Almighty God, who after the creation of the world
rested from all your works and sanctified a day of rest for all your creatures:
Grant that we, putting away all earthly anxieties, may be duly prepared for the
service of your sanctuary, and that our rest here upon earth may be a
preparation for the eternal rest promised to your people in heaven; through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
“Lord,
if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” a heart-wrenched and
grieving Martha says to Jesus. What was it, do you suppose, that Jesus was
doing? The text says that “after having heard that Lazarus was ill, Jesus
stayed two days longer in the place where he was.” By the time Jesus arrives,
Lazarus has been in the tomb for four days. Why did it take Jesus so long to
arrive?
Just before
our passage began today, John records that “Jesus went away again across the
Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing earlier.” Jesus was in the
wilderness when word came to him of Lazarus’ illness. And as Jesus often does
throughout the gospels, he was likely taking time to be alone and with God, to
be deep in prayer, to rest. Jesus was keeping Sabbath. And when he hears of
Lazarus’ illness, he doesn’t rush off and interrupt his time of prayer and
rest. Quite the lesson for those of us, especially clergy, who think we’re indispensable, who think that no one else can handle the situation, who pride
themselves on always being available. In his delay, Jesus models for us the
reality that our most important work is not dealing with crises or
accomplishing tasks, our most important work is rest. And in the end, it all worked
out just fine.
This
is a sermon about Sabbath. A few weeks ago, I was at the Diocesan Lenten Clergy
retreat and it was a transformative experience for me. Before the retreat, we
were instructed to read a book by Matthew Sleeth, called 24/6. It’s a wonderful
book that I’ll say more about later. The author and his wife were with us for
the retreat and led a series of wonderful reflections and discussions on
Sabbath. Now you’ve all probably noticed that I tend to have healthy boundaries
and don’t often work on my days off. But what I now realize is that there is a
big difference between taking a day off and a taking a Sabbath day.
So I
came back, excited and energized about living into the idea of Sabbath. We’ve
only been at this for two weeks so far, but let me tell you, this is life
changing. Sabbath is the secret to a better life. Just imagine for a moment-
what if you had a day where you didn’t have to check email, a day where you
weren’t allowed to do any chores, a day to simply pray, relax, and spend time
with family, a day of true rest? Taking Sabbath one day a week, for 52 weeks a
year, over the average life time plays out to about 11 years. Imagine- 11 years
to rest, to be with family, to be with God. In a culture that is over-stressed
and over-scheduled, the idea of rest may sound as impossible as a man being
raised from the dead, and as welcome as a valley full of dry bones coming back
to life.
I do
want to point out up front that Sabbath is a day of rest, it is not Sunday.
Some people have to work on Sundays, some people have schedules that change too
often to have a regularly schedule Sabbath each week. For most Christians,
Sunday is that day, what day the Sabbath falls on isn’t nearly as important
as keeping it.
We
were made to rest, not to go non-stop. On the seventh day, God rested from
Creation. God didn’t feel the need to check-in on Creation to make sure things
were going well. God rested. And when God gives to Moses the laws that are to
govern them, the Fourth Commandment is right in the middle. The first three
Commandments all deal with our relationship to God, and the final six deal with
our relationship with our neighbors, and Sabbath is the bridge between the two.
When you go home and look it up, you’ll see that the Sabbath commandment is
much longer than any of the others. God is on to something here. As any
musician will tell you, it isn’t so much the notes that make the music, but
rather the rests between them.
If I seriously
said, “after church today, we’re going to meet in the parking lot and begin
sculpting a golden calf,” or “take out your phones and call your parents and
curse them,” or “let’s go to the mall and just take whatever we want,” you’d
probably gasp and question whether someone that is so willing to break one of
the Ten Commandments is fit to be preaching. But if I were to say “after church
today, we’re going to have a meeting in the Parish Hall,” no one would bat an
eye. Why is it that we’re so comfortable breaking the Sabbath commandment?
