IV. The Ten
Commandments
“Sabbath”
Exodus 20:8-11
Mark 2: 23-28
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The
complaint is almost universal, “I’m too busy!
I’m so tired! There’s too much to
do and not enough time.” So stress
levels rise and fatigue saps the soul and joy fades away.
The story is told of a South
American tribe that went on a long march, day after day, when all of a sudden
they would stop walking, sit down to rest for a while, and then make camp for a
couple of days before going any farther.
They explained that they needed the time of rest so that their souls
could catch up with them.
There is a
deep need today to rediscover the gift of Sabbath. ...Across all barriers of
age and culture, the need speaks, presses, makes itself known.
If
that’s your problem scripture has a solution and it’s pretty simple. In fact we teach it to our children when they
learn to cross the street – stop, look, listen.
That’s one of the reasons God gave Sabbath. There are others as well, but before we cross
that street, let us pray:
Lord, you
have given us the Sabbath to remind us that you are in charge of the cosmos,
and that you can use us for the fulfillment of your plans. Remind us again and again, that you never
give us more than we are able to do in the time you have given us. Amen.
It
is the fourth commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” Some call this the “hinge” commandment
because it serves as a transition between the first three, which define our
vertical relationship with the Lord and the last six, which describe our
horizontal relationship with others. The
fourth commandment does both. Keeping
the Sabbath honors God, but also nurtures our relationships with others and it
restores the soul.
There is more
detail provided in this commandment than in most of the others, but still
people wondered and argued over the obvious question - “how”? How do we
remember the Sabbath and keep it holy? When God said, “you shall not do any
work on the Sabbath”, what does that mean?
What is work?
Rabbi’s
wrestled with this question again and again as they tried to parse this word,
so by the time of Jesus, they had developed a list with 39 chapters and
countless sub-sets that provided a clear and explicit definition of this word
“work”. Keeping the Sabbath “holy” was
reduced to knowing and following these prohibitions. They determined how far you could walk on the
Sabbath day, what you were and were not allowed to do for meal
preparation. Consequently, Sabbath for
some became an odious experience. There
was nothing refreshing or healing about it.
It was just something to endure.
But,
that is not what God intended. The
Sabbath was not to be a burden; rather it was given to help us lay our burdens
down. To understand God’s purpose for
this command, we go back to the story of creation itself. You remember the pattern; “In the beginning
God said, “Let there be…” and creation began.
Order came from chaos, light broke through the darkness, and life
emerged from the earth. The account of
creation is elegantly folded into one week.
In six days God created the heavens and the earth, with the creation of
humanity appearing to be the grand finale – God’s greatest work. One more day is added to finish out the week,
so the Bible says, “God rested.” How
about that? Even God deserves some time
off.
I
think many of us, if we think about this at all, imagine that God must have
been perspiring and panting after an incredible week of thinking up giraffes
and hippopotamuses, and creating plants and people. So we figure that on the seventh day, God
just plopped down on an easy chair with a beer in one hand and a remote in the
other and turned on the Super-Bowl.
If that is
your view, then Sabbath is understood to be only a kickback,
do-whatever-you-want day. It is a reward
for completing a hard week.
When
you read the fourth commandment in its entirety there is something more to it
than that. In Exodus 20:11 the Hebrew
word usually translated, as “rest” is “vaiynafesh”, which literally means,
“exhale”. It is that breath you take
when you have finally finished that important project. It is a cleansing breath. It is that transition between what you have
just done and what you are about to do. Skip that breath, or slide past that
moment, and one thing just leads to another and there is no distinction. You just end up living in a 24/7 world
without reflection or celebration.
That’s
what the Pharisees were afraid of. This
is why they were so critical of Jesus.
If the Sabbath becomes a day like any other; if you do the same things
on this day that you do during the rest of the week, then you skip the
“vaiynafesh”- the great exhale. There is
no opportunity to stop and take a breath to reflect upon what you have done,
and how you have lived, and where you are in your relationship with God. You give no time to celebrate the blessings
God has given nor do you carve out a space for grace so that you may consider
the direction God may be leading. Without
that life just becomes a matter of increasing speed.
Many
today, and many in this congregation are doing just that, burning candles at
both ends. Your personal goals for
achievement, and your financial needs for security pull you onto a treadmill
that never seems to stop. You are always
on the clock, bound by Blackberries and laptops to a life that leaves you
feeling weak and weary and heavy-laden. You feel as if you don’t even have time to
breathe.
This
anxiety is transferred to our children as well.
Their schedules burst the calendar over-flowing into Sunday morning and extending
through the day. Homework, sports, and
music are all worthwhile and beneficial, but when all of life is consumed by
constantly doing there is no time to simply “be”, to be a child or as scripture
says, “To be still and know the Lord is God.”
Bonnie
Thruston, Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary asked
an obvious question that few of us have time to ponder, “Why do we have to be
so busy all the time?” She answered her own question. She said, “I think it is because we like to
both complain and brag.” The
conversation goes like this:
“Hi!
How are you?”
“Oh,
I’m so busy. Everything is chaos at work.
There’s this big project I have to complete. Then I have to attend night classes in order
to finish my Masters. Of course, the
kids need me to sew a costume for Halloween, and the dog has to go to the
vet.” But, beneath the complaint that we
are too busy is an unspoken the pride in attainment and achievement.
“I’m
so busy” may well be a way of saying, “See how important I am – how necessary,
how essential!” How calendars validate
our existence.
