Fourth Word of Community Design - Deuteronomy 5:1-5, 12-15
This is our fourth week to talk about Words. More specifically, it is our fourth week of talking about God’s Ten Words for Community Design. We more commonly call them the Ten Commandments. In these commandments, in these words, we find not a restrictive set of rules to be followed like a teacher might post in the classroom, but words of guidance to help us live in the magnificent community of which God invites us to be a part.
God’s First Word: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you hall have no other gods before me,” reminded us that: 1) This is God’s community, not ours, it was designed and is about God, not us, 2) We are important because God has loved us enough to invite us to be a part of the community, 3) This is not a compulsory community, God has blessed us with free will and we can choose to be part of it or not, and 4) If we choose to be part of this community, God must be first, before everything else. In community this word keeps us in our proper place in perspective with our relationship with others…all are loved and all are invited, we don’t determine who.
God’s Second Word: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them…,” reminds us that God cannot be contained in anything in all of creation, because He is the Creator and we are the creature. We cannot manipulate or control God. In community we are reminded that God, and those around us, are not tools for our use, God is in control and those around us are lovingly designed by Him, for His glory, not ours.
God’s Third Word: “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God,” reminded us that is important that we are careful with the name of God. We are not to use it to frivolously, thereby causing it to lose significant to us (for we cannot diminish God, regardless of what we do). We are not to lose it too sparingly, denying the role that God plays in our lives. And, we are to be careful of our actions and how we represent God to the world, for if we claim the name Christian, then we must remember, as we vowed at our Baptism, that we are ambassadors for Christ in the world. In community, as we treat the name of God with respect, we are reminded of the respect we are to treat those named around us.
So now we come to God’s Fourth Word of Community Design: “Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you hall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.
This may be the most quoted, most debated, most misunderstood, and most ignored Word or commandment. Why? Because resting does not come naturally to many of us, even from the point of birth.
If you don’t believe me, try getting a toddler to go to sleep. In fact, come over to the parsonage in about two to three hours from now, and we’ll let you try getting Joshua to take his nap. Tired as he can be, he like other kids his age will fight lying down and going to sleep most of the time. He will lie down, and then realize he has forgotten something, maybe a stuffed animal or his blanket. He will lie down, and then decide he needs a drink of water. He will lie down, and then realize that he needs to put a toy away, and then begin playing with it or another toy. He will fight lying down. He will want to go from one person to another. He will talk. He will sing. He will do whatever it takes to, as we often say about a lot of kids, “fight going to sleep.”
Adults are no better. We also try to use up every bit of time that we have…and if we are not doing something productive, we feel guilty about it. I think of Summer Breakaway, the youth event that I do every summer at Louisburg College. One of the most celebrated times on the schedule is the daily “siesta,” an hour after lunch where everyone is to be in their room and be quiet. It is supposed to be an opportunity for rest to get us through the rest of the day. What do I do? I use it to work on plans for the evening activities or to work on stuff for the church so that everything is still going. I think of folks and their vacation time, times where the family may go on vacation and then one or the other person either takes their work with them and works the whole time, or feels the need to leave their family behind and return early because there is work to be done. We live by the Ben Franklin adage that “time is money,” and feel that any unproductive time is wasted time. We also celebrate all this technology that we have from microwaves to computers to cell phones that are supposed to make things easier…in turn that ought to mean we have more time, but the faster we are able to do things, the less time we seem to have because we feel like we can jam more stuff into the time we have freed up.
In the midst of all of this, we hear, “Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work...” Why?
Why would God want us to stop? Is it because God is just on some big ego trip and needs us to stop and worship Him? Does He need us to come together and sing songs and pray prayers and hear a sermon? The answer is “NO!” God is God! God doesn’t need anything. God does not desire to take anything from us other than our sin and misery. God loves us. God wants to give to us. God wants to encourage us. That is what the sabbath observance is all about. It is God’s gift to us, God’s gift to community.
The fact that it is a gift is the problem when we become Pharisaic about it. The Pharisees established numerous laws about what could and could not be done on the Sabbath. It was amongst those rules that they tried over and over again to trick and trap Jesus…yet each time they failed. It was not that Jesus was dismissing the sabbath observance, He was trying to prove to the Pharisees that they had missed the point. Jesus said, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath….”[i] The sabbath was not created to take anything from us, the sabbath was created as a gift for us. The Exodus recitation of this Fourth Word, reminds us that God set for us the example, “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy...For in six days the Lord made the heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.”[ii] Do we think that God rested because He was tired, because He needed a break? God does not grow tired or weary. God set for us an example, that there is a time to work, and a time to rest.
