Sabbath Sermon from 3/8/2015 at Vineyard West Philly

Outline

1. In work mode, we trust ourselves more than we trust God.

2. In rest mode, we trust Jesus and experience peace

3. Sabbath is a gift that prevents burnout, transforms work, and offers us time to spend with God.

Good morning, VCC. I’m going to be continuing in the sermon series of these practices during lent called Life in Paradox. Brad is out of town this week. He is on vacation. Resting. Recharging. And by the time that he comes back, he should be ready for whatever. Brad is highlighting something for us all: the importance and beauty of rest. I think it is very important to rest, and it’s something that our western society does pretty poorly. We will organize, categorize, and prioritize tasks that need to be done for the hour, day, week, month, and even year. Unfortunately, this work mentality is super detrimental to us especially in our relationship with God.

We don’t give ourselves rest.

There once was a man in the early 20^th century who was pretty good at running. He was slotted to run in the 1924 Olympics. However, the race was to be held on a Sunday, and the man made waves around the world headlines for his refusal to run on the Sabbath. He had deep convictions about this race, and he ended up running another race on another day. This man was named Eric Lidell. He was the famous runner in the movie, “Chariots of Fire.” Though a very old movie, I never got around to seeing it until recently because I really hated that dumb song. You know what I’m talking about right? (Hum the song). Why would this guy who had been training his whole life be willing to not run this huge race? Because he made the Sabbath a priority.

Often, it feels like we are always running around. Moving from one thing to the next. But if we don’t prioritize a day each week where we rest, we will surely burn out.

Today we will be talking about Sabbath, and we will look at the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38-42. In this story, there are two characters that interact with Jesus: Martha who opened her home up to Jesus and her sister, Mary. This passage speaks heavily on Martha’s attitude, but it only has one verse on what Mary did where she sat at the Lord’s feet and listened. We all have anxieties. We all have worries. But when we come to Jesus in work mode, it is impossible to encounter the peace that he gives us. In order to experience the peace of God, we must find rest in his presence. This is Sabbath. So let us open our Bibles to that story or you can follow along on the screen.

Luke 10:38-42

38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “You are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

As we look at these two great women in the Bible, we will see why Mary chose what is better. We don’t know much about either of these two women. Martha plays the major role in this narrative. In a way, she functions as a “what not to do.” Speaking of, if this whole seminary thing doesn’t work out, I would love to take over Clinton’s spot in “What Not to Wear.” Maybe that can be my bi-vocation. Whatever it takes to be Twitter famous! Anyways, in this text we see two models of spending time with Jesus: work and rest. Martha works. The Greek used to describe Martha’s serving and preparations is diakoneo which is where we get the word “deacon” like in the church. But the word that describes the serving is that it distracted her. It was all this serving as an objective fact and not a neurotic obsessiveness that kept her from being with Jesus.

First, it must be said that we are all like Martha. We love to work. Though I don’t often get to host people in my little dorm room in seminary, there was a point in my life where I did get to host my friends. I used to be the hostess with the mostest, but sadly, dorm life is not the most conducive for get together’s. But there are always things to do when people come over. I remember growing up all the times my parents would have small group (they were called kinship groups back then) at our house, and then us kids (well it was just my older brother and me because Jaclyn was too little to help) would have to vacuum, dust, take out the trash, straighten up our rooms, sweep, help with shopping, cooking. And if things looked out of place, we would have to place all them in the basement. Running back and forth, cleaning and preparing…I’m honestly getting worn out just thinking about these things we used to do. Maybe it is good that we’re talking about the importance of rest today. But when we come to Jesus like Martha, in work mode, it is hard to experience Jesus’ peace.

I’m sure that Martha probably did all these things to make sure that her home was presentable to Jesus. The passage says that “Martha opened up her home to him.” In order for Martha to open up her home, she probably hustled and bustled to get her house ready for their encounter with Jesus. She had all these “preparations.” All these tasks. All this work that must get finished in order for her to host Jesus.

