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[for further information and reflection on the idea of Sabbath, I would highly recommend The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel.] (read in conjunction with Hebrews 4) meaning of the Sabbath: - “rest” - timeline (Present Age/Age to Come) (Matt 13:1-23) (v. 22) “among the thorns” refer to people who hear the word but the worries of this life and deceitfulness of wealth choke the work, making it unfruitful. “the Word” here means kingdom/reality of God, the reign of God, a life of intentionality and reflection—you are fully engaged. but for some people this life never becomes the dominant thing because: 1) worries of this life 2) deceitfulness of wealth - people with good intentions want it…but it doesn’t become. They never step into it and make it their wealth. They may earnestly want and desire it…but they don’t take hold of it. so we need to take a closer look at the things Jesus says aid in preventing this from becoming a reality in our lives: “worry” (Greek meris, means ‘to split/division/apart’). To worry means we’re not fully HERE. “deceitfulness of wealth” is the idea that “If I just had that…” or “If I could just get to that place…” THEN I would really be living. It’s a future orientation. It’s not being fully NOW. To worry is the failure to be here, and the lie of wealth is the failure to be now. On the seventh day when God rested, He was fully present to enjoy it. He calls us to be—that’s why labor and toil was forbidden on the Sabbath, so that people would be fully present to the goodness around them. One of the central practices of the examined life is that we look at our soul to find out what’s inside of us (what’s going on, what stress, worries, anxieties, etc.) let’s take a few moments (bulletin, pen) and think about what has you split/divided right now. Get rid of your EDIT button…don’t nice-ify things. Get it on paper. Put it in front of you. Own it. Admit that it’s there. [take a few moments] Jesus said that the reason the seed doesn’t become fruitful isn’t because it’s not there…but because it becomes CHOKED…ASPHYXIATED. At the time of Jesus, a group called the Pharisees believed that the reason God had not sent the Messiah must be because Israel was ‘pure’ enough—they weren’t living up to their end of the covenant. So for them, the answer became making everyone ‘acceptable’ before God, and once that happened, then He would once again return and live among his people and the Age to Come would be ushered in. - the Sabbath become a victim of their perfectionistic rules and regulations. Mark 2:27 – “Then [Jesus] said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.’” Remember, Moses is writing this for the Israelites who will be entering a new land. Their identity for generations has been that of brickmakers—how much they can produce. - Many biblical scholars say that one of the main purposes of the entire creation narrative is simply to lay out a theology of the Sabbath, to say that there is this day that is different than all the rest. Something different occurs on this day, and God set it apart…and it’s still going. - as the author of Hebrews said: “Don’t miss God’s rest.” Not much has changed in the last few thousand years. We are addicted to produce. And when given a day NOT to produce…we can lose it. We can go through withdrawals, get depressed and irritable. We need the adrenaline; we need the fix. We live in a culture that worships production, and for many of us our worth gets intimately tied in to what we’re doing. And when we remove the stimulus of achieving, our bodies shut down because we have no idea how to respond to stillness, relaxation, and rest. But Sabbath isn’t about what we’re NOT doing on this day (as the Pharisees had thought)…but how are we being put back together? We need to allow God to take what broke that week and put it back together. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: “The Sabbath gives the world the energy it needs to go for another 6 days.” Sabbath is not a list of all the things we’re not to do…it’s a GIFT. So we need to ask: what makes this day DIFFERENT than all the rest? What feeds your soul? What makes you come alive? That is Sabbath. It is the anticipating of the healing of the whole world. “The Sabbath is a reminder of the two worlds—this world and the world to come; it is an example of both worlds. For the Sabbath is joy, holiness and rest; joy is part of this world; holiness and rest are something of the world to come.
“To observe the seventh day does not mean merely to obey or to conform to the strictness of a divine command. To observe is to celebrate the creation of the world and to create the seventh day all over again, the majesty of holiness in time, ‘a day of rest, a day of freedom,’ a day which is lie ‘a lord and king of all other days,’ a lord and king in the commonwealth of time.” For some people, there are certain things that are emblematic of sweat and toil, so Sabbath is when they don’t engage in or worry about those things. What day of the week do you not check your e-mail? Is there a day of the week when your cell phone is turned off…and you don’t touch it? If you are ALWAYS available…you become a machine. You become thin. Keeping a Sabbath is essential to not chocking. Sabbath is a day when my work is done, even if it isn’t. It’s when we live as if our work is done, even if it isn’t. - We live in a culture that worships at the altar of production. “He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life. He must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man. Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self.” (Ecclesiastes 3) “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven…” - There are rhythms in life (a time for everything, a season for everything) - what are the rhythms of your day? - how do various situations and interactions affect/impact you? central to the examined life, to living in the Kingdom of God, is our awareness of ourselves and presence. It’s about learning the rhythms of our life. - What does _______ take out of me? Because if it takes something out of me, then I’m going to have to account for it at some point. Henry Nouwen: “In the spiritual life, the word ‘discipline’ mans “the effort to create some space in which God can act.’ Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere you’re not preoccupied and certainly not preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline means to create that space in which something can happen that you hadn’t planned or counted on.” - What’s scary is when our time is so scheduled and we’re so busy, that we don’t have the time to get interrupted and there are all these encounters (disguised as interruptions) that we completely miss because we don’t’ have room on the calendar and we’re rushing to the next thing. Do this: schedule NOTHING on your calendar. where are the margins/spaces in your life that are just spaces? Where are the blanks? See, the problems with our calendars is that they’re doable…until we actually live.
Schedule nothing. Who is most important to you? What are the things that feed your soul (e.g. what really matters?) - Does your calendar reflect your answers? If not…then you’re choking. It’s not the best possible life Jesus has invited you into. And Jesus says there are some who have heard of this life, but the seed gets chocked out. They want it, they desire it…but it’s not a REALITY. Let’s say you had to move tomorrow. Out of all your stuff (closet included) what would you keep, sell, give away, throw away? - Now, having figured that out and made a decision about what you would do with everything you have…why don’t you do it—why don’t you go through that exercise. What’s stopping you if you can admit now that you don’t need all of it?
- Because here’s what I think we’ll find out: we’ll start remember why we bought it in the first place, and we have to go back through the story of all the stuff we have that we don’t use, and we’ll realize the thought process we were in when we bought it. We were convinced that we had to have it…and weeks/months/years later we haven’t touched it.
And what we’ll discover is the deceitfulness of wealth.
“I was so convinced I had to have this…and I don’t even use it.” Let’s go back to the list of worries in front of you. For each one, you have two options: 1) you can do something about it. 2) or you can’t. - decided for each one which is which. And for those that we can’t do anything about, we need to give up and ask God to grant us the peace we need to let them be…and allow Him to be in control of them. Jesus said that worrying will not add a single minute to your life. We need to stop the insane pace of our lives and let God take them, because we don’t have to. We weren’t meant to. “Unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath while still in this world, unless one is initiated in the appreciation of eternal life, one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come. Sad is the lot of him who arrives inexperienced and when led to heaven has no power to perceive the beauty of the Sabbath…”
“There are those who hear the word but it never
becomes a reality…because it gets choked out by the worries of this life and the
deceitfulness of wealth. They are unable to be HERE, NOW.” |
