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Sermon: Sabbath - God's Gift to Us · North Raleigh United Methodist Church Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus went through the wheat fields on the Sabbath.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: As the disciples made their way, they were picking the heads of wheat.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees said to Jesus, Look, why are they breaking the Sabbath law?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: He said to them, Haven't you read what David did when he was in need when he and those with him were hungry?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: During the time when Abiathar was high priest, David went into God's house and ate the bread of the presents, which only the priests were allowed to eat.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: He also gave the bread to those who were with him.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Then he said, The Sabbath was created for humans.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Humans weren't created for the Sabbath.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is why the Son of Man is Lord even over the Sabbath.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus returned to the synagogue.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: A man with a withered hand was there, wanting to bring charges against Jesus.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: They were watching Jesus closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: He said to the man with a withered hand, Step up to where people can see you.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Then he said to them, Is it legal on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: To save life or to kill?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: But they said nothing.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Looking around at them with anger, deeply grieved at their unyielding hearts, he said to the man, Stretch out your hand.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: So he did, and his hand was made healthy.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: At that the Pharisees got together with the supporters of Herod to plan how to destroy Jesus.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's the word of God for us, the people of God.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks be to God.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let us pray.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: O Lord, let the words of my mouth and the thoughts and meditations of all of our hearts be pleasing in your sight.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: For you, O Lord, are our rock and our redeemer.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let me explain.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: We had the entire summer off for a renewal leave last year, Memorial Day to Labor Day, before we started here at North Raleigh as your pastors, one year ago.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I was determined to get this sabbatical thing right.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: I had a checklist, at least in my head, of what I would do every day in order to maximize my sabbatical.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Every day I would have some form of time outside in God's creation.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: This was quite easy when we were on a six-plus-week camping trip.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: I would play an instrument each day, using the sabbatical as an excuse to get better at them.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: I would be fully present with my children.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I would look at my phone less, and before long I had a list of things to do for each day that looked no different from when I was working.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: A sabbatical is just an extended Sabbath in principle, and Sabbath goes against the grain of our whole culture.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: How does Sabbath go against that grain?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the biggest words in our culture right now involve the concept of maxing.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: To max something, double X, is to do something to the highest degree, to become the most efficient or the best at something.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: People today are sleep maxing, they're protein maxing, or fiber maxing, or time maxing.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: What was I trying to do at the beginning of last summer?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was sabbatical maxing.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: When we are immersed in the maxing culture, we are trying to squeeze the most out of every single thing we do.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: We are making sure that we are the most efficient at all times.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: In 2012, Dr.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew Sleeth wrote in his book 24-6 that in the previous 20 years, work was up 15% in America and leisure was down 30%.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that was before the age of maxing.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: The notion of Sabbath goes against the grain of our culture because the first thing that Sabbath asked us to do is stop.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: A literal translation of the word Sabbath just means stop.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: In his book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, John Mark Comer writes this: the Sabbath is simply a day to stop.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Stop working, stop wanting, stop worrying, just stop.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: We live in a culture that is not very good at stopping.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Our minds are endlessly moving.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Even when we sit down and try to rest, we find ourselves looking at a screen or at two screens and being bombarded with more things to buy or more things to work towards.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Often when I ask parents my age how it's going, the initial response is what?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Busy.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: We use words like rat race, or we say that something's wide open, or we just know the reality of multiple Google calendars being full with blocks at the same time.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: And God commands us to stop.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think you understand God.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was a lot easier to stop when there wasn't so much to do.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that Sabbath command thing, that must be like a cultural thing back for your time when that was given to the people of Israel.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think God might be saying to us, that's why you need the Sabbath even more.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: For the Sabbath is not only to stop, it also has the meaning in the Bible of to delight.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: We are commanded to delight, to enjoy the gifts that God has given us in creation and in relationships.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we say to God, no thanks.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: I have too much to do to delight.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: John Mark Comer writes, maybe that's why God eventually has to command the Sabbath.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Does that strike you as odd?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's like commanding ice cream or live music or beach days.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: You would think we'd all be chomping at the bit to practice the Sabbath.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: But we're not chomping at the bit, are we?