Sermon Title: "Sabbath Rest; Vacations Too"
Date: July 19, 2009
Minister: Rev. Charles Ensley

Lesson:  Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

I usually arrive at church about 7:30 on Sunday mornings.  Invariably in my one-mile drive I will see someone in shorts and a T-shirt, walking back home from Second Street, coffee cup and newspaper in hand.  I have often wondered what it would be like to sleep in on Sundays, spend the morning lazing about the house, read the entire L.A. Times and Press-Telegram at one sitting over a pot of tea.  Sometimes it takes me all week to finish the previous Sunday’s newspapers.

Not that I am faulting those who are enjoying their Sunday mornings out and about.  I just figure they are all good Catholics who went to five o’clock Saturday Mass at St. Bart’s!

There are at least two places any preacher could go with today’s passage from Mark’s Gospel.  One would be Jesus’ admonition to the disciples to “come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”  The other would be the compassion Jesus had for the great crowds that pressed in upon him, “because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”

Doubtless it is because I have a long-planned vacation week ahead of me that I choose today to focus on the withdrawal and rest theme.  I am, of course, very disappointed my wife cannot go along, and it took a lot of her persuasion for me to accept the fact that she wants me to go ahead and join our daughters and their boyfriends.  Any of you who have had a family member sick and been in a caregiver role can understand the toll it takes on you. 

And not to bemoan my called and chosen profession, but things have been pretty busy around here.  In all of last year, I had eleven memorial services.  So far, in the first half of this year alone, I have had twelve.  Sometimes I have not completed one such service before someone else dies, and I attempt to minister to that family at the same time. 

So when I looked at choices for today’s scripture, Jesus’ admonition to rest, to get away, to take a break, to have leisure to eat, jumped right out and sounded a responsive chord for me.

There is a reason we have weekends, and there is a reason we have Sabbaths, or Sundays.  Do you recall what the writer of the Genesis account of creation quotes God as saying after each of the first five days?  “And God saw that it was good.”  Then, on the sixth day, “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” (1:31)

When all of creation is complete, the story continues:  “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…”  (2:2-3)

In his book on the Sabbath, Rabbi Abraham Joseph Heschel notes that while God looks at the first six days and calls them good, the Sabbath is the only one of God’s creations called hallowed, or holy.

Thus, we seem to be given a free pass to take off, especially on the Sabbath.  We can relish times of inactivity, reflection, and the good grace of doing nothing.  Sunday worship gives us a taste of this.  Here, while we do much activity—praying, singing, listening, meditating—little of it is useful, productive, or essential, as the world defines these matters.  We are here relaxing, resting, simply enjoying being with one another and with God in the peace and beauty of this sanctuary.  Christians believe that these Sunday mornings are a foretaste of eternity when we shall have nothing better to do but to rest from our labors, to relax and to enjoy being in the presence of God, not just one day a week on Sunday, but always.  Our destiny, in God’s hands, is rest—Sabbath rest forever.  That rest is a great tribute to God.  Our ultimate destiny is not in our hands.  It is not the result of our vigorous, hard work, or even our good work.  The significance of our lives is in what God is doing, not in what we do.

I know this may fly in the face of what some people think church is for.  I experienced that one busy Sunday last year.  It had been a hectic morning:  I had had meetings both before and after church.  I missed out on my weekly donut.  I took time to post my sermon online.  I needed to call on someone critically ill at the hospital.  My stomach was growling, so, on the way, I thought I would stop at my favorite donut shop—the one I only stop at once a week if I don’t get a donut here!

I was seated at a little booth, nursing my cup of tea and a donut, kind of decompressing before heading on to the hospital.  Because I was still dressed in my usual suit and clerical collar, some man in the donut shop called over to me and said, “I sure hope you gave them hell this morning, preacher.”  I mumbled in reply something like, “No, I don’t think I did.”  “Well, you’re supposed to tell them they’re going to roast in hell!” this avid Christian and sermon critic declared loudly, almost shouting. 

Jesus said, “‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’”  For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.”  There I was, thinking I was in a quiet donut shop on a Sunday afternoon, all by myself, finding I “had no leisure even to eat” for the pastor is always on duty, even to those who are not of his own flock.

Everybody needs a break, a time to oneself, to refresh, to re-create.  William Willimon recounts a woman he once knew “who took great pride that she had never, in her 20 years of work at a company, taken all of her vacation time.  Year after year her vacation days accumulated but she never went on vacation.  She considered her lack of time away from the office as a great virtue.  Vacations?  Those are for wimps who don’t enjoy their work and who are always whining about how tired they are; not for good, sturdy stock like me!

“I’m afraid,” Willimon writes, “that in reality her failure to take vacations was a vice rather than a great virtue.  She thereby showed that she had little life outside the office, that she thought that the company’s entire fortunes rested solely on her sturdy, restless shoulders.  It wasn’t that she was so strong, so committed to her work that she did not need vacations.  Rather, it was that she was vain, full of self-righteous pride, and self-absorbed.”

In today’s text, Jesus’ disciples report to him all the good things that they have accomplished as his disciples.  Then he invites them, permits them, commands them to rest and to get away from the press of the crowd to rejuvenate, renovate, and be restored.

We stress other commands of Jesus to love the poor, to feed the hungry, to bind up one another’s wounds, and to bear one another’s burdens. Why not equally stress this command?  Jesus commands us to take a vacation!

Thank God the future of the world is not entrusted solely to you, or to me.  The world is not in our hands; the future is not ours to determine.  We can do the work God has entrusted to us, each in our own way, each in our own families, neighborhoods, schools, places of employment, even as volunteers at church and charities.  We can work and pray and do our best.  And then we can take Sabbath, resting secure in the faith that the most important work is God’s.

So, if you have not yet taken a vacation, even if this year it means making the best of your furlough days or your “staycation,” I hope you will experience some change of scenery, some change of pace, some wandering in the wilderness to clear your mind.  I went up to Pilgrim Pines Camp last Thursday afternoon to check in with Susie, our campers and the director.  Then, for one hour, I simply sat in the shade of a tree and felt the wind blow and watched the leaves rustle.  It was a much-needed hour of peace and relaxation for me.  After all, it is evident from today’s scripture that Jesus permits, invites, commands his disciples to rest, and we’re disciples too!

(Sermon theme inspired by William H. Willimon’s sermon, “Sabbath Release,” found in Pulpit Resource, July 23, 2006, Logos Productions, Inc. pp. 20-21.)