(Pause) What do we think must be done in order to spend time with Jesus? (Pause) Martha lacked trust. She put all her trust in her own capabilities. Her own works. Her own deeds. In work mode, we trust ourselves more than we trust God.

I know that I constantly am trying to think the right thing, say the right thing, and do the right thing whenever I’m making my preparations for spending time with Jesus. I make all these lists and procedures thinking that this will help me in my spiritual growth. I’ll prepare and prepare and prepare. And this isn’t inherently a bad thing. Any musician knows the importance of preparation and practice. But when the preparation keeps us from spending time with God, we are robbing ourselves from true intimacy with our Lord. Because being in work mode distracts us from spending time with Jesus like it says in v40.

And when these preparations, tasks, and things to do pile up, we get worried and upset just like Martha in v41. Responsibilities bog us down. Societal pressures wear us out. Internal expectations, these ideas that only we have that we must, we should, we ought…these are the things that keep us from joy with Jesus. In Matthew 6, Jesus is telling his followers the importance to not worry. But our natural tendency when things compile and exponentially grow is to worry. Because if we don’t worry about these things, they won’t get done. The most important thing for a lot of us is crossing off things from our list. But the problem with these lists is that they never end. There are always things to do. There will always be work to do, but we will  never have peace if we’re always working.

You can hear the desperation in Martha’s voice when she talks to Jesus. She says, “Lord, don’t you care that ­my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

Martha won’t even call her sister by name. She is too upset to do that. She feels alone. That she is the only one that cares. That no one is helping her. Her question to Jesus, “Don’t you care” is similar to the one that the disciples ask Jesus in Mark 4:38 when they were in the storm, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” Martha, like the disciples, feels helpless in the storm of her work, and she feels like Jesus is not concerned. Martha experiences no peace in her time with Jesus because she is worried with things to do.

Which brings us to Mary, the “source” of Martha’s frustration. To Martha, Mary is a lazy good for nothing. Mary knows the amount of work that must be done to prepare for Jesus, but she instead chooses to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to his word. Mary chooses rest mode over work mode, and the passage tells us that she chose the greater part. In rest mode, we trust Jesus and experience peace. Some few observations about Mary’s actions. She sits at Jesus’ feet. Throughout Luke and Acts, sitting at the feet indicated an acknowledgement of authority (such as the sinful woman who anoints Jesus’ feet in Luke 7:38, the woman that touches Jesus’ cloak that heals her in 8:47, or the man healed of leprosy in Luke 17:16). Sitting at the feet of Jesus was an act of surrender. She was showing Jesus that she trusted him. It was something that physically represented that Jesus was Lord. Mary is the student, and Jesus is the teacher. Mary is lowering herself, figuratively and literally. Just like John the Baptist in John 3:30, “He must become greater, and I must become less.” Mary sits at Jesus’ feet because she recognizes that he is worthy of her praise and adoration.

And she listens to his word. This listening resembles the listening of Mary the mother of Jesus who treasured the things said about Jesus in the beginning of Luke’s gospel. This Mary now has the opportunity to treasure the words that Jesus is saying. She is hungry for his word. She waits patiently upon him, resting in his presence, because she knows how important this man is. She chooses the greater part because she loves Jesus and wants intimacy with him.

And she experiences peace. She is in the presence of her Lord.

She chose the one thing, what the Psalmist in Psalm 27 says:
One thing I ask from the Lord,

    this only do I seek:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

    all the days of my life,

to gaze on the beauty of the Lord

    and to seek him in his temple.

This one thing that Mary had, this one thing that she sought was to spend time with Jesus. Think about that. This was all that she needed for sustenance. This was all that she needed in life. This one thing was to rest in the presence of God.

Mary chose the greater part, the right choice, to rest with Jesus. Though there was work to be done, the better part to do was to spend time with Jesus. Work mode is a coping mechanism. We trust in our own instincts more than we trust in God. This is why Mary chose the greater part. She chose to rest with Jesus, and she had peace.

Mary is our model for Sabbath.

