Dear friends in Christ at Peace and Grue,
In the Northern Hemisphere it’s summer: a time of vacation, rest, and renewal, but not necessarily for all of us. The word is out. Americans take less time off and enjoy fewer days of vacation than any other industrialized nation in the West.
Walter Brueggemann, in his book “Journey to the Common Good,” speaks about this. He writes, “Sabbath, in the first instance, is not about worship. It is about work stoppage. It is about withdrawal from the anxiety system of Pharaoh, the refusal to let one’s life be defined by production and consumption and the endless pursuit of private well-being. It is easy to imagine that in Pharaoh’s system there never was a sabbath for anyone. Everyone was 24/7. The slaves never got a day off and perhaps had to multitask to meet their quotas. Pharaoh surely never took a day off; he was too busy writing memos and sending out work orders and quotas. As a result everyone was caught up in an endless process of production and accumulation.” (p.26)
We don’t mean to, I’m sure, but our busyness, our ceaseless activity gives the impression that we believe that it is up to us to do good or good won’t be done. It’s up to us to set the world right or the world is lost. Behind our busyness is the blasphemous belief that we are the saviors and the solution to what ails the world.
To stand and say in the Creed, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth,” is to say that we believe that it is not up to us to make the world right. God not only created but is still creating and creative. God is not dead, inactive, or ineffective. Thus we can rest and relish times of inactivity, reflection, and the good grace of doing nothing.
Sunday worship gives us a taste of this. Here, while we do much activity-praying, singing, listening, meditating-little of it is useful, productive, or essential, as the world defines these matters. We are relaxing, resting, remembering-hoping, singing, and telling stories-as we simply enjoy being with one another and with God. Christians believe that this is a foretaste of eternity when we rest from our labors and enjoy being in the presence of God forever. Our destiny, in God’s hands, is rest. That rest is a great tribute to God, a confession that our destiny is in what God is doing, not in what we do.
The world is not in our hands; the future is not ours to determine. We do God’s work as it is entrusted to us. We work and pray and do our best to be light and salt to the world. And then we take sabbath, resting secure in the faith that the most important work is God’s. So, if you have not yet taken a vacation, gotten away from it all, experienced a change of scenery, or wandered into the wilderness, I hope you will do so soon. The church stresses other commands of Jesus: to love the poor, to feed the hungry, to bind up another’s wound, and to bear one another’s burdens. Why not Jesus command to rest?
Pastor Dan