The Sabbath Year

"The Sabbath Year"

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
July 19, 2009

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught.
He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”
For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went
away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and
recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead
of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them,
because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many
things.
When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat.
When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, and rushed about that
whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And
wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces,
and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched
it were healed.

Friends, I come to you this morning to apologize somewhat for my performance a few
weeks ago at Family Night Supper, when I first shared with you my kernel of an idea
about this Sabbath Year. I sometimes make the mistake of proposing something
without putting words around the idea, words and structure, so that it is more
understandable, more accessible to the people I am trying to explain myself too. Even
Douglas, who has been hearing my ramblings about this idea, even Douglas, has
asked, “now, what exactly are you talking about when you talk about this Sabbath
Year?” If I hadn’t explained it well at home, then there is no doubt that I have failed to
explain it fully to you, and, so for that reason, and for confusing you beyond measure, I
do apologize.

And yet, even after our difficult conversation from that night, and from the wise words of
caution that were expressed by some of you, I continue to feel in my soul that there is
something, something to this idea, that perhaps it is time to take the Sabbath seriously,
to take it seriously as individuals, but also to take it seriously as a congregation. I don’t
mean that we should necessarily set aside Sunday as a holy day, and reinstitute the
blue laws, or not pick up the phone on the Sabbath, to make it day where we cannot do
anything because of some set of rules that we or someone else has laid down. On the
cover of our bulletin today, we have a painting by Samuel Hirsenzberg depicting The
Sabbath Rest found in many Jewish homes in the last century. In the Jewish tradition,
the Sabbath began at sundown on Friday night and ended at sundown on Saturday
evening.   A reviewer of this painting points out how the Jewish people in the 19th
century actually lived out the Sabbath. The reviewer writes:

In [the painting] The Sabbath Rest, the entire family including an ill, elderly relative
spend the Sabbath afternoon in one room. The view from the window is of an
unwelcoming industrial landscape, but presumably threats of violence also kept them all
inside. The family have eaten their Shabbat lunch, and there is still a bowl of fruit and
some nuts on the table. Notice also the Shabbat candlesticks still on the table from the
night before. These are the only objects of any value in the home, reflecting how
important Shabbat was to this family. There are family photographs on the wall. The
lamp [on the ceiling] is typical of Shabbat lamps found in Jewish homes since medieval
times. These were in the form of a star, and were lit at the same time as the candles to
welcome in Shabbat. The star shaped part of the lamp contained wicks and oil and the
basin below caught any dripping fuel. It was important that the lamps were fashioned to
burn for 24 hours, because it is forbidden to do any sort of work, including the lighting
of lamps during Shabbat.

As oddly beautiful as this picture is, literally and figuratively, I don’t think I am interested
in re-creating this kind of Sabbath, even something like this that was probably close to
what Jesus himself experienced when he practiced Sabbath in the first century. What I
am interested in exploring and what I think we should explore together is the profound
and powerful principle of the Sabbath itself, a day of rest, a day of delight, of joy, found
in family and friends and in the world that God has given to us. Whether that day is on
Sunday or Saturday or Tuesday, or whenever, the idea that we must rest, we must slow
ourselves down and immerse ourselves in the resting arms of God, at some point, is
something that has intrigued and challenged me all of my life, but especially in the last
12 years, as I have practiced ministry with you and others in various churches. I love
the work of ministry, and I have great appreciation of this gift of being able to minister
full-time, and yet, I found myself becoming more and more tired, a bit weary of it, simply,
I think, because I do not take Sabbath seriously.    Nadia Bolz Weber, a Lutheran
minister herself, wrote the following in a recent blog posting on the Christian Century
website:

Pastors are notorious for overworking, and the church colludes with its clergy in this
particular sin. When people say, "Pastor Bob is a total workaholic," we all know that this
is secretly seen as a pastoral virtue. To work 60+ hours a week is to show commitment
and passion.

And there's so much work to do, isn't there? How is the church supposed to function
without us? Well-meaning friends smile and say that we must take a sabbath and rest.
But as a friend of mine once observed, rest is only part of the reason for taking a
sabbath. If the sabbath were only for rest, we might be tempted to think it serves only to
fuel us back up so we can do more work. After all, our work is very important. The world
needs us.

