Working the Land

Most of us approach the Sabbath, initially, like Pharisees, creating an amazing burden of rest that sits heavily not just on our shoulders, but on everyone else's. Eventually, most of us try to be more like Jesus, taking the burden of the Sabbath on ourselves and allowing the needs that arise around us to modify our practice of rest. But is there a happy medium?

There is. And it's buried way back in the Old Testament, in Leviticus 25. 

It is easy to miss this little bit of wisdom because it refers not to the human practice of a seventh-day Sabbath, but to the communal practice of a seventh-year Sabbath. But as we have seen this week, even our best Sabbath is, to some degree, communal; it affects everyone around us. And everyone around us affects our Sabbath.

So here's the rule, straight from Leviticus: "For six years, you will work the land, but in the seventh year, the land will lie fallow. For six years, you will eat what you produce, but in the seventh year, you will eat only what the land produces."

Boiled down to its core message, the wisdom of this verse is this: "Even on the Sabbath, the land is working, but no one is working the land."

That, I think, is the key to a successful Sabbath practice. And it runs two ways.

First, consider yourself the land. You may produce amazing things on the Sabbath, things that flow naturally out of you. The land cannot help but grow what has come to rest in its fertile soil, even during the years that no one is tilling the land. All the little seeds that fell off of last year's harvest are buried in there, and they take root anyway. All the good things that God has put in you are buried in there, and Sabbath or not, they take root. So do what you do on the Sabbath. Do what comes naturally. Let things grow out of you. Love. Serve. Worship. Cook. Sew. Read. Whatever it is that you do, do it on the Sabbath.

But don't let anyone, even yourself, force you to do these things. Don't let anyone work you. Sometimes, someone just needs something on the Sabbath, on my Sabbath. The question I ask myself is: "Am I doing this because they make me feel obligated to do this? Or am I doing this because this is the kind of thing that grows naturally in me?" Sometimes, I say yes because I give freely, because the opportunity is one that I naturally grow into. Sometimes, I say no because it feels like someone else has placed the demand of work on me. Sometimes, it can be the exact same request, the exact same thing, even the exact same person needing the exact same thing, and I might say yes on one Sabbath and no on another, depending on the context of how it's all playing out. If it's something that comes naturally from me, I'm in. If I feel like I'm being worked, I'm out. 

Because the land produces even on the Sabbath, but no one makes it produce. The land works, but no one works it.

On the other side of this, and the second direction in which this understanding of the Sabbath runs, neither will I work anyone on the Sabbath. We live in a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week society. There are persons whose employers force them to work on Sunday so that you have the convenience of doing whatever you want to do when you want to do it. There are persons running cash registers who would rather be at church. There are persons waiting tables who would rather be around their own tables. There are persons who do not get a choice about where they get to be on my Sabbath, but I will not be a part of that decision. I will not be one of the reasons that they do not get a choice.

Which means, in essence, just as I will not be worked on my Sabbath, I will not work anyone else. I will not go out to lunch or to dinner on my Sabbath because that requires that someone be there to cook, to work a cash register, to wait a table. I will not go shopping on my Sabbath because that requires that persons be there to operate the store and to serve me. If I do this, or any other number of things, I am guilty of breaking even my own Sabbath. I'm working the land in the seventh year. I'm forcing it to do what I want it to do, rather than trusting it to do whatever it does naturally. 

For one day a week, the same day that I live out of what is natural in me, I let the world do the same. I let it be whatever it will be.

And I think we see this in Jesus' practice, as well. I think the key to figuring out what Jesus was doing on the Sabbath is not focusing on the very real needs that He was meeting, but to consider what it means to "work" and to "be worked." Nobody ever worked Jesus on the Sabbath. For all the stories we have of men and women lining the streets, calling out to Him, begging Him for mercy, these aren't happening on the Sabbath. All the men and women He heals on the Sabbath are men and women He just kind of ran into in the course of His normal day. They didn't ask for healing, but He saw their need. He did what flowed out of Him naturally. He worked, but no one worked Him. 

This is the key, for me, to a healthy Sabbath practice. Work. Be fruitful. Produce. Grow. But don't be worked. And don't work others. For one day, let things be. Breathe. 

You may just discover, as did God on the seventh day, that this is very good. 

Like Jesus

Perhaps the showdown that occurs most often in the Gospels is the one between Jesus and the Pharisees over what is lawful on the Sabbath. Jesus, always the rabblerouser, spends His Sabbaths healing, teaching, eating, and generally being a pain to the ritual law.

It is because He realizes what we looked at yesterday - any legalistic keeping of the Sabbath becomes a burden not just on the Sabbath-keeper, but on everyone around him, as well. 