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Some of us don't want to hear the sermon today because we are just trying to get by.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you might be, not if in reality, like kind of putting your fingers in your ears, saying, I'm not hearing this.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: I can't fit it all in seven days.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Don't give me another thing to do.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: How could I possibly fit it all into six?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: But we are not meant to live like robots.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew Sleeth says that the Sabbath is a time to transition from human doings to human beings.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: I like that.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: When busy is the operative word in my life, when I go from thing to thing to thing with no margin and no space just to be, I am a human doing.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Our culture wants us to be human doings.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: After all, human doings consume more.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: But God made us to be human beings.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: When God gives the Sabbath commandment in the Ten Commandments, it is the only commandment with a Y after it.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: I guess we didn't need an explanation for do not murder or do not commit adultery.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: But God gave us a long explanation with the Sabbath command.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if it's because God knew this one would be so easy for us to break, that we would need some explanation because we would fall so easily into patterns of life that ignore God's design for us.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: What's also interesting is that the Ten Commandments are given twice in Scripture.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Once in Exodus 20, when Moses comes down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets, and once in Deuteronomy 5, when the people of Israel have wandered 40 years, and they're about to enter the promised land, and they're being reminded of the ten laws.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: The Ten Commandments are the exact same in these two places in the Bible, except for the explanation of the Sabbath.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: The first explanation that we are given in Exodus 20 sounds like this: Because the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and everything that is in them in six days, but rested on the seventh day.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: The reason why we Sabbath according to Exodus?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because God did.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: That should be reason enough, but that's not all that we're told.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: We are also reminded that God didn't make anything in creation holy.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: But God made this time, this every seventh-day rhythm holy.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Rabbi Abraham Heschel said it like this: the Sabbath and eternity are one or of the same essence.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath while still in this world, unless one is initiated in the appreciation of eternal life, one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Friends, God has made a day holy.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: We have the opportunity to experience the realm of God and to experience eternity through this portal that is Sabbath.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's a pretty good reason to Sabbath.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: But then Deuteronomy gives us another rationale.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's the passage that you heard read earlier.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that you were a slave in Egypt, God tells Israel, but the Lord your God brought you out of there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's why the Lord your God commands you to keep the Sabbath day.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: So why else should we keep the Sabbath?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: God wants God's people to know that they are not slaves anymore.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: In Egypt they were owned by Pharaoh.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: They had 10-day work weeks with no rest day.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: There was no such thing.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: They toiled and had nothing of their own, and now they were about to enter the promised land.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Have we become slaves once again?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Not in the literal sense where someone else owns me and I have no control or rights.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: But are we slaves to the market?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Are we slaves to our imposed or self-imposed email response time for our employer?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Are we slaves to the dings and pings of our devices, no different from Pavlov's dog, when we know a new notification has come on our phones?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think that God knew that we would be held captive once again.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Sabbath keeping is a resistance to those forces that try to dominate us.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Forces like unchecked consumerism, where we need to have this particular thing.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now that desire is fulfilled with a simple swipe and click, and it's at your doorstep the next day.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: When we choose Sabbath in our day and age, we are saying that we are no one's slave.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: We are saying that God created the world and it will survive for 24 hours without my help.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: When we Sabbath, we are not participating in the market for that day.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: We don't go shopping.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: We don't require others to work.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is why blue laws that many of you grew up with existed.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: They allowed communities to practice Sabbath better than we do today.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: But when the store is open, someone's got to work.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: When I click the button, someone is working on the other side of that website to make sure I get what I ordered.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: We can be human beings when we opt out of Pharaoh's brickmaking for one day a week.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: The Sabbath, it's not meant to be a demanding commandment.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: God gives us the Sabbath as a gift, but we react like it's an impossible burden.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Look at what happens with Jesus and the religious leaders who were his opponents in the Gospel of Mark.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: First, Jesus' disciples are taking a walk on the Sabbath and they start picking the heads of grain and eating them.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: There were not specific regulations in the Torah about whether this activity was considered work or not, but the Pharisees, trying to oppose Jesus, viewed the disciples' activity here as equivalent to harvesting a whole field.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus' response to the Pharisees was this: the Sabbath was made for humans.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is what we need to hear today.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: The Sabbath was made for you.