A Sabbath Mindset

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Prayer

Almighty God, who after the creation of the world rested from all your works and sanctified a day of rest for all your creatures: Grant that we, putting away all earthly anxieties, may be duly prepared for the service of your sanctuary, and that our rest here upon earth may be a preparation for the eternal rest promised to your people in heaven; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (A Collect for Sabbath Rest, ACNA BCP, 2019, 24).

Hook - the disciples’ arithmetic

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Our Gospel for this morning opens with Jesus trying to get away. He has just had the crushing news that John the Baptist – his relative – has been executed by Herod, and so "he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself" (Matt 14:13).

Sit with that for a moment. It's one of the most ordinary things in all of Scripture. Jesus gets hard news and does what any of us would do – he goes to find somewhere quiet.

And yet it doesn't work. The crowds hear where he's headed and follow him on foot. When he comes ashore, he doesn't get solitude; he gets a crowd. His compassion overrules his grief, and by the time evening comes, he still hasn't had his moment alone.

The disciples look around: the people need to eat, and there's no village nearby. And so, very logically, they offer a solution:

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Matthew 14:15 ESV

Now when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”

Send them away. So they can buy food. For themselves.

Hold on to that — I'll come back to it in about two minutes.

The two questions

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Now — for what it's worth, I hadn't planned to be standing up here this morning. Some of you were with Danielle, Cheryl, and me at yesterday's retreat, working through a much longer version of this, so you'll recognize some of it. But we never opened Matthew's door — and Matthew is where I want to start.

Look again at what the disciples assume in their solution. Two things — and both of them are perfectly reasonable.

The first: there isn't enough here. Whatever this place has, it won't cover this many people. Send them somewhere that has more.

The second is quieter, and it's the one I can't get past: buy food for themselves. Because that is how food works. You get what you pay for. Everyone covers their own.

Underneath both is the same idea: I am responsible for my own provision.

And I'd love to tell you I hear that and think, "those disciples sure were faithless!" But I don't. I think: well — yes. That's the math. I make assumptions like that every day of my life.

The disciples were talking about supper. But my assumptions don't stop at food. I make them about time, about margin, about whether I'm allowed to stop at all.

So when I hear God's call to Sabbath — to stop, for an entire day — those two assumptions come back and meet me as questions:

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1. Will there be enough? If I stop doing long enough to actually rest, will there still be enough — enough money, enough time, enough life? That isn't a productivity problem. It's a trust problem. Can I trust God to provide what I need, whether or not I'm the one chasing after it?

2. Am I allowed to? Can I "just be," without earning it first? Am I worthy of rest — have I done enough, earned enough, striven enough? Or can I trust that I'm allowed to rest simply because of who God says I am?

I don't have all the answers. I can't tie it up in a nice little bow, write a perfect self-help book, or give you ten steps to true Sabbath. But I can point you to the one who does.

The First Question - Will there be enough?

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Before we go back to that hillside, we first have to go a long way back.

In Genesis we read that creation takes six days. Humanity is made on the sixth. God rests on the seventh. Follow the order: Adam and Eve's very first full day of existence is a day of rest. Before they built, gathered, planted, or accomplished anything, they were given Sabbath — they hadn't done a single day's work yet.

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Rest came first.

Sabbath is not earned. It is a gift.

Later, the same grace that gave Adam and Eve rest before they'd lifted a finger gave Israel freedom before they'd lifted a finger.

In Exodus, Israel walks out of Egypt, but it doesn't take long for the food and water to run out. They start whining to Moses that they'd rather go back to slavery.

And before they even reach Sinai — before there's a commandment about any of this — God gives them an exercise in trust. You heard it read this morning.

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Exodus 16:4–5 ESV

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.”

A test. That's God's own word for it — he sets out to see "whether they will walk in [his] law or not."

The bread comes, and the first test is immediate. Those who gathered a lot and those who gathered a little each found they had enough. Those who tried to hoard it woke up to find it full of worms.

Then comes the sixth day. Gather double. Prepare it today — because tomorrow there won't be any.

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Exodus 16:26–28 ESV

Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be none.” On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws?

Six straight days of food falling out of the sky(!) — and still some of them went out on the seventh to look for more. And found nothing.

God doesn't ask how long they'll keep forgetting. He says refuse. That was a failure of trust.

Now, let me be clear. There is preparing for rest, and there is bracing for rest.

Two weeks ago my family and I went on vacation, and I did exactly what Israel was told to do. I gathered double: long hours beforehand, every list checked, the dog arranged for, the house made safe.

