Remember the Sabbath

One morning, Harvard president, the university president at that time,

who was Neil Rudenstein, overslept.

For the perfectionist that he was,

in the middle of a major fundraising campaign, it was cause for alarm.

After years of non-stop work in an atmosphere that rewarded frantic overwork

and constant attention to all of the details, Rudenstein collapsed.

He says this, my sense was that I was exhausted. His doctor agreed.

He was only able to return to his post after a three-month-long sabbatical during

which he read books and listened to music and walked with his wife on a Caribbean beach.

In the relentless busyness of our modern life, we have lost the rhythm of action and rest.

It doesn't take us long to notice that.

We get so overworked and we drive and drive and drive, especially if you are

a type A personality, you will constantly be doing and going after everything, and you will do that.

As a pastor and as a neighbor, I encounter people from all walks of life in

every economic level and race.

My friends and acquaintances are people in many different types of businesses,

from general managers at automobile dealerships or to owners of small-town restaurants.

Others in my sphere of relationship, as with you, range from school district

superintendents to to educators, to principals,

city managers, to office clerks, to local police officers,

daycare workers, to stay-at-home moms or retirees, well-paid union employees

or grocery store clerks or McDonald's fry cooks, students to custodians, to cafeteria workers,

local store owners, to Walmart employees,

to corporate executives, pastors, to lay people, to bishops,

almost to a person.

Within this collage that we call life, there is one chorus that is sung time

after time after time when we meet.

Our greeting is, how's it going?

And the response is, I am so busy, I'm exhausted.

I'm tired. I'm busy. I don't know what to do. I've got so much going on.

It seems like that's the response everybody gets.

The more gadgets we acquire in our lives to help us become more efficient or

to bring us more joy or help us enjoy recreation, the busier our lives become.

The computer was designed to make our work easier.

And technology hasn't made our work easier. It just has made more of it.

We get to get more done in a smaller amount of time so that we become more efficient

and more productive, or so they say.

The more our lives speed up, the more we feel worked out and worn out, overwhelmed and lost.

The rat race goes faster and faster every day.

Despair on our hearts, and despite our good hearts and our minds and equally

good intentions, our lives and work rarely feel light, pleasant, or healing.

How many of you have gone to work and said, boy, this is such an easy job?

Well, some do. And our vacations?

Our vacations are two weeks of too fast, making them too short,

and they're too expensive, and so we come home and we're too exhausted to go

back to work. We need a vacation from our vacation.

Instead, as it all piles endlessly upon itself, the whole experience of being

alive begins to melt into one huge obligation.

It becomes the standard greeting everywhere.

I am so busy.

We say this to one another with almost an overabundance of pride, as if our exhaustion.

Was a trophy, as if our ability to withstand stress is a mark of real character.

If we can keep more balls juggled in the air, we're the winners in this thing called life.

The busier we are, the more important we seem to feel about ourselves.

And we imagine we're more important to others, or at least that's what we want to think.

To be unavailable to our spouses and children, to be unable to find time for

the sunset, or even know that the sun has set at all, to whiz through our obligations

without time for a single mindful breath,

this has become the model of a successful life.

I remember times in business when I was at the hospital in Oklahoma City working there,

and I would work all night long, and I thought it was a high honor to see the

sunset go down and the sunrise come up and still be in my office working.

What a great man I am, or that's what I thought. What a ridiculous fool.

Because we do not rest, we lose our way.

We miss the compass points that show us where we're supposed to go.

We lose the nourishment that gives us sustenance.

We miss the quiet that gives us wisdom.

Poisoned by the hypnotic belief that good things come only through tireless

effort, we never really rest, and for want of rest, our lives are in danger.

I remember one time when we were in a church in Michigan, and stress had been

high, and we'd been overworking and all of that, and I came to my board on a Sunday evening,

and I just said to them, I said, friends, I said, I'm not asking you,

I'm telling you, I need to leave tonight on a two-week vacation.

My wife and I are leaving, and we're going. We have no idea where we're going

to go. We're just going to go.

I need this two weeks, or you won't have a pastor. And we come to that point

sometimes in our lives when we get so exhausted and overworked.

In fact, we can't even juggle things anymore because all of our different hats

that we wear begin to crowd in on each other. You ever felt that way?

How have we allowed this to happen? This was not our intention.

This is not what the world was designed to be. This is not how how we dreamed

it would be when we were young.

