TRISTAN SHERWIN

We’re continuing our ETHOS series this morning, looking at the things that matter to us at MCC as we seek to express the centrality of Jesus.

We have looked at Scripture, Seekers, Spirit and, over the past two weeks, we’ve talked about Service (You can catch up with the previous weeks via our blogs and YouTube channel).

I’m thankful to Katie, not only for continuing the theme of service, last week, but for also speaking about the great work of Trust House, for speaking with passion and compassion, and for also touching, honestly on the rubber-hits-the-road costs of service in her life.

This morning, we are going to talk about something really close to my heart: Sabbath.

READ: MATTHEW 11:25-30 (NRSV)

MAKING TIME

As we’ve explored over the past couple of weeks, we want service to be one of our values here at MCC. I don’t mean that strictly in the context of a church program, but in the wider sense that a compassionate orientation towards others develops as an organic fruit of our relationship with God, a fruit that flavours our everyday lives. As we engage the scriptures, as we seek God, and as we are taught and helped by the Holy Spirit, our hearts are led towards others.

As such, if service is part of the growth process, it’s something we genuinely want to do, and it’s not something that is manipulated from us via some burdensome command of ‘you must’, or through peer pressure, or through a Church vision statement.

The heart matters. And that heart cannot be mass-produced or manufactured, it can only be grown and nurtured as we continually walk with God.

For all of us, service will look differently. It may mean, for some, that in our work places we give more attention to the cares of our work colleagues. For some of us, it may mean taking someone out for a coffee each week, or assisting a neighbour in some way. For some of us, it may involve being part of a church-ran programme, or volunteering at a community group.

As Helen mentioned at the end of last week, there are things we, as a church, would like to look at doing, next year, as a means of reaching out a helping hand to our local community. As with all things, those things can only happen if there are people able and willing to invest themselves.

I want you to understand something—when we make these suggestions, we understand that there may be nobody. And that’s OK. If we can’t, we can’t.

We need to all understand that. We all have limits. All of us only have so much availability, so much time, so much energy. Each of us only has so much emotional and physical capacity.

We are all fragile and finite people. And as the Christian author, Edith Schaeffer said, ‘[It] is imperative to remember that it is not sinful to be finite and limited.’[i]

To be human is to be finite and limited. God made us that way. God is fine with that.

To be human is to be finite and limited. God made us that way. God is fine with that.

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The problem is, we’re often not—especially when it comes to our idealistic expectations of others, our church, and even ourselves.

When I was growing up, my mum and her friends would always gather around our kitchen table for an end of the afternoon catch-up. This would happen every weekday. I would come home from school to find this meeting happening. The table would be stocked with cups of tea, coffee, and a plate of biscuits, and there would be this bluish-grey cloud of cigarette smoke gathered at the ceiling, and huddled beneath this cloud would be my mum and her friends catching up on family stories, the latest gossip, and generally putting the world to rights.

I remember coming home one day and the huddle was happening around the table. I was looking low, and so my Mum asked me what was up. I shared that I had some schoolwork due for the end of the week, work I’d been set that day, and that I just didn’t have the time.

At that point, one of my Mum’s friends—a nice lady, a well-meaning lady—turned around and said something that riled me, ‘Well, you’ve just got to make time.’

I bit my lip, and walked away, screaming inside.

I knew what she meant—I think? I know, when people use those words, they mean prioritise what is important and what is not. They mean don’t be lazy etc.

But—and I won’t go into why—I literally didn’t have the time. Those words stung, and were unhelpful and uncaring words that didn’t lift any burden from me, but placed more upon my shoulders.

I wish I could make time! That would be an extraordinary skill to have. I know ‘a stitch in time saves nine’, but if it were truly possible to learn how to weave minutes, crochet hours, and knit days, I would not have wasted years training to be an engineer. As far as super powers go, the ability to make time would be the most useful super power to have.

Sadly, I can’t! None of us can. Yet, with the amount of demands that are placed on us today, with the amount of tripe life-style advice given out, with the amount of expectations that are placed upon us by the busy world and by other people, I can’t help but think that some people are under the illusion that we, mere humans, can all make time.

For example, I’m tired of hearing about the importance of regular exercise and healthy eating. It’s not wrong, by the way. It’s great advice—the right advice. But it’s spoken into a frenzied, restless, sleep-depriving world that doesn’t give opportunity for it. Think about it: many people now travel further to work, they’re stuck in traffic for longer, or on public transport, and they are working longer shifts, plus overtime—maybe even two jobs, if they are trying to make ends meet. They leave home early, get home late, and someone expects them to squeeze in 30 minutes of exercise a day, and the time to shop for and prepare three well-balanced, non-freezer meals!