But then … I packed my laptop.

Because I was also braced. Ready for emergencies. Hoping to knock one more thing off my work backlog. Even in my time of "rest," I was readying myself to gather manna on the Sabbath — just like those untrusting few in the wilderness.

And that's the test. It's not that Israel hadn't worked hard — they worked hard the other six days. The real test is whether, after we've done our part, we can stop striving and trust that it's enough.

So — the first question. Will there be enough?

Yes. Absolutely, yes. When God calls us to stop and rest, he is also faithful to provide — though rarely on the schedule we would have picked.

Just ask Jesus. Three verses past where our reading stopped, once the crowd has been fed and sent home, he finally goes up that mountain by himself, and Matthew says he was there alone. He got the solitude he set out for at the beginning of the story. Just not before the crowd had eaten.

II. The second question - Am I allowed to just be?

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Which brings us back to the hillside.

The disciples had done the math, and the math was right. Matthew records their words: “... ‘We have only five loaves here and two fish’” (Matt 14:17) – for five thousand men besides women and children(!). As I like to say, the “math wasn’t ‘mathing’.”

But notice their solution. Send them away, so they can buy food for themselves. Everybody gets their own. Everybody pays for what they eat.

And Jesus refuses their whole premise.

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Matthew 14:16 NET

But he replied, “They don’t need to go. You give them something to eat.”

And then he tells the crowd to sit down on the grass.

I want you to see who is sitting on that grass. These are people who brought nothing. They contributed nothing. They interrupted a grieving man's attempt to be alone, followed him around a lake on foot, and stayed out there until dark with no food and no plan. If anyone in Scripture ever had less claim on a meal, I don't know who it is.

And the people sit down. And they eat. And Matthew tells us they were all satisfied.

And then, there’s a detail that I cannot get past. The men who said, "Send them away so they can buy their own," are the ones handing out the food — and then going back around to gather up twelve baskets of what was left over. Their objection became their job.

Think back to the manna. What Israel held back for themselves bred worms. What Jesus provides overflows — and they gather up the leftovers with more than they started with.

That is the whole difference between hoarding and receiving.

So — the second question. Am I allowed to just be? Can I be worthy of rest without earning it?

Five thousand (plus!) people who had earned nothing sat down on the grass and were fed until they were full.

Yes. Absolutely, yes.

III. The gap - and who closes it

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So both questions have answers, and I could stop there. But if I did, I'd be lying to you by leaving something out.

Because I wish I could tell you that I've personally arrived. I haven't. Sundays, for me, as you can imagine, are not days of rest. Even Saturdays are hard, when the laundry, the lawn, feeding the kids, and walking the dog all send their not-so-gentle reminders into my brain.

Even on that vacation, the closest I got to real, unguarded rest was during my one-year-old daughter’s nap time — her asleep, the house quiet, an actual chair, an actual book. And even then I kept one ear tied to the baby monitor. I couldn't fully let go, even in the best conditions I could ask for.

So if you're sitting there thinking, "I believe that in theory, but I don't know how to actually receive it" — I am right there with you.

And if that sounds like an excuse, look at the men who served that meal. That same night they watched Jesus walk across the water like some sort of ghost — and despite everything they had just witnessed, they were terrified. Mark explains why – they still hadn’t taken in what the loaves meant.

They had held the baskets in their own hands.

And I want to say this carefully, because it matters: that gap, between what's true and what we can actually take hold of, is not a failure. It's just where most of us live.

But I won't leave you there. Because if you're asking how that gap ever closes, here is the only honest answer I have.

You don't close it by striving harder.

And I can say that with some confidence, because God told us — centuries before Christ — exactly how he intended to deal with hearts like ours.

The NET translation brings this out the best:

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Ezekiel 36:26–27 NET

I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you; I will take the initiative and you will obey my statutes and carefully observe my regulations.

I, God, will take the initiative. Not you.

God does not stand on the far side of that gap telling you to jump. He puts his own Spirit inside you and moves you across it. So the gap doesn't close by your striving — it closes for you, as the Spirit does in you what you could never manufacture on your own.

And the place that happens is worship.

IV. The response - and the life that grows

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So what do you do with a God like that? When the storm finally died down, Matthew says the disciples worshiped him.

That's the response. And we said Psalm 92 together this morning — and, appropriately, its title is “A song for the Sabbath day.”

And look at where the psalmist starts. Not with himself.

