Calgary First Mennonite Church

Sabbath 1: We are enough!

Written by Alissa Bender

Associate Pastor Alissa Bender
Calgary First Mennonite Church
August 29, 2010

Sabbath 1: We are enough!
Exodus 20:8-11, Genesis 1:1-31, Mark 2:23-28

Over the past four years, I have found it more and more compelling to explore what it means to remember the Sabbath. When I was younger, I basically thought that it meant that on Sunday you go to church and don’t work. Over the past few years I have discovered how much richer the practice of Sabbath actually is. I have discovered Sabbath living as an invitation, rather than a moralistic law to follow.

I remember attending a large family reunion many years ago on a Sunday when my father’s cousin apologized with embarrassment for the cake not being iced. She explained that she hadn’t had time to ice it the previous day, and she just couldn’t do it that day because she remembered the little song that one of her parents used to sing:

On one hand, I acknowledged the honour she was paying to her parents’ witness of faith, but on the other hand, I thought: "Really? You can’t do this little thing to add to our joyful celebration?" It felt to me like a legalistic view of Sabbath, even though I was mostly just wishing to taste the icing she might have made.

What is compelling to me about Sabbath is not a legalistic rule-following, but rather an invitation to a way of living. And so, what I hope to do in my last two sermons here at First Mennonite, is to open up to you the invitation that God gives all of us to live a Sabbath way of life.

On each of these two Sundays, we will 1) Look to our Scriptures, and in those we will see how they cause us to 2) Remember who we are, as well as 3) Remember who God is. And in this reading and remembering, we will 4) Explore God’s invitation to Sabbath rest.

In the Old Testament, the giving of the Ten Commandments is recorded twice, once in Exodus and once in Deuteronomy. The lists are very close to identical, which is why it is especially interesting that the two Sabbath commandments are rather different from each other. The basic instruction is the same, but the explanation of why the Israelites are to keep Sabbath is quite different. The writer of Exodus and the writer of Deuteronomy root Sabbath in two different stories. So, since we’re going to talk about Sabbath for two weeks, we’re going to spend this week exploring what Exodus teaches us about God’s invitation to Sabbath rest, and next week we’ll focus on Deuteronomy.

We have already heard Exodus 20:8-11: "Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy…" and then it ends with this explanation: "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".

This Sabbath commandment is rooted in Creation. To root ourselves in this creation story, let’s hear the whole thing.

What does this story remind us about who we are? We are God’s created children! Made in God’s image, according to God’s likeness, and we have been blessed. Did you notice when God blessed humans? Not after they had earned it. Not after they had found meaningful employment and shown their worth by what they could do or make. God blessed humans as soon as God had created them.

Our world tells us that our worth is bound up in what we do for work, what we produce, what we achieve or accomplish. One of the first questions that we ask when we meet someone new is "What do you do?" as if this response will help us to really know who this person is. The creation story reminds us that our identity is bound up in being children of God. Our worth is not in what we do, but rather in who we are as God’s creation. God made us. God blessed us. And God saw that the whole creation, including humankind, was very good.

When we remember the Sabbath, we first of all remember who we are. We are God’s beloved creation. As we work and run around and fulfill our busy schedules 6 days of the week, we can start to think that the more full our schedules are, the more valuable we are. But on the Sabbath, when we stop working and stop rushing and stop planning, we remember that none of those other things make God love us more. It is actually enough just to be who we are in God’s presence.

You’ll notice the word "enough" in both of my Sabbath sermon titles, because it seems to be a word that escapes us far too often. We often wish to have more time, less stress, more money, less housework, more hair, less weight… the list could go on as we wish for just a little more this, or a little less that. When we remember the Sabbath, we remember that we are enough. Next week we’ll consider what it means to remember that God is enough, but today we celebrate that we are enough.

Now, don’t try to tell me that you never forget that fact. Everything conspires against us to make us forget that God made us good. Sometimes, even the Church conspires against us. We judge each other as easily in the church body as others do outside of it. We criticize each other’s best efforts. We turn down each other’s ideas. We pile the work on each other without stopping and asking whether our many activities are genuinely letting God’s kingdom come or whether they’re just making us too busy and stressed out to notice the Spirit’s presence.

We are a busy and stressed out culture. We complain about being busy, and I am guilty of this too, and yet I am convinced that one reason we keep a frantic pace is that we believe that if we can’t claim to be busy, others will look down on us. Or our lives will have less value. We will not have achieved what others achieve, either as parents, as professionals in our field, or simply as members of our society.

Our society makes us want to be busy, and I am convinced of the church’s need to proclaim a different message. You see, being busy doesn’t make us more worthy; it makes us forget our worth as God’s children. The more we do, the more we think we have to do. I would like to assure you that when you allow the to-do lists, the chores, and the schedules to cease for one day, you will not face a void of nothingness and find that your life has no meaning. When we stop and rest, we remember that we are enough. And we remember that truth not only about ourselves, but also about other people.

