AU United Methodist Community

Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
August 29, 2004
Deuteronomy 5:12-15; Luke 6:1-5

Deut. 5:12 ¶ Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 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. 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.

Luke 6:1-5 ¶ One sabbath while Jesus was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked some heads of grain, rubbed them in their hands, and ate them. But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” Jesus answered, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and gave some to his companions?” Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”

INTRODUCTION

I am not 22 anymore.

I say that just in case you were wondering or might be confused by my youthful vigor. Sometimes, I get confused by that. I have known that fact intellectually for quite some time. I really only came to understand it five years ago. Playing softball in a recreation league. I was playing second base and I dove to my left to field a ground ball. I don’t remember whether I fielded it or not. What I do remember was that the bruising and the swelling on my leg took about a week to go down. I think I was healed just in time for the following week’s game.

I realized that at thirty I was going to need a lot more rest in between games than I had needed in my early twenties. I remember talking to my friends and they were all going through the same realization: it’s taking us a lot longer to bounce back from things than when we were younger.

So, the older I get the more I think about the need for “rest”. The more I wish I could sleep for hours on end, the way I could in college. The more I covet those quiet evenings at home doing absolutely nothing.

THE TEXT: THE SABBATH

So, you might imagine that I would be fascinated by the fact that the concept of rest is a central concept to our lives in faith. It is, after all, one of the Ten Commandments. Observe the Sabbath day. Keep it holy.

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.

So important is this commandment that it even merits two justifications for its existence. The first is as we heard earlier:

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.

The second version is found in the version of the Ten Commandments in the Book of Exodus:

Ex. 20:11 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

In Deuteronomy the people are told to observe the Sabbath because once they were slaves in Egypt who could not refrain from work. Further, the Mighty and Powerful God who brought them out of Egypt says so. In Exodus, the people are told that God rested after creating the world, and thus consecrated the Seventh Day and therefore we, too, should refrain from work on that day.

So central was the idea of Sabbath rest that a great deal of discussion and teaching arose around the Sabbath day. We see something of this in the New Testament lesson when we are presented with a confrontation between Jesus and some Pharisees over the particulars of Sabbath observance. In the story, Jesus’ disciples are criticized for plucking ears of grain on the Sabbath—that is, doing work. Jesus answers with a story about David eating the bread of the presence (forbidden to non-priests) when he and his men were hungry, so why not the disciples when they are hungry?

This is a very subtle argument that is taking place between Jesus and the Pharisees, and over the centuries many people have read into this passage a whole host of meanings. Everything from the now discredited notion that Jesus was in some way saying the Jewish law, and thus Judaism, was irrelevant or useless, to the idea that Christians were free from Sabbath observance.

With the first idea, we have caused enough trouble for the Jews over the ages. With the second we Christians have caused a lot of trouble for ourselves over the ages.

RESTLESSNESS

It would be tempting to blame all our troubles with Sabbath observance on the Emperor Constantine who officially consolidated the Sabbath and the Lord’s Day onto one day: Sunday, rather than Saturday and Sunday. And who knows? Maybe it did get started there. But I don’t think you can blame our current attitudes about rest and Sabbath on the Emperor Constantine. I blame enough on him anyway.

No, the real problem is that we have a culture that doesn’t seem to value rest. In fact, we have made it almost impossible to do so. Devices that are supposed to be time-saving devices do not create time for us, they merely quicken the pace.

Our need for convenience, for quickness, for efficiency has taken all the pauses out of our lives. Time was—not too long ago—that if you wanted to send a document to someone in another city, you had to mail it. (That was where a man or woman called a mail carrier came by and brought little pieces of paper called letters to your house and took them from you to be brought to other people). And after you’d sent the document off, you had to actually wait, like, three days before the other person even saw the document, let alone responded to it. Then came the fax machine. Then e-mail. Then e-mail got faster. (I remember one friend telling me that with e-mail, he could converse with another friend of ours maybe as much as three times a day). Then Adobe Acrobat and cross-platform file sharing and suddenly there’s no excuse for not reading my document and getting back to me right away.

Now we have 24-hour Kinkos, because we have to have that document copied now. We have to be able to work 24 hours a day.

We get so wrapped up in the busy-ness of our lives that we forget altogether to rest.