If you have that time, please, please understand that you occupy a privileged position that many do not.

Life is demanding, we all have limits, and we all need to understand and respect those limits. We often understand ourselves really well. Sadly, we’re just not very good at translating that understanding into the lives of others.

During Lockdown, some of us (not all of us) had the gift of time to make some realisations about ourselves, our limits, about what is important, and what’s not—what we can do healthily and what we can’t do healthily. Good lessons, lessons we need to keep learning. We’ve understood the importance of rest, of better rhythms in life.

Sadly, though, our expectations of others haven’t altered as much—our expectations of others, organisations, institutions, have remained high. We have given ourselves some slack, but not others. We can still be a tad egotistical and consumeristic, and we can still have a tendency to views others as if they were commodities.

REST

At MCC, as well as service being part of our Ethos, I want us to also grasp that Sabbath will be a vital part of our Ethos. We all need to grasp this.

At MCC, we want to encourage, cultivate and exhibit healthy rhythms in life. We want to be a church that truly understands that work, rest and play are all gifts from God that can easily become unbalanced if not managed wisely. Our heart is not to see people as commodities or resources. We need to resist cultivating a ‘burnout culture’, where our expectations of others (the church, the leadership, those around us) become burdensome and exploitive, because we understand that human life is not about productivity.

To place my cards on the table, and declare a bias on this topic: I have learned this lesson the painful way. Eleven years ago, I had a full on nervous breakdown, and I wrestle with the scars it has left on a weekly basis. Having a breakdown is something I refuse to go through again, and it’s something I do not want to see happen in lives of others.

Exhaustion is not worship!

In the passage we’ve read, this morning, Jesus says some really powerful things. One of those things is contained within verses 28-30: ‘Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke fits perfectly, and the burden I give you is light.’ (Matthew 11:28-30, NLT, italics mine)

I’ve always wrestled with these words. Mainly because, as we’ve discussed at numerous points, and more recently when we looked at being Seekers, I know that following Jesus is not an easy thing. I know that Jesus calls us to pick up our cross, daily; that discipleship involves this process of dying to self, dying to our egos, as we learn to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God. I’m also aware that hardships are a part of life, and that following Jesus does not mean we evade the difficulties, disappointments, traumas, pain or sorrow that live throws at us. Additionally, I’m also aware, that in some places in our world, following Jesus leads to persecution.

At the same time, though, Jesus assures us that following his way is restful, that he is a gentle and humble teacher, and that his yoke is light.

Jesus is employing a farming image: When two oxen would plough a field together, a wooden beam (a yoke) was placed between their shoulders in order to pull the plough. It was a shared burden. So, when Jesus leans on this image, he wants us to understand that he is the other oxen, he carries this with us (similar to the other week, when we described the Holy Spirit as being our helper, the one who picks up the other end). This is Jesus’ yoke, and he’s asking us to join him and carry the other end, with the ultimate purpose that we would keep pace with him.[ii]

When I look at Jesus’ pace in the gospels, then yes, Jesus worked, but Jesus also knew how to rest and unwind. Jesus grew tired and weary (John 4:6). Jesus took time out for solitude and prayer (see Luke 5:15-16; 6:12-13, Mark 1:12; 1:35-36; 1:45; 3:7, 13; 6:31-32, 46; 9:2; 14:32; Matthew 14:13, 23). Jesus slept. Jesus spent time relaxing, eating, and reclining with people—and didn’t feel guilty about it. Jesus even drew his disciples aside, from time-to-time, telling them to get some rest (Mark 6:31).

Picking up your cross is a hard way to learn, but Jesus is not a harsh, hard-hearted taskmaster. Jesus is not beating us with burdensome expectations, assessing our growth through some inorganic idea of progress, or measuring our productivity against some quota or size-scale.

Now that’s not to say that change doesn’t happen, that growth and maturity do not take place, or that fruit doesn’t develop, as we follow Jesus. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t correction, or lessons to learn, or that effort, choice and commitment, on our part, are not required.

But the truth remains: Jesus is a gentle and humble teacher. With Jesus, there’s no pressure to perform or to produce. Instead, there’s an invitation to walk with him, to work alongside him, and to learn from this gentle, humble teacher.