"You have to take sabbath," my friend told me, "if only to realize that God's redeeming
work in the world actually goes on just fine without you." Ouch.

Ouch, indeed, Nadia, ouch indeed. And yet I wondered whether it was just me, whether
this whole Sabbath year idea was simply about my need to learn the difficult lesson of
slowing down and letting God take over…and I have no doubt that is true, that the
practice of Sabbath is certainly something I must learn for myself, but I don’t think it’s
just a lesson I alone need to learn—in reality, Sabbath keeping is something that most
of us need to learn. I think we all struggle with slowing down, and resting in God, and
fully trusting that God will provide, with really believing that God doesn’t need us for all
seven days of the week, and that God and the church and our families, and our jobs,
and our farms can do just fine without us, for at least one day. If God rested on the
seventh day, why would we think we didn’t need to rest us as well, we mere mortals?

Certainly in our text from Mark today we find Jesus being challenged by the crowds,
whose need of him and his power and his words seem insatiable. And yet, Jesus too
must rest, he too must go and be quiet before God and himself—he and the disciples
did not even have time to eat, so says the Gospel of Mark. “Come to the deserted
place,” says Jesus, away from the frenzy of being busy all the time, and from the
mistake of thinking that busyness equals holiness, that being busyness equals being a
person of worth, that busyness equals getting something done in this world, as if the
measure of who we are in this world is actually measured by how much we have
accomplished in this life, how much of our never ending to-do list has been checked
off. The interesting thing in our text is that Jesus and disciples don’t quite get away—
the crowds come after them, in their neediness, in their desperation for the gifts that
Jesus brings, his hands of healing, his words of healing. The reaction that Jesus has to
them is one of compassion, which, if you break down the word compassion itself down,
it actual means, “with suffering” to suffer with. The reason why Jesus had compassion,
why he cared so deeply, why he the ability to suffer with, to walk with others who were in
pain, was because he took care of himself, he found places and spaces, deserted
places, where he leaned more and more heavily on the God that had given him the
Good News, this Good News of how much God loves this world and. The reason why
Jesus could so deeply care for others was because he took care of himself, by
honoring the Sabbath and his own need for rest.

Well, the reality is that we too, like Jesus, have that good news to tell, we members and
friends of this congregation, and our particular message is needed so much in this
world, and especially in our part of Michigan—that God’s love and compassion includes
you and me, and the ones we love and the ones we struggle to love, it includes all of
us, of different colors, and families, and orientations, and politics. It really does include
us all…and yet, I can’t help thinking that somehow we haven’t quite gotten the knack of
how to tell that story to our neighbors here in Coloma, in Watervliet, in Bainbridge, and
Hartford. You know, I’m going to begin my fourth year of ministry here in ministry this
August, and, much to my frustration, I’ve simply not been able to grow this congregation
numerically—we have a few more attendees than when we first started, making up for
some who left when I first arrived, plus adding a few more, but it hasn’t gone beyond
that…and that is a new experience for me, as arrogant as that may sound. I’ve always
been able to grow congregations, or at least be a partner in helping a Senior Minister
grow a congregation numerically. Now, most importantly, I’d like to think we’ve grown
spiritually together during the past three years, that the services and the sermons have
enriched our walks with God, and with each other, imperfect as they are, these
sermons, studies, and services—a few of you have shared that you felt that was the
case, and I thank you for sharing that with me. And yet, I’ve been doing everything I
can think of, that I could do with integrity, to encourage more people to join us here, but
it hasn’t quite happened—our numbers haven’t grown in the ways I had expected. Now,
sure, there are sociological reasons demographic reasons—we in Michigan are only
one of two states that have experienced a decline in population in the last 10 years,
and a much higher than normal exodus out of our young people to other states,
especially college educated students. Still, there are plenty of people in this community
who need to hear the good news, who would welcome the gift of this place, and this
community, and the God we share with each other in place.