ON THE NEED FOR REST

But rest is important

One of the other things that people have missed about the story from the New Testament we heard earlier is the evidence of the importance of Sabbath rest to Jesus. Jesus doesn’t respond to the Pharisees by saying “The Sabbath is unnecessary”. He responds by citing a previous time where an exception was made. Back when I was a lawyer, I would have called this “precedent”. And people don’t use precedent when they think the subject matter is unimportant—they only use it when the matter is very important. Jesus uses his example of David eating the bread of the presence, not because he believes the Sabbath to be unimportant, but because he knows the Sabbath is important.

Further, we often read of Jesus taking time out to rest and to reflect. Time apart from the crowds.

In fact, those little pauses and rests are crucial. In many things.

In music there are notes that aren’t notes, they’re rests. They tell you when you’re not supposed to play. They help to define the rest of the notes by the silences in between. Imagine what music would sound like without the rests. [Here, Fellowship of Sound director Jeff McAleer played the Doobie Brothers’ Long Train Running without any rests—it was not quite listenable].

Music without the rests lacks a kind of definition. Without the rests, the melody becomes a blur, hard to pick out. The rests, in effect, give shape to the notes that do get played.

When I was in college I took a course in world religions in which I had to read the Tao te Ching. There was something very interesting in one of them that read:

Thirty spokes will converge in the hub of a wheel;
But the use of the cart will depend on the part
of the hub that is void.
With a wall all around a clay bowl is molded;
But the use of the bowl will depend on the part
of the bowl that is void.
Cut out windows and doors in the house as you build;
But the use of the house will depend on the space
in the walls that is void.
So advantage is had from whatever is there;
But usefulness rises from whatever is not. [1]

The time outs we take are not irrelevant, the help define what it is we’re doing with the rest of the time. The spaces help us to understand the context of the rest of our activity.

They know this in sports. Right in the middle of the action they’ll stop. They’ll take a time out. A pause. They’ll take that time apart to regroup. A catcher will walk out to the mound. A coach will call his players to the sidelines.

But could you imagine a catcher going to talk to the pitcher and not talking about the baseball game? Or a basketball coach who called a time out and then talked about some movies he’d seen? No, the time out is not separate from the rest of the game—it has everything to do with the game. [2]

SIX DAYS

Sometimes in the churches, we forget that the time out we take here in church is related to the rest of it. Some times we forget that the rests we note here are what gives definition to the rest of the music. The void that gives use to the rest of the week.

We here in our community are trying to be very clear about the connection between our Sabbath rest and our Christian lives. That’s why this year we are beginning a program called “The Other Six Days.” It’s a program designed to tie together Sunday piety with weekday study and service. It is important for us to make the connection between the activities that we undertake and the rest that prepares us for the way.

OUR REST IN CHRIST

For, we all need to get our rest. And not just because some of us aren’t 22 anymore. The physical exhaustion is actually the least of our worries. It’s easy to sleep off the physical exhaustion. You can sleep pretty well when all you are is physically tired.

But there are times when you’re spiritually exhausted. Beaten down and worn out. When the pressures of the world bear down on you. And there’s no amount of sleep that can make up for an exhausted spirit.

I know. In my personal and professional life I have had those times of sheer and utter spiritual exhaustion. And it’s times like that when you need to take your rest, and come to a place that will rejuvenate and reinvigorate.

There will be times in your college careers when you are exhausted, not just physically, but spiritually. There will be times in the middle of the semester when you’ll barely remember why you even bothered to come to college. Or what it is you’re even working on at the moment.

And it’s times like that when you have to remember to take your rest. To come to a place where you can center your spirit, where you can rest yourself and recharge. Whether it’s with us, or with someone else, or on your own, you need to take that time out to reconnect with yourself and with God.

Because no matter how beaten down you get. No matter how exhausted or stressed out—no matter how over-programmed you may get, you are not alone. You are part of a community here: friends you know and friends you don’t. People who will care for you, undergird you, and help you to rest.

And you are not alone: because you are with the One who came before us. The one who showed us the meaning of Sabbath. The one who taught us how to work and to rest. And the one who said to us: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matt. 11:28)

Notes

[1] Lao Tzu and R. B. Blakney (1955). The way of life. A new translation of the Tao tãe ching. [New York], New American Library. (Back)

[2] I am indebted to the Rev. Dr. J. Philip Wogaman for this analogy. (Back)