With Jesus, there’s no pressure to perform or to produce. Instead, there’s an invitation to walk with him, to work alongside him, and to learn from this gentle, humble teacher.

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God’s not into measuring things in the way that we are—we’re the ones who are addicted to productivity and busyness, and size and ‘bigness’, and success. God’s not.

Have you ever noticed that God is not too keen on taking a census’ in the Bible, when people begin to count others as mere numbers, and to begin measuring productivity and size?

God’s not flogging us.

Which brings us to this idea of Sabbath. Because when Jesus uses the word rest, he’s tapping into a big biblical theme. He’s bringing up Israel’s past, and he’s reminding them of the alternate and contrasting community that they were called to be in the world.

You see, Israel had to be rescued from community where they were flogged, a community that didn’t value rest, a community that was obsessed with production and size, a community that treated Israel like commodities. In contrast with this experience, the idea of Sabbath was radical.

COUNTING BRICKS[iii]

The Fourth Commandment begins, “Remember to observe the Sabbath…” and encourages the importance of resting personally, and the importance of letting others rest as well. It’s not about a specific day, per se, although, in Israel’s life it was a specific day, and a specific year. The Sabbath, as a principle, was supposed to be a God-orientated perspective to all life and all time.

As a part of the Ten Commandments, the command to Sabbath can be found within Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. If you give both of those passages a read you’ll discover a big difference in the motivation given to observe the Sabbath. This difference is purposeful, and it reflects a forty-year generation gap.

In Exodus chapter 20, Israel has recently been freed from slavery in Egypt.

Israel are fresh from the escape, and would have had no problems in recalling the hardships they’ve had to endure in Egypt, producing a gruelling amount of bricks.

They had been slaves in a regime obsessed with the attainment or wealth and power, success and size. It was a system obsessed with counting, a system that required its slaves to work every day of the week in order to manufacture the mud bricks Pharaoh demanded.

For Israel, Egypt was no place of rest. It was a culture of relentless production and restlessness, a culture driven by insatiable gods. Yet, this system had been Israel’s norm for 400 years. This must have affected their perspective on life?

Because of this, as Moses gives the Ten Commandments, he feels the need to remind this generation about the rhythm of God’s work from the Creation story of Genesis 1. And so, along  with the command of Sabbath, in Exodus 20:8-11, Moses reminds the people that in six days God made everything that was needed, then God rested.

If you think about it, that story would have been a cultural contradiction to these people. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was not exploitive like the god’s of Egypt.

As the Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann puts it in his brilliant book Sabbath as Resistance,  ‘This performance and [display] of divine rest [characterizes] the God of creation, creation itself, and the creatures made in the image of a resting God… Indeed, such divine rest serves to [invalidate] and dismantle the endless restlessness sanctioned by the other gods and enacted by their adherents.’[iv]

Or, to pull this into our day, this divine rest invalidates and dismantles the restlessness sanctioned by our culture, or our church leaders, or from some church members.

In the Exodus command, Moses is stressing to the fledgling Hebrew nation that the one true God’s mandate for creation is different from the oppressive, egotistical and megalomaniac ‘dream’ of Egypt.

Alternatively, forty years later, Moses takes a different tact. The Israel of Deuteronomy knew nothing of the slavery of Egypt first-hand.

For the past forty years, Sabbath had been a regular practice. These people have only known the provision of God through manna, quails, water and sandals that never wear out. This generation did not need reminding of God’s creative patterns, it had been their daily experience—it was their new norm.

However, for this new generation, because of the miracles, there is the danger that they have never really known the responsibility to provide.

When Moses delivers the words of Deuteronomy 5, the forty-year-old nation of Israel is getting ready to cross the Jordan River into a land of their own. Once they cross over the Jordan, the miraculous provision of manna and indestructible sandals will stop.

Israel will have to produce, and build, and farm, and work… which is good. But, building and growing and producing can get addictive.

With a production mindset, it’s easy to become possessed by materialism and consumerism. If unchecked, the appetite for more can grow ravenous and can get out of control.

When this happens we can begin to see ourselves, and those around us, as purely means to our own agenda of success, our own dreams, our own visions; people become viewed as commodities—we can label them as being either ‘cogs’ or ‘spanners’ within the machine of productivity. It’s also tempting to look at the other nations, other people, and begin to want what they have. So, we get competitive, we start making comparisons.

