Sunday Worship 4 May | Let There Be Rest, Let There Be Work

Genesis 12:1-3 (NIV)

Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

In the lead up to Easter, we reflected together on the six days of creation. The seventh day got a brief mention on Easter morning, when I suggested that we might see Holy Saturday as a parallel to the day on which God rested, and Easter Sunday as the first day of a new creation, but I want us to spend a bit more time with the seventh day. That's in part because I like pattern and order and finishing what I've started, but also because the seventh day gives rise to one of the big ten commandments. Exodus 31:16-17 says: “The Israelites are to observe the Sabbath, celebrating it as a lasting covenant for the generations to come...for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, but on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed." There is a direct connection between God's rest and Sabbath rest, and so it is more than the final detail of the creation story, but the establishing of a pattern.

It could be argued that this pattern is just for the Israelites, but while that may be a fair reading of these verses, it is not the only reading. Just because Sabbath was given first to the Israelites does not mean it is not given to anyone else, and it would be foolish to turn down a gift because we were not the first to receive it. Because I do believe that Sabbath is a gift. It may not have always felt that way, particularly if we have associated it with a puritanical adherence to a strict set of rules, but it was established because “on the seventh day [God] rested and was refreshed”, and that means it was always intended for our rest and refreshment.

I had hoped to do a great deal of reading on the Sabbath in preparation for this morning, but I'm sorry to say that I didn't have time for much of it, although that is itself a lesson in why we need the Sabbath, because it is precisely the gift of time. Time which does not need to be productive, time which stretches out without the usual tasks of life to fill it, time which exists only for its own sake. Time was indeed the focus of the reading I did get to, as the late rabbi and philosopher Abraham Heschel spoke of the Sabbath as a cathedral in time, and the Jewish scholar Michael Fishbane spoke of trying to stand in the cycle of natural time. I first read Heschel several years ago, and I have always loved his image of a cathedral in time, although I have never been able to describe precisely what it means to me. I think there is something about a sense of expansiveness, of being able to explore without feeling hurried, of being able to pay greater attention to the presence of God. The idea of natural time really resonated with me as well, because I have increasingly felt that we have lost a true sense of the rhythm of the world and even our own bodies. I like the idea of being led by our sense of what is natural rather than an assumed or enforced schedule.

There is of course a tension there if we assume the Sabbath is a Sunday, because that creates a schedule, but I want to offer two reflections there. The first is that it does feel part of the cycle of natural time for me to be here. I can't promise that I'd be here at the same time every Sunday if I wasn't watching the clock - in fact I can almost guarantee I wouldn't because I have time blindness - but it feels like part of my natural rhythm to gather with a worshipping community on a Sunday morning, and I feel quite peculiar when that doesn't happen. That may not be your feeling, but I do think that fixed points can become part of natural time, in a way that makes them a blessing not an obligation. My second reflection is that I don't think the Sabbath has to be any particular day. There is something powerful in sharing the Sabbath as a communal experience, and so I wouldn't want to do away with the importance of Sunday altogether, but I think the most important thing is that we find space for rest and refreshment, and if the rhythms of our lives are sometimes a little jazzy, and we need find Sabbath somewhere else in the week, that's okay. As Jesus said, we were not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for us.

It is perhaps in large part because of that saying of Jesus that Christian traditions around the Sabbath have diverged so greatly from Jewish traditions, although I think we still have much to learn from Jewish writers such as Heschel and Fishbane, and Jewish practices such as the welcoming in of the Sabbath. I want to end though with the Protestant Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman, who speaks of the Sabbath as resistance and alternative. In a culture driven by capitalism and consumerism, it is an act of protest to take a day each week to disengage from those systems, to say we are not defined by our labour or by our consumption. And it offers an alternative to the constant demands of society, by declaring instead that we are the recipients of the blessing of God.

This reflection was followed by the hymn 'Be Still for the Presence of the Lord' and a time of stillness.

