Come Away With Me
Our Adult Sunday School class had a homework assignment that was due this morning. Their assignment? Take the Ten Commandments and put them in order by how difficult they are to keep. Some of you have discovered the insert to the bulletin today and you may have begun to think about this exercise. I would challenge all of you to do exactly that… in this hour… and in the week ahead. I would challenge you to not only rank these, but then ask yourself why some are more difficult to keep than others. When I did that, I discovered that, for me, those that were… and still are… the most difficult to keep are those that have to do with the focus of my life. What is central to me? What is most important to me? And how do I demonstrate… to myself and to the world… that this is the most important thing in my life? Do I have time… do I make time… for those things that I claim are most important to me?
How often have we heard someone say, "I just don’t have enough time!" There is so much living to cram into each twenty-four hour period. After all, we must earn a living… fulfill our vocation… nurture various relationships… care for our dependents… get some exercise… study and learn… keep our homes and yards clean and clear… have some fun… and, oh yes, get some sleep, as well. Each year, there seems to be more that needs to be done… and less time in which to do it all.
And those of us who feel pressed for time are not alone. In a surprise best seller of 1991, The Overworked American, economist Juliet Schor reported that work hours and stress are up… and sleep and family time are down… for all classes of employed Americans. Women who work outside the home return to their homes to find themselves facing the equally challenging demands of housework. To pay the bills, men add overtime to their schedules or take a second job. Both face the ever-increasing demands of their children’s extra-curricular activities. Single parents are stretched in so many different directions that they sometimes feel they can’t manage. Simultaneously, men, women and our youth are all bombarded with messages that urge them to spend more (and so, ultimately, work more)… to keep their homes cleaner (standards keep rising)… and to improve themselves as workers… as lovers… as investors… as parents… or as athletes. Supposedly to make all this possible, grocery stores stay open all night long… and entertainment options are available around the clock. We live, says Schor, in "an economy and society that are demanding too much from people."
All of this explains why “You shall have no other gods before me” is the most difficult commandment for me to keep. God is not the central focus of my life… all these other things are! And because God is not the central focus of my life, it becomes a major struggle to keep several other commandments, such as “You shall not make an idol of anything nor worship it”, “You shall observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy”, and “You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor.” I do put other things before God in my life and, because I do, those things… and they usually are things… (whether they are material goods or achievements)… those things become idols in my life… things that I want… things I covet… because my neighbor has them… and I will do whatever I need to do to acquire them… including using the Lord’s day to work… to compete… to shop… in order to attain those things that I have made the central focus of my life… if just for a period of time.
In our text today, we read that Jesus told his disciples, “’Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while,’ for many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.” What? No time to eat? Does that sound familiar? Wouldn’t that explain the existence of hundreds of fast food restaurants that specialize in food that you can eat while you are doing something else… food that you can pick up at a drive-up window so that you do not even need to get out of your car? My question for today is simply this: At what point, do we lift our noses from this self-imposed grindstone and say, “Stop”? And why is it important that we do so?
Well, the health benefits of stopping and resting have been demonstrated in countless studies that show how productivity and longevity increase when we have periods of rest incorporated into the frenetic activity of our lives. But there is also a religious reason for doing so. The historic practice of setting aside one day a week for rest and worship promises peace and renewal to those who embrace it. Whether we know and use the term Sabbath or not, we… the harried citizens of the post-modern world… long for the reality of it. We need Sabbath, even though most of us doubt that we have time for it. At one time, it was a part of our culture. The strict Sabbath observance of the New England Puritans, which gave rise to the "blue laws" in many American cities and towns, influenced the structure of time for many groups in this society. More recently, Reformed churches of Dutch origin have anchored an American subculture within which Sundays are still filled with family visits and theological debate.
Why has it disappeared from our culture? Because we have elevated making… doing… producing… consuming… profiting… and achieving to the level of idols. While we may not be willing to admit it, we worship these things… and they, in turn, de facto govern our lives. And it does not help that, while corporate profits have zoomed and the concentration of wealth has increased in recent decades, real wages have remained stagnant for twenty years… and the pressure to work harder and longer has intensified. We have to work more just to stay even… and to keep up with the Jones’.
So, what is the practice of keeping the Sabbath? And how will keeping the Sabbath restore order to our lives and make other commandments easier to keep? Sabbath rest is rooted in the twin biblical precepts of creation and freedom. The Ten Commandments which form the foundation of biblical law appear in two places in the Bible… once in the book of Exodus and once in the book of Deuteronomy. The Exodus commandment to "remember" the Sabbath day is grounded in the story of creation. The human pattern of six days of work and one of rest follows God’s pattern as Creator of the Universe. God’s people are to rest on one day because God rested. In both work and rest, human beings are made in the image of God. At the same time, they are not God but God’s creatures, who must honor God by obeying this commandment.
In Deuteronomy, the commandment to "observe" the Sabbath day is tied to the experience of a people newly released from bondage. Slaves cannot take a day off, while free people can. When they stop work every seventh day, the people will remember that the Lord brought them out of slavery, and they will see to it that no one within their own dominion… not even animals… will work without respite. Sabbath rest is a recurring testimony against the bonds of slavery. Taken together, these two renderings of the Sabbath commandment summarize the most fundamental beliefs of the scriptures: creation and freedom… human beings created in God’s image… and God’s people liberated from captivity. The practice of keeping the Sabbath crystallizes the Bible’s portrait of who God is and what human beings are most fully meant to be as God’s creatures… and as the liberated children of God.
In an authentically Christian form of Sabbath keeping, we affirm the grateful relationship to the Creator that we, as God’s creatures, enjoy… and we share the joyful liberation from slavery first experienced by the slaves who left the bondage of their lives in Egypt. But we add to these celebrations, Christ’s victory over the powers of death as our weekly festival for the source of our greatest joy. For Christians, this victory makes of each ‘First Day’… each weekly day of rest and worship… a celebration of Easter and Christ’s resurrection… our new creation… and our liberation from sin and death.
Sabbath rest is a gift… a gift from God… and yet, for many of us, receiving this gift will require discarding our image of Sabbath as a time of negative rules and restrictions… for it was a day of obligation for Catholics… and a day without play in memories of strict Protestant childhoods. Relocating our understanding of this day in the biblical stories of creation and exodus is essential if we are to discover the gifts it offers.
To discover these gifts, we must begin by keeping the Sabbath. The struggle will be to fully understand what that means and how to interpret it within the context of the world in which we live today. While some additional insight into that I leave to next week’s scripture lesson, I will leave you with one question to ponder for this week: If you were tasked with the interpretation of following this commandment in today’s world… remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy… what guidelines would you give to your children… and what guidelines would you follow for yourself? What would you do… or not do… that would witness to the world… and to your children… that there is but one God… and that nothing on this earth is more important in your life? Is it possible to be in this world… and not of this world? And just because we, as Christians, have the freedom to do something… does that mean we should do it? How can it hurt us… or hurt others? Theology talks about the visible church versus the invisible church. Which are we? Does the way in which we keep the Ten Commandments determine our visibility as Christians?
O.K. Perhaps, I should have said one question… and many parallel questions that follow the same line of thought. This week, as you ponder the guidelines that you follow for yourself… and the guidance that you give to your children, may God bless you with many moments of insight… and the joy of sharing those insights with the ones you love. Amen.
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56