For three years, I have done church and church growth like I have always done it—by
working hard and working long hours, doing this new thing, and that new thing, with a
few successes and few more failures, like I have always done it, and yet, the results
have been mixed—I think we remain a strong congregation, but we remain essentially
the same as when I first arrived, at least numerically, though I would like to think that
our spiritual roots have grown deeper into the Source, into the reason why we gather,
and, of course, that reason is God.   I’ve had to really think and pray, and struggle with
God over this, and I’ve come to conclusion that if what I have always done to grow
churches doesn’t work here, that if I cannot outwork this issue, if I cannot outthink this
problem, this question of how to grow us deeper and wider, then maybe I need to
consider doing something completely new,…like maybe completely trusting in God, and
leading us, this congregation into a journey of complete trust in the God who has given
us a reason to gather for worship, and to pray, and to eat together, and struggle
together and love together.

And ultimately, at its base, Sabbath, this principle of resting in God, this principle of
intentional rest, is all about trusting God, trusting that God will take care of us, that we
certainly have work to do on for six days but on the seventh day, on the seventh day,
we rest in God, trusting that there is enough time to do what needs to be done, that
there is enough money to do the ministry we have been called to do, to trust there are
enough resources for us to do what God has called us to do. Sabbath is ultimately
about trust, about trusting God and about trusting each other that we will pick up each
other’s slack, and that there will be indeed enough work and enough hands to get that
work done. Its ultimately believing in God’s abundance, and God’s care, and trusting
that God will take up the slack for us, will take care of us, and that we can put down our
work, our emotional work, our spiritual work—yes, even our spiritual work, our church
work, if only for a little while and knowing that God will take care of us. There is
enough, enough time, enough resources, there is enough of God, for us to be able to
rest in God, and learn to trust God for everything in our lives—for our families, for our
church, for our spouse, for our finances, for our very lives.

And so, I want to present to you this idea again, that we take a new journey, if only for a
year, but hopefully for a lifetime, that starting in September, we embark on a Sabbath
Year, a year of rest, as a congregation, as people of faith, that we cease our worry
about our future, cease our striving, thinking that we can outwork our problems, and we
start to learn how once again to rest and trust in God who will take what we can do on
six days, literally and metaphorically, and turn it into something wonderful, even as we
rest, and let God do the rest.   No, I don’t mean we will stop worshipping together on
Sundays, or that we won’t continue to do our ministry, or that I as a pastor am taking
the year off. What I do mean is that as a congregation we start learning how to be a
Sabbath people in four major areas in the life of our church: first, we learn Sabbath
through learning new ways of prayer that focus on resting in God, and trusting in God,
in a Centering Prayer Group that will start in the fall; second, we learn to actually do
Sabbath in our worship, by integrating Sabbath themes into our worship, and then
taking an incredibly countercultural, wonderfully radical three week Sabbath, a three
week rest, ourselves from our own worship services in January 2010, and that we use
that gift by going out to worship with other congregations to see how they worship God
and then come back on the fourth Sunday to share the best of what our sisters and
brothers do in their worship of God; third, we learn Sabbath keeping by being more
intentional about stewardship, in thinking about how and why generosity is truly an act
of trust in God, a God who meets that trust with good things, graceful things,
unexpected things—when we choose to give to the church rather spending it on
ourselves, or even by saving it instead, we are trusting that God will take care of our
needs, one way or another; and fourth, that we begin to learn how to keep Sabbath by
coming together in home based small groups, called Sabbath Circles, where we learn
about what Sabbath itself is, and how we can integrate Sabbath practices into our own
lives, where we learn how we take care of ourselves, and our bodies and our spirits.

By integrating the principle of Sabbath, the practice of rest and trust in God, through
these four ways—through prayer, worship, stewardship, and home based small
groups—I really do think we can be transformed by the journey itself, and that
transformation will only make us more attractive to those who walk through these doors,
to see if this place is where they will intentionally attend to their relationship with God.
This is a special place, this church, like all churches are, of course, and yet we are also
going through a difficult time as a country, as a community, which I think requires a
different way of doing things. The way we have always done things, personally,
spiritually, financially, and communally, will not work for us anymore, and so in a world
that is looking for people to live out a radical faith in God, a world that is looking for an
authentic and real faith, I really think that living out a deep trust that rooted in both
working hard, and leaving the rest to God, leaving it up to God, on the Sabbath, so to
speak, well, that is something that will speak to a lot of people, or at least I believe it
will. Now, I’ve been wrong before, probably more wrong than right, but I’m slowly
coming to learn the grand lesson of Sabbath, and that is this: I can do what I can do, we
can do what we can do, and then we are to rest, and leave the rest to God. Amen.