Sermon for June 2, 2024 - The Second Sunday after Pentecost

Yesterday, I, along with a few thousand other Winnipegers, participated in Manitoba CancerCare’s Challenge for Life, a 5k or 20k to raise funds and awareness for cancer research and treatments. While it seems like a lifetime ago, you might remember that I first came here two years ago, on the back of my final treatment and being declared cancer free; and I am still cancer free. So, when I saw the opportunity to give back, I knew I had to sign up to walk. Since I do not normally walk 20k in an average day, or any day for that matter, I knew that this would be a challenge for my body and spirit. As I walked each kilometre, each one seeming longer than the last, I kept telling myself I can rest at the finish line. And I couldn’t help but think of Jesus, and his disciples, as they walked from town to town, sleepy little villages and bustling market towns, and even the big city, Jerusalem. Where they ever as sore and tired as I was? I imagine that in the midst of their journeying they wanted and needed rest. We hear of Jesus often going off on his own to rest and pray. But, as we heard again today even on the Sabbath, the preordained day of rest, Jesus’ cannot rest because God’s work must be done.

For Jesus, Saturday – not Sunday – was the most important day of the week. Saturday, not because of shopping, or afternoon barbecues, or baseball games, or getting bills paid and the laundry done, but because Saturday was the sabbath, the most important day of the week. Jesus was formed in the observance of the Ten Commandments. Of all the Commandments, the longest explanation is given to the fourth commandment: “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy,” as we heard from Deuteronomy. You are probably quite clear about the commandment not to commit murder, and not to steal, and not to take the Lord’s name in vain, but what about remembering the sabbath day and keeping it holy? For many of us, several things have colluded to compromise the observance of sabbath.

For one, there’s the Church’s deference to Sunday. Sunday is the day of resurrection. Every Sunday is a little Easter. By the Middle Ages, most Christians had transferred sabbath observance from Saturday to Sunday, that is to say, keeping Sunday holy. Sunday, for most Christians, became the new sabbath. As a young boy, I remember there were no school activities on Sunday. I wasn’t allowed to play youth football because the games were on Sunday mornings. In Massachusetts there were “Blue Laws” which kept most stores shut, including liquor stores. No shopping on Sundays allows store employees to do the very thing we were supposed to be doing on Sunday: having a day of rest.

However, this is not the culture in which we live now. That’s done and gone. There are fewer and fewer self-reported Christians are attending church services on Sundays, stores are wide open on Sunday, and now, more often than not, you’ve probably got some event to negotiate on your Sunday calendar. And as pleased as you may be with your smartphone, you not only have 24/7 access to family and friends, and they to you, but so does your boss or your “bosses” – your employer and the people you join in volunteer organizations. Here’s why a sabbath practice is so important to retain or to retrieve.

We need a sabbath practice because this is how we are “hard wired.” We are called to imitate God in carving out a time of rest, but actually we mimic God in remembering that we are not God. In mirroring the divine behaviour, we discover our human limitations. The sabbath forces us to recognize we are creatures, that we are “made from dust,” and that without proper care we break down or burn out. God doesn’t need rest, but we do. Rest is indispensable. I remember in my early university days occasionally “pulling an all-nighter.” It’s amazing what you can get done in 24 hours if you don’t sacrifice a third of that time being in bed. But you can only do that for a night or so, and then you begin backpaying your dues. For Jesus, the observance of sabbath rest one day each week is as much a given as the need to sleep each night.

The great rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel makes a contrast between biblical thinking and Aristotle’s thinking. Aristotle presumed that relaxation is not an end in itself. Relaxation, he said, is for the sake of activity: we rest, we relax, for the sake of gaining strength to return to work. Isn’t that familiar? But this is not the biblical understanding. The Hebrew understanding is that the rest is the goal or the end; it’s the purpose, it’s the crown, it’s the culmination of the week. Rabbi Heschel writes that sabbath rest is not for the purpose of recovering lost strength to be able to return to work. It’s the opposite. Sabbath rest is for the sake of life: “[Humankind] is not a beast of burden and the sabbath is not for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of our work. The sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of the sabbath…[The sabbath] is not an interlude, but rather the climax of living: the last day in God’s creation; the first day in God’s in intention.”

Jesus was formed by the practice of sabbath rest. When we hear him say, “I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly,” he’s not talking about giving us abundant spiritual life, he’s talking about giving us abundant life – the whole shebang, 24/7 – and that, for Jesus, presumed the practice of keeping a sabbath day. The sabbath is meant for life. The sabbath is meant to free us from the numbing routine of a life driven by work, by the need to produce and to accumulate.

Sabbath-keeping is a resistance movement, and it’s very counter-cultural. Sabbath keeping is a resistance to the clutter, the noise, the advertising, the busyness, and the “virtual living” that sucks the life out of our lives. Sabbath-keeping is a resistance to constant production, and work, and accumulation. It may be the most difficult of the Ten Commandments to keep, and it may also be the most important, especially in our absolutely-driven, over-paced culture, which is breaking our hearts and our bodies. We are the most medicated, depressed people the world has ever produced. We are overworked, over-stimulated, over-entertained and over-the-top exhausted. We need to discover – or re-discover – the purpose of the sabbath.

Here’s three words that will help you keep the fourth commandment: to remember the sabbath and keep it holy. The most important word is “yes.” Say “yes” to your creaturely nature. Say “yes” to God that you will live within the life parameters in which you’ve been created. You need to sleep every night… but you need more than that. You need the space to “be” as a human and not just “do.” We are human beings, not human doings. Claiming and revering space for rest and re-creation is absolutely essential for your living a whole life. Don’t wait for the intervention of your cardiologist or your psychiatrist, or for your deathbed to get clear what is most important in life.

A sabbath day of rest gives us the opportunity to refresh and deepen our friendships. It enables us to rest, and exercise, and play, and to enjoy the use of our senses. A sabbath observance encourages a space for music, art, entertainment, for pursuits that interest us, for hobbies. We can even go a step further. How might we find time in each and every day that could include an element of sabbath?

The second most important word is “no.” If you cannot say “no” to yourself and “no” to others, you’re really not free to say “yes.” If you cannot say “no,” your “yes” will become an “oh well,” or “oh dear,” or “rats,” or you will find yourself living life resentfully because you’ve handed the custody of your life over to a tyranny of claims by others. The compromising power may come from electronic gadgetry. Consider putting a boundary around your availability to email and social media – when others can and cannot get at you. Try calling or emailing me on Mondays, my Sabbath, and you will only get my voicemail. If the first thing you do habitually in the morning is check your email, or search Facebook, or click on your favourite news site – which may completely allow yourself to be hijacked – then take on some other holy practice to begin the gift of a new day. Put some constraints on your electronic gadgetry: how you are accessed, and how you access other people and other things throughout the day. Practice an “electronic sabbath.” And what else? Where should you say “no” to your availability to do the things you are being endlessly requested to do by other people? Where should you say “no” so that you can live a “yes” to the prior claims of life?

The third word for sabbath-keeping is an important qualifier. “Remember the sabbath and keep it holy.” “Keep it holy.” Sabbath-keeping is not just about stopping, important as that is. Sabbath-keeping is about sanctifying, which is the practice of holiness. You are the holy one. You are one in whom God has chosen to dwell.  Saint Paul says our bodies are “a temple of the Holy Spirit.” Holiness is about living our whole life, practicing the presence of God, and by the terms in which God has created life, which includes sabbath rest.

We don’t rest in order to be more efficient. We don’t rest in order to work better. We practice a sabbath rest to be fully alive. You need it. God knows, you need it. And you’re worth it.