In Jewish culture, the Sabbath was a day of rest considered holy to God because of His rest on the seventh day after creation and viewed as a sign of the covenant relation between God and his people and of the eternal rest promised to them. The word “Sabbath” comes from the Hebrew “shabbat” meaning to cease or desist. The Israelites rested on the seventh day because God rested on the seventh day in Genesis 2. In there we read, “Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.” God made the day, blessed it, and then made it holy. In Exodus 31, God says to Moses to remember the Sabbath. We are not asked to make the day holy with our works or with anything because it is God who allows the Sabbath to be holy just by his word. That should relieve some of us where we think that we have to make the Sabbath holy. Simply because God spoke it into being, the Sabbath is holy. It is not by our works that it is set apart. It is an invitation by God to be with God. It is not a threat but a promise.

Because God himself rested in Genesis 2, his asking of his covenant people to rest is God’s way of bringing people into God’s divine nature. As created beings, we are reliant upon the Creator. But God extends mercy to us to be more like Him. That for me is why the Sabbath is not a messy word, or a rule, or a law. It is God wanting me to be like him. To spend more time with him.

This is why Jesus proclaims in Mark 2 that Sabbath was made for us not us for the Sabbath. (pause) God is giving us a gift by allowing us to rest. Sabbath is not meant to be done begrudgingly, or because we ought to. In Isaiah 58, it is the observance of the Sabbath that brings us closer to God and gives us joy in the Lord.

And Jesus invites us to place our burdens upon him as he says in Matthew 11. We get to come to Jesus and rest in him and rest with him. God cares about us. God cares about our well-being. God wants us to both work and rest.

Practicing a Sabbath is hard work. That might sound paradoxical, but it is difficult to rest. This world runs off anxiety. We are all feeding off each other’s energy, getting riled up, and then we end up becoming more anxious about our tasks. In my family dinners, we’ll sit at the table and do our “highs and lows.” We will go around the table and talk about what we did that day and what we liked and disliked about it. Though this is supposed to be a way for all of us to catch up, it can sometimes cause more anxiety. Maybe it’s me, but hearing about what others did and their productivity makes me want to be more productive. I must get these things done. I have got to. There’s this scene in Anchorman where Ron Burgundy is running back to the studio and pushes an unsuspecting person to the ground proclaiming, “I’ve got to do the news!” We have these obsessions with these got to’s and have to’s.

Like Martha, we’ll get pre-occupied with being busy. It becomes a priority for us all.

So why do we Sabbath? Why do we rest? We need to look at Sabbath not as an obligation but as an extension of grace, a gift, to spend more time with God. It is the fourth command in the 10 Commandments. Maybe this is why we have such a hard time seeing it as a good thing. But God invites us to rest. God allows us to rest. Martin Luther, speaking on the Sabbath, said, ‘The spiritual rest which God especially intends in this commandment is that we not only cease from our labor and trade but much more-that we let God alone work in us and that in all our powers do we do nothing of our own.” Though there is work to be done, like Martha, the better part is to rest in God’s loving presence, like Mary.

Sabbath is a gift that prevents burnout, transforms work, and offers us time to spend with God. Jesus never says to Martha that she shouldn’t work. In Genesis 2, God puts Adam to work in the Garden of Eden. God allows us to rest. That should put every anxious person at ease. We are given a day to remember to rest. And we often must be reminded that we can rest because once we get going, we will get pre-occupied with the tasks that must be accomplished. But we weren’t created only to work. God did not create us and breathe life into us so that we can be mindless robots running around this world from task to task. God cares about us as that we can cast all our anxiety on him. It’s a trust building exercise as well because we have to work on trusting God and that God will accomplish that which concerns us. We get to fall into the arms of the God who created us. (That’s the only trust building exercise that I could think of). Honoring the Sabbath is an exercise of relinquishing control and allowing God to be God over our worries, concerns, and anxieties.

