I Command you to Rest
Exodus 35:1-3

I want to begin my sermon today by looking at this text.  There are a couple of things I want to point out in the text that Todd read to us.  Then I'm going to take off, and hopefully at the end of this we will have something to kind of give us some notion of what God may be speaking to us today. First of all, I want you to notice in Exodus that Moses comes down from the mountain.  This wonderful passage says that because he has been in God’s presence, Moses’ face was shining so brightly that they had to cover it with cloth so that it didn't blind people. The very first thing he did when he came down was to give a rule, a statute, a commandment that was so important that it was in many ways to mark and weave the identity of the Hebrew people up into the present age. I can’t emphasize enough how important that one particular rule was.  In Judaism even to this day, the Sabbath, or in Hebrew, Sabbath (say it with me, then you will feel like Jews before you leave today) was very important. But that regulation was, in may ways, one of those things that moved with them wherever they went.

I had a Rabbi once say to me that the Sabbath, essentially, was a temple to God created in time and that it truly marked the identity of the Jewish people in a way that nothing else did. Even to this day, within Jewish homes and particularly Orthodox homes, when the Sabbath evening occurs, important rituals are performed.  The ancient people did not mark time from midnight one day to midnight the other.  They didn't have watches to look at to tell them it was midnight, so they used more natural things.  A day was really marked, not in the way that we mark it, but from the first star in the sky in the evening, until the next day so that days were marked from evening to the next evening, rather then from morning to morning. That is also why the Sabbath for Jewish people starts on Saturday evening. Right? No. It starts on Friday evening because, after all, the last day of the week is Saturday not Sunday. And I will get into that later.

But there are really important rituals that mark that Sabbath observance. The matriarchal head of the family covers her head with a veil and lights the Sabbath candles and prays some prayers that have been prayed for centuries that invoke the Sabbath to come and be a part of that family. One other thing that marks the Jewish faith that I always admired is that the most important liturgical acts occur not in a place like a synagogue, but in the home.  And there is a reminder to us that the Sabbath observances that are most important in Judaism to this day are marked by a gathered family as it lives out its faith in the place that it lives. And the other thing about the rituals that I like is the food—the Sabbath is always marked by meals.  

Now what I want to say to you is what Todd pointed out to me this morning as he was reading that text—that the rules for not obeying the Sabbath according to Moses were pretty heavy.  I mean, what did it say would happen if you did not observe it? Death!  And death is pretty much a pretty big deal. It is for me—I don't know about you all. I want to start right there basically to help us understand the backdrop of Sabbath worship from our Hebrew ancestors. And I want to jump ship there and plug back into the Christian community. No I don't want to do that; I want to start with something a little more broad. If you were to look back at human civilization from its very beginnings, up until about 70 years ago, give or take a few years, what you will see is that the rhythm of human civilization has always been marked by sensitivity to the natural rhythms of the world in which we live. The concept of time as we live it today is a fairly modern, and in many ways the way we view time may rob us of our true humanity. Our obsession with efficiency is important to look at.  

Gary Nabhand, who is a professor at NAU in the sustainable living department up there, wrote a book several years ago about the native Americans who live around Saguaro National Park close to Tucson. Now what is interesting about his contribution to our world, and by the way he is world renowned for this, is that he has been able to take an anthropological field and show how people through time have dealt with the environments in which they live. This book that he has written is a wonderful story of a people and their living with one of the harshest environments in the world. How is it for centuries that  they were able to gather and sustain themselves with food that came in abundance at certain times of the year and was scarce at other times of the year?  One of the interesting remarks that he makes is that there was only one berry that could be fermented that could make an alcoholic beverage. Essentially, they would ferment this berry once a year and drink a lot for a week and then the brew was gone. And there was no issue of alcoholism in that community until western civilization showed up and destroyed that rhythm. You see what I'm saying? As a matter of fact, that mark of alcoholism and diabetes among native Americans in our area has been traced directly to their bodies not adjusting to a certain rhythm and a certain diet over many generations.  Their bodies reacted to the western food that was suddenly thrown upon them, and they are still reacting to that today. Alcoholism and diabetes run very high in native American communities.

