Saying Yes
Luke
1:26-38
A
Sermon Preached by
University
Congregational United
Help
us rest into this Sabbath time, O God, so we too may hear the angels sing. Amen.
Several people I talked to had been planning on doing some Christmas shopping after church last Sunday.
“Dave’s sermon on Sabbath upset my whole day”, one man complained. “I couldn’t go to the store and pick up the things I was planning to. Instead, I went home, put up the Christmas tree, and worried about when I was going to get all my shopping done!”
A mom got a call on her cell phone from one of her kids. “Mom, Susan won’t do the dishes!”
“Why not?”, she asked.
“She says it’s her Sabbath and she is supposed to be resting!”
For the past three weeks, we’ve been considering what it might mean to follow the fourth of the 10 commandments, “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy”. (Exodus 20: 8-11) Built into the fabric of creation is rest. After six days of doing, worrying, consuming, it is necessary for the earth and all God’s creatures to rest.
Sabbath helps me remember who I am. Before I am a son, a partner, a pastor, a preacher – I am a human being.
We teach our kids about what it means to be human by how we live. And our kids are watching us. From the kids I’ve been talking to, the poll ratings for we adults is pretty low. Our kids don’t like what they are seeing in the lives we adults are living.
As one girl in our church put it,
“No, I don’t want to be an
adult. Adults have lots of nervous
breakdowns. They worry about taxes and
bills. They don’t have a lot of fun. And although they complain about not seeing
their friends, they don’t make time to see them.”
Another put it this way. “Their lives are all about work and most adults I see are pretty miserable. I do see some adults who balance work and play, making money and hanging out and having fun but not many.”
Instead, as one of our youth put it this way, “I see lots of examples of why I don’t want to be an adult. I want to think about the future and not have the kind of cynicism I see most adults having. I don’t want to just settle for a job that pays good wages. I want something more than that. I don’t like what our economic system does to people and the adults I know.”
According to our kids and what they see in us, we are:
Overburdened,
Overstressed,
Overworked,
We have lost our sense of fun and play,
We have forgotten how to be human.
No wonder our kids don’t want to become adults.
We’ve taught our kids way too well. They have been watching us and learning from us, and learning as kids do by imitation. Many of our kids are mirroring adult life by having too much stress, too full schedules, overburdened lives and not enough play in their lives.
Last weekend we had a senior high retreat and it became clear on the first night that our group was tired and most in need of time to just hang out, be together, play together. We had made together some good, some very good plans for the weekend. But good as those plans were something more important was needed. So for 36 hours we put down all our plans and played – we walked the beach, played Monopoly and Psychiatrist and basketball, danced on the beach, colored, played flashlight capture the flag, ate really well, went to bed late and had good talks. We practiced Sabbath. Last Sunday morning I asked the group, how often do you get to do this? “Never.” “Not often enough” came back the responses.
What are kids are saying is true:
Our lives are out of balance and we don’t know what to do about it.
As you look at your own lives you know this is true.
As one parent put it, “We are crazily balancing 1001 small details at once and trying to finish painting the living room in time for our parents to arrive on Wednesday!”
We’re feeling pressure from all sides – from our employers, our families, our churches.
We want everything for our kids and that is costing us more and more money, and time and energy.
We are never out of touch with each other and our offices.
And we wonder why we come to worship and weep because this is the only time many of us have for silence, for allowing ourselves to stop, to listen, to feel and be still. To be held by God after all of our holding.
At dinner the other night, someone asked, “What is the best decision you’ve ever made?” The best decision I have made in the past 8 years was to keep a weekly Sabbath.
More than any other single practice, keeping a weekly Sabbath has helped me, encouraged me, challenged me to grow and mature as a human being and man of faith.
Ask any 14, 44 or 80 year old and they will tell you – growing up hurts. And it does.
Dave and I have practiced a weekly Sabbath for 8 years from the first time he preached about Sabbath and thought it would be a good idea to listen to his own sermon and have us take it on. The first couple of years I wondered why were doing this as we seemed to save our biggest arguments for our weekly Sabbaths.
After breakfast we would glare at each other, “Now what?”
“I feel so stupid, so useless.”
“This is so selfish. Such a waste of time!”