As we remember who we are, we also naturally remember who God is. God is the Creator of the world, the Creator who loves us. God delighted in the making of the world, and on the seventh day in the creation story, God rested in that delight. God blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it – made it holy, made it set apart. We set apart a Sabbath day because God did first.

I said earlier that I am not interested in a legalistic approach to the Sabbath commandment; I am interested in a Sabbath way of life. Remembering the Sabbath isn’t something that we just have to do once a week. Remembering the Sabbath is a rhythm of life that shapes us as God’s children.

How does it do that? Wayne Muller writes that like a mother who rocks a child who is angry and exhausted from a tantrum, "The Sabbath rocks us and holds us until we can remember who we are" (Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest). When we make Sabbath rest a priority in our lives, we make space for God to bring us back to God’s self. On our Sabbath day we don’t just go to church and not work. As part of Sabbath rest, we are invited to do just what God did on the seventh day – delight in all that God has made! Delight in creation, in your family, in your friends, in the hobbies and games you love to enjoy. When we delight in God and God’s creation, we make room for God to delight in us. We remember again that God said that all of creation is very good.

Jesus tried to teach people about the nature of Sabbath. Mark records that one day, Jesus was criticized by the Pharisees, for allowing his disciples to pick some grain from the field and eat it on the Sabbath. These keepers of the law were pointing out that this action was work and should be avoided on this day. Jesus responded with a story, as he often did, and also told them: "The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath."

Our creator God blessed a day of rest for us because humankind needs it! We can too easily become like those Pharisees, measuring others and ourselves by what we do and what we don’t do. We can forget to recognize the goodness in what is around us, and the goodness within ourselves.

I’m not going to tell you today or next Sunday exactly how you need to keep Sabbath, that’s not the point. After all, Jesus, like Jews today, kept Sabbath from Friday sunset until Saturday sunset. In the early days of Christianity, the celebration of Sabbath was eventually moved to Sunday, the day when Jesus’ resurrection was celebrated. And other people keep different days. For example, you may notice that I work on Sundays. So, like many other pastors, I keep my Sabbath on Monday every week.

It is extremely rare that I change the day of the week that acts as my Sabbath. Sabbath rest isn’t something that I fit in when or if I have time. Sabbath is the day that reminds me that no matter how many tasks I haven’t finished, no matter how poorly I feel I’ve done the tasks I have finished, God invites me to let go of all of them and to rest.

Sabbath living is a rhythm that shapes us. And bit by bit, I am learning that God loves me when I can’t do everything I wish I could do, and God loves me as I’m still figuring out how to do new things. God loves me when I go to bed on Sunday and wonder how I can afford a day of rest with everything I have on my mind, and God loves me when I wake up on Tuesday morning and think to myself – "Okay, now I’m ready to do this again".

God’s invitation to Sabbath living isn’t just for our benefit, it is essential to our relationship with God. Gathering with others to worship, like we are doing this morning, is one way that we re-encounter our Creator, and re-orient ourselves to who God is and who we are. Certainly, going to church is an important part of Sabbath, but not because we can then check it off the week’s list. As we gather for worship, we delight in God as God delighted in creation. And it is very good.

The Sabbath was made for us. It’s a gift. But it’s one of those gifts that we have to learn how to use or it will sit at the top of a closet until we suddenly realize that the giver is dropping in for a visit and will want to see it. Each of us could claim a reason that it’s hard to keep an entire day as a Sabbath rest in which we delight in God and let God delight in us. Maybe you do shift work and get different days off every week. Maybe your kids’ schedules keep you running around every day. Maybe you’re a student and the schoolwork never ends. Maybe you’re retired and don’t see what the difference is between one day without paid work and another. Maybe you’re single and people assume you have all the time in the world and don’t respect your need for rest.

But what I’ve learned about keeping Sabbath is that the stopping allows me to step back and look at all the rushing, and possibly to shift my priorities. Wayne Muller also writes that "like God in the creation story, we need Sabbath time to step back, pause, and be quiet enough to recognize what is good". I’d say we may also recognize what is getting in the way of what is truly good.

I used to sing in a community choir on Monday nights. But I started to realize that because nearly every other night of the week was taken up with ministry responsibilities, going to choir rehearsals both exhausted me and prevented me from spending time in relationships that were important to me. As much as I had wanted to sing, it was no longer a delight, and I needed to quit in order to make space for other priorities in my life, like rest and relationship.

So there will always be reasons that it will be hard, but I challenge you to believe that no matter your life circumstance, it is not impossible to live a Sabbath way of life. It is exactly how God invites us to live. So, as you go home today, rest in God’s delight in you, because you are enough. And delight in what God has made, because this, too, is a gift. Do this as a family, do it alone, do it with someone who doesn’t believe that one God made all of creation. And just see what happens. Just see what the God who made you and loves you will do.

 
God of the Sabbath day,
Our hearts are restless ‘til they rest in you.
Bring us to your joyful rest,
Where you remind us of our worth as your children.
We pray in Jesus’ name,
Amen