Matthew 28:16-20

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

I’m reluctant to rush us from rest to work, but I wanted us to hear the great commission this morning because I wanted us to think about what comes next after Sabbath and after Easter. If we rest from work, what is the work we return to? If Easter marks the first day of a new creation, what new world is being created? I think the whole of Jesus’ life and ministry was answering those questions, was preparing us to live as resurrection people. The beatitudes, the parables of the kingdom, the miraculous healings and feedings...they are all part of it. But this morning I wanted to return our attention to the great commission because it is quite literally the thing that comes after Easter. We have reflected on it together before, but we can't hear these teachings once and think we've learned them. We have to keep coming back to them, to dwell in them and let them dwell in us.

We might read the great commission as a particular instruction for the original disciples, to dedicate their lives to sharing the gospel and building the church. What we know of the early church suggests that many if not all of them did just that, but I'm not sure that is precisely what Jesus was saying. A more literal translation of verse nineteen is “having gone, disciple the nations”.  So perhaps the command was not so much to go and make disciples, but simply to go and then to make disciples. You may be thinking that sounds like the same thing with extra words, but the way I understand it is that Jesus was sending the disciples back to their ordinary lives, but with a new thread to weave through them. We might say “go and make disciples along the way”, and I think that makes it a general instruction for all who accept Jesus’ teaching. Making disciples is not just for evangelists and missionaries, but for all followers of Christ in their ordinary lives.

So how do we do that? I have spoken before about living questionable lives, that is lives that make people ask questions. How are you so kind? So hopeful? So generous? The kind of questions whose answers draw people closer to God. Those of you who have already read the Contact may have spotted that I snuck in a recommendation for the BBC series Pilgrimage, in which a group of celebrities from different religious backgrounds take a pilgrimage and explore faith together, and there was a great example of what I'm talking about in the last series. One of the pilgrims was talking about the hope that got her through when she lost half of one leg after a boating accident, and how that was the beginning of personal faith for her. The other pilgrims were clearly very moved by her testimony, and one told her that she made him believe more. She wasn't presenting any complicated theological argument or inviting anyone to pray the sinner's prayer, she was simply telling her story and showing what faith looks like in practice.

It is a beautiful thing to be a person who helps others believe more, but I think there is still more to the great commission than inspiring faith. Jesus tells the disciples they are to baptise people and they are to teach them to obey everything he has commanded. And what is it that Jesus commanded? To love God, to love your neighbour as yourself, to love even your enemy. To take up your cross and follow him in the way of sacrifice. To reorient your way of living towards the life of the coming kingdom, which is a place of justice and joy and generosity. The great commission is nothing less than a call to transform the world by remaking it in the image of Christ.

And so a great part of our work in the world is to provide the same kind of resistance and alternative as the Sabbath. Tom Wright put it this way: “The church must be active at the places where the world is in pain. The church must be in the forefront of work in the world to alleviate hunger and poverty, to remit major and unpayable international debt, to make peace and prevent war. The church must be on the front line in the fight against crime and the fight for proper punishment and rehabilitation of those convicted of crime, as well as for the rights of the victims of crime. Christians must be active not only in advocacy of the moral standards in which all are treated as full human beings, not as toys or as trash, but also to stand alongside and help those who, having been treated like that themselves, treat others the same way because that is the only way they know.  In these and many, many other ways, those who would tell the story of Jesus must first live it, bearing a measure of the world’s pain as they do so.” 

Easy, right? Well of course it's not. But it is through this work that we will recreate the world. I read this week that Walter Wink once said “killing Jesus was like trying to destroy a dandelion seed-head by blowing on it”. Jesus' death and resurrection scattered the seeds of his kingdom by dispersing his disciples into the world. They planted themselves and they grew and they dispersed more seeds, and the whole thing kept going, until now we are those seeds and it is our turn to plant ourselves and grow and then disperse more seeds. The work we have been given is a work that must be sustained by a practice of rest and the hope that we find in the resurrection. And it is a work that must be rooted in prayer, which connects us to both the God we pray to and the world we pray for.

This reflection was followed by a time of prayer, bringing our concerns for the world before God, and asking what our work might be in response.