Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Title: "The Most Difficult Commandment?"

Text: Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

is just another depiction of Jesus’ compassion for the crowds:

teaching them when they seemed lost and confused,

healing those who were suffering.

At another level,

it’s a story about a commandment

that even Jesus found it difficult to keep …

and one of the Ten Commandments, no less!

And that is,

God’s command to us to rest.

The commandment about keeping sabbath.

About doing honest labor, to be sure,

but then taking time to rest from it.

Because even God rested

after an intense six-day week of creating the whole universe.

And if even God needs to rest,

then how can we imagine that we don’t?

Look again at how the story begins,

and then how quickly it gets sidetracked.

The apostles – and we presume that this means the "top 12" –

have gathered around Jesus to tell him

everything they have been doing the past few days:

where they’ve been, what they’ve done, what they taught.

And he says to them,

"Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while."

And so they go away in the boat.

So far, so good.

It’s a brief retreat time for the disciples:

relax, renew, recharge.

Obviously, we don’t know whether it was literally the sabbath day or not …

but the intent was the same.

"You have worked hard and done well …

now it’s time for a break."

But what happens?

"Many saw them going and recognized them,

and they hurried there on foot from all the towns

and arrived ahead of them."

Great.

You’re going to Mo-Ranch for a weekend of R-and-R,

taking a leisurely route through the Hill Country on highway 281,

stopping in small towns to check out the antique shops

and read the historical markers …

and when you get there, you discover that

everyone else from the office has sped down on I-35, etc.,

and is waiting there for you!

So what does Jesus do when he see this crowd of folks,

who must still be out of breath

from running around the lake to catch up with them …?

Does he say, excuse me,

even the messiah and his disciples are entitled to a little rest?

Does he say, it looks to me like

you aren’t remembering to keep sabbath?

He does not.

He has compassion on them,

because they are "like sheep without a shepherd,"

and he begins to teach them.

And people begin "rush[ing] about the whole region"

and bringing sick people to him to heal.

So much for relaxation, refreshing, recharging.

Now, yes, the sabbath is made for human beings;

we are not made for the sabbath.

So even if it happens to be Sunday, or Saturday, or whichever day you choose,

if you come across a genuine need that cannot wait,

then you should do whatever is necessary,

and the sabbath will have to wait.

Jesus made it very clear that the commandment is not non-negotiable.

It can be bent, shifted, reframed …

but still, it must be honored.

And here’s why I claim that this may be the most difficult commandment

for us, today, in the world we live in.

It’s not just that we find it difficult to keep sabbath,

to rest from our labors …

it’s that we find it difficult even to take the commandment seriously.

Here’s a wonderful scenario from writer Dorothy Bass,

which sounded way too much like my own life:

(Receiving the Day, pp. 45-46)

I remember very clearly the moment when I first glimpsed the possibility that my Christian faith might be a source of guidance through the time crunch that was my life. It was a Saturday night, and a few teachers were sitting around a dinner table. Great piles of papers needed grading, and we had promised our students that we would return them on Monday. And so we whined, and as we whined our complaints gradually shaded into boasts. Someone listening in might have thought that we were competing to see who had to grade the most, who worked hardest, and who was most put upon by the demands of his or her job.

That’s when it hit me. "Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy." This was a commandment, one of the ten laws in the basic moral code of Christianity, Judaism, and Western civilization, and here we were, hatching plans to violate it. I could not imagine this group sitting around saying, "I’m planning to take God’s name in vain"; "I’m planning to commit adultery"; "I think I’ll steal something." Yes, we might occasionally break one of the other commandments ("You shall not covet" is an especially hard one for me), but if we did, we would hardly boast. Our approach to the sabbath commandment was different. We had become so captivated by our work, so impressed by its demands on us and by our own indispensability, that it had simply vanished from our consciousness.

 

Well, I certainly resemble that remark.

Anyone else?

Keeping the sabbath seems like a quaint historical thing to do …

we may remember childhood days,

or stories from our grandparents,

about staying home on Sunday afternoons,

and not playing cards,

or not going to movies;

some who even prepared the Sunday dinner on Saturday,

and then left it in the oven for mid-day Sunday.

If you’ve lived a long time in Texas,

you remember the "blue laws"

that left whole sections of stores roped off on Sundays …

and odd combinations like,

you could buy a hammer, but you couldn’t buy nails.

