April 14 2019 Sliding Into Sabbath Mode

April 14, 2019 Palm Sunday “Sliding into Sabbath mode” Pastor Jacqueline Hines

Like sliding onto home plate, keeping a Sabbath is something to cheer about! [slide #  1 at home plate ]  Americans have gone way out of line and off base with frantic activity. We don’t sleep enough for trying to burn the candle on both ends. We are busier than a one armed paper hanger! A member told me this week, I am too busy to tie my shoes.

The Lenten season is a reminder to slow down at least long enough to ask God for help and guidance. We need to know what is going on in life. If we do not talk to God, we miss some very important information. We miss some very important blessings.

God talks to us through the scriptures and today the message is “Remember….remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy.” Here is our reminder that our spare time, our down time, our non-working time, should be holy.  Our God tells us to remember. [slide #  2 REMEMBER]  

Have YOU ever been forgotten? You made arrangements to meet someone only to find out that they forgot all about you. Perhaps it worked out but in case it did not work out you may have felt rejected. Has the shoe been on the other foot? Did YOU forget someone? Did it slip your mind that you were to be at such and such a place at such and such a time to do whatever? It can feel bad to be forgotten and it can feel even worse to be the one who has forgotten someone. We don’t want others to feel devalued, dismissed, or less important because of what we do or don’t do. [slide #  3  heart and string on finger]

We don’t like the feeling of forgetting someone or being forgotten and we have several ways to remind ourselves. We have calendars and alarms and strings around our fingers or sticky notes. We do many things that help us remember something important that we do not want to forget.

The Sabbath is so important to God that God tells us to remember it and to keep it holy. Remember, when you are not working to make a living, it is still God that provides your time and that time is to be used to bless and not curse. That time God gives us is to be used to bear fruit of the Holy Spirit, not unholy Spirits; to bring life, not take life; to shine light, not create darkness. Remember the Sabbath…to keep it holy! [slide #  4  Remember the Sabbath]

My seminary professor taught us that the Sabbath is personal for each of God’s children. He testified that he feels most rested and close to God when he is on his knees in the garden, with hands in the dirt and the beauty of nature all around as he partners with God to grow something good. The Sabbath is about you and God being together, finding joy and delight in one another’s presence, and spreading that joy to those around you.

The Sabbath can look completely different from one generation to the other. It may look like dressing up in silk stockings and neckties and ironing your Sunday clothes on Saturday night instead of Sunday morning. There was a time when one dared not be caught in the driveway washing your car or hanging up laundry or grocery shopping. Nowadays it is common for grocery stores to be open 24/7 and nobody judges you if you mow your lawn on a Sunday, organize a soccer tournament or go to the theatre. Nobody!

Every culture and community interprets God’s will differently regarding the Sabbath and each culture and community makes decisions that may not look like those who have gone before them. Bishop Peggy Johnson [slide # 5  Bishop Peggy] said in the town hall meeting in Reading a few weeks ago that things are always changing. She gave as an example, women were not allowed to be ordained before 1956. Or, at one time the Book of Discipline asked total abstinence from alcohol. Today it mandates that the consumption of alcohol be in moderation. She expects that gay marriages will be allowed sometime in the future. Others declare that we just spent months fasting and praying for an answer and when God gave “no” as the answer - some did not want to hear it. We will all answer to God for ourselves. I am not in a position to condone nor am I called to condemn anyone in the LGBTQ communities. Still, hate or rejection is not an option. We will all answer to God for ourselves.

Things change. Opinions change, rules change, cultures change and communities change. God’s love remains steady and we have no excuse for our love for one another to not remain consistent as well; because the Holy Spirit is within us to unite us in love and unless we reject the Holy Spirit, we have access to the power of God’s love. [slide #  6  unites us]

The Sabbath has changed through the years, but it is still God’s time, a time to ‘reflect on God’s goodness, rest in God’s love, reconnect with God’s spirit, and replenish our physical and spiritual strength.’ (Jerry Watts)

Reflecting on God’s goodness helps us to do good, and to be good. Reconnecting with God’s spirit energizes and restores us so that we are refreshed and refreshing like the morning dew. If we take time to rest in God’s love we flow in God’s peace and patience and pardon. If we take the Sabbath and spend time with God we will likely have less time and energy for looking for love in all the wrong places.