So what kind of gift is this sabbath observance? It is a gift in so many ways.
First it is a reminder that we are to be like God. God worked and then rested. We are created in His image, we are created to be like Him. God intends for us to work and rest. If we refuse to rest; if we think we need to work seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year, then we set ourselves up as above God, as beyond God, or simply as saying we know better than God.
Secondly, it is an opportunity for us to be renewed and re-created by God. It is a time where God can rebuild and refuel us for what is to come. When we don’t stop to rest we will eventually run out of steam. I was working on this sermon while I was in the doctor’s office on Friday. They had one of those televisions that show different kinds of medical reports on a playback loop. God’s timing is amazing. While I am sitting there I over hear one of the news articles so I paused to listen. The report was talking about the danger of stress and its effect on the body. The report pointed out that the refusal to take time for rest and relaxation was dangerous and created stress on the body. The report discussed all the different ways that this stress could have impact on a person’s body, with a person’s cardiovascular system being the most at risk. A refusal to rest puts a person’s heart at risk. A lack of rest also preys upon a person’s emotional system. When our bodies get tired, we tend to get irritable, have shorter fuses, and blow our tops more easily. In the gift of the sabbath, God has given us the opportunity to give our bodies and psyches a break, so that He can renew them for all that we face and need.
Thirdly, the gift of sabbath is an opportunity to celebrate all that we have accomplished. God didn’t rest on the seventh day because He was tired, but because He was finished. He took the opportunity to look at all He had created and say that, “it is very good.” The sabbath rest is an opportunity for us to stop and look at what God has allowed us to accomplish and say, “hey, that is very good.” It is a time where, even more than that, consider and appreciate the accomplishments and work of those around us.
Fourth, the gift of sabbath is a reminder that we, and those around us, are more than tools, more than instruments to be used to produce something. Our value is not in what we accomplish, not in our work, not in what we do, but our value is in our relationship with our Creator. Having time to stop working, means it is not the work that defines us. It is also a reminder that those around us are more valuable that the work that they do, for not only are we told to cease working, but our family is to cease working, our servants or employees are stop stop working, our livestock, and even the alien in our land is to stop and rest. Not only are we suppose to rest, but we asked not to cause anyone else to have to work. That is a hard one for some folks. Prior to serving in Burlington, I served in several agricultural communities. It would not be hard to find a farmer who refused, on scriptural basis, to work on Sunday…however, his field would be filled with migrant workers continuing the harvesting efforts. This command says even those efforts are to cease…
In that sense, the fifth gift of sabbath is that it is the great equalizer. It applied to everyone across the board, regardless of social standing or status, regardless of a master or servant role. It reminds us that we are all equal before God.
The sixth gift of the Sabbath is it is an opportunity to celebrate freedom. God’s people once were slaves. In Egypt, they were not given time to worship and rest. They were forced to work, forced to labor for others. In the gift of the Sabbath, they, and we, are presented with the opportunity to stop, to rest, and to worship God.
The final gift for us to consider today, but not the final gift of the sabbath, because it is a gift that keeps on giving in so many different ways, is that the sabbath is a reminder that some things are holy and to be treated as different. All too often we begin seeing everything as the same. For many retailers, sabbath is seen just like any other day. There is nothing different about it. Many companies see that the same way, there is no special reason that a business should not be in operation on the sabbath. The sabbath is about a day being set aside as holy… “Observe the sabbath and keep it holy.” It is a reminder that some things are sacred. The sabbath is our opportunity to thank God for the gift of time, and declare that this day is holy, this day is sacred, this day is different than all the rest of the days we have.
This Word from God for our community helps us preserve community. It calls us to remember that we were created in the image of God and are to be like God, which means if we are created in the image of God, then those around us are as well. It calls us to remember that we need time to rest and be renewed, it preserves the peace by taking us off the heat, lest we boil over and harm those around us. It gives us an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the efforts of those around us. It reminds us that we are more than our labor. It reminds us that no one is beneath us, even those who work for us are to be honored and celebrated on this day. And it reminds us that not everything is to be treated as mundane, that we are to treat some time as holy.
It is not about the day of the week, it is not about what we do or do not do, as long as we take a day and set it aside to rest, be renewed, worship God, and celebrate all that God has given us. Observe the Sabbath, and keep it holy…that God may continue to give you such a precious gift.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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