In fact, probably many of us dreamt that we would be retired at age 45 and live

on a beach somewhere for the rest of our lives with a million dollars in the

bank or more at that time.

Life seemed full of possibility and promise. How did we get so terribly rushed

in a world saturated with work and responsibility, yet somehow stripped of joy and delight.

We look at all of the commercials that you see on TV, or used to see anyway,

I don't know how many of them are, but one says, let's go for the gospel.

Another one, you're number one, look out for number one. And we keep looking

at all of these things that advertise for us to get more faster and do more.

Most spiritual traditions prescribe some kind of Sabbath rest,

a time consecrated to enjoy and celebrate what's beautiful and good,

time to light candles, sing songs, worship,

reflect on the Almighty, listen to stories and tell stories,

bless our children, and walk with our children and our loved ones,

give thanks, share meals, take naps, and walk together.

My wife read somewhere that if a man takes 15 minutes nap every day, he will add to his life.

She says, well, Tim, you're going to live forever.

It's time to be nourished and refreshed as we let our work and our chores and

our important projects lie still,

creating a time in us to reflect on God and to sit in his lap and worship him.

Sabbath time is a revolutionary concept. It's a challenge to the violence of

overwork because it honors the necessary wisdom of dormancy.

Necessary wisdom of dormancy. If certain plant species do not lie dormant during

the winter, the plants will die off.

You know that. You know, that's a history. If the leaves don't fall off the

tree and it gets a time for it to be dormant and collect some of the nutrients

during the winter, that tree is not going to produce the next year.

Interesting thing, it's been told of even businesses, manufacturing businesses

have found that if they let their machinery rest one day a week and be idle,

they don't have as many breakdowns as when they run them 24 hours, seven days a week.

Rest is not just a psychological convenience, it's a spiritual and biological necessity.

Perhaps this is why in most spiritual traditions, remember the Sabbath is more

than simply a lifestyle suggestion, it's a commandment.

It's an ethical law as serious as prohibitions against killing, stealing, and lying.

You notice that in the Ten Commandments, The first few are about our relationship

with God, and chief among those is remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

So here's an example. Physicians are trained to work when they're exhausted,

required to perform when they are sleep-deprived, hurried, and overloaded.

One such physician said this, I discovered in medical school that the more exhausted

I was, the more tests I would order.

I was too tired to see precisely what was going on with my patients.

I could recognize their symptoms and formulate possible diagnoses but I couldn't

be sure and precisely put them together.

So I would order tests to give me what I thought was missing.

But when I was rested, he says, if I had an opportunity to get proper sleep

or meditate or go on a quiet walk, I could rely on my intuition and experience

to tell me what was needed.

And then I would order the test to confirm what I believe was true.

And almost all the time when I was rested and relieved I was right.

Still another one several years ago many years ago now there was a major snowstorm

in Chicago that pounded the city for days and crippled it for weeks.

The city snowplow drivers were called into work because of a large amount of

sickness among their staff.

The few drivers that remained had to work exceedingly long shifts each day with

no days off for more than two weeks.

During one of those shifts, a sleep-deprived and Sabbath-deprived snowplow driver

thought that a car had been deliberately placed in his way to annoy him,

and he was going to get back at whoever left that car there.

So he plowed over and crushed to death the family whose car had broken down on the side of the road.

Is forgetting the Sabbath day rest dangerous? Absolutely.

Sabbath is more than the absence of employment. It is a day when we partake

of the wisdom, peace, and delight that grow only in the soil of time,

time consecrated specifically for play, refreshment, and renewal.

Many of us, in our desperate drive to be successful and care for our many responsibilities,

disabilities, feel terrible guilt when we take any time off at all to rest.

I'm not getting done what I should be getting done.

And I think I've told you this before, the first time I went deer hunting with

my brother, it's all his fault.

I love it now. But anyway, the first time I went, I got out in the deer stand

and I sat there and sat there and sat there and I thought, all I could think

about was all the work I had to do back at the office.

And I thought, this is really painful.

This is really a waste for me to sit out here in the woods.

But as I got to go on, I realized that even watching the squirrels,

even watching the birds,

even watching the leaves fall out of the tree or the acorns hit my tent blind,

that was restful and relaxing and it was what I needed most of anything.

The Sabbath gives us permission we need to simply stop and restore ourselves and our souls.

As part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, it's already woven into the fabric of our society.