“I don’t know what YOU’RE supposed to be doing Dave! This was your idea!”
Sabbath is a hard practice for busy people who don’t know how to stop and don’t know what to do with unstructured time.
And Sabbath will make us change how we structure our time and structure our lifestyles.
Sabbath just won’t fit as one more thing to do in our schedules.
It won’t work if we see it that way.
There will never be enough time or energy or will or leisure or peaceableness for Sabbath.
Instead, as one Biblical scholar put it, “Sabbath demands that we re-evaluate and re-prioritize our time. So long as we are in pursuit of one more achievement, one more sale, one more commodity, one more party, or one more advance there will be no time for Sabbath. Instead, Sabbath making may well entail the termination of our routines, disengagement from some social conventions, even lowering one’s standard of living.” (Walter Brueggemann, The New Interpreters Bible, Exodus)
I want to encourage you to say “Yes” to something that is hard to do and that even after the first couple of years you won’t necessarily like.
Why is all that disruption worth it?
Why is it important to find a different way to handle our Christmas shopping?
Why is it important to have conversations with our kids about sharing and keeping household chores on the Sabbath?
Why? Because I have learned in a weekly Sabbath how to enjoy life, enjoy being human and enjoy getting to know and love God and making room to know how much God loves us. Keeping Sabbath has helped me enjoy life more and this amazing gift of being alive.
Keeping a weekly Sabbath has helped me say “YES” to a larger rhythm of life.
I, like you, get caught up in all my little chores and duties and I can think that life all comes down to checking off my lists and getting a bunch of stuff done. I can get deluded in thinking that it really is all up to me. On Sabbath I put away my little green notebook of lists, I don’t try to get anything done but only what I want to do and what helps me enjoy the day, enjoy the people in it, enjoy myself, enjoy God. I am reminded that we need to both work – and rest. I need to hold stuff – and I need to let God hold me.
Keeping a weekly Sabbath helps me say “YES” to getting emptied out of all the stuff that fills me up. Without Sabbath I don’t think I’d realize how many emotions and feelings, regrets, guilt, fear, sorrow get gunked up in me. In Sabbath I realize I have all those gunked up feelings and emotions in me. That alone helps begin to move them out of the stuck places they reside in me. And when I have to put down the project I am worrying about, the assignment I am obsessing about, well, I pick it up in a new way.
Finally, keeping a weekly Sabbath helps me say “YES” to Joy.
I find joy when I have time just to be. These days I really have fun on my Sabbath days – I do not what I have to do but what I love to do – and when I do what I love that brings me closer to God. I do the things I don’t have the chance to do on some other days – take a long walk, play a game, hang out and laugh with friends, make a big mess in the kitchen making bread. And because I enjoy that day so much I take that joy with me into the rest of my week.
That way of life of keeping Sabbath is just the kind of life we see in Mary the Mother of Jesus. I love it that Mary, probably a 13 or 14 year old, shows what it means to be human, what it means to be an adult. She had the gifts which Sabbath brings - room, time, imagination and faith to be who God was calling her to be. And what more can we hope for than that – to know we are doing what we are supposed to be doing, being who we are supposed to be, and enjoy doing that.
Gabriel showing up was probably not in Mary’s plans – but she knew there is life beyond her own little plans – there is a larger rhythm of life that holds us. Although most of us don’t expect to hear an angel calling to us, we do hope that we will hear what we are being invited to be about that is most important. Sabbath helps us hear that.
Mary like some of us panicked when she heard what Gabriel was asking of her. “You’ve got to be kidding!”, I can hear her say. But while she might have felt afraid or worried she wasn’t trapped or overcome by her feelings. We too don’t want to be all gunked up with too much but have enough empty space in us so that although we too might feel afraid or worried about what is being asked of us, we won’t be overcome by our feelings but able to respond as we are being called to. Sabbath helps us do that.
Finally, Mary knew a Joy which comes from taking time to rest in God. She could dare to trust that absurd as it sounds, God wanted to use her. She knew it wasn’t all up to her – but that God held her, holds our lives and so she was able to say, “Here I am a handmaid of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.” That’s the kind of Sabbath life I think we all want to live. Amen.