Community Covenant Church - Sermons - Sacred Rhythms: Sabbath: Putting Work in Its Place

September 2, 2007

Sacred Rhythms

“Sabbath: Putting Work in Its Place”

Scripture Reading

Exodus 20:8-11 8 "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 11 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. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

                                     Isaiah 58:13-14 13 "If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
       and from doing as you please on my holy day,
       if you call the Sabbath a delight
       and the LORD's holy day honorable,
       and if you honor it by not going your own way
       and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,

14 then you will find your joy in the LORD,
       and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land
       and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob."
       The mouth of the LORD has spoken.

Mark 3:1-6 1Another time he went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. 2Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. 3Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, "Stand up in front of everyone."

4Then Jesus asked them, "Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?" But they remained silent.

5He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. 6Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.

Message

I am getting into a bit of a rut; or from a more positive angle I’m establishing a tradition, for once again I find myself compelled to speak about Sabbath rest on Labor Day weekend. Last year I began my Labor Day weekend message with all kinds of statistics describing the increasing amount of time Americans are dedicating to work, much to the detriment of family and society. I’m not going to repeat those statistics; they haven’t changed much, and I sense that I would not have to convince many of you that you work long hours!

As you probably already know, Labor Day was a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. (Source: US Dept. of Labor, TTY: 1-877-889-5627) For 113 years now, the first Monday of September, along with and the long weekend it creates, lifts up the importance of hard work and productivity.

To honor Labor Day, I want to lift up Sabbath rest; for as opposite as those concepts seem, they are directly related. For while many would argue that hard work is born out of a willingness to put in the extra hours, I would argue that productive work is only made possible when we discover a God-inspired balance of work and rest in our lives. Work gives us the awareness of achievement and purpose, while rest gives us perspective and joy for life. How balanced are you today? Are you getting a lot of work done, but feel no joy for life, or have you begun to discover the joy of observing Sabbath in a culture defined by work and productivity?

Today, through Words recorded in the books of Exodus & Isaiah, the Gospel of Mark and other scripture passages, God invites us to discover the blessed rhythm of a weekly Sabbath, a rhythm that helps us to keep perspective and protects us from burning-out. Again, how balanced is your life today? How seriously do you receive God’s gift of Sabbath joy?

It was almost from the very beginning when God chose the Israelites to be His people; blessed people chosen to bless others with a model of living in relationship with the living God; it was almost from the beginning that God taught them the importance of observing the Sabbath.

You may remember that “Sabbath” means “seventh” in Hebrew.. for God rested on the seventh day, the Sabbath day. In what we might think of as “God’s Top Ten”; the 10 Commandments, God included in this brief instructions about living in relationship with Him and with human beings, that those who would live as His children were to:

Exodus 20:8-10 8 "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.

Remember, the Ten Commandments were not a legalistic burden, but God’s answer to a question from grateful people wanting to know how best to live life under God’s blessing. Unfortunately, by the time Jesus came to earth, humanity had transformed those 10 commandments into 600+ laws. Despite reminders, like that we heard through the Prophet Isaiah, that there is joy for those who keep the Sabbath, the legalisms that surrounded Sabbath in Jesus’ day stifled the very joy God intended us to experience on Sabbath days.

Consider again the Gospel story; in short, a joyful celebration of God’s gift of healing for one man, but a joy the religious leaders could not feel. In fact, that Sabbath act only convinced their legalistic minds that Jesus would have to die. Can we appreciate even more Jesus’ question to these religious leaders:

Mark 3:4

"Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?"

Jesus was revealing what the Sabbath had become to God’s people; a measurement of righteousness rather than a source of joy.

The religious leaders may have known their law, but they didn’t understand God’s call for His children to observe the Sabbath. Do we? Do we understand the importance of Sabbath?

On another occasion when Jesus was criticized for picking grain on the Sabbath, He said,

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. (Mark 2:27b)

The Sabbath is not important because it is a law we must keep, nor is it a measurement of our righteousness. Rather, the Sabbath is important because it is God’s invitation for us to discover the rhythm of life, the balance of fulfillment and purpose that comes with productivity and the joy of perspective and refreshment that some with Sabbath rest.

This weekend I want to convey that we can grow nearer to God through labor and Sabbath if we can learn to exclude certain things from our lives and include other things.

1. Exclude from the Sabbath

a. Work

The questions I receive most often these days have something to do with working on Sundays. That is because more and more jobs require potential employees to be available to work on Sundays. Having grown-up in the Midwest but coming back east on a regular basis, I took particular note of your “blue laws” which once kept stores closed on Sundays. But as you know, with final permission for liquor stores to be open on Sundays, all “blue laws” are now history.

Now I hope you will bear with me when I say that the issue that is most pressing on my heart today is not to defend Sundays but to encourage Sabbath. As I mentioned earlier, Jews celebrate their Sabbath on the seventh day of the week; Saturday. From sundown on Friday night to sunrise on Sunday, observant Jews put down their work and focus upon the life-giving blessings of God. Early Christians; Jews who had come to see Jesus as God’s Messiah, switched their Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday because Jesus rose from the dead on Sunday. In His resurrection those Jewish Christians saw God’s greatest blessings in their salvation from sin and their hope for eternal life. So while Sunday became the most common Sabbath day for Christians, what is most important is keeping the Sabbath and not the day.

