Sabbath and Work

A couple of weeks ago, we experienced the gamut of emotions. Day one on Monday, we were all smiles and photographs in the snow. Day five, maybe some of us felt a bit differently.

Maybe you were forced to not work. Maybe you were still expected to go in when everyone else was resting. Maybe you were thankful for time to stop and slow down. Or did you have trouble being away from the demands of work and didn’t like being behind? In looking back at this week, I want you to think about what it reflects about your relationship with work and with rest.

It is likely that not all of us have the same relationship with work in this room. Some of us may love our work and find great meaning and purpose in it. Some of us have a job and it pays the bills, but there isn’t much beyond that. Some may be retired or stay-at-home parents and find that you work more than you did when you were employed.

What does Sabbath have to do with our work? Last week we talked about God creating the Sabbath day, blessing it, and calling it holy. But just as God created Sabbath, God also created work. There was work in the garden of Eden that came before the fall. We are told Adam had to name all the animals and tend the garden. In other words, meaningful labor is a gift of God, not a result of our sin. God’s labor is always informed by God’s love. Norman Wirzba says ““When we work, what we are really doing is responding to the grace of God evident in our families, communities, and natural habitats...This is our universal calling: to serve and keep God’s creation.” **Miroslav Volf’s belief that we will have meaningful labor in heaven. Labor, but not toil. Wha’ts the difference?

After the fall, sin takes labor and turns it into toil, distorting our relationship with work in a way that neglects rest.

The Bible has a word for work without rest: slavery. The Israelites in Egypt knew this well. They didn’t have a weekend and they certainly didn’t observe any Sabbath. They were an enslaved people who worked themselves to their death. This is why our Old Testament text this morning from Exodus is so important when it comes to our relationship with work and rest.

When the Israelites had been rescued by God from the Egyptians, they were given a new law, a law to reflect their love of God and love of neighbor, to set them apart as God’s own. And then there is the Sabbath command.

But many of us today treat the Sabbath as a suggestion rather than a commandment. We will get to it when we have time, when we finish our to-do list. But do we really ever finish our to-do list? Is Sabbath just what we do when are done with everything else?

Sabbath comes in the middle of the to-do list, almost like a breath. Did you know that … definition is catching one’s breath. Sabbath isn’t what we reach at the end of our list, it is allowing ourselves time to stop and catch our breath and thank God for the meaningful work we have been able to accomplish. We are designed to labor from a place of rest. ***nap time in workplaces. Long lunch breaks in Europe? Work is a benefit of our rest. When we are rested, we work better. During a particularly stressful time of serving in the middle of a rebuild in Tupelo, the pastor I served under would occasionally leave the office for a little bit each day. One day I asked where he went.

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