The 2nd Sunday before Lent

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

What is time? How do you view and experience time? Does the march of time cast an oppressive shadow over your life as you battle to-do lists and calendar appointments that never seem to come to an end? Or do you enjoy time as a spacious, inviting gift to be received and celebrated? Time is not just an abstract philosophical problem.

We live in an age of time famine and hurry sickness. As a society, we are enslaved to a frenetic and frantic pace of life. We are always on the go. We are expected to multi-task, or as my husband says multi-fail, and we are under pressure to make ourselves available 24/7. Even if we are off duty, we find it difficult to unplug and let go. Increasingly, long working hours and unending to-do lists signal achievement and worth in our world. Busyness has become a status symbol. To be busy is to be successful. There is no room in our lives for the sabbath.

I am speaking from personal experience here. Last week proved to be an exceptionally busy time at work for me. This is the season of marking, with script after script and essay after essay landing on my desk and demanding a response. Marking collided with a few pastoral emergencies that I had to attend to. Eventually, events overtook me, and all my plans went out of the window, leaving me with very little time to prepare this very sermon.

So as Friday afternoon rolled around, I increasingly began to think that I might have to finish this sermon on Saturday, which is technically my day of rest, my sabbath. But as that thought entered my mind, it also occurred to me that it would be deeply ironic to extol the virtues of sabbath observance to you in a sermon written on what was meant to be a sabbath. The irony would have been almost too perfect. So, instead, I decided to finish the sermon on Friday. And if its quality is ultimately not quite up to snuff, well this is because I practise what I preach. I did not sacrifice my sabbath to polish this sermon off.

Now, one of the key philosophers and theologians of sabbath in the 20th century was Rabbi Abraham Heschel. He wrote insightfully of our struggle with time:

Technical civilization ... is man’s triumph over space.... Space is exposed to our will; we may shape and change the things in space as we please. Time, however, is beyond our reach, beyond our power. It is both near and far, intrinsic to all experience and transcending all experience. It belongs exclusively to God.... Time, then, is otherness, a mystery that hovers above all categories.

Time is beyond our reach. It evades our control. It refuses to bend to our will. It does not submit to the human machinations.

Time also lies at the heart of the creation story in Genesis 1. We tend to think of humanity as the pinnacle of creation. The whole story, we are convinced, builds up to our arrival on the scene. But if we read Genesis 1 carefully, it becomes obvious that the whole account of creation builds up to the seventh day. The sabbath, not humanity, is the culmination of God’s creative work. Genesis 1 is not so much about us as it is about the sabbath.

“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.”

The first chapter of Genesis was probably written at the time of the Babylonian exile. This was a time of national tragedy. God’s people had been driven out of their homeland. No temple. No king. Only the pieces of a broken covenant and the fear of divine abandonment. To top it all off, the people of Israel faced the threat of cultural assimilation as they had to start a new life in Babylon. So what is their response? What is the most counter-cultural, and courageous, and defiant thing they could do? Surrounded by their perplexed Babylonian neighbours, they practise rest. They observe the sabbath. The sabbath becomes a cosmic imperative. The sabbath takes centre stage.

At the very foundation of the world, God establishes a period of worshipful rest and restful worship. And beginning with the sabbath day, that restful spirit trickles down into all of our lives. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” From the very beginning of the world, God has been extending an invitation into his rest. That invitation to God’s sabbath rest still stands. Made in the image of God, we are called to enjoy God’s sabbath.

We tend to view time as a road that stretches into the distance as far as the eye can see. Instead of delighting in the present, we are quick to think about what comes next—the next stop on the road and then the next and then the next. Some of you, as you are sitting here and listening to this sermon, are probably already finalising your lunch plans in your heads. But God invites us to enjoy the spaciousness of the present moment. “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” There is a place and time for everything, and everything is in its place and its time.

So how can we practise the sabbath? What does this rest look like in practice? Well, the point of the sabbath is not so much to do nothing as it is to do restful things. And different people will find different activities restful. Abraham Heschel, for example, makes the point that someone who works with their mind should sabbath with their hands, and someone who works with their hands should sabbath with their mind. So you may well need to set aside some time for figuring out what a worshipful and restful sabbath will look like for you.

I am aware that this is not easy. For one, we are living through a cost-of-living crisis. Many of us have to work harder and harder just to make ends meet. For another, childcare does not follow the settled patterns of sabbath rest. But most of us can still pick a period, even if it is only a few hours rather than the full 24, and commit to the counter-cultural practice of rest. Even if it is just an evening.

But for most of us, the sabbath is a challenge for an altogether different set of reasons. We are enslaved to a frenetic and frantic pace of life. Do you already feel resistance building up within you? Panic and anxiety washing over you as you contemplate a full day of rest with no to-do lists? Surely, I can’t afford to observe the sabbath. I won’t get everything done, and the world will end.

May I urge you to stay with that feeling for a moment. Observing the sabbath is meant to make us feel this way—to help us realise that we cannot get it all done. So it can be unsettling at first, because the sabbath is meant to dethrone us. Because that is the way reality works. The sabbath is a reminder of our finitude and our dependence on God. And there is already a God, there is no vacancy up in the heavens, and even God rested on the sabbath day.

“Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” Let us take our cue from the birds of the air. We are called to rest in God’s presence. To delight in the fellowship of family and friends. To worship. To be renewed and restored. To cease work. We are called to be a peculiar people who follow the rhythms of grace and rest, not worry and exhaustion.

Amen.