Sermon: "Permission to Rest" (the Fourth Commandment), October 10, 2021

Preacher: The Rev. Ryan Slifka
Scripture: Exodus 20:1-11

The Fourth Commandment in our Sermon Series on the Ten Commandments, “Remember the Sabbath Day”

Today we continue our series on the Ten Commandments, with number four: “Remember the Sabbath Day, and keep it holy.”

“For six days,” we're told. “For six days shall you labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.” So you work all week, the work week is Sunday-Friday, but Saturday, the seventh day, that's the Sabbath... dedicated to the Creator. Take a rest. Of course, for Christians the Sabbath eventually because became Sunday, or “the Lord's day” on account of the fact that Jesus was raised on Sunday. But the same idea remains. Six days on, one day off.

Now, on one hand, a day off in the week doesn't seem like much of a big deal for us. Over the past century, we in North America have gradually transitioned into a forty-hour work week, translating to five eight-hour days. Two days off of work is more or less provide for by government regulation. For most of us, anyway. One day off would be a downgrade in benefits.

Think, though, of who Moses presents these commandments to in the first place: the commandments are delivered to God's people following their harrowing escape from Egypt under Pharaoh, through plagues and parted waters. The commandments are first addressed to former slaves. People who'd literally been owned by other people for four-hundred years, having just been released within the last few pages on their calendars. Back in Egypt, every day was devoted to making bricks for Pharaoh. From the time you got up in the morning until the time you lay down at night, it was bricks, bricks, bricks, dig, dig, dig, build build build. If you didn't you'd get whipped. If you couldn't you'd be discarded as useless. There ain't no such thing as a day off for slaves.

Any it's more than just a day off, too. The word Sabbath itself means to “cease.” To cease, to desist. To stop. “You shall not do any work,” it continues. “You shall not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock or the resident alien in your towns.” So this isn't just a holiday for the king. Or the wealthy, the middle class, or government employees. This is a day where everything shuts down, and everybody clocks out of the regular work week, ceasing their labours. Even slaves—of both sexes. Even migrants with no rights. It's a weekly holiday for every single human being, no exceptions. Even animals get a rest. Give your ox and chickens a sleep-in day. Everybody ceases on this day. Every week.

So it's a direct contrast. In Egypt you had no rest, no time to breathe, to regenerate. But you, you are free people. You are God's people. Free people do not have to toil unto death. You also don't have to work anyone else, to death either. Servants are included, so are illegal immigrants, cows and every other barnyard creature. Work itself is necessary, and unavoidable. But it's not all there is. God didn't bring you out of slavery of one kind just to suffer in another. As free people you can cease your labours. You can take a day of rest. Everybody needs to rest. And everybody can rest.

For ancient Israel, the Sabbath's revolutionary. It's incredibly good news for the oppressed and the overworked. It's the promise of rest for exhausted and weary people.

Now, like I said, one day off a week doesn't impress us much. But what about the promise of rest? Rest for the weary and exhausted?

A while ago I read a piece in the New York Times about the shift to working from home during the pandemic. Many of us have been able to work remotely. There were many worries about people working from home not getting as much.

At the same time, though, this apparently has led to more burnout and exhaustion.[i] Whereas before you'd have set days and times of work, you'd work whenever. Days bleed into eachother. You'd also try to multitask, taking care of kids and the household at the same time. No clear boundaries between work and home life, days on days off. Couldn't finish that on Friday, so will try to sneak it in on Sunday night. Plus thanks to technology work just comes to you day after day all the time. Emails never stop, and you might not actually stop checking. It may be more efficient for the bottom line, but it doesn't lead to a better life.

And really, this isn't just a pandemic thing, it's a parable of modern life. The late Jewish-Polish philosopher Zygmunt Baumont once said that the defining characteristic of modern life is efficiency. “Speeding up.” It's not just work, but it's everything. Children's sports, family life, social media, health, exercise. First it was opening stores on Sundays, now it's 24 hour e-commerce, Amazon Prime deliveries on Sundays. It's all about getting more and more done in less and less time. I mean, this is great in a lot of ways. Just take a look at your washer and dryer. But we've just filled our time with more stuff. And it's made us believe that productivity, producing is the main purpose of our lives. I know I have trouble relaxing on the couch for a while on Sunday afternoons because I have this deep sense that I should be getting something done. And I'm not alone. So many adults tell me that every week is a hamster wheel.

We may have limits on how much we have to work or pay, unlike Israel in Egypt. But we're like them in that we're picking away in our little brickyards 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We may not be literal slaves engaging in excruciating physical labour. But true rest is just as hard to come by, isn't it? No Sabbath, no ceasing. We won't stop because we don't think we can.