Resting prevents burnout. Though it might not look like it, I love to exercise. Whether it’s hitting racquetballs and listening to Taylor Swift with my friend or shooting hoops, exercise is awesome. It’s my favorite stress reliever. But I won’t be able to do the same exercises day in and day out. There has to be at least one day in a week where bodybuilders do not work out. Athletes call it “rest day.” This is because working out tears muscles, and lifting weights without resting will actually be detrimental to the body. It is on the days of rest that the muscles are actually rebuilding. This day of rest is a day of growth for the muscles. I guess my whole life is a “rest day.” Just waiting for these muscles to grow… So too, we as humans need rest. We need this one day because it’ll allow us to step away from the stresses of the week, and we get to rest in the presence of our Comforter.

Something that I’ve learned honoring the Sabbath is that it has radically transformed the rest of my workweek. I have more energy to do things. I don’t get worn out by little tasks. Honestly, last semester I didn’t honor the Sabbath as much as I should have. I would take a Sabbath sporadically, and I was overworking myself. Because I wasn’t allowing myself to rest, it felt like a marathon. A marathon that never seemed to end. At the end of last semester, our counseling center on campus brought in masseuses from around the area in the week before final exams and final papers. I thought that these masseuses were going to be masseuses in training, and that we would have the pleasure of being their practice. It turned out to be a very lovely 15 minutes of rest and relaxation. The woman at the end said to me, “If you would fix your posture while you work, you wouldn’t have so much strain in your back.” Granted, I can’t really control my posture sitting at a computer, but I was happy to have her advice. That massage absolutely reshaped my outlook on the upcoming doom and gloom of finals week. I feel like that was a mini-Sabbath. It reshaped and reoriented me to have peace in order to be successful in the coming stress. We enjoy the Sabbath because it transforms the rest of our work.

And the reason why we engage in the Sabbath primarily, especially, and most importantly is to spend time with God. Resting for rest’s sake is fine, but what separates rest from Sabbath is that Sabbath is time with our Creator. We soak. We rest. We breathe in the very breath of God. We allow him to minister to us. We pray. We ask God for strength. And we sit at his feet and listen to his words.

Sabbath is more than simply watching Netflix or going on Twitter. Sabbath is more than the refusal to do work. We don’t choose Sabbath to neglect our responsibilities. We choose the greater part because we want to be with God. I have found beauty in the sheer simplicity of silence. And this is hard, but it is part of the discipline. I use Sabbaths as an opportunity to wait on God and to hear what he has to say. Eugene Peterson, the author of The Message and other pastoral books says, ”If you keep the Sabbath, you start to see creation not as somewhere to get away from your ordinary life, but a place to frame an attentiveness to your life.”

Sometimes I’ll go for a walk and pray, looking at buildings and sunsets, and I’ll hear the voice of God. I, like Peterson, see the beauty in these sunsets as echoes of the creator. It’s hard to hear what God is saying to us when we’re constantly stimulated by electronics or if we’re constantly working. In order to experience the peace that God promises us, we remember this Sabbath as a way to connect to God. Honoring the Sabbath allows us to see God at work because it forces, allows, and encourages us to rest and see His work.

I’ll say it again. Sabbath is a gift that prevents burnout, transforms work, and offers us time to spend with God.

I think we all love the idea of a day-off. And it has been given to us. We simply must receive the invitation. Why is it that we dread Mondays when we are given two days off from work? Is it because we’re not really resting on those days? We were not made for 24/7 ongoing madness. We were not made to be in non-stop stress. We were made for work and rest. (Pause) Find this rhythm. Get into this rhythm. Rest in the presence of God who so adamantly is pursuing you and wanting you to rest with him. God loves you, and he is always looking out for you. Your God is fighting for you. Your God is on your side. He does not want you to burn out. He does not want you to be busy with work. He wants you to choose the greater part: time with him.

Let me pray.

  

Sources:

Carroll, John T. Luke: A Commentary. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012.

Green, Joel B. The Gospel of Luke. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997.

Johnson, Luke Timothy. Sacra Pagina Series, Volume 3: The Gospel of Luke. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1991.

Nolland, John. Word Biblical Commentary: Luke 9:21-18:34. Dallas: Word Books Publisher, 1993.

Scrima, Adrienne. Why You Need a Sabbath. Relevant Magazine. June 18, 2014.