Semon for February 5, 2012 - Getting Away

The Scripture Reading for this Week is: Mark 1:29-39

Who knows what the fourth commandment is?

I have to say, I really feel for Jesus in our scripture reading for today.  His Sabbath day of teaching and exorcisms has ended.  No sooner does the sun set on his “day of rest” than people begin streaming towards Peter’s house where Jesus was staying.  They are pounding on the door, wanting to be healed, wanting to have demons exorcised.  The whole city was waiting for him, ready to run to him as they watched the sun.  As soon as it was below the horizon we can imagine them swarming to where he was.  Yelling, demanding, shouting, wanting him to work his power upon them.

It’s like getting back from a vacation to a mountain of work, to the phone ringing off the hook, to people knocking on your door.  We’ve all experienced that.  I think that is why much of the world hates Mondays, because they are forced to go from 0 to 100 in an instant.  For myself, I know after a vacation I need a day or two to catch my breath, to get rolling, to ease into things.  Even after a single day off, work is that much more exhausting and tiring.

So the people are knocking on the door, reaching out to him, begging him, crying for him.  And Jesus dives into the middle of the crowd.  He heals people to the left, to the right.  Moving slowly through the swarm as they cluster around him, as it pushes towards the centre.  They claw at him, they pull at him, they tug on him.

And he has to leave, he has to get away from it.  The story implies that he got a bit of sleep, but still, early the next morning, before the sun has even begun to rise, Jesus slips away.  In the darkness, when the rest of the town was asleep, Jesus leaves.

And he prays.  He gets away, to a deserted place.  No one else around, and he spends some time with God.  He prays.

Pause

But it isn’t long before his disciples find him.  They hunt him down, and explain to him that everyone is searching for him.  Everyone wants something from him.  He is being pulled back.

I love this story about Jesus.  He is so vulnerable in it.  I think we can all empathize with that feeling of being pulled in many directions at once.  It can be overwhelming, it can be exhausting.  I think we can all appreciate Jesus’ desire to throw up his hands and just get away from it.

This is one of those remarkable stories where we see that Jesus is not some super-human.  We see that Jesus, in his humanity is bound and constrained by those same limitations that we are all so familiar with.  I just feel for him in this, I think most of us can feel for him because we have been there.

Who here hasn’t at least once in their life, though likely more than that (possibly monthly or weekly) been pulled by many different people, by many different demands, by many different things to do?  All of us have.  All of us have experienced that.  And truthfully, all of us have been on the other side as well.  We’ve all demanded.

But God gets it.  God knows how it is.  After creating the world in 6 days, God rested.  Jesus was overwhelmed more than once after healing people, more than once while living out his public ministry.  In our scripture reading for today, Jesus knew he needed Sabbath, he needed his own rest in order to return to public ministry.

So the question I have is, “Why do we think we’re special?”  Why do we think we are better than God and Jesus, why do we think that we don’t need rest?  Why, when our world says “Go! Go! Go!” do we always respond with “Ok!”?  What has happened to our Sabbath?

I’ve heard it said about that fourth commandment, that it is no longer relevant.  Worse still, it is often argued that keeping a Sabbath is not practical or even possible any more.  That makes me sad.  More than that, I think we may have confused ourselves with what Sabbath actually means.  I think often we convince ourselves that we know what Sabbath is, and that we are honoring it to some degree.  We need to be careful about that as well.

Who knows what the word Sabbath means?  It comes from the Hebrew word Shabbat, which means not only rest, but also, cease.  Sabbath means, “cease”, to stop.  This is hard for us to understand because we are such a “doing culture”.  Sabbath means stop, it means “don’t do”.

How many of us actually take a day when we “don’t do”?  How many of us even take an hour?  What does that even mean, “to cease”?  Does running around and doing all those odd jobs that need to get done but have been put on the back burner because of work mean “to cease”?  No.  Does hanging out and watching TV mean we’re “not doing”?  I’d argue that it doesn’t.  Not necessarily anyways.  It certainly doesn’t mean that for me, in my life.

So, what is Sabbath? 

When I ask this question I look to Christ for answers.  Because this is a hard question.  He stops his work, moving away from all the demands the word is making on him.  He spends time with God.  I think these are the two key ingredients.  And they are huge. 

First, Sabbath is that time when we step away from the demands of the world.  Jesus slips out before the sun rises.  More than that when his disciples track him down saying the world is demanding his presence, he just leaves.  Stepping away from the demands of the world can be a difficult thing to do.  It is that time when we just stop, when we rest, when we have the strength to say to ourselves, “All those things I should be doing, I’m going to put on pause.”  All those things the world shouts at me, I’m going to tune out.  There are so many ways that this can happen, and I can’t tell you what they are.  They can be quiet and meditative, they can be active if we feel they need to be.

Every morning and night I try to take 15 minutes to do some yoga stretching.  This is hard for me.  It’s hard because in the morning, I’d either rather be sleeping.  If it is a really busy day, it is very easy to say to myself, “well I should be getting to work, I don’t have time for this.”  At night, I just want to goto sleep. And if I am too tired, it is very easy for me to convince myself that my mild yoga and meditation is not as important as sleep.  But, what I’ve noticed is that when I give myself this half hour every day, I am more energized and focused when I do have to do things.  And at night, I truly sleep better.  This has become a part of my Sabbath practice.  I’m not as good at it as I’d like to be, but I am starting to see the tremendous importance.  There are other practices that work, depending on our motivations and our mindsets.  Contemplative prayer, labyrinth walking, pilgrimage, even going for a run can be a Sabbath activity if it helps us pull away from the demands of the world.

Moving away from the demands of the world for a few moments or a day or a week of vacation does not just mean stopping work.  It is deeper than that.  It is allowing ourselves a chance to drop all those masks that we put up at the world’s request that hide our true selves.  For example, in a world that demands we be happy all the time with a smile on our face, Sabbath could simply be a moment when we let ourselves cry.

Secondly, Sabbath has to be about God. It is why Jesus didn’t simply sleep a bit longer on that early morning.  For his rest, for his ceasing, for his rejuvenation he needed God.  Jesus’ power comes from God.  His strength, his authority, his ability, all of that came from God.  We are no different.  I can’t tell you what it means to spend time with God.  I can’t tell you what it means to pray.  It is different for each and every one of us.  But somehow, our rest is tied to our admission, our conviction, that we are utterly dependant upon God for who we are.  This is where I struggle, and often my Sabbath days will consist of me confusing watching tv and playing video games with holy rejuvenation.  I’m not beating up on those things, we need to unwind, but Sabbath does not mean entertainment.  True rest, Sabbath rest must be cradled within the arms of God.

I cannot tell you what the key ingredient is to Sabbath.  I cannot tell you what you need to do to find this holy rest.  Church should not be a place which places more demands and strict orders on how you experience and encounter God, on following legalistic rites to enter into a time of Sabbath.  Church should be a place where we explore that together, where as a community we can bring our true selves forward, those selves we hide from the rest of the world, to explore how we rest in the presence of God.  If anyone is interested in exploring this, please talk to me.  I can think of nothing more joyous, more communal, more holy than sitting down with a sister or brother in Christ and asking what does it mean to rest in God.

Sabbath should be exciting.   It should be demanding, but paradoxically, it should also be easy.  It should be something that once we’ve experienced it, we can’t wait to experience it again, and again.  In a world that demands so much from us, we must learn to join with Christ when we take time to pull away from those demands.