And yet, it's something we desperately need. “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them.” In the six days God made it all, then on the seventh day, God rested. Therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.” Here we look back to the account of the creation of the world in the book of Genesis. God creates the world—day/night, moon/stars/sun, dry land, animals, plants, human beings. It's a big job generating a universe, so then on the seventh day God rests. And in resting, God blesses it, consecrates it, sets it aside as a special day. Different from the other six.

Now, you don't have to take the number of days literally to get the point. God, rested on the seventh day. And of course, God doesn't literally need a break or a nap. God is God. But God isn't scrambling at all cylinders all the time. God isn't frantic. Being at work is God's resting position. And if rest is something the all-powerful, omnipotent Creator of the universe does, if it's a characteristic of the one who made us in his image, what makes us—finite, mortal, limited creatures who have to eat and sleep and a host of other things to survive—what makes us think we can go without it? We're not God. We're not God. You're not God, either. So what makes you think you can go and go and go, if God herself doesn't?

No, we need rest. You need rest. And considering the health of the world's ecology, creation itself very clearly needs rest, too. The animals, the land, the oceans, the air, all needs a breather. We just can't keep going on like this.

We can't keep going on like this. And the good news is that we don't have to keep going on like this. I know it seems like it. We had that little break where the world slowed down for a bit due to the pandemic. Now it's shifting back into hyper-drive again. These bricks for Pharaoh won't make themselves. But it doesn't have to be that way. Not for us.
It doesn't have to be that way on account of the promise folded into this commandment. Think about it: the Sabbath was first given to ancient farmers and shepherds. People who had to more or less spend every single day scratching out a living simply to survive. It took incredible faith for them to trust that if they paused their whole society for one day out of seven that they wouldn't starve. But they believed that they weren't the only force that makes life itself possible.

On account of the God they'd come to know in their journey from slavery to freedom, they'd come to know that the world wasn't being held up by their own sheer effort. They'd come to expect that life itself wouldn't spin out and crash and burn if they dropped their shovels for a day. They'd come to believe that their Creator knew them, knew their needs and had provided for them, including rest. And went so far as structuring rest right into the very fabric of reality. They could cease their endless striving, because God gifted them with the Sabbath. If God could rest on the seventh day, without the world falling apart, they could, too. And it was worth remembering. Worth celebrating with worship. Worth keeping holy with thanksgiving and praise.

Now, what might this mean for us? Well, it means the same thing—it means good news. With it God says to us that our social lives won't crumble, our children's futures won't collapse, the world will not spin out of control if we cease all our striving for a single day. It means all those pressures on us to perform, the fear of missing out, the constant dings and notifications, the constant drive to do more, be more, to hack our inefficiencies and optimize our our potential. We can let it all go, at least for a day. Because all of this is a self-generated delusion. It's all a figment of our collective imaginations. What is truly real are these human bodies that have been created good and in need of rest, and that we have been given exactly what we need by the divine hand of grace.

It means we can clear our calendars, without the constant clamouring in our heads that demands that productivity be squeezed out of every moment.

It means we can resist the magnetic pull of consumerism, and sacrifice spending money we don't actually have in favour of spending time with our family, our friends, and our children.

It means we can turn off our phones, tune out the 24 hour news cycle, and turn, and tune into eachother instead.

And it means we can pull ourselves out of bed, put on some real pants, and get ourselves on down to church. Not out of gloomy obligation, but in joyful anticipation, and in grateful celebration of a life we could not earn, and a love that we do not deserve, one that is given to us anyway regardless of the number of bricks we can or cannot produce. And pass that same gift along to somebody else.

I know it's deeply difficult in our cultural climate, with all of the constant pressures on our time. It's the kind of thing that may take discipline, sacrifice, struggle. It's a countercultural practice if there ever were one now. But the promise is that it will be truly worth it.

But I'm reminded of a parable told by the late great Jewish Rabbi & civil rights leader Abraham Joshua Heschel: “that day is the Sabbath.”

It'll be worth it, because we'll know true freedom. The freedom to cease, to rest, to be still and know that we are in God's good keeping, is a sign, a foretaste of the life we're promised forever.

So may you remember this day. May you keep it holy, may you honour it, in honour of the God who knows and provides for your every need. Including your need for rest.

May this same restful, holy God have mercy on us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.

AMEN.

[i] David Gelles, “Are Companies More Productive in a Pandemic?” The New York Times, June 23, 2020.