Most of us will recall when not long ago—now, a few of you are older than I

am, but not very many—but we will recall when the shops and the offices were

closed on Sundays, right?

The only thing that was open on Sunday was what?

Hospitals, an emergency room. Everything else was closed, even the restaurants.

Not to say that that was a horrible thing or a good thing, but it was something

that we remembered we honored Sunday. In fact, it was understood that no school

activities would happen on Sunday.

Much of modern life is specifically designed to seduce our attention away from

God and away from a Sabbath day rest.

When we are in the world with our eyes wide open, the seductions are inescapable.

Hundreds of channels of cable and television, satellite television available to you.

So you can watch whatever you want. And if you like one thing,

you can, well, no, you don't TiVo anymore.

I don't even know what the new word is for it. but you can save it and watch it again later.

Or if you like one particular show but don't like the reception on that channel, just wait.

You probably got about 40 others with the same thing on it.

We can go through the, scroll through the menu of our cable TV faster than we

can read the Bible and probably get nothing out of it. It seems that's the way it is.

Phones have multiple lines and call waiting, begging us for us to juggle from

one conversation to another.

Just a minute, hold on. I got another call coming. Let me take that one.

Go back and forth, right? Have you ever done that?

Call waiting or caller ID, that's a great way to ignore some things.

By the way, if I don't pick up your call, it may be because I'm calling somebody

else. It's not because I'm trying to ignore you. Just a thought.

Sometimes we have mail and overnight mail and email and internet chat rooms.

The post office, Federal Express, and UPS deliver on Sundays now for an extra fee.

We have Zoom calls. We have pop-up screens.

We have e-zines. We have Facebook, Facebook, and we have online news.

All of that keeps us busy and overworked and looking at stuff all day long.

I mean, I don't know how many of you get Facebook messages or tweets or whatever

from different people that you know are supposed to be at work,

and they're sending you stuff. Thank you, my sister Wendy.

We have those things all the time. We just do it. It's almost like it's constant.

We could do three or four things at once, and Facebook is one of them.

Thank you for for the

invention of facebook because it has helped us so

much in our life by the way that's sarcastic anyway

for those of us with children there are

endless soccer and hockey games and practices baseball and football games band

concerts choir concerts homework laundry lawn work house cleaning and errands

every responsibility every stimulus compels us to do more faster.

Buy me, do me, watch me, try me, drink me.

And the try me one reminds me of Christmas time. I love it when my wife and

I go through the store and you have those little toys on the shelf and they

want you to push them and she goes through and pushes every one of them.

It's great. It's awesome. Everybody knows where Nancy Ward is in the store.

Gary Leslie, who is an executive with the Detroit Edison Electric Company,

said that his life was revolutionized several years earlier when he decided

to devote Sundays to worship and visiting with his family and nothing else. He did not go into work.

Now he says that he finds himself calmer, healthier, and more concerned with

his family's well-being.

Quoting him, he says, my Sundays now set the tone for the week ahead,

not a restful recovery from the week past, but sets the tone for the week coming and for what we have.

He says instead of Sunday being a time when he scrapes his chin up off the floor,

now he finds Sunday as a new starting point for which to challenge the week

ahead for Christ and to rise even further.

A few years ago, Pope John Paul II issued a 100-page letter to the more than

one billion members of the Roman Catholic faith, urging them to take the Sabbath day more seriously.

He wrote this, through Sunday rest, daily concerns and tasks can find their proper perspective.

In his letter titled The Day of the Lord, the Pope said he is concerned about

the stressful demands of the 90s. So that tells you how old that was.

Of course, he's been passed away for quite a while.

He says, what have led millions of Roman Catholics to skip Mass or pack their

Sundays full of work and other hectic activities?

He said, work is very oppressive for many.

He wasn't saying we shouldn't work. He just said, put it in perspective in what you're doing.

Here's a quote from him. He said this, As the day on which man is at peace with

God, with himself and with others,

Sunday becomes a moment when people can look anew upon the wonders of God's creation,

allowing themselves to be caught up in that marvelous and mysterious harmony.

When was the last time you took that Sunday afternoon drive,

that Sunday afternoon walk, The wander up the hill The sitting by a campfire.

Or maybe even just that Sunday afternoon nap. You know, we do have work to do. I know we all do.

But it'll still be there after our nap.

Sometimes we need those times. A few years ago, our own Spring Arbor University,

Free Methodist College in Michigan, their soccer team took a stand for Christ.

They had advanced to play in the national championship game.