And so, when Moses gives the Sabbath command to the Deuteronomy generation (in Deut 5:12-15), Moses doesn’t tell them of the creation-rhythm of God. Instead, he gives them a history lesson; reminding themthat they were once slaves under a system obsessed with empire, obsessed with production, obsessed with size and influence. They need to recall that this preoccupation was so choking to human life that it was only through the intervention of God’s power that had been delivered from it.

In both Exodus and Deuteronomy, the reasons to observe the Sabbath may be different, but they are both different sides of the same coin. ‘Without Sabbath’, Moses is saying to both generations, ‘you could end up building another regime like that of Egypt!’

Without Sabbath, you’ll treat people like resources—flogging them with demands and burning them out.

Without Sabbath, you’ll get addicted to size, and comparisons.

Without Sabbath, you’ll worship the idol of productivity.

Without Sabbath, you’ll not reflect God, or God’s intent for humanity.

Sadly, within the story of Israel contained with the Old Testament, that’s exactly what happens: they do forget.

Little wonder that both Exodus and Deuteronomy begin with the word remember.

RESISTING THE IDOL

Why is Sabbath important for us? Because Jesus is not like Pharaoh! God is not like Pharaoh! Therefore, our churches should not be like Egypt.

Jesus is not like Pharaoh! God is not like Pharaoh! Therefore, our churches should not be like Egypt.

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Church should have a different rhythm to it. If Jesus is the centre of this, then we need to enter into the rest that Jesus offers us. If we’re keeping pace with Jesus, then there’s a healthy, non-exploitive rhythm of work, rest and play to this life of discipleship; a rhythm that isn’t possessed by a consumer attitude, and that is not driven by the idol of productivity, and where people are not flogging others or themselves through egotistical and idealistic demands.

As one of my favourite writers, Sarah Bessey, puts it, in her book Jesus Feminist, ‘We need our gathering together to be a place of detox from the world – its  values, its entertainment, its priorities, its skittered fears, its focus on appearances and materialism and consumerism.’[v]

Can I be honest with you? I don’t want to be a “successful” church. Or a “big” church. Or a “productive” church (using all the metrics of size and style, etc.). I want MCC to be a good church—a church filled with goodness. A community, where people are not seen as commodities or numbers, but as people created in the image of God. People to be loved. People learning how to live the Jesus-shaped life together.

Some of you may feel that lacks vision and faith. I would argue that it is a more holistic and beautiful vision than being a hurried and harried church seeking success; a vision that puts its faith in God’s heart for humanity.[vi]

 ‘Be still, and know that I am God.’

Psalm 46:10 (NKJV)

‘In the past he said to them, “This is where security can be found. Provide security for the one who is exhausted! This is where rest can be found.” But they refused to listen.’

Isaiah 28:12 (NET)

‘Then Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath.”’

Mark 2:27 (NLT)

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[i] Edith Schaeffer, as quoted by Christine Pohl, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, p.132

[ii] C. H. Spurgeon, when preaching on this verse, put it this way, ‘Now I think the Saviour says to us, “I am bearing one end of the yoke on my shoulder; come, my disciple, place your neck under the other side of it, and then learn of me. Keep step with me, be as I am, do as I do. I am meek and lowly in heart; your heart must be like mine, and then we will work together in blessed fellowship, and you will find that working with me is a happy thing; for my yoke is easy to me, and will be to you. Come, then, true yoke-fellow, come and be yoked with me, take my yoke upon you, and learn of me.”’ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, January 8^th 1871, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Volume 17.

[iii] This segment is an edited extract from a chapter on Sabbath in my book Love: Expressed (WestBow Press, 2015).

[iv] Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying NO to the CULTURE OF NOW, Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.

[v] Sarah Bessey, Jesus Feminist: God’s Radical Notion that Women are People too.

[vi] As always, there is always more to say on such a huge subject matter. Just to share a couple of thoughts: Firstly, rest/Sabbath, although a popular topic again, can sometimes be taught as a means to encourage more productivity (i.e., rest, and then you’ll work better). Although rest is crucial to healthy work, and certainly does make a difference to the quality of what we do, we still need to be wary of subjecting rest to the servitude of work. To echo the sentiment of something that Pastor Rich Villodas said recently on social media, we practise the rhythms of Sabbath, not because they enable us to be more productive. We practise the rhythms of Sabbath because we resist the idol of productivity, and we seek to image the resting God. Secondly, if you’re looking for some further reading on the Sabbath, may I encourage you to read Brueggemann’s Sabbath as Resistance, and especially Abraham Joshua Heschel’s poetically beautiful, The Sabbath.