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Stop trying to go against the grain of the universe that God has made.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: I remember after each semester of college and divinity school, getting sick the day after finals were complete.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: I had just run what felt like a long sprint for the previous two weeks, late nights, early mornings, endless reading, and at the end the body said, If you won't stop, I will.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: I had pushed against the rhythms of how God made me too long.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: In the next story, a man with a withered hand was at the synagogue.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: In a blue-collar agrarian economy, not having your hand to work was a sentence to life as a beggar.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus' opponents, they want to see if he would do such a thing as heal this man on the Sabbath.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the law of Moses never intended the Sabbath to become a legalistic burden.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: There were always exceptions for saving life and for helping others.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus does not tell his opponents ever to stop keeping the Sabbath.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, in his actions, he is restoring the purpose of Sabbath, for God intended the Sabbath to be about life and to be about wholeness.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: You see, I wanted to create my own rules of sabbatical like a Pharisee.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to win my sabbatical.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I quickly realized that was not only impossible, but it was dangerous for my soul.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: So finally, after a couple of weeks, I was able to finally move out of the realm of accomplishing something each day to just being.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: I felt less burdened by the day.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: The delights of life included sitting with a cup of coffee freshly brewed in the morning.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: I delighted in hearing a particular bird who I've talked about before, the white-throated sparrow every day as I would rise.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: I delighted in the giggles of my girls.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: I delighted in a good meal or even an okay meal prepared over the campfire.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: I delighted in local ice cream shops.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: I delighted in looking up at the forest canopies.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: I delighted in sitting with my guitar and my girls singing along with me.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And do you know what has happened to me?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: I have realized that I don't need to be on a three-month hiatus from work to delight like that, although it helps.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is the gift of Sabbath.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Walter Brugeman said that people who keep Sabbath live all seven days differently.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I hope to do.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: We don't keep the Sabbath perfectly in our home.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: There are still some ways we'd like to get better at it, to be more present in God's love and world and a little more removed from the constant busyness.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what I want you to understand today.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: If we're going to go against the grain of our culture, it's going to take practice.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just going to take practice, it's going to take practices, sustain things that we commit to getting better at, because if you don't keep the Sabbath in your life right now, you're not just going to start doing it because you want to or because I said to today.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's like saying I need to eat more salads without buying the vegetables to do so.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Barbara Brown Taylor said it this way in a piece called Sabbath Resistance.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: She said, with sundown on the Sabbath, I stopped seeing the dust balls, the bills, and the laundry.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: They were still there, but they had lost their power over me.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: One day each week I lived as if all my work were done.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: I lived as if the kingdom had come, and when I did, the kingdom came for 25 hours at least.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when I know Sabbath is near, I can feel the anticipation bubbling up inside of me.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sabbath is no longer a good idea or even a spiritual discipline for me.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: It is an experience of divine love that swamps both body and soul.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: It is the weekly practice of eternal life.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but I want to live inside God's love that swamps both body and soul.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to practice eternal life.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, start somewhere.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: What if you committed Saturday evening through Sunday lunch as a Sabbath?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, really, that's getting super close to 24 hours.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: So if you don't really Sabbath right now, and you said, well, Saturday night like at six or five, through Sunday lunch like at noon, maybe till one, and we're getting like 18 to 20, right?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's really close.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that means a drawn-out dinner on Saturday night with family or friends.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that means a commitment to no phones for a lot of that time.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it's playing a game or going on a hike or sitting by a lake or sitting on that porch we built but never actually sit on.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And part of a Sabbath practice needs to differentiate from a day off.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Pastor Laura and I, we take Fridays off.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: While the kids are at school, we get the stuff done that has to get done around the house.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Pick up, which is endless, right?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Laundry, groceries, mowing the lawn.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Those things are not Sabbath.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: But we try as best we can to be fully present to one another and to our kids and to God starting Friday evening.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't always happen.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Other stuff comes up.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: But if you can, try to differentiate between a day off and the Sabbath.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: I invite you to consider this.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: What would you do if your only directive was to enjoy and delight in God's presence and God's world?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: What would you do if your only directive was to delight and enjoy God's presence and God's world?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: And do that.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Happy Sabbath.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.