St.
Augustine said that “our hearts are restless until they rest in thee, O Lord.”
But how often do we take the time to rest? Studies show that in the last 20
years, Americans work 15% more while leisure is down 30%. And yet if you ask people
about happiness, we haven’t seen it trending in the right direction. We have
been brainwashed to believe that consumerism is the lord of our lives. When CS
Lewis wrote of a demon trying to lead a human away from God in The Screwtape Letters, the plan of
attack was to “keep him busy.” We measure our success in our salaries and number
of hours worked, and in the process, capitalism, quite literally, has put a
price on our life. But God tells us that we are priceless. Do we stop to hear that
voice?
If you
Google “time management,” you’ll get 1.7 billion results; do the same thing
with “god” and you get 600 million. We’re all searching for ways to be more
efficient, more productive, and less stressed. And despite all of the
technologies, despite all the time-saving strategies, are we any less stressed?
What I am suggesting this morning is an exit ramp from the rat race. Keeping
the Sabbath, despite the fact that as a group we haven’t been very good at
doing so, is very much part of the salvation that Jesus offers us.
I hope
that I have piqued your interest in the idea of Sabbath. But you might ask,
what exactly is Sabbath? As we see in Jesus’ ministry, he got into a lot of
trouble because of what the Pharisees perceived as him breaking the Sabbath.
There were all sorts of rules about what could and could not be done on the
Sabbath. And Jesus responds that the Sabbath was made for humanity, not
humanity to serve the Sabbath. The Sabbath should be life-giving and liberating.
In his book, Sleeth often refers to the Sabbath as a “stop day.” It’s a day to
stop from whatever fills the other six days of the week: a day to stop
worrying, a day to stop working, a day to stop doing the things that you don’t
enjoy. We need a day to take a break from the bells and whistles, a day to be
found instead of searching.
On the
Sabbath, we take time to be still and know that God, not us, is God; with an emphasis
on the “be still.” Edward Turner once said “he that remembers not the Sabbath
at the beginning of the week, will be in danger of forgetting, before the end
of the week, that he is a Christian.” Sabbath grounds us and resets our
priorities. It is a time to feel that breath of God that flowed through the
valley in Ezekiel and gives life to the soul. Sabbath is the opportunity to
experience, here and now, the Resurrected life that Jesus gave to Lazarus. When
was the last time you stopped and felt God flowing through your life?
The Sabbath is a reality check; it
gives us the opportunity to stop and know that you have enough. When the Hebrew
people were wandering through the wilderness, God provided manna for them to
eat. But if they gathered too much manna and tried to store it up, it became
infested with maggots. And the same will happen to our bank accounts and
storage units when we try to hold onto more than we need. As Jewish theologian Abraham
Heschel notes, the goal of life isn’t to amass wealth, but to face sacred
moments.
And if
we don’t stop, what will become of us? We’re getting to the point where we’re
not on the go 24/7, but rather 48/7. There are more and more demands on us.
Technology has made us slaves to our jobs and email accounts. The Sabbath is a
way of declaring independence from these systems which demand our life and give
us nothing in return. Walter Brueggemann has a new, appropriately titled, book
called Sabbath as Resistance. In it,
he says that the Sabbath is both resistance and alternative. It resists our
cultural assumption that life is defined by productivity and consumption. He
reminds us that the well-being of Creation is not dependent on our actions. So
on the Sabbath, we resist the temptation to put our trust in the wrong places. And
the Sabbath is an alternative to the non-stop pace of life, to the value of work
over rest, to the race to top that takes us away from ourselves, our families,
and our God.
The
Sabbath though, is not simply a self-help day. Sabbath is not a day to catch up
on the laundry or mow the yard, but rather a time to catch a glimpse of Heaven.
The Sabbath is a day not to hoard to ourselves, but a gift to be given away.
