Those of us tied to school terms
may well have taken a holiday of some form over the summer if we are lucky. For
some a holiday will have meant globetrotting for weeks on end and for others it
may simply be a day or two at the coast or time in the garden.
We all have our own ideas of what
a holiday is. Possibly warm sunshine, clear seas, too much food and drink, time
to explore history and culture, time to play, read and think. Time to rest and
recuperate.
We often come back from holidays
with new ideas and ambitions, planning to create a bit of Tuscany in our back
garden or resolved against falling into the same exhausting patterns of
overworking. A tee shirt I saw in Cornwall summed it up with an image of 3
middle aged men staggering along the beach with surf boards under their arms
and the caption ‘workaholics in rehabilitation’.
In some ways our readings today
suggest that we take a type of holiday every week, time to rest, time to think,
time to worship and pray, time set aside from the routine. In Luke’s gospel there’s
controversy over what should be done on this special day, known as the Sabbath,
as the synagogue leader criticises Jesus for healing a lady suffering from a
condition which caused her to be bent over for 18 years.
Since 1994 larger shops have
legally been able to trade for a maximum of 6 hours on a Sunday and in 1995
pubs were allowed to trade all day. As patterns, hours and methods of work have
changed many have welcomed more flexible retail and leisure opportunities
resulting in work available to employees when they are free from childcare or
education commitments. But there will also be those who would like common time
set aside for rest, family and worship.
In Exodus
20:8-11God told Moses ‘Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you
shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord
your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male
or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in
six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but
rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and
consecrated it.
Some here
will recall Sundays from decades ago that were very different to those we have today
including expectations about standards of dress for church.
When I was
a Scout monthly church parade was absolutely compulsory and had it not been I
wasn’t at a point in my life when I would have chosen to attend though I admit
that it did get more interesting as I grew into my teenage years and realised
the same rule applied to the Girl Guides.
My father
recalls very quiet Sundays in his childhood, no shops, no sport, no playing
with friends… no fun. His grandfather would attend church morning and evening
and sit reading the bible between the two, but then he was a minister and he
didn’t hold the children to his standards.
This sort
of stuff prompts us to consider why we may observe a Sabbath, is it to comply
with expectations, restrictions and obligations put in place by others? If so
it’s likely that we now see things differently from the Israelites when they first
heard of thes. The laws given to them following their Exodus from enslavement
in Egypt, including that which told them to take a day for rest would surely
have been welcomed by people unused to time off for them and their hard pressed
animals.
Thankfully
things are not viewed in this context for most of us, we are free people living
in a 24 hour society with more or less continuous communication and
connectivity with each other, our work places and sources of information. My
mother –in- law was on a London hospital ward recently and said that she looked
forward to coming home to get some decent sleep as the hospital staff worked as
hard throughout the night as they did in the day.
I’ve just
had some holiday time but like most I’m never disconnected from my colleagues
and clients due to all the means of mobile communication. Perhaps some other
cultures have a better relationship with work, I can remember being kept
waiting in a restaurant in Greece because the family was sitting down for their
meal together. When I asked a local supplier if a certain floor tile was
available recently I was told that we would have to wait for a response as the
factory in Italy has shut down for its 6 week summer break!
I guess
there are two main challenges to making ‘Sabbath time’. People with quieter
lives often struggle to differentiate it from any other quiet time they have
available or people with hectic lives simply struggle to set time aside.
If we
chose not to have ‘Sabbath time’ on set days or in certain settings we have to
ask ourselves whether we have the self-discipline to find this time elsewhere.
This building and the people who gather here offer opportunities to create
sacred space in a place where generations will have pondered and prayed about
such issues over centuries, so we are in good company. It’s a good place not
just on Sunday mornings and evenings, but also on weekdays when some take the
opportunity just to sit here in peace alone and undisturbed.
Even
though most of us are unlikely to feel the need to adhere to rigid rules and
systems if we call ourselves Christians we do need to have some idea what
Sabbath is to us. After all why did Jesus free the lady from her ailment in a
synagogue on the Sabbath? She had been unwell for many years. Surely he must
have known that a lot less fuss would have been made if he had done this a day
later away from the synagogue.
It seems
he was making a point, showing the people that the consequences of God’s love
need to be shown and that by making the Sabbath a day for arguing about the law
made it smaller than it was and less about our relationship with God and what
he desires for us. When Jesus says ‘you are free’ to the woman it is as if a
great weight has been lifted or a burden removed and her response is to be
upright once again, praising God in recognition of his power. Jesus rebukes the
synagogue leader’s criticism by reminding them that they untie their animals
for water on the Sabbath so why would he not untie (or set free) this woman,
known and loved by God.
Of course
such logic goes against what suits the Jewish leaders and proved to be another
step towards the inevitable final conflict.
Jane
Williams suggests that ‘perhaps this is what the Sabbath is really about,
worship and freedom, not endless worrying about whether you’ve broken some
obscure rule without really knowing it.
We need to
find enduring value in the Sabbath if we are to separate valuable time for it.
Perhaps it helps to reflect on the instructions God gave to Moses regarding a
sabbatical year after every six for the land. Nothing was to be grown in the
seventh year, it was to be given complete rest. This way it may recover some
nutrients and similarly we know that to relentlessly continue the same pattern
of life without setting time aside means we also cease to yield maximum
productivity and that this leads to staleness.
Isaiah
points us towards a Sabbath that shifts our emphasis from our own interests to
an unselfish focus which considers who we are and why we are each loved by God.
If we can do this, in his words ‘then you shall take delight in the Lord’.
It follows
that Sabbath may include looking around us to consider who feels unworthy of
lifting their head to look up and what is broken that might be restored.
We may no
longer be bound by Sabbath laws or even cultural expectations but it is clear
that separating time to commune, to worship, to reflect and to rest is an
essential element of our Christianity which acknowledges God’s love for us.
Amen
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