When I first went off to seminary in New Jersey, in 1982,

I was astonished that shopping malls there were open on Sunday, because here in the Bible Belt, that was still unheard of.

And it’s not so much about what you do or don’t do on Sunday …

or on Saturday, if you’re Jewish or Seventh-Day Adventist …

it’s about the spirit of, and the need for, rest.

Human beings were not made for work.

It’s important, to be sure,

but it’s not the reason for our existence.

And when we get so wound up, and so into the stuff that we simply must do,

and so busy that we never slow down,

we’re violating the commandment and the example of God.

Now, the way I’ve talked about this so far

assumes that we have some degree of choice

about the hours we work, and our opportunities for rest.

For most of us here, that’s probably the case.

But maybe not all.

Because our culture has made sabbath-keeping increasingly difficult,

if not impossible,

for many of our sisters and brothers.

I don’t just mean stores being open on Sundays,

and soccer games scheduled for Sunday mornings,

though that may be part of it.

I mean the ways in which

… let’s call it the excesses of our economic system,

by which I mean, it doesn’t have to be this way, but it is …

The ways in which the excesses of our system

demand more of our time and energy

than God expects us to have to give.

At present, that seems to happen one of two ways.

If you’re a salaried employee,

you probably don’t work a 40-hour week.

You’re expected to work however many hours you need to work

to get your job done;

only, the company has downsized twice in the last five years,

so now there are half as many salaried employees

to do the same amount of work.

The job doesn’t get done

unless you stay at the office late, and/or on weekends,

and/or you take your work home with you.

There is no time at all for sabbath:

if you rest, and fall behind, and not all your work gets done,

well, there’s always someone who would be happy to take your job.

At the other end of the spectrum,

are the hourly workers being paid minimum wage or not much more …

and probably only being given part-time hours anyway,

so that the employer has no expenses for benefits …

And so, if that’s you, you probably have two or more jobs

just in order to pay your rent and feed your family.

There is no time for sabbath:

evenings are for your second job, and weekends for the third.

If you rest,

you won’t earn enough money to survive.

How can we honor God’s commandment of sabbath …

God’s command to rest, no matter what day of the week we do it! …

in an environment, a culture, an economy,

that makes it nearly impossible?

Even for those of us who are retired,

and may not have the same issues we once had surrounding paid work,

there are issues to think about.

I hear lots of folks – including my own parents –

say that they are so busy in their retirement

that they don’t know how they ever had time for jobs!

Even if our work is volunteer and unpaid,

we still need to take time to rest from it.

Whatever our individual situations …

whether we work too long and hard because it makes us feel important,

or whether it’s because our work situation is too demanding of us …

either way, it suggests that something is seriously out of whack

in our, and our world’s, relationship with God.

We may be limited in what we as individuals can do about it,

which is one reason that the Christian community is so important.

If just one of us says to an employer:

No, I’m not going to respond to your e-mails over the weekend,

we will probably lose our job.

If every Presbyterian in the U.S. of A. did the same thing,

we might actually make some changes in the culture of the workplace.

At the very least,

we would get a serious conversation going.

If just one of us refuses to shop at a place that treats its employees poorly,

in terms of wages and hours and benefits,

it probably won’t make a difference.

If all of us did it,

and made sure everyone knew why,

we might actually make a dent in the exploitation of low-wage workers.

If we refuse to invest our retirement savings

in corporations with poor records of employee relations,

our little drop in the bucket probably won’t even be missed.

If together we invest in companies, or mutual funds made up companies,

that have a track record of fair employment practices,

we do have the opportunity to have an influence.

Keeping the sabbath is not just about the personal choices we make

about how we spend our Sundays,

or whether we ever rest adequately.

It’s also about helping to re-create a world in which

people’s work and labor are honored and not exploited.

Having said that, though,

most of us also still need to work on ourselves.

We are all valuable,

but none of us is indispensable.

We need times of rest from the demands placed on us …

whether those are demands in the workplace,

or in a volunteer task, or housework and yardwork,

or even caregiving for children, or for family members who are ill.

God has commanded it of us.

God rested on the seventh day.

Our life is not just about our work;

it’s about enjoying the creation God has given us,

and the people God has given us to share it with,

and God’s own self.

Come away and rest.

Amen.