The majority of the words in the Fourth Commandment deal with how we are to
extend rest to our neighbors and the environment. How might we enable others to
rest by the way we practice Sabbath?
Sabbath
takes work. You have to plan for a day of rest by making sure what needs to be
done to allow you to stop on the Sabbath is done beforehand. But I have found
that doing so actually gives more meaning to those tasks. Working hard on
Saturday to prepare for Sabbath turns mundane tasks into the holy work of
preparing for Sabbath. Sabbath comes as a great relief as one week ends and
another begins, and it gives meaning to the other six days.
Now, I realize this is a challenge.
What I’m talking about is divestment from multi-tasking, from success as
defined by the market, from worrying. Our society is built on the premise that
there isn’t enough time, that you would be happier with newer products, and
there is much to be worried about. Our government even provides us with a
color-coded terrorist alert system to tell us how scared we’re supposed to be.
I’ve
heard the arguments against Sabbath- “I’m expected to check my email, or do my
work, or have to get chores done; if I don’t my house will be a zoo or my boss
will replace me with someone who is willing to work every day of the week.” It’s
a compelling argument, I get it. But are we really willing to sacrifice our
sanity and family for a promotion, for the almighty dollar, for a clean house? You
might keep your job, but lose your livelihood. This is hard to do.
Sabbath
invites us to join a parade being led by the beat of a different drummer; it
invites us to a different rhythm of life. Sabbath invites us to work 24/6
instead of 24/7. There was a blog post written about a year ago called “Sports
vs Church,” in which the author talks about the challenge of wanting to raise
her children with God as a priority while competing with Sunday soccer leagues.
She comments that it feels like a no-win situation, that society is setup to
undermine the discipline of Sabbath.
If we continued reading in John just
a few more verses, as if we didn’t read enough, the text would say that the
religious leaders decided to kill Jesus after this incident. The idea that
there is a power loose in our world that saves us from the chains of capitalism
and being workaholics is dangerous to those in power. The Pharisees were in
control and profited greatly from it, and they weren’t going to let Jesus come
in and give people an alternative. And the same might happen to you if you
choose to follow Jesus into Sabbath rest. You might get crushed by the system. You
might watch people pass you by in the rat race. Jesus said that he came that we
might have abundant life, but we have to accept that life.
To do this, we’re going to need each
other. We’re going to need to hold each other accountable for Sabbath keeping,
but also to support each other in those tough moments when the world keeps
pushes us, faster and faster, towards the grave. Keeping Sabbath will mean
making tough decisions and avoiding what is convenient or easy. But Jesus wasn’t
thinking about convenience when he invited his followers to “take up your cross
and follow me.” Keeping Sabbath, in our culture is crazy, I’ll admit that. But
let’s be crazy together. What might it look like for St. Francis to be a
community that truly embraced the Fourth Commandment to remember the Sabbath?
Sabbath rest is one of the gifts
that God has given us. In resting, we find ourselves and the meaning of our
lives. It goes against the culture of do-more & spend-more, but it allows
us to live into the Kingdom of God as it is currently unfolding on earth as it
is in Heaven.
I
pledge, before you all, to, by the grace of God, keep the Sabbath. I ask that
you honor that, and keep me on track. To help you and all of St. Francis in
dedicating ourselves to Sabbath, I have bought 8 copies of the 24/6 book and
put them in the narthex, spreading them out between the services. It’s a good
and quick read, so I’ll ask you to please take a copy, read it within a week,
or two at the most, and then return it to the narthex so that someone else can read
it. Or if you don’t want to wait, you can get it online for $10. And after you
read it, share your thoughts with me and others about it. Ask others to support
you in the keeping of Sabbath.
Sabbath is a Commandment, but, as we see in the valley of dry bones and in the raising of Lazarus, is
also the invitation to the life God intends for us. So, let us pray: O God of
peace, who has taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in
quietness and confidence shall be our strength: By the might of your Spirit
lift us, we pray, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are
God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