Take the crippled man, for example. His arm is shriveled; he is in need of healing. Jesus, they both know, has the ability to provide him with the healing that he so desperately needs. But it happens to be the Sabbath. A legalistic keeping of the Sabbath requires Jesus to turn away from this man, introducing a new burden into Jesus' heart. He could help, but He was required not to. This is terrible. It also puts a burden in the heart of the crippled man. He could have been healed, had it been any other day of the week. But it happened to be the Sabbath, and so he would be forced to carry his cripple one more day.

This is what Jesus was talking about when He kept asking the Pharisees, "Does this seem right to you? Is this Sabbath thing really the right thing to do? This Sabbath could burden two men."

Or take another example, the one of Jesus and His disciples breaking the heads off the wheat in a field on the Sabbath to satisfy their own hunger. There are several considerations here. First, the men are already walking through the field; they are likely already stepping on some of the life that is developing in this ground. If they do not make purposeful use of the produce of the field, they are simply assaulting the ground by walking through it, rather than making it meaningful. 

They are hungry; they will have to satisfy their hunger somewhere. If they do not pluck the heads from this grain, then they will have to work to prepare a meal later in some other place. And this would be even more work than plucking the grain is. Or if they do not prepare their own meal, they will have to trouble someone else to prepare a meal for them. Think about the hospitality custom of the day. Whenever the disciples arrived wherever they were going, their host would naturally wonder if they were hungry. If they showed up hungry, they have now required something of their host on the Sabbath, thus breaking his Sabbath for him because of the nature of hospitality. If he does not break Sabbath for them, he is a bad host. Which is worse? 

And there is something else going on here, too. Plucking the heads off the grain is something most of us would probably do mindlessly. It is natural for us to pick at the plants as we walk through a field, at least, for many of us, it is natural. Jesus says that's not what's happening here. It's not mindless what the disciples are doing; it is very mindful. It is for a purpose, to fulfill a need. To fulfill several needs - to make the land meaningful, to honor the Sabbath of others, and to satisfy the hunger of the disciples. There's nothing about this that is mindless. 

And shouldn't the Sabbath be mindful? Isn't that part of keeping the Sabbath? 

When Jesus gets into it with the Pharisees over the Sabbath, it's always about these kinds of ideas - needs, mindfulness, meaningfulness, burdens. Jesus is very aware of all the dynamics that go into keeping the Sabbath, and those that are at play in breaking it. Tops on His list are the needs of others and avoiding the creation of an additional burden by His Sabbath practice. (Although it ruffles the feathers of the Pharisees, it creates no burden on them for Him to break Sabbath. It does, however, draw them to argument, which they do like it's their job, so aren't the Pharisees also working on the Sabbath?)

I think this is apt for those of us who attempt to embrace Sabbath practice in our modern world. We must be mindful of needs and burdens. We must be aware of what's going on and how our practice of Sabbath either contributes to or detracts from all that is happening in the world around us.

There is a danger in this, of course, and that is that we can become so attuned to "needs" on the Sabbath that our Sabbath can become all about serving rather than resting. We can emerge from our Sabbath more weary than when we began. We can give over our entire set-aside time for the sake of others and not have any of it left either for God or for ourselves. And this is no good, either. It is burden in the other direction. There is a very real threat that the needs, demands, and expectations of others will make our Sabbath a burden on us, if we read Jesus in such a limited way as to say that we must do good works on the Sabbath. 

And so, we can approach the Sabbath neither purely like a Pharisee, creating an undue burden on everyone, but nor we can approach it purely as the surface reading of Jesus would suggest, creating a burden on ourselves. There is one more lesson here that I think really brings Sabbath practice into focus, and I will share more on that tomorrow. 

Like a Pharisee

It's easy, starting out, to approach the Sabbath like a Pharisee, as though the Sabbath has all of these hard and fast rules about how it is to be practiced. It's easy to read where the Bible says, "On the seventh day, you shall do no work," and get caught up in the idea that essentially everything we do is work.

Isn't it?

Vacuuming the house, washing the dishes, checking the email, mowing the lawn, tending the baby, minding the pets, cooking, driving, hosting others in your home - all these things are things we intentionally do, exerting effort to accomplish them. All these things are work. Therefore, we should not do any of them on the Sabbath.

I think that's the place where we all start out, defining our Sabbath by all the things that we don't do on this day. All the things we're taking a break from. All the things we can't be held responsible for. For one day a week, it's not our problem. 

The problem with this view (and there are many, but how about just one for now) is that when we take this approach to Sabbath, it becomes a burden, not just for us, but for everyone else who knows us.

