This Week's Sermon
A Sabbath Life
I read an article this week about a movement that takes simple living to a new extreme. It’s called the 100 Thing Movement, and people who are living into it are committed to whittling down their possessions to, yes, 100 things. Some couples are doing it as a household – getting all of their possessions– towels, forks, knives, cups, shirts, chairs, - down to the magic number . Others are the only ones in their family; one man was trying to get his own household effects, like his tools, clothes, and sports gear down to 100 things. Another woman was also participating in the movement, but has taken a more liberal approach. She’s committed to 100 Things, but counts her 30 pairs of shoes as one thing. She might need a little more encouragement.
Why this current obsession with simplicity? Why are reality shows like Clean Sweep and Hoarders so popular, and movements like 100 Thing taking off? Peter Walsh, a professional organizer quoted in the article, said, “People are finding that their homes are full of stuff, but their lives are littered with unfulfilled promises."1
Their homes are full of stuff but their lives are littered with unfulfilled promises.
And it’s not just our homes that are filled with stuff, masking the places of disappointment and regret in our lives. Our calendars are now reflections of our homes. Our surfaces, our closets and our rooms are covered and cluttered so we feel suffocated and hemmed in. Our schedules are no different. Our mornings, noons and nights are filled with appointments, to-do lists, family obligations, work and school requirements. We envision the lives we want and desire but somehow, we never can clear the space on our daily calendar for those types of lives to fully play out.
As Americans, we’ve bought into the myth that quiet or unstructured time is lazy or wasted time. Our worth is based on how much we can do in the quickest possible time. We take fewer vacations than any other industrialized country. We are rewarded by our bosses for late nights and early mornings. Sometimes we have to piece together so many jobs that we don’t even have the time breath, much less stop for an hour, a half-day, a whole day, just to be.
That’s why the Sabbath, particularly in our American society and culture, is so radical. It’s a day that is set aside with no agenda other than to be. There’s no doing on the Sabbath. It’s a day of active inactivity. It’s a day that, on the surface, doesn’t accomplish a whole lot. It’s what some might call a lazy or unproductive day. But when we practice the Sabbath, we find out that while we rest, God is doing amazing restoring and renewing work in us.
At the very beginning of creation, God did a lot of hard work for six days, declared it all good, and then rested. God thought that the idea of resting was so important, that when God was giving the 10 commandments to the Israelites, God’s chosen people, honoring the Sabbath is number 4, before the commandments to not kill and not steal. It’s a day set aside to do nothing but remember God, honor God and rest like God.
The Sabbath appears repeatedly throughout the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Exploring these scriptures reveals three important qualities about the Sabbath.
First, the Sabbath is communal. You didn’t practice the Sabbath alone. In the Exodus lesson from today, we hear how the Israelite community honored the Sabbath. You had to participate in the Sabbath whether you wanted to or not, because everyone around you was doing the same thing. As the years went by, the Sabbath also was a day when God’s people gathered together for worship. In the New Testament books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Jesus taught and preached in the synagogues on the Sabbath. And as Christianity spread and formalized, we took Sunday, the day when Christ was resurrected, and made it a new Sabbath – a day for worship, a day for the community to gather, a day to celebrate God.
Second, the Sabbath is a way we learn to rely totally and completely on God. On the Sabbath, no one could work. There was no buying, no selling and no trading. No work in the fields. No animals are allowed to work for that day. It is a day when God’s people must rely completely and totally on God. When the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness and on the edge of starving, God sent them manna, or bread, from heaven. They were told to gather enough for just for that day, except for the day before the Sabbath. They could collect enough for two days. The Sabbath was the only day that the extra manna did not spoil. The Israelites had to rely wholly and completely on God to provide for them. In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus’ disciples relied on God’s provision when they ate the grain of the field as they traveled.
Third, the Sabbath is for healing. When we rest, when we come out of our difficult daily routines, we can see the places where we are wounded. We acknowledge our injuries. We recognize our tiredness. But even more than being healed through rest, Jesus uses the Sabbath to affect powerful, miraculous healing. The man with the withered hand from today’s lesson is just one example. We are meant to be whole and complete – the Sabbath is a time for us to offer ourselves before God and for us to expect healing.
The Sabbath is set aside to be with others, to rely on God and to be healed. Setting aside an entire day to spend with our family, our worshiping community and with God may seem extreme. It should be! We may chafe at the idea of giving up our shopping, our sports, our internet and television, our work. It takes effort the other six days to make time in our weeks to honor God by stepping out of our world and into the Sabbath world. It may feel like we are restricting parts of our lives at first. But if we give ourselves over fully to creating Sabbath space in our lives, we may find that that one day a week becomes not a straitjacket but a life vest.
We create a space where we can retreat from the demands the world makes on us and instead focus on our responsibilities as God’s servants on the Sabbath. It’s a time not for us to spend our energy and our money on things that deplete us and take from us. It’s instead a time for us to be replenished and restored by breathing in crisp air, laughing with family and friends and praising our creator. It’s a time for us to be redefined and remade into the image of the one who created us at the very beginning – God.
During August, you so graciously granted me a four week sabbatical, or renewal leave. All pastors are offered four weeks every four years for extended reflection, study, or spiritual renewal. When my sabbatical time came due this year, I prayed and sought God’s direction for this gift of time. I explored workshops and conferences. I poured through catalogs of books. I started creating a list of goals for the time away and a to-do list for the four weeks. Remember our uniquely American myth that any quiet or unstructured time is wasted time? I buy into it hook, line and sinker.
But God broke through the planning, the lists and the goals and spoke loud and clear. The Sabbath is made for humankind. Come and rest with me. I realized that what I needed for my relationship with God, with my family, with myself, was Sabbath time. Not vacation time or wasted time or unstructured time but Sabbath time. A season of intentional and restful focus on God and God’s call for our congregation. Hours and days spent reflecting on what God wants from us as the body of Christ and what God desires from me and for me as God’s daughter. Time that is spent in community. Time that makes me rely fully on God. Time that offers the healing touch of Christ. Time to be redefined as God’s chosen and beloved.
So I spent the past month doing many of the things I originally planned. I read many books, especially ones that focused on the Sabbath. I journaled. I spent time laughing and playing with my children. I spent extended time in prayer. I did nothing so God could do something. But the focus was different. It was time spent being remade and redefined in God’s image.
That time was a gift and a luxury and I thank you for it. But it also was a challenge to be intentional about Sabbath time now that life has returned to normal. How can my week have extended time to be redefined in God’s image? How can we as a family unplug from the life our society proscribes for us and live into the life God provides for us? How can my life become a Sabbath, a constant refreshing and reorienting time back to what God wants from us?
So my dear friends, as many of us begin a new year – a new year at school, a new year of programs, a new year of learning – how can we create Sabbath time in our lives? How can we let go of some things in order to take on God’s things? How can we come together as a community, rely totally on God, and be healed along the way? Let us all commit ourselves to a radical way of life on the Sabbath – a time to gather with others, rely on God and be healed by Christ. Amen.