Compared to the other of the Ten Commandments, we can see that the Command to take a Sabbath break is just as high on God’s priority list. All ten of the commandments are for our good in the short run as well as the long run. Not heeding God is reckless! [slide #  7 reckless]

Never let it be said of us that we worship our work, work at our play and play at our worship. As we cross the threshold and enter the church, we are aware consciously or unconsciously that what happens here does not happen everywhere. If you have eyes to see and ears to hear, you know that what happens among God’s people is a God thing, and every God thing is a great thing.

Playing at worship may have been the problem that the Sadducees and Pharisees had. You’ve read about the good things Jesus wanted to do, heal the sick, open the eyes of the blind, do a little rehab on a man whose hand was atrophied. They forbid Jesus to do good things on the Sabbath. And when he did it anyway, they got him good, or rather, bad. They were led by their rules rather than by the Spirit.

One source says they were so rigid and hard hearted and hard on others when it came to Sabbath rules:

They believed that absolutely no work could be done on the Sabbath, and they added many of their own laws, rules, and interpretations to make sure that no work would be done… They believed that medical attention could only be given on the Sabbath if a life was in danger. If a woman was in labor, it was iffy if they could help. If a wall fell on a person, they could move enough to see if the person was alive or dead, but could not move the body or help until the next day. You could not attend to a fracture. You could not pour cold water on a sprained hand or foot. You could bandage a wound, but you could not use ointment. In short, you could only keep it from getting worse. You could not make them better, that would be work.

This rigidness also extended beyond the medical sphere. You could not prepare meals on the Sabbath. Scribes could not have a pen on nor tailors a needle! That could lead to work! In the Maccabean Wars, soldiers would not fight and defend themselves on the Sabbath, and they got slaughtered![ …Jesus had to break their law to do God’s will.] To them, man was made for the Sabbath. (Nickolas Kooi) but, Jesus taught that the Sabbath was made for humans, not humans for the Sabbath.

For a few years, the Holy Spirit guided me to a special season of prayer and meditation from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. every morning. [slide #  8  three a.m. prayer] The time quickly became a delight, but at first it was an adjustment. Instead of praying, I found myself nodding off. I set alarms to wake up every few minutes in case I fell asleep. I was afraid that I might miss a miracle or a healing or an insight in building up the kingdom [slide # 9 wall of prayer] I also did not want to be like the disciples who fell asleep when Jesus asked them to stay awake in the Garden of Gethsemane. Setting lots of alarms was my way of being faithful and disciplined and taking control of my blessings.

But, instead of a sharp rebuke, I experienced a gentle nudging of the Holy Spirit to stop setting those alarms in order keep myself awake. [slide # 10 gentle Jesus near stream with lamb]   Such gentleness was reinforced when I heard someone say that the same thing happened to them. As they were spending time in prayer, they would fall asleep sometime and they too grew to understand that God is not trying to be a drill sergeant, but a companion and a lover of our souls. Did not Jesus say that his burden is light and his yoke is easy? [slide #   11  awake] I soon adjusted and was able to stay awake and years later it was just as much an adjustment to stop that three hour prayer time as it was to begin it.

We may be living in a time when culturally and spiritually we do tend to worship our work, work at our play and play at our worship as if our relationship with God is insignificant. Still we should be able to hear Jesus calling us. Tenderly calling us as the song declares, lay down your weary head lay down, and lean upon the everlasting arms.

Those who knew the voice of Jesus and longed to run into the presence of the divine, could sing the loudest Hosannas of all! [slide #  12   hosanna] They were shouts of longing and hope and dependence on God.

It is in our time of Sabbath rest – our special time as a child of God to spend time in God’s presence that we hear important information, that we see the way that we should go, and that we touch the hem of his garment and are made whole. May our Sabbath be all of that and a bag of chips! (as they say in the city) [slide # 13  …bag of chips] Amen. [slide # 14  remember]     [slide # 15  don’t forget]