The interesting thing I remember reading in a book is that there were periods in the lives of these traditional people, in which they had to work very, very hard because there were certain crops that only came at a certain time.  If they didn't work hard to get them in, then there wasn't going to be food—not only tomorrow, but also perhaps six months down the road.  And at the truth of the matter was that they worked very, very hard at certain periods, but there were also many periods during the year when guess what they did? They did nothing! Absolutely nothing. Isn't that a horrible thought? But what I want to say to you is, that as we look at that natural rhythm in their lives, we see a very similar pattern in every civilization that we can look at in the broader world of human civilization. This was a typical pattern: there was a time for a lot of focused attention on producing for the well being of the community and then long periods when there was time to rest and to reflect. All of that ended with the coming of our modern age. Currently we live our lives in a way that is so regimented that many of us cannot get into our cars without a cell phone.  We just know that there is an important call that we need to make or needs to be made to us—somewhere between home and work, right?

I mean we are so obsessed with our efficiency that we do what is called multi-tasking. The point is that we live our lives defining who we are simply by what we do. And what I want to say is that that is a very dangerous place to be. Now I want to go back to a time in the near past that may seem odd to some of you who are younger than I or close to me in age.  This won’t, however, seem so odd to some of you who are older. As we look at the Christian community at the concept of Sabbath, we see that it was moved from the last day of the week to the first day of the week.  Often we will correct people because ministers like to split hairs about theological things, and I don't like to call Sunday the Sabbath, because that has a definitely Jewish connotation. I like to refer to Sunday as the Lord’s Day, because that is the traditional wording that the church has used because something very significant happened on Sunday. Jesus rose from the dead. And that became such a mark on the Christian faith that the early church not only did their Sabbath worship on Saturday, but they always gathered as a community on Sunday so that they could remember that that event is what marked their lives.  

So over the centuries, the Sabbath for Christians became the Lord’s Day—Sunday.  Do any of you remember the blue laws?  I say that, and you know what they were. Stores were not allowed to open, and somehow we all managed quite well to wait and get our bread on Monday.  We knew we could go get the t-shirt that we wanted desperately on Tuesday.  We didn't need to worry about buying things. Our obsession in our modern age with producing and with being efficient and making sure that we use every minute of our time is what really destroyed that concept of Sabbath in our culture. In ways the Sabbath was marred maybe by the commercial interest of a few people. But what I want to say to you is that those commercial interests would not have been responded to if the vast majority of the population hadn't so readily adapted. Once those blue laws were pulled away we have not been all the better for that as a society.  It is often said that the unexamined life is a very, very sad life. If we always live our life focused on what is out there and what we are doing and producing, then we don't take the time to look inward and reflect upon what it is that God has taught us to be and to do.  We need to examine what is central to our lives on a regular basis and discern God’s will for us so that his will is distorted in ways that are unbelievable.  Now I stand here to tell you that most of the sermons I preach have as much to do with my sins as yours.  By the way, I do three services on the technical Sabbath—you know from Saturday evening to Sunday evening most Sundays.  I work pretty hard.  I don't know what to say about that except that maybe you all should give me Sundays off.  I don't know.  But the point I want to make to you is that for all of us there is a need to reflect up on God’s command. That the first command that Moses gave us from God when he descended from Mount Sinai.  The first command was to rest and to use that time to rest to be with family and friends to reflect upon sacred text, to pray, and to just be. Not to do but to be. Our challenge as people of a modern age is to pull against a cultural norm. The norm tells us that we must always be doing something in order that we might be okay.  We must understand that always doing something violates a major concept of who God has called us to be as God’s people. So what do I ask of us today?  It is to rediscover the Sabbath in our lives—to mark a time every week, and Sunday is probably not a bad time for most of you, although it may be a little more difficult for Todd and me.  I want to say to you to have a time set apart when you rest and reflect upon who God is and who you are in relation to God in your life. Sometimes Hebrew scripture is harsh, but in its harshness it makes points that are very important.

In the ancient world the commandment indicated if one didn’t observe the Sabbath, then death was the result.  What I want to say to you today is that I don't think I want to set up a Sabbath committee and go about shooting the people who don't observe the Sabbath.  But I will tell you at least in symbolic way that we do face death when we don't do that which God calls us to do.  Our very souls will die if we don't observe the Sabbath. The next few weeks we are moving into the stewardship time of our life as a congregation.  We are looking at the gifts that God has given us, and whether or not we are using those gifts as God has intended us to.  I think it’s befitting that before we begin talking about other gifts, we talk about the gifts of time and whether or not we are giving God the piece of it that God deserves. These are things for us all to think about, myself included.  Hopefully we will hear Moses’ words, and we will find a way to live out beautifully the life God has called us to.  Let us bow our heads now for a word of prayer.