This was their chance to win it all, and they looked forward to doing so.

So in fact, they were favored to win it all, to be the number one team in the

Division IV, I think it was, in the NCAA.

But the game was scheduled for a Sunday. The NCAA had determined that they needed

to have those games on Sunday to bring in the most amount of revenue.

And so the game was scheduled for Sunday. They stated their objection to playing

on Sunday. In fact, the other team said they would be willing to change the

date if the league would do so.

But the league said, no, we're going to have it played on Sunday.

You will either play or you forfeit.

And so they were faced on whether or not they were going to play in the national

championship soccer game.

But while they viewed their responsibility to the team to win the game,

they also reviewed their responsibility to God even greater.

And they voted unanimously as a team to sit out that game and forfeit the game

and not win the championship.

For soccer that year. Were they looked at as losers?

Probably in the name of statistics, but that was the only way they were viewed as users.

Interesting enough, when they forwarded that game, the game was not played,

so the league didn't get the revenue they thought they were going to get on Sunday.

Oftentimes, church families must decide between worship and sports activities.

I remember a family that we knew in Michigan.

They lived across the street from us, and they had their children in hockey

and soccer and everything else.

There were Sunday travel teams, travel leagues.

And they would get up early, sometimes four or five o'clock in the morning to

take off to head up north Michigan to some hockey tournament.

And I asked them how that was. I said, why do you do that? Well, it's our family time.

We work so much, this is our only time to be with family. I said,

tell me about your family time.

Well, the kids sleep in the car on the way up there and back.

And when we get there, they go out onto the ice rink, and we sit up in the stands

and we yell at them. I mean, yell at the refs.

And then they get back in the car, and they go home, and they sleep all the

way. I said, so how's that working for you?

Thousands of dollars for hockey uniforms, and yet their family time isn't any better.

The costs associated with these things are overwhelming. And it becomes a vicious

cycle that is never ending because all we are pursuing is happiness,

and it seems that it's continually out of reach.

All we need is something more to make us happy, right?

The point of reclaiming Sabbath day is not to return to some forced legalistic Sabbath.

We cringe at the thought of the dreary and humorless Sundays that obscured the

more traditional healing prescriptions of laughter and companionship and fellowship.

I know of a church, the Apostolic Church of Peoria, Illinois.

Illinois, and every Sunday they had two services, and every Sunday they would

have a dinner after church where the families of the church stayed together and ate dinner.

And this was a church of about 600, and they would stay together and have dinner

together, and then they'd go their ways and oftentimes have activities at night

where they just got together with other families.

I wonder sometimes, what's happened to our front port?

But God's commandment to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy is still

a commandment, and all of God's commandments were given with God's glory in

mind and also with our well-being in mind.

By keeping Sabbath day rest, we are allowing our bodies, which God has fearfully

and wonderfully made, to recuperate and to be at their peak in health.

We're allowing our minds to be refreshed to their peak in performance,

And we are allowing our spirits to be restored to perfect communion with God as our creator.

A new Sabbath must arise.

A new Sabbath must invite a congregation about the forgotten necessity of rest.

Sabbath oftentimes is anything but holy, but we need to keep the Sabbath day holy.

A new commitment to the Sabbath day is like another reason to do as God said, as Jesus said,

come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Sabbath days are for us to come to God, every day is, but especially the Sabbath.

Push everything else aside and rest.

Read a book, light a candle, walk with your wife,

talk with your neighbor, put some wood in the fire pit out back,

brew some coffee, enjoy the day, and enjoy God.

God said this in his commandment, remember the sabbath day why not because of

legalism but to keep it holy.

I think we should do that. I know this man doesn't do it as much as he should,

and my Sabbath is usually not on Sunday because it's the only hour I work every week.

Well, we need to take that time, and I'm preaching to myself as much as I am

to you. In fact, our superintendent and I were talking about this.

Neither one of us are very good at taking a day and just shutting everything

else out, turning off the phone, and we've got to do that.

We've got to do that, and I've got a wife that's going to help me do that.

If you don't have a wife that's going to help you, find somebody else that will

help you and say, what are you doing for a Sabbath day?

How are you keeping the day God has made for rest? How are you keeping it holy?

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we close this time of worship,

it It seems like your commandments are sometimes hard for us,

but actually, this one shouldn't be hard.

It should be easy, because this should be the one where we realize that all

we have to do is worship you.

In Jesus' name, amen.