So today when I see Christians gathering to worship God on Saturday or Sunday, some even on a Friday night, my question is the same, is this a Sabbath day for them; have they excluded work so that they have room to include God’s blessings of the Sabbath?

b. Buying and Selling

Ruth Haley Barton, in her chapter on “Sabbath” from her book Sacred Rhythms, makes a good argument for Christians to also exclude from their Sabbath any buying or selling. She does so not from a cultural “blue laws” standpoint, but out of compassion for those who will be required to work if we buy things on the Sabbath. Just as we would not to rob ourselves of the blessings of Sabbath by having to work, Barton argues that we should not rob others of discovering those blessings as well.

I see this argument as particularly powerful in a consumerist society, where not only can an individual lose themselves with a sole focus on work and productivity, but a country can do so as well.

Do we realize the risk we run, as a nation, to lose our heart and soul, as we fail to observe Sabbath? When a nation loses perspective and purpose, even a powerful focus on productivity will fail to keep a nation alive.

c. Worry

I believe we can best understand the effects of losing Sabbath as we consider a final thing we need to exclude from Sabbath; and that is worry.

While there are many things we worry about six days a week, on the Sabbath, with a focus upon God’s blessings, we’re reminded of His goodness and His provisions for all our needs. There is no reason for worrying when our focus is on God.

One of Jesus’ most memorable but least owned teachings comes from

Matthew 6:31-34

31So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

When we take one day every week to focus upon God’s goodness, His provisions and promises, we regain a perspective that helps us to deal with the daily worries which are created by our work at home or “at the office”. If nothing else, Sabbath reminds us of our place in the greater scheme of things; we are not God… we are not almighty, all-knowing, all-powerful. There are things we cannot handle on our own. There are problems we’ve create which we cannot fix.

Sabbath allows us to let those things go as we reflect upon the One who is in control, to the One who is almighty, all-knowing, all-powerful and merciful.

As we help to create Sabbath by excluding things, we also experience Sabbath as we include things:

2. Include in the Sabbath

In Sacred Rhythms, Ruth Barton begins by suggesting that we include:

a. Rest for the Body. – My family used to always joke about by father’s Sunday afternoon naps. I don’t know if it was something that was modeled for him, growing up in a Christian home in Watertown, or whether it was just something he chose to do on his own. But even as a younger father, I can remember his 2:00 pm nap in his leather chair, even if the Chicago Bears were on TV.

Monday through Friday dad was at work, often times traveling on the road. Saturday he was working hard at home cleaning bathrooms, polishing shoes and cutting grass. Sunday morning we were at church where he often taught Sunday School, but Sunday afternoon, unless guests had come over for and stayed after dinner, dad was snoring in the family room. Sometimes when we even had guests, he fell asleep in his chair. I have come to the conclusion that dad had it right. As Ruth Barton phrases it:

“What is to replace all that we are excluding from our Sabbath time? The simple answer is whatever delights you and replenishes you. (p. 142)

I can relate to the delight and physical replenishment of a Sunday afternoon nap, though at other times the Sabbath will lead us into including things which will

b. Replenish our Spirits

For me this is one of the most variable elements in keeping the Sabbath, and what is most damaged when “observing the Sabbath” becomes a legalism rather than a joy. When taking a walk in the beauty of God’s creation is not allowed because someone has defined the number of steps you are allowed walk on the Sabbath before “walking” become “work”; then some people are robbed of a blessing God would give them.

If you sincerely want to observe Sabbath, and receive the blessing God would give you in doing so, you need to differentiate between those activities in your life which merely stimulate you or serve as fillers, from those activities which really replenish your soul.

For some people:

- A long walk is work, but for others it is just what the doctor ordered.

- Gardening will be a chore, while for others it fills their souls with joy.

- Reading a book is laborious, but for others it is heaven-on-earth.

- Preaching a message may be a task for some, but for me it is a delight that can be a part of my Sabbath experience.

What are those activities which refresh your spirit as you focus in on God’s gifts to you?

A good Sabbath includes rest for the body, the replenishment of the spirit, but also the

c. Restoration of the Soul.

Most people include in their Sabbath observance some kind of openness to encountering God. In our Covenant tradition this includes congregational worship with hymns and songs of praise. It includes congregational prayers and the preaching and teaching of God’s Word. In short, for us it is “going to church”. Many people equate “Sabbath” with “going to church”, and yet our observance of the Sabbath can be so much more. Do you recognize that attending a Bible Study and enjoying fellowship opportunities are all elements of Sabbath joy?

Now mind you, going to church is a great element in our Sabbath celebration because it helps to restore our souls in ways we cannot accomplish on our own. God has gifted each one of in different ways so that we can help each other accomplish this goal.

But today we see additional “soul restoring” opportunities being exercised, like small groups gathered to read the Bible together, or Christian support groups reflecting God’s love and support to each other. While Sabbath can have its private moments, Sabbath is to a great deal a communal activity reflecting our relational natures. It is celebrating God’s gifts of friends and family, of love, joy and peace.

This morning I would simply leave you with a few questions to consider if you are serious about drawing nearer to God and receiving the blessings of God’s Sabbath.

1. What is the best day for you to observe a weekly Sabbath? (What is the most promising day of your week to exclude and include those things we’ve talked about?)

2. What are the obstacles you will face in making Sabbath your priority? (Do you have a strong enough desire for Sabbath to remove those obstacles?)

3. How does working on your Sabbath rob you of God’s blessings?

4. Does your faith in God give you a Sabbath breather from the cares and concerns of the world? Or does worry still rule your Sunday?

5. Besides going to church for worship, how else do you observe the Sabbath?

6. How do you most effectively rest your body, replenish your spirit and restore your soul on the Sabbath?

Let us honor the Sabbath by making it holy… by making it different than all the other days of the week, for…

14 then you will find your joy in the LORD

AMEN

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION