Come Away With Me – Part 2

Last week, we talked about the Ten Commandments and our attempt to rank order them by how difficult these commandments are to keep.  That led to a discussion of how difficult it is to keep the first one: “You shall have no other gods before me” – along with its corollaries: “you shall not make any idols or worship them” and “remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” We talked about how… in our pursuit of “the good life” or “the good things” in life… God is rarely at the center of our lives… how other things crowd God out… and how even the Sabbath becomes a day for “getting things done.”  At the end of last week’s message, I threw out the following challenge: 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?

Remember that, on the one hand, the origin of Sabbath rest is rooted in the story of creation… in the story of how God rested on the seventh day after completing this work and pronouncing it good.  God rested on the Sabbath day and enjoyed his good creation… never once feeling the need to pause in his Sabbath rest to boot up his computer and redesign his good creation… to tweak it… or add anything to it.  God simply rested and enjoyed it… as we should as well.   On the other hand, Sabbath rest is rooted in the story of the Exodus and the new-found freedom of the children of Israel.  While slaves in bondage cannot stop their work, those who are free can choose to stop and rest.  Thus, resting on the Sabbath is both a declaration of… and a celebration of… our freedom.  Conversely, to continue to work is an acknowledgement of our bondage to the demands of the world and our lack of freedom.   Also, as Christians, we stop on the ‘First Day’ of the week to celebrate the hope of eternal life that is ours through Christ’s redemption of us by his death on the cross and his resurrection on that first Easter morning.  We have been reborn into new creatures who are free from the constraints of this world and this life in our life in Christ.  

So, if God is the center of our lives and we worship no other gods or idols in his place, what guidelines do we follow when we remember the Sabbath to keep it holy?   Drawing on the three Biblical foundations that we have just outlined, we can identify several guidelines for observing the Sabbath to keep it holy.  From the story of the Exodus, for example, we should do no work.  We don’t have to make bricks and we celebrate our freedom by not making them.  While Jesus did some things that were considered work by the Pharisees on the Sabbath, he did not till the ground to put food on the table.  His actions on the Sabbath were purely to serve others… healing them and teaching them about God.  While for a few of us, working on the Sabbath is required, there are many of us who choose to work on the Sabbath and, in doing so, we bind ourselves to the Pharaohs of this world by that choice… and we rob ourselves of the gift of this day of freedom that comes from God.

From the story of creation, we have received the gift of a day to rest and enjoy God’s good creation.  From that comes the idea that we should rest from outside obligations… from all that pulls us away from that which God has created… that pulls us away from nature… from our family and friends… and from this time of rest.  God blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it… set it apart from the other days to be holy. How would our awareness of the Sabbath as God’s day of rest change us if we… for one twenty-four hour period each week… chose not use money… or sit planted in front of our television sets… or have our cell phones glued to our ears?  How would your life change if you just eliminated those three things for twenty-four hours?   What would you do instead?   Gather together with family and friends… take a nap… play outside with family members… or perhaps, even make love to the one that God has bound to you in a covenant relationship. All these are activities for the Sabbath that are tied to the story of creation.

And, if we look at the uniquely Christian celebration of the Easter experience, the chosen activity of our Sabbath should revolve around the worship and praise of our Creator God… the One who has freed us from bondage… and the One who has redeemed us and opened the door to eternal life for us.  It is a day to sing praises to God… to read God’s story in scripture… to pray to God… and to listen for God to lead us into new places… and new truths… as we enjoy a renewed relationship with him.  Thus, the center of this day, for Christians, is this gathering time for worship and praise.

When all three of these objectives are taken in combination, it is easy to see that the Sabbath is a day of simply being… not a day of making… manipulating… acquiring… or achieving anything.  It is a day of being… of being God’s children and enjoying God’s world… a day in which we witness to what is at the center of our lives by dedicating one day out of seven completely to God.  Is it possible for us to return to the simplicity of a life that… for one day a week… is centered on God?  Yes… but to do it, we will have to buck the demands of a world that sees no reason why the Sabbath day should be any different than any of the other six days.  Can we be in this world and yet not of this world?  Yes… but it is not easy to do.  It is, however, a powerful witness to our children and to the rest of the society in which we live… a witness to who we are… and whose we are... in this world and the next.

In our text last Sunday, Jesus said to his disciples, “Come away to a deserted place and rest awhile."  Notice that the idea did not come from the disciples.  They were all crowding around Jesus, seeking his approval for their work and eager for new assignments and new opportunities for achievement.  Aren’t we just as bound to the demands of this world… and its push to set ourselves apart through our accomplishments?  Sabbath rest is a time away from this… away from our own need to have others approve of us… approve of our work… our lives.  Sabbath rest is time spent with God… reveling in the one relationship we have where love and grace trump work and worry.  In our text this week, Jesus says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”   Are we able to come and simply rest?  Are there any among us who are not weary and carrying heavy burdens that we long to lay at Jesus’ feet?   Walter Brueggemann, Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, says that our exhaustion stems, in part, from our constant attempt to be other than who we really are… to maintain the façade that we believe the world expects of us.  Like Atlas, who has become the metaphor for those who carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, we carry the burdens of others’ expectations of us and they weigh us down.  And like Sisyphus, we can find no opportunity for rest and renewal… for just as we reach the pinnacle of the hill we are climbing, our burdens roll down to the bottom and we must begin again.  Countless authors have compared the human struggle of daily living to a hamster on a wheel… endlessly running, but going nowhere.  As Dorothy Bass says, “for us to act as if the world cannot get along without our work for one day in seven is a startling display of pride that denies the sufficiency of our generous Maker.” She goes on to say that churches must also be careful… “not to devour Sabbath freedom with "religious" or charitable obligations. Filling Sunday afternoons with church committee meetings, for example, is a terrible violation of this freedom.  And it is a violation that unfortunately seems to be increasing, precisely because of the pressures that Sabbath freedom specifically opposes.”    And yes, I am well aware that this Sunday I am guilty of scheduling one of those meetings that she talks about here.

So, when do we stop to rest?   When can we enjoy the gifts that God has given to us… the gift of creation… the gift of freedom… and the gift of our own redemption from sin and death?   Can we lay our burdens down… if just for one day in seven?   Can we regain our balance… find our center… and renew our focus?   Where can we go to drop the façade we live with each day?   The answer that comes from our text is that we should be able to find that haven in the fellowship of believers… in the church… but Walter Brueggemann insists that the church is often part of the conspiracy of silence that keeps us in bondage to the Pharaohs of this world.  In a society driven into unremitting overwork… and burnout… into techno-idolatry and the worship of doing and making, it is our religious communities that can call the nation to a sense of the sacredness of calm, of simply being, and of loving… of shmitah, dror, and Shabbat.  Instead, it is often the community of believers that stays silent and thus condemns the faithful to endless toil and the ever-increasing expectations of perfection held up by the powers that be in this world. Too often, it is the church that judges and condemns… instead of offering a sanctuary that is truly a haven… a place of comfort and care… a place for rest and renewal… surrounded by those who love… and forgive… and strive to serve others in Christ’s name.  When will the church speak truth to power and claim… for its people… the Sabbath rest that God has given?   When will the church point us to the true measure of a successful life… the example of Jesus Christ, not the example of Wall Street?  And when will the church be the self-sacrificing people of God who are a reflection of the person of Jesus Christ… reflecting in our mission and our ministry the same love and grace that Jesus offered to those who sought him?   The reality is that we all fall short… even in our best attempts to love and to serve.  What a relief it is to know that we, too, are sheltered in the arms of One who will accept us just as we are… and offer to carry our burdens for us?   For it is in the Lord that we renew our strength. 

Many years ago now there was a commercial for Lipton iced tea that aired on nationwide TV.  In this commercial, a young man who was hot and tired simply fell backward into a pool of cold, clear water.  All of us know the refreshment of such an act.  That is the refreshment that our Lord offers to us when he says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”  Can we, as a congregation, uncover the wisdom… not only of the Sabbath as a specific, agreed-upon time of rest… but also to focus on the "sabbatical moments" of contemplation… joy… calm… and love… of self… of family… and of community… moments that can transform our lives.  We sometimes forget that all the struggles of the Bible have a deep root in spiritual calm… the calm of knowing that God is in charge.  The jubilee passage of the Bible… found in the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus… calls for acts of justice, yes… of a radical restoration of the balance in life.  Yet the passage never uses the word "justice"… tzedek. Instead, it calls for "shmitah" and "dror" and "Shabbat Shabbaton"… words that mean "release"… "pause"… and "non-attachment"… the Sabbath of God within the Sabbath.

Can we learn to set aside a time for rest… a time to put God in the center of our lives… a time to put down the burdens of the day… of the week… to have a time just to be…  not to do… a time with God… a time for God... God’s gift to us?   That one act… that one effort… in one day out of every seven… may do more to be that pool of cold, clear water for us than anything else we can imagine.   For it is the rest we find in God that renews our strength.  It is in God that we find a love that will not let us go.  It is in Jesus that we find a friend to whom we can give the burdens that we carry.  “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”  Come and rest.  It is the Sabbath.  Amen.

Matthew 11:25-30