I
remember when we first moved to the D.C. area.
Newt Gingrich had just become the Speaker of the House and he got into a
game of chicken with President Clinton.
They shut the government down and an order was given, non-essential
employees of the Federal government were not to report for work. You’d think people would have celebrated the
time off, but they did not. Many showed
up for work who were not supposed to because they did not like to think of
themselves as non-essential. They wanted
to believe they were important and that they mattered. So, they worked hard toward that goal.
“Stopping work tests our
trust: will the world and I fall apart if I stop making things happen for a
while?
Is life really gifted and the Spirit moving
through it, so that I can truly rest and taste this playful caring?
Can I trust that this caring will be the
bottom line when I rest, beneath all the suppressed and repressed sides of myself
that are likely to rise when I relax my controlling reins?
Is there truly a unique image of God in me
that is simply given and rises to obscure awareness in such spacious times, an
image that is my deepest identity?
Or is there really no such
deep self in God, and does everything really depend on my producing, asserting,
and protecting a conscious, managing ego-self?”
(Edwards, Tilden:
Sabbath Time. Upper Room Books, Nashville. 1992.Pg 68)
There are
other reasons as well. We push ourselves
so relentlessly, because we believe that if we don’t do it, it won’t get done;
and if it doesn’t get done - well, we don’t want to even think about that? The
kids do need to be fed. I do need to
show up for work to earn the money to feed the kids. The list goes on. So, we constantly juggle these balls in the
air, work, family, future, faith afraid that if we stop for even one minute
they’ll all come crashing down.
This
pressure to achieve and attain or just to keep these balls in the air is also
stimulated by the world in which we live.
A thousand times a day, in a million forms, a single message shouts from
billboards, magazines, television, radio, newspapers, movies, and
telemarketers: You are not enough! You
do not have enough so you cannot happy.
You have not achieved enough so you cannot be fulfilled, cannot be at
peace. Never do they say, “Be still and
know that the Lord is God.”
Stopping
tests our trust. Will the world continue to spin if I stop making things happen
for a while? Is life really a gift? Is
God really at work so that I can stop work truly rest and taste and see that
the Lord is good? Can I trust him to hold me while I rest? Does
everything depend on my producing and asserting? We must not be so sure because we keep
pushing ourselves.
That’s
why I sympathize with the Pharisees who believed that Jesus’ exception to the
Sabbath requirements would lead them down a slippery slope where one exception
follows another and soon the Sabbath becomes like any other day. In my lifetime
I’ve seen Sunday change from being a day of rest, reflection and recreation to
become the busiest shopping day of the week, so I understand the Pharisees
concern.
What they did not understand was that Jesus
was not breaking the Sabbath, but rather was really fulfilling it. “The Sabbath was made for people,” he said,
“and not people for the Sabbath.” God gave this and all commandments for our
benefit. God is our creator so is well
aware of our limitations. In the same
way a civil engineer knows how much stress the steel in a bridge can take, so
God knows how much we can take before we break.
I
believe that is why God rhetorically asked Moses, “How long will you refuse to
keep my commandments?” The disappointment is not because God’s
feelings are hurt, but because God knows how our insecurities make us “weak and
heavy laden”. God knows how our
faithlessness and lack of trust in Him becomes a heavy burden.
That
is the point of the Sabbath. It is about
lifting the heavy burdens we carry throughout our lives and laying them before
the Lord.
John
Calvin, the spiritual grandfather of the Presbyterian Church wrote that the
purpose of the Sabbath is to “rest from our work so that God can do God’s work
in us.”
There
is an old legend about the Apostle John, late in his life. One day some Christian Pharisees were
scandalized to find him playing a game with his followers. They believed the time could have better been
spent teaching or preaching or praying or in the study of God’s Word. They thought this a frivolous waste of
time.
So,
John asked one of them who was carrying a bow pull back and draw an arrow. He did this several times. Then John asked him to draw the arrow and
hold it without interruption. Soon the
archer’s arms began to shake. John said,
even if you could hold the tension on the bow; the bow would soon break in the
end. So, he said, will the human spirit
break if the tension is never released.
“By
saying no to make some things happen, deep permission arises for other things
to happen. When we cease our daily
labors, other things – love, friendship, prayer, singing, rest can be born in
the space created by our rest.
Worshipping, walking with a friend, reciting a prayer, caring for
children – those are the intimate graces that need precious time and
attention.” Sabbath calls you to pay attention to your
life.
I
know that some of you have staggered in here this morning and plopped down on
the chair with a great “vainyafesh” - a great exhale. This past week has just been one thing after
another, and next week looks like it will just be another rerun of the last.
Hearing
me to you slow down won’t make a bit of difference because most of the
responsibilities you carry are important.
Your boss has expectations, and your family has more. You are carrying heavy burdens that you
cannot just toss aside, but here in this place and on this day you can lay them
down at the foot of this cross and allow Jesus to “give you rest unto your
souls.” You can find a place and create
some space for grace. So, stop, look,
and listen this Sabbath day for God in you life. Then you may find strength for your soul.
Let’
do that right now.
Lord,
we come to you “weak and heavy laden”.
We carry great burdens and calendars that are filled to the brim. Grant that in this moment we might “exhale”
the stress of this past week, and “inhale” the cleansing breath of your
Spirit. We carve out of our week this
time, and consecrate it to you, so that we might keep it holy. Amen.
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