*****The following is a draft of the message for Sunrise UMC on March 3rd****** -->
Many, if not all, of us in this room this morning often feel
like we are being pulled in so many directions and called upon to do more
than,...well, we have time for.
Time management is a skill that is sought after by countless
people and is the topic of many sold-out seminars. We are taught to use time
for our advantage, but in reality, it appears that we are the ones that are
being used. Salaried employees feel they must give their all and hourly wage
earners feel pressured to put in overtime to stay on their employers good side
- Whatever it takes for the good of the company.
Yet, we know that through our dutiful allegiance to our job,
people suffer. Often, our families suffer as we rationalize that "quality
time" can be as beneficial, and even better than "quantity
time."
Our finances suffer as we are tempted to take more elaborate
and expensive vacations as another attempt to spend "quality time."
Our health suffers as we push our bodies and minds to do
more than they are designed to do, with lesser amount of rest. We become
intentionally indifferent to taking time to rest and recuperate when our bodies
and minds succumb to any illness, which just prolongs the ailing.
As Juliet
Schor states in her book, The Overworked
American, "We live
in "an economy and society that are demand too much from people."
This
predicament leads us to wonder - Is there any hope? Can there be any relief?
Good
morning! I am Tim Roberts, the pastor here at Sunrise Church and I want to
welcome you into a place and time where we can safely ponder these kinds of
questions and concerns. But not only can we raise these concerns, but we have
the opportunity to seek the counsel of the God of all creation who intimately
loves you and me and is passionately concerned about our lives, even the
busyness of them.
This
morning, we are in the ninth week into looking at some of the practices and
disciplines, which we are calling Holy Habits, which people throughout the
centuries have developed to help them in the quest to grow in their faith.
Today, we are looking a habit that is God's answer to this predicament of our
overworked, overburden lives - Sabbath.
Sabbath.
What do we know about this word?
Sabbath
is a Hebraic word, a noun at that, indicating that it is a period of time to
cease and desist.
Cease
and desist from what? Well, before we answer that, let's take a look where the
word is used in scripture.
Many
people recognize the word from what some lovingly refer to as "The Big
Ten" or the Ten Commandments that Moses received on Mt. Sinai. Even if you
haven't read the passage in the Bible, I am pretty sure you've seen the movie.
The
Ten Commandments are found in two different books of the Bible, Exodus and
Deuteronomy and each portrays a unique emphasis. Let's take a look.
In
the Exodus account, let's remember that this is the story of where God used
Moses to lead the Hebrew people out of Egypt where they had been enslaved for
several hundred of years. Now here they were, at the foot of Mt. Sinai and Moses
was up on the mountain in a "closed meeting" with God.
Exodus 20.8-11
8 Remember
the sabbath day, and keep 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; you shall not do any
work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock,
or the alien resident in your towns. 11
For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in
them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day
and consecrated it.
This passage
starts out with a very significant word - Remember. It calls the people to
remember not only that they are to keep the Sabbath, but just as important, why.
God created everything in six days and then on the seventh, what did God do?
Rested...without any regrets, or feeling the need for more improvement. So, the passage evokes the understanding that
if God can rest from a week of work, so should we.
Now
the second time the Ten Commandments are found is in Deuteronomy. This book
contains a retelling of the commandments to the Hebrews as they continue to
strive for the Promised Land. Actually, the words Deuteronomy means
"Second Law." It gives its own spin to the commandment of the
Sabbath.
Deuteronomy 5.12-15
12 Observe
the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.
13 Six days
you shall labor and do all your work. 14
But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any
work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your
ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your
towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. 15
Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God
brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm;
therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.
Now, if you
noticed, in this rendition, this commandment begins with a different word, Observe.
From the get-go, you know there is a different emphasis. While the people are
called to remember, they are called to remember not just the creation, but also
that they, who were once enslaved, were freed by God and God alone. This time,
the command has no sentimental allusion to mimicking God and resting, but
simply obeying God, because God has all the power and they would still be
enslaved if it were not for God. In essence, it's God like saying as a parent
would, "Because I said so!"
