Every person
here knows what it is like to be swamped at work, to be overwhelmed by the
tasks at hand, and to have people coming at you from all directions. At times like this you say to yourself, “I
need a vacation” or “I need an assistant” or even better “I need a vacation and
an assistant.”
This
morning’s gospel reading comes in the midst of a very busy and hectic
time. Jesus has sent out his followers
in groups of two to preach and teach and heal.
They fanned throughout the region and did some impressive work; so impressive
that when they re-gather in the countryside, 5,000 people follow them
there. Jesus teaches all day. And then, because the people have no food, he
takes what is available – five loaves and two fish – and uses it to feed the
multitude. Do you remember how in the
story the disciples distribute the food?
12 disciples, 5,000 people – that is 416 people per disciple. Now, I have never worked as a waiter, but
serving 416 people strikes me as being a monumental task. Jesus says to his followers, “We need to go
away. It is time for us to rest.”
It is worth
noting this invitation does not come once all the work has been completed. People are still coming and going and the
disciples are so busy feeding folks they themselves do not have time to
eat. When Jesus says lets go away for a
while there is still plenty of work that needs to be done. I once served a bishop who said the reason he
scheduled a clergy conference in the fall at a time when church activities are
ramping up and priests generally are really busy is because this is precisely
the time when we most need to get away.
Resting when there is work to be done.
The 10
Commandments are recorded in the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy. Each contains the command to remember the
Sabbath and keep it holy, but the rationales differ. The Exodus version is grounded in creation:
six days God worked and on the seventh day God rested. We humans who are created in God’s image are
to follow this pattern in order to express who we are and to preserve what is
holy about us. The Deuteronomy mandate
to honor the Sabbath is grounded in the experience of slavery in Egypt. Forced for generations to make bricks day
after day after day, God’s children became valued only for what they can do,
not for who they are. Sabbath rest is a
tangible affirmation we are more than just machines; that there is more to life
than constant productivity. When
observant Jews light two candles on Shabbat they do so to remember they are
created in God’s image and they are free.
Eugene
Peterson, a now retired clergyman and author, once wrote about his Sabbath
practice:
Monday is my
Sabbath. Nothing is scheduled for
Mondays. If there are emergences, I respond,
but there are surprisingly few. My wife
joins me in observing the day. We make a
lunch, put it in a daypack, take our binoculars and drive anywhere from fifteen
minutes to an hour away, to a trailhead along a river or into the
mountains. Before we begin our hike my
wife reads a psalm and prays. After that
prayer there is no more talking – we enter into a silence that will continue
for the next two or three hours, until we stop for lunch.
We walk leisurely,
emptying ourselves, opening ourselves to what is there: fern shapes, flower
fragrance, birdsong, granite outcropping, oaks, and sycamores, rain, snow,
sleet, wind. We have clothes for all
weather and so never cancel our Sabbath-keeping for reasons of weather… When the sun or our stomachs tell us it is
lunchtime, we break the silence with a prayer of blessing for the sandwiches
and fruit, the river and the forest. We
are free to talk now, sharing bird sightings, thoughts, observations, ideas –
however much or little we are inclined.
We return home in the middle or late afternoon, putter, do odd jobs,
read. After supper I usually write
family letters. That’s it. No Sinai thunder. No Damascus road illuminations. No Patmos visions. A day set apart for solitude and
silence. Not-doing. Being-there.
The sanctification of time.
How does this
sound to you? Perhaps the specifics are
not for you – the walking, the silence, the weekly repetition – but don’t you
think you would feel a lot more human if you found your own nourishing way to
keep the Sabbath? I know I would. A famous opera singer once noted half of
Beethoven’s music is silence. It is the
empty spaces between the notes that distinguish music from noise. What do you do to create empty space in your
life?
In her book An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown
Taylor, an Episcopal priest and author, said much the same thing as Peterson:
At
least one day in every seven, pull off the road and park the car in the garage.
Close the door to the toolshed and turn
off the computer. Stay home, not because
you are sick but because you are well. Talk
someone you love into being well with you. Take a nap, a walk, and hour for lunch. Test the premise that you are worth more than
you can produce – that even if you spent one whole day of being good for
nothing you would still be precious in God’s sight. And when you get anxious because you are
convinced that this is not so – remember that your own conviction is not
required. This is a commandment. Your worth has already been established, even
when you are not working. The purpose of
the commandment is to woo you to the same truth.
She quotes Meister Eckhard who said, “God is not found in the
soul by adding anything but by subtracting.”
What do you need to subtract from this day in order to allow it to work
on you?
I think it is telling Jesus has to call his disciples to
follow him to a place of rest. The
harder a person pushes himself or herself the more alienated he or she becomes
to needs of his or her own body and soul.
While the command to honor the Sabbath is in the same list as ‘Thou
shalt not kill’, we hardly treat it as seriously. But it is every bit as important because
without a regular pattern of rest and restoration we engage in killing
ourselves. In a very real sense, the
Sabbath is not a commandment, but holy gift.
Jesus offers you this gift with the invitation to step away for a while
and rest. Will you accept?