For us, it feels like we're putting ourselves into a smaller and smaller box. We're limited. We're not experiencing rest because there are too many rules to keep. We can't relax because if we do, we might forget all the things we aren't supposed to be doing on the Sabbath and accidentally do some of them anyway. We're constantly on guard, constantly thinking, constantly evaluating whether we can or we can't, and it isn't long before our Sabbath, our one day of rest, our time carved out, becomes the most stressful day of our week. Instead of looking forward to it, we dread that seventh day each week. We dread our time set apart. We dread this sacred space, and it's just not sacred any more. It's not a beacon; it's a burden. It's not desirous; it's a drag. 

We come to despise the Sabbath.

Not only do we despise the Sabbath, but everyone around us despises our Sabbath, too. They hate that one day a week, we can't help them. We won't help them. We aren't available. We aren't willing. We're so intent on keeping the rules that nothing is good enough reason to even risk breaking one of them. Let's say you don't cook on Sunday because it's the Sabbath. But let's say you are caring for a family member who is hungry. If you don't cook, they don't eat. Let's say you don't clean on the Sabbath, but your dog throws up all over the floor. Sorry. Too bad. It's the Sabbath. We all just have to walk around the vomit until morning breaks. 

Let's say you don't use your computer on the Sabbath, but your family member is having some technical difficulties with theirs. Maybe they are working on something very important, maybe something with a deadline, and now, they're stuck. Since it's the Sabbath, you won't help them; this would break your computer rule. Let's say you don't "work" on the Sabbath, but you're suddenly asked to babysit a niece, a nephew, a grandchild on short notice because something requires the parents to be away. Will you say yes to babysitting, even though that itself is work and will require more work? Will you say yes and permit the youngster in your home, but not interact with him/her? Will you discipline your own child on the Sabbath if he/she is doing something wrong? Isn't this work? Has the Sabbath become a free day for your children, a day when they have no accountability because to discipline them would be "work"? 

There are all kinds of troubles with approaching the Sabbath like a Pharisee. It puts an undue burden on you, so much so that you don't even look forward to this time set aside. It also puts an undue burden on everyone around you. Sabbath or not, there are people in this world that need you. When you hold legalistically to a certain idea about what the Sabbath is, about what its "rules" are, you fail them. You fail the people in your life who love you and whom you love. You create a horrible burden for them not only by failing to be present for them but by holding them accountable to your own practice of Sabbath. You're making them practice your rest. That doesn't work for anybody.

But I think this is how all of us start out. I think this is where our minds naturally go. This is how Sabbath is done, is it not? This is what it means, right? No work means no work. Rest means rest. Sabbath is such a counter-cultural idea that if we don't have some hard and fast rules about it, it would be nearly impossible to keep. But a ruled Sabbath is just no Sabbath at all - not for you, not for anyone else, and not for the glory of God. 

And when we realize this, we turn the page and discover a new voice speaking into the Sabbath - the voice of Jesus. More on that tomorrow. 

Sabbath

For several years, I have faithfully observed a Sabbath on Sunday. When I started this practice, it was really just in an attempt to breathe and simply enjoy my life. I was running seven days a week, always trying to push my life toward the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. One more step, one more decision, one more opportunity, one more, one more, one more, and it was killing me. So I decided that on Sundays, I would take a step back. I would stop pushing. I would rest. 

I would breathe.

I thought that what I needed was a temporary break, that Sabbath would be, for me, only a season. That it was unsustainable as a life practice, at least to some degree. I figured that after a few months or maybe a year of this, I would have the refreshment that I needed and be willing to go hard-bore again. I figured it wouldn't be too long before I would go back to my seven-day-a-week schedule, stuffing Sabbath back in my pocket for a time when I would need it again.

That was six years ago.

The truth is that as time presses on, I continue to press myself deeper into this Sabbath rest. What started out as one day a week where I did not use the Internet became a day when I did not turn my computer on at all. Then it became a day where I did not do any work, even homework, because that was a draw back into my busy, hectic life. Then I decided that some work would be okay. Then I decided that on Sundays, I don't even use my cell phone. I don't text, check my Bible app, sync my fitness tracker, nothing. Then I stopped even wearing my fitness tracker. Who needs to count steps on a Sunday? I take it off on Saturday night before falling asleep and don't put it back on until Monday morning.

Then earlier this year, I read something in my Bible and now, I don't even shop on Sundays. No fast food. No "I forgot _____ at the store yesterday, so I'll just stop on my way home from church." None of that.

That doesn't mean I sit around on my fanny on Sundays and don't do anything; that would be a misunderstanding, as well. I have picked up some chaplain shifts on Sundays, even though at first, I was not keen on this idea. If my mother is having computer trouble, I will work on her laptop for her. I visit friends and neighbors, talk with people, play with the dogs, give the dogs a bath. Sometimes, I vacuum the house or dust my desk. Yesterday, I spent the day sewing. I watch NASCAR in the spring and summer, football in the fall and winter. I cook a big meal, usually enough to last a few days into the week, and sometimes, I bake. 

