05.02.06 Steve A time to rest Mark 1: 29-39/ Isaiah 40:21-31
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...........he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.
If myriads of people through the ages have been drawn to the person of Jesus (including, to some extent, those of us here), it is not necessarily easy to say why. We have a sense that it's somehow true that he is the human embodiment of God - God physically present in a way that we can connect with. Yet in this divine expression, he is compellingly human too. Here in Mark 1 is a gripping 24hr snapshot from the beginning of Jesus' ministry. He's had a 'mad day' - and retreats to he home of some of his new friends - and what happens? - the whole town gathers outside. The house is beseiged, and again he attends to them. But instinctively, and not surprisingly, he feels the need to get away for a time on his own. He gets up early and goes off to a deserted place to pray. This kind of activity is often held up as an example to us of the kind of personal piety we should aspire to. The truth of this is not diminished by the reality that he was probably pretty phased/freaked-out by all of the attention and the highly emotional contact with so many needy people. He had to gather his thoughts without anyone else around.
If we would pattern our lives after his, then, quite apart from aspiring to whatever we understand to be prayerfulness, I want to propose that one of the marks of spirituality is to learn to be self-aware about the realities and limitations of our energies and abilities.
Compared with a generation ago, our culture has become 24/7 - work, commerce, recreation, media, entertainment, retail - are all 'crowding outside our door', demanding our attention - every day, of every week. Compare for a moment, our culture with that, not only of the ancient world, but with our own 'modern' age of, say, 100 years ago - a modern world, but not powered by electricity and it associate technologies. In contrast to the natural world's rhythm of darkness and light, winter and summer, scarcity and plenty, growth and hibernation, - we have contrived an increasingly 'constant' world - where the light, the temperature, the flow of information, the noise, the food we eat, the world itself - are constantly available to us......the unlimited broadband connection that connects us to the permanent drone of human activity.
I am ashamed to admit how dependent I have become on my broadband connection - and how twitchy I felt last week when it was down during the time when I was switching my service provider ... (an excuse for a story about Sebastian - Clare and Jolyon told me about a Sunday lunch when their guests were discussing the weighty matter of internet connections.... when a guest asked Calre and Jolyon who their service provider was, Sebastian shot up his hand and said 'Steve!').
According to the 'nhsplus' website - In the UK, as many as one in five people are suffering from high levels of work-related stress. Stress is a natural reaction to excessive pressure or other types of demand placed on people. Work-related stress, caused by, or made worse by, work is not an illness, but it can lead to increased problems with ill health if it is prolonged or intense.
I read in the Guardian recently that the average British lunch break is 19 minutes long - adding to the worrying truth that the UK's long-hours culture is accepted and encouraged ('Got a spare 19 mins? Let's do lunch', January 25). British people, it seems, work some of the longest hours in Europe, seriously affecting health and opportunities for a social and family life.
CC me in on that Monday January 9, 2006 - The Guardian
'If a Blackberry featured in your Christmas wish list, you may be in for a stressful 2006'. A staggering three-quarters of us find email addictive and it's jeopardising our health, according to new research. So serious is the problem for one in five people that they fall into a category of emailer called "the dependent". They check for email compulsively and panic when they cannot get access. Dependents carry out their first email check as early as 6am and may only say goodnight to their inbox at midnight, found the study by Symantec Corporation. Email has been found to be a major catalyst for workplace stress. One survey found that our addiction to it is so great that as little as 30 minutes without access causes most users to become irate.
I think godly people, like their Lord, know that this is not life as our creator intends. The story of God's people and of God's world is highly characterised by pattern and rhythm. Ecclesiastes 3 - among the pattern of 'times' listed ar 'a time to break down and a time to build up.....a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together..... a time to keep and a time to throw away ..... .' I remember writing an essay on these in my Biblical Studies class of 1977 at Edinburgh University - the very ancient professor (at least in his 70s) had a good deal to say about the times of life - he it was that forbad us from getting summer jobs because that's not what our undergraduate time of life was meant for.....
'Rest' or 'sabbath' is a first principle of the created order. According to Sue Mayfield and Robert Warren in the CofE's Lent book for this year, 'Life Balance', ...... there are three key words about rest - or Sabbath - Restoration, Remembrance, Grace
1 Restoration
A second meaning of the Hebrew word 'Shabbat' is 'to rest', both mentally and physically.
The Sabbath instructions in Deuteronomy 5 require a complete cessation of work for the whole community - family, servants, neighbours and even animals.
Rest is more than just relaxation or a break from work. Rest is about recovery and restoration. In 1 Kings 19.4-8, Elijah's depleted reserves are replenished by sleep, food and drink. The Hebrew word for rest, 'menuha', means held or embraced like a child at its mother's breast.
A folk tale tells of two men who chopped wood for a whole day. One man chopped constantly without a break. The second rested for ten minutes in every hour. At the end of the day it was the second man who had chopped more wood. Puzzled by this, the first man asked his colleague how this could be. 'It's simple,' said the second man. 'Whenever I rested, I sharpened my axe.'
2 Remembrance
Deuteronomy 5 links Sabbath keeping with remembering God's deliverance of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt.
In the ritual that marks the start of the Sabbath in a Jewish home, two 'Kiddush' candies are lit, one for 'observe' and the other for 'remember'. Remembrance of all God has done is an essential part of Sabbath rest.
Resting reminds us that all that we have and all that we are come from God and that he is the author and perfecter of our faith, the Lord of our lives, the potter moulding clay.
3 Grace
The Sabbath is the first day of the week - not the 'week end'. It is meant to sustain us, not reward us for working hard all week!
Grace is the underlying dynamic of the Sabbath. God's love for us doesn't depend on what we do. Receiving God's love is fundamental in being a follower of Christ.
Proper rest will, most likely, make our work more effective but that is not its primary purpose. This runs contrary to the 'Protestant work ethic' that has pervaded and shaped our culture for the past 500 years. True Sabbath elevates rest, play and celebration above work and productivity. We are human beings, not human doings.
'Man is not a beast of burden, and the Sabbath is not for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of his work'. Heschel, The Sabbath and its Meaning for Modern Man, p. 14
'To be fully alive involves being open to the renewable resources of creation, human society and grace that are given to sustain life. Being human, then, begins with grace and with the ability to live in thanksgiving out of the 'renewable resources' which life opens up to us.'
Robert Warren, Being Human, Being Church, p. 118
'Rest' of this kind is arguably a good model of prayerfulness - finding ourselves in God and being open to our journey of service in God's world - past and present.
Mayfield and Warren continue by proposing that Sabbath attitudes of receiving and giving rest help us order our priorities and recognize our dependence on God's goodness. This cuts across:
... activism and the need to appear busy;
... acquisitiveness and the drive to achieve;
... a tendency to define ourselves in terms of the job we do - and to ask people on first meeting them 'What do you do?'
... human greed and the desire to have domination over the earth, its people and its resources;
... an inability to stop and a fear of doing nothing!
...........he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.
In our prayers this morning, then, we'll go in our minds to a place of quiet - and hold the quiet for each other. Let us listen for God's word to us about our offering of work, and God's call to rest. And when we hear what is most on our hearts today - whether it be someone who is poorly and for whom we have prayed and don't really know what else to pray - or whether it's the gloom of the international tension over religious sensitivities - let us lay our burdens down in the hands of the living Lord.