So,
wrapped up in these two accounts of the command to celebrate the Sabbath, there
are the appeals to the emotional need to obey and the subservient need to obey
and cease and desist...from what? Work.
But as is the
case with so many laws, over time some people felt the need to enhance and put
in some addendums to make sure people followed them. So it was with this
command to celebrate the Sabbath. Restrictions were placed on it to define
exactly what work is so there would be no question about the limits and
boundaries. That seemed to work, at least until this man named Jesus came on
the scene. Let's read about one of
the instances where a problem came up about the Sabbath.
Mark 2.23-24
23 One
sabbath he was going through the grainfields; and as they made their way his
disciples began to pluck heads of grain. 24
The Pharisees said to him, "Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on
the sabbath?"
25 And he
said to them, "Have you never read what David did when he and his
companions were hungry and in need of food? 26
He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread
of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he
gave some to his companions."
Here we see an
example of the restrictions of what could be done on the Sabbath were so tight
that even just the act of plucking off the head of grain as they leisurely
strolled through a field was considered work. When confronted about their
indiscretion, Jesus uses the example of King David blatantly defying a law
rather than to go hungry.
But, then
Jesus becomes very radical with his thinking as he begins his proclamation
about the purpose of this Law as he
continues to say:
Mark 2.27-28
27 Then he
said to them, "The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for
the sabbath; 28
so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath."
Now
we come to the heart of the Sabbath - that it was made for people and not
people for it. But the question that we need to ponder today asked is...Why?
Why
was the Sabbath...made for us?
I
come up with two possible reasons.
The first is to give us...rest - much needed rest.
If
we go back and revisit the two accounts of this commandment in the Old
Testament, we'll recall that we are to - Remember
and Observe. As we can see, tied to both of these verses is the command
to...rest.
You
see friends, the Sabbath is a revolutionary act. It is so counter-cultural...not
just back when this commandment was given so three thousand years ago, but
also, here, today. The world demands work, work, work! - yet God reminds us,
work, work...rest.
When we cease
and desist from our work, we show ourselves to be master over labor. But that
takes an intentional effort on our part to create those times of rest. When we
fail to do so, we succumb to a stupefied life that is blind as we give
ourselves up to being enslaved to lesser powers.
The question
that arises from the command to Remember and Observe should not be so much of
how to keep specific Sabbath rules as much as how should we make the day holy,
which was the intent of the commandment.
So what can
we do to make the Sabbath holy, especially as it pertains to work? John Wesley,
the founder of the Methodist movement, weighed in on this question by simply
asking, "Do you do no other work on this day which can be done on any
other?" (paraphrased)
Yet, in our modern,
global society, maybe even this should be answered by not looking at the nature
of the work as much as the purpose.
So, one
possible reason the Sabbath was made for us is to give us rest. Now, the second
possible reason is one that is much more subtle, but just as essential:
What if the
Sabbath is...a date - a date with God?
What if God
set this one day out of the week as a day free from work so you can just spend
with Him?
Let's
consider what a date is. When you find that special someone, you intentionally
take time to be together, get to know each other and allow a relationship to
develop into love. While a loving relationship continues to grow beyond the
first few weeks or months of mutual discovery, couples who continue to date
realize that doing so greatly helps cultivate and nurture love.
So, what if
Sabbath for us is God's way of saying to us, "I love you so much that I
have ordered all of Creation so that we can spend some time together each week.
I already know you and love you with an infinite love, but I want you to get to
know me and love me. I want to fill your life with so much joy that you can't
even begin to comprehend it. But, you have to get to know me more than just as
a mere acquaintance. So let's make a habit to spend some time together each
week"? That gives Sabbath a whole new perspective, doesn't it?
Let's do
this. Take out your iPad, your iPhone, smartphone, semi-intelligent phone,
whatever you have that you keep your calendar on. Go ahead and open up the
calendar app on it. Now, I want to invite you to join me in making this a Holy
Habit.
EVENT? Date
with God
PLACE? God's
house.
WHEN? Sunday
morning at (9 or 11).
REPEAT?
Weekly.
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