It's been hard for others, looking in, to "figure out" my Sabbath. Because they think Sabbath means rest, and it does, but they think that rest means doing nothing. It does not. There is plenty of opportunity, even on the Sabbath, for doing. But Sabbath requires an intentionality not only about what I do, but how I do it and for what reasons. 

I have often heard other say, "Sabbath? I wish I could do that..." as though what I am doing is either some tremendous feat of personal discipline or some extravagant luxury that modern life simply will not accommodate. Neither is particularly true. Some Sabbath practices are harder than others; some are inconvenient at times. Sometimes, my Sabbath practice conflicts with God's command to love others, and here, I have to make some hard choices. But it's doable. And it's worth it.

So I thought I would take a few days this week and talk about my Sabbath practice, some of the guides that I draw from Scripture about how to rest and how to make this period of rest meaningful, and some of the challenges this presents. If you are interested in incorporating the practice of Sabbath in your life, stay tuned. It is my hope that some of my Sabbath may help you to figure out how you want to do yours. 

Exalted by Men

The great tragedy of the story of Matthias, the thirteenth disciple, is that it is the story of a man exalted by men. 

We saw yesterday how Matthias appears to be very worthy of this honor. He has invested just as much in the ministry of Jesus as the twelve whom Jesus called. That was one of the fundamental criteria that the disciples had in choosing a replacement for Judas - it has to be one of us. It has to be someone who has been there with us from the very beginning. 

And we can assume that Matthias met some pretty stringent character requirements, as well. After all, if you are replacing a betrayer, you want to make absolutely sure you do not "mess up" this time and pick another man who is going to turn out to be some kind of moral failure and thus, one more embarrassment on the name of Jesus. 

And of course, he was fortunate enough that the dice fell in his favor. 

But despite his worthiness, his character, and his luck, Matthias is still the recipient of the honor of men, not of God. Because it is not Jesus who chose him to be one of the twelve; it was only the eleven, who felt somehow incomplete after the loss of Judas.

That's not to say that Jesus doesn't have an opinion on Matthias. He does. He knows the man by name. He understands how much Matthias gave up to be His disciple, just as the other twelve had. He probably remembers that at all the major events of His ministry, Matthias was there. They likely knew each other intimately. Jesus knows Matthias. And I believe Jesus has a plan for this disciple, as well. 

That plan, however, does not include replacing Judas. Judas was and always will be one of the twelve. Matthias will always be number 13.

So can you imagine what it must be like to give your whole life to this Jesus thing, to invest yourself wholly in the ministry just like the twelve special disciples that Jesus called, to finally have the chance to step up into an even greater role in the story when one of those disciples experiences a tremendous moral failure, to have everything finally fall in your favor...and then you one day die, get to Heaven, and see Judas face-to-face? 

Not only do you see Judas, but you find that he is sitting in what you thought would be your seat.

Not only is he sitting in your seat, but Judas has become your judge. This man, this moral failure, this guy whose disaster paved the way for you to finally get your chance, sits in judgment of you. Because even after all of this, he is still one of God's chosen twelve. And you, though exalted by men, are number thirteen.

It's got to be heartbreaking.

And yet, I fear this will be the testimony of many of us. For it is all too often that we find ourselves exalted by men at the cost of knowing our true position in Christ.

Matthias had a very real role in the ministry of Jesus. He was a very real part of it. He was not the central part of it, was not one of the figures of special election within Jesus' ministry, but that does not diminish the role that Matthias played as a faithful disciple of Christ. Though he is not mentioned by name in the Gospels, we can be fairly sure that Matthias was doing much of the same kind of quiet work that so many of us are called to. He just...wanted more. We all want more. 

But that's not up to us. Our job is to play alongside the Jesus character in whatever role He has cast us in. We are but a cast of characters, some with speaking parts and others without. Some of us may find that we spend our whole lives dressed as a tree, standing on the stage as part of the scenery of the developing story of God. Others may discover that we have but one line. Still others, many. Whoever we are, we must play our role faithfully. We must be content to be who God has called us to be and to play the part He has called us to play. 

There may come a day when our hard work is recognized, when others see all that we have put into it, when the dice roll in our favor and this world gives us a chance to step up. But we must be careful. For it is far too easy to live a life exalted by men and still find ourselves in obscurity. (Matthias is never mentioned again.) 

Far too easy to live a life exalted by men only to come into the presence of God and find someone else sitting in the seat we were never meant to occupy. 

For even exalted, we may never be more than number thirteen.