When Your Soul Need to Catch Up

       You people have it sooo easy.  You come to church for a one hour service. You sit in a comfortable chair.  The building is air conditioned in summer and heated in winter.

       Let me tell you, our ancestors were made of sterner stuff.  Going to church used to be a real test of stamina.

       In the 1700s, church buildings were unheated.  Some families brought their dogs with them so they could lie on their feet and keep them warm.  Ushers were equipped with dog tongs to break up fights.

       Worship was uncomfortable.  Families sat in pews partitioned from their neighbors.  Three sides of the box were fitted with narrow shelf-like seats.  Teenage boys didn’t sit with their parents.  They were seated in groups, usually on the stairs.  A tithing man with a long pole was assigned to keep them out of trouble.  Boys given to mischief might be confined in a cage outside the church. 

       Who says we can’t learn from the past?

       I’m sure the children got bored.  But there were no children’s sheets to work on.  There was no children’s church.  The customary sermon lasted two to three hours – not the twenty minutes of today.  It was not unusual for a prayer to take one to two hours – during which the people stood or leaned against the pew walls for support.  The minister spoke to a captive audience.  When the congregation assembled the doors were closed and guarded.

       So what’s wrong with you?  You act like Sunday is supposed to be enjoyable.

       Well you’ll be glad to know that Jesus agrees with you.  In our New Testament text we read how Jesus’ disciples do something that violates the Sabbath rules of the Pharisees.  The Pharisees are ticked off.  But Jesus tells them that people weren’t made to serve a day but that a day was given for the benefit of people.  Jesus can say this with such authority because he owns the day – “So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

       In the first commandment God says to us, “Give me your heart – you shall have no other Gods before me.”  In the second commandment, God says, “Give me your eyes – don’t make idols.  In the third commandment God says, “Give me your lips” – don’t take my name in vain.  Now, in this commandment, God says to us, “Give me your schedule – give me your Day Timer – Remember the Sabbath day and keep it hold.”

       Jesus tells us the reason for the commandment.  It’s for our benefit.  Because God made us with an internal seven day clock.  We don’t need to read this in scripture.  We know this inside ourselves. 

       The ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians both lived on a seven day cycle.  The Romans tried an eight day cycle but that didn’t work. They went to seven.  The Incas had a seven day cycle. During the age of reason the French adopted a ten day cycle – 9 days of labor and one of rest – but discovered that it wouldn’t do.  They went back to seven.  If you’ve been in France you know that the French have reversed it to one day of work and six days of leisure.

       Some American explorers were on safari in Africa . On the seventh day, after breakfast was finished, the African guides went over and sat under a tree. The Americans shouted, “Come on, let’s go.” One of the guides replied, “We don’t go today.  We rest today to let our souls catch up with our bodies.”

       When do you let your soul catch up to your body?  There is a built in rhythm to life.  God knows the rhythm we need for health.  So he tells us that we need to have one day out of seven that is different – that isn’t more of the same.  We also need to reserve some energy for this day.  It’s not the only day we have off.  In a real way, our Sabbath is the day we most have on.

       The Sabbath secret isn’t inactivity.  The secret is rhythm.  God knows how we are made.  And God gives us the Sabbath not as a burden but as a gift.  It is a fight to us of adequate rhythm for life and it is a command for us to allow that adequate rhythm to others when they work for or with us.  God knows that we need this if we are going to be human beings and not just humans doing.

       Now this is obviously a sermon for the people who aren’t here this morning because they had to get the house clean or step into the office for just a bit.  You can always find reasons to work.  It is so easy to justify using Sunday afternoon to get a jump on the week’s chores or on that report in your briefcase.  That’s why God gives this as a commandment – not as a guideline.

       Now it is true that the Old Testament Sabbath law allowed work exceptions for emergencies – you could pull your cow out of the ditch for example.  But emergencies must be rare exceptions – not the weekly norm.

       A man who made his employees to do Sunday work justified himself to evangelist Dwight L. Moody by asking, “If you had a mule that kept falling in to a hole on the Sabbath, what would you do?”  Moody replied, “Well, sir, if the mule continued to fall into a hole, I would either sell the mule or fill the hole.”  In other words, an emergency you face every week isn’t an emergency.  It’s a chosen lifestyle.  Over the long haul we can do more work in six days than we can in seven.  A rundown person is an unproductive person.

       What does it mean to keep the Sabbath day holy?  It doesn’t mean that we spend all morning in church and then all afternoon with our hands folded doing nothing.  We may do stuff.  But we do what is different from what we do the rest of the week.  We set aside a day for God, for our families, and for building community with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

       This is the first Sunday of a new year.  Here is a new year’s resolution to keep: “I will remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy – and enable my family and those who work for me and those who work with me to do the same.”  This may mean helping with the household chores on Saturday so they don’t have to be done on Sunday.  Parents, this may mean making the hard call that your kids can’t participate in the “sports stars of the millennium wonder team” because the “only time the games can be played is Sunday morning” when you’ve promised god to bring them to His house.  Women, this may mean sticking that honey-do list in a drawer on Saturday night and attaching a stout padlock.

       What does it mean to keep the Sabbath day holy? It starts with God.  Without Sabbath time for reverence, we end up harried and flat, frustrated, and fatigued and at each others throats.  We need periods of reverence in our lives, in which we ponder gratefully what life is about. 

       Albert Einstein wrote: “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is at the source of all true art and science.  Those to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt with awe are as good as dead; their eyes are closed – to know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend – this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.”

       But when we lose the sense of the sacred, we lose the reference point for who we are and what life is about.  So God calls us to set aside one day out of seven to reconnect and be redirected.  He wants us to lift our eyes out of the weekly ruts.  People sometimes say, “I’m too tired to a take time to worship,” but God says, “Until you take time to worship, you always will be tired” – You’ve heard the saying, “Seven days without worship makes one weak.”  People sometimes say, “I’m too busy to take time to relax.”  But God says, “Until you take time to relax, you always will be busy – not productive but busy.”

       Sabbath time reminds us that we aren’t God.  We are physical beings with a physical clock and physical needs as well as spiritual beings with spiritual needs.  We need a Sabbath to realize who we are, to meditate on God, and let our souls catch up with our bodies.  We need a season in which to focus on what is deep within ourselves, to savor the goodness of life and thank God for it.  We need a time to gather in community, to hear scripture, to hear God’s word for our day.  We need Sabbath time if we are to be found by God and if we are to rediscover the holiness of love and the beauty of our common life as God’s people in which we care for and serve each other.  Let us “remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.”  It’s a great gift.