire. But beneath the (relative) peace and security of elite Western life lies the same old, horrific secret: slavery, more than ever before in history. Millennial burnout is real and painful, but it is nothing compared to the lot of the 40.3 million enslaved humans all over the world who make our chairs and coffee and blue jeans, all with two-day shipping. [12]

The Sabbath commandment provides God's foundation for a just vision of work which challenges the Babylonian way head-on. The Sabbath command applies to everyone dwelling in Israel — and God means everyone: “On it you shall not do any work, you, your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.” [13] Keeping the Sabbath is meant to preserve the dignity and health of the marginalized. It is a reminder that God’s holy rest ordains justice: as Moses instructs the people, “You shall remember that you were once a slave in Egypt… Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” [14]

And God’s laws reveal a larger plan. Every seven years, “there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land” in which none of the land’s produce is sold, but the laborers take what they need. [15] And after seven seven-year cycles — forty-nine years — a truly extraordinary year arrives. “You shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all of its inhabitants,” commands the Lord, “For it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you.” [16] This is a year of joy and justice in which old wrongs are all set right. Everyone returns to their land; any property that has been taken to pay a debt is returned. Anyone in indentured servitude is freed. The land lies fallow, and its ecosystem recovers.

These yearly Sabbath rhythms point to something grander than just rest. Just as each jubilee is a giant Sabbath, each weekly Sabbath is a mini jubilee. By honoring God’s sacred time, we participate in God’s passion for justice.

***

Yet God knew that humans could never perfectly fulfill his commandment; left to our own devices, we could never stop ourselves from exploiting our brothers and our sisters for our selfish gain. So God entered his creation to redeem it himself. 

Jesus of Nazareth, a human being like you or me, put on our weakness, “taking the form of a servant,” experiencing dull human cares like yawns and sleepy eyes. [17] He took on the ultimate weakness of humanity — death — and was crucified and buried. He conquered death, and rose again to take up his just reign over the earth.

In taking on our sins, Jesus offers us freedom from our vicious cycles. We’re not doomed to suffer in systems of injustice, either as the oppressor or the oppressed. Jesus offers perfect rest: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” he says. And he offers perfect work: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” [18] As the theologian N. T. Wright points out, in his resurrection Jesus inaugurated a new creation, with a new Sabbath and a new jubilee; he brought deliverance from the debt of sin, freedom for the oppressed, and rest for everyone. [19] Jesus’s death and resurrection allow us to finally accept God’s command — and gift — of Sabbath.

But while Jesus’s promise of rest is lovely, it sounds absurd to the average college student. Professors don’t consider Sabbath when they schedule prelims, projects, and papers; sacrificing 24 hours each week seems like a recipe for failure.

Indeed, spending six days of the week in a “normal” college lifestyle and one day lying on the couch would be terrible both for grades and the soul. But that’s not what the Bible commands. Rather, practicing the Sabbath transforms both work and rest. If we live every day in the knowledge of the coming rest day (just as every day is lived in the knowledge of the Resurrection, even though Sunday is the main day we celebrate it), our work ethic should be transformed; knowing that we have no space for procrastination should motivate us to work in a more focused, productive way. And being fully rested on Monday means that the week starts out on the best possible foot. Sabbath helps us rest better, and it also helps us work better.

But even so, honoring the Sabbath with our hearts calls us to a more radical discipline: rejecting our idol of achievement at any cost. Prioritizing an A over our health seems normal, because it is (at least at 10pm in Olin Library). But this is in fact idolatry — rejecting the command and blaspheming the Name of the most holy God. By keeping the Sabbath holy, we spit in the face of our idols and honor God’s holy time.

Now, Jesus himself pointed out that “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” [20] Keeping the Sabbath is not about following rigid rules to maximize our own piety (that’s more idolatry), but about honoring God as best we can. So practically, there is room for flexibility. While I take midnight Saturday to midnight Sunday as Sabbath, this isn’t the perfect choice for everyone. My brother, for instance, works in campus ministry and holds huge weekly services on Thursday evenings. For him and his coworkers, Friday is the perfect Sabbath day. 

Similarly, Sabbath activities will look different for all of us. We all have different ways of honoring God’s holiness and resting in his majesty, which is how we should spend our Sabbath. I find it refreshing to clean out my desk; others might find that utterly horrifying. An extrovert’s ideal Sabbath might be filled with friends and family, but an introvert might find a day of reading and walking alone more restful. As long as our activities are honoring God (and, by extension, our neighbor), we’re keeping the Sabbath holy. 

***

The details of our Sabbath-practice may change. Yet it’s important to understand that the Sabbath, while made for man, is not human law. It’s God’s law, and bending or breaking it to suit our sinful desires is a rejection of his promises.

And because it’s God’s law, it is not arbitrary. The Sabbath is law, yes, but it is also an act of hope. In practicing Sabbath, we look forward to Jesus’s return — the great accomplishment of God’s redeeming work.

Isaiah, prophesying God’s restoration, sees a new heaven and new earth, free of injustice: “no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress.” [21] And in this new creation, just like the old one, humans will be called to create alongside God: “They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit… my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.” [22] We will, somehow, be working.

Yet we will at last be freed from the idolatry that our work will save us. At the very end of the apostle John’s visions, after Jesus comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead, he sees what Isaiah had foretold: the new heavens and the new earth, and a new holy city, the New Jerusalem. And when all the saints come into this glorious city — whose walls are like precious gems, illuminated by Christ himself — they have no need of their own work. They are already saved and their appropriate response is to worship their Savior through eternity: “But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him...the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.” [23]

Every seventh day offers us a foretaste of this joy. Every seventh day, we have a chance to pause and wonder at the holiness God gives to each moment. If we rely on our own strength, we’ll end up just like Petersen’s millennials; worse, we’ll exploit the labor of others. But if we take up the gentle burden of Christ, we will receive his holy gift of rest.

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