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Psalm 92:4–5 NET

For you, Lord, have made me glad by your deeds, and I will shout for joy because of your handiwork. O Lord, how glorious are your works; your thoughts are very deep.

That isn't self-examination — "let me figure out how I feel about God today." It's God-examination. The psalmist’s very first move is to look at what God has done and find his delight there.

But here's the thing, and it may be the most important sentence I say this morning:

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We can't proclaim what we haven't stopped long enough to see.

Let me say that again. We cannot proclaim what we have not stopped long enough to see.

Stopping. Receiving. Looking at him long enough to actually see. These aren't techniques for producing worship; they're the window. God built each one into the way he made us. When that window opens for us, we see him as he actually is, rather than as we imagine him when we're too busy to look.

That same vacation, the wildfire smoke rolled across Pennsylvania and wrecked everything we'd planned. We were supposed to be riding roller coasters. Instead, the air turned noxious, and we were shut indoors with our family for a day and a half.

I didn't choose to stop. I was stopped. And with nothing left to do, I looked through that window — and saw what God had been doing all along, which no roller coaster was ever going to show me. I got the rest I needed, not the rest I’d planned.

Returning to the psalm at verse 11, there is a dramatic turn:

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Psalm 92:11–14 NET

The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree, and shall spread abroad like a cedar in Lebanon. Those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They also shall bring forth fruit in their old age, and shall be green and full of sap, That they may show how upright the Lord is, my rock, in whom there is no unrighteousness.

This word: Flourish. And notice where — planted in the house of the LORD. Not alone on a mountain somewhere. This is not navel-gazing; it isn't becoming a hermit. Planted … among God's people.

And notice what flourishing isn't. It isn't a burst of feeling that fades by Monday morning. It isn't winning the lottery. It is the deep-seated, firmly rooted, well-watered flourishing of an entire life — still bearing fruit in old age — with our trust planted in the only one worthy of it.

So why does it happen? The psalm says it out loud in the last line: “that they may show how upright the Lord is.” The flourishing isn't the point. What it shows about God is.

Which is right back where we started. We can't proclaim what we haven't stopped long enough to see — and a life planted long enough becomes its own kind of proclamation. Not because we worked at it. Because we were planted.

Close - The cross and the table

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So both of this morning's questions have answers.

Will there be enough? Yes — absolutely, yes.

Am I allowed to just be? Yes — absolutely, yes.

But all of it rests on a promise. Ezekiel said God would take out the heart of stone and put his own Spirit within us — take the initiative himself. And a promise still needs a way to be kept.

So here is how it was kept. God sent his own Son, Jesus Christ — to take on himself everything that made us feel we had to earn our place, and to hand us, free, the place we could never have earned.

The cross is not a footnote to any of this. It's the reason all of it is true — rest before we'd worked a day, manna every morning, a meal for people who brought nothing, a new heart and a Spirit to go with it. All of it from one place:

God, in Christ, doing for us what we could never do for ourselves —

and God, by his Spirit, doing in us what we could never work up on our own.

And listen again to what Jesus did on that hillside. He took the loaves. He said a blessing. He broke them. And he gave them to the disciples.

Now hear what Matthew writes twelve chapters later, in a borrowed upstairs room, on the night Jesus was betrayed.

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Matthew 26:26 ESV

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.”

Took. Blessed. Broke. Gave them to the disciples.

The same four movements. In the same order. Into the same hands.

The meal on the grass was a rehearsal for the meal at the table — and the meal at the table was pointing us at a cross.

Which means that this morning, at this table, you will be handed bread you did not earn — by a God who has never once asked you to go buy your own.

And just before you come forward, you'll pray what you always pray. Give us this day our daily bread. Not let us go and buy our own. Give us. Enough for today — exactly what Israel was told to gather.

Nobody is being sent away.

So come and receive it. And then take this home — because knowing the answer and living inside it are two different things. That gap doesn't close in twenty minutes, or in a single Sunday morning. Israel didn't learn to trust God in a day; they learned it one gathered morning at a time, for forty years.

So here's the question to take home:

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What would one ordinary day this week look like if you believed the answer to these questions was already yes?

Not a new schedule. Not a habit to master. Just one day where you stop gathering on your day off — and let him show you how faithful he is to you.

Closing Prayer

O God, the light of the minds that know you, the life of the souls that love you, and the strength of the wills that serve you: Help us so to know you that we may truly love you, and so to love you that we may fully serve you, whom to serve is perfect freedom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Collect 72, ACNA BCP, 2019, 668).