It’s stewardship season, so we are in our new worship series, Good Stewards. You heard amazing sermons last Sunday from Nick North, the Rev. Harry Buch, and Julie Gilliland and I am so thankful for them. I am so thankful for you for giving me 4 Sundays to spend time with my family. It was a great time to be back at Ohio University for Homecoming. And that’s what we’re talking about this Sunday… The stewardship of time.

This sermon might get a bit technical in places, so I want to give you the whole point of the sermon right here, right now. We’ll go back to what we practiced in a previous series that I learned from our kith and kin at Trinity UCC in Chicago. Turn to your neighbor and say the following phrase. “Neighbor. Oh, neighbor. The Sabbath. Is a refusal. Of the rat race.”

Being a pastor is an amazing job if you’re called to it. It’s a great gig. But the job description is a little… vague and complex. Professor Lee Barrett once gave an overview of what a pastor does.[1] In the ancient cultures, there was always a holy person in a village or tribe that tapped into the divine. They knew the sacred stories and the will of the gods. As time passed, the priests came and added how to properly approach and sacrifice to the gods. We see this with the priestly books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Then the rabbis came, and they were expected to be able to read and write. They were the most learned and taught the Torah, the law… They knew the stories, knew how to sacrifice, knew how to mark the seasons, and taught the law and Jewish way of life. Then Jesus came along, and then we get Christians and Christianity.

We read in Paul’s letters of the early structure of the church with deacons and elders who would preach, teach, marry and bury. They would visit. They would study. These formed the basis for ministry yet the church has seen some new trends in modern age. In the 1950s, pastors were supposed to know every person in the congregation and be so closely tied to our nation that we saw a fusion between our faith and our country. When it was good, it led to good citizenship and patriotism; when it was bad it led to a nationalistic jingoism that is toxic to society. In the 1960s, we saw the rise of the social prophet who would call out injustices in the world. In the 1970s, it was folk music and pop culture references and the ability to present the Good News in everyday language. In the ’80s, pastoral counseling was all the rage and pastors were expected to be part social worker and part-psychologist. In the ’90s, pastors were in charge of programs and structures and needed to know organizational management like a CEO of a Fortune 500 company which then gave rise to mega-churches and pastors with MBAs but no theology degrees.

As we have gone through the years, we’ve seen things added to the role of the pastor. Nothing has been removed, by the way. Things have been added.

The future, says Professor Barrett, is that the pastor will need to be some sort of provocateur who wakes folks up to their present problems through art, sermons, and the unexpected. Someone who can deliberately provoke a reaction in a community to address the problems that they face.

Once again… things have been added. Nothing has been taken away.

I have been ordained for 9 years. I have seen colleagues thrive and many burn out and leave. All of us pastors deal with some sort of guilt or grief. Guilt that when I’m writing a sermon, I could be visiting, or when I’m visiting, could be doing justice work, or when I’m doing justice work, I could be on a committee… One study found that ministers work on average 60 hours a week.[2] We constantly face expectations of us, both spoken or unspoken. Yet each and every Sunday, pastors from all denominations get up and pray and lead a worship on this day, Sunday. Our Sabbath day. A day of rest. A day devoted to God. I fear that it’s a practice that is faltering in our society. People aren’t choosing to be as present in a church on a Sunday anymore. They are spending their time elsewhere. We have forgotten how to keep a Sabbath and pastors are the most guilty of this. I’ll tell on myself now… I’m preaching on the Sabbath without having taken one this week. Friday, I had the wedding rehearsal. Saturday morning was visiting Cynthia in Cleveland and then home for a quick lunch and then the wedding in the afternoon.

We have forgotten how radical and revolutionary the Sabbath is. The Israelites were slaves in Egypt. They were forced to build Egypt’s temples, pyramids, and cities. It had gotten so bad that the Israelites had to collect their own straw to make bricks. It was back-breaking work with no vacation leave, no paid time off, the 401k was awful… so was the insurance coverage come to think of it… because those didn’t exist! Seven days a week, from sun up to sun down, it was just back-breaking work for the Israelites.

Then this Moses guy leads them out and they’re in the wilderness and he comes down and says… “Hey. God says take a day off.” And the people are shocked.  Like, what are we going to do? And Moses is like… Nothing.

Scholar and Theologian Walter Brueggemann talks about how each of the 10 commandments by design are a counter and alternative to Pharaoh’s governance. They are guidelines for how to live well and faithfully outside Pharaoh’s world which is devoted to the pursuit of possessions. Each of the 10 Commandments God gives Moses to give to the people are so that we may love people and use commodities, whereas Pharaoh would do the opposite, to use people and love commodities.[3]

There is also an extreme theological statement. The Sabbath is so important that even God observes it. God, the all-power, all-knowing, the God who is so powerful God speaks and things come into being… rested. If God who has no limits does this, why do we foolish mortals think we can forego the Sabbath?

Yet Moses isn’t following the command. He’s with the people and he’s working 7 days a week. His father in-law points this out. “What is this you are doing for the people?”

Moses has a good reason. A good answer. His heart is in the right place. He’s there to serve, to help people find God and inform them of God’s decrees and instructions. It is what pastors are supposed to do, right?

Yet Moses’ father-in-law replies, “This isn’t good. You will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you can’t handle it alone. Get some help, train up some folks to help and then you will be able to stand the strain.”

It’s good advice then. It’s good advice now.

It is a temptation for me to try to “save the church.” To put on programs everyone loves. To lead Bible studies where lives are changed. To welcome in hordes of new members. To have a balanced budget in the black where we give more to mission than we spend on ourselves. To visit every single member and make everyone happy and be your best friend. But I will only wear myself out trying to do all of this. And I’ve felt worn out at times. Maybe you are feeling worn out.

Life seems to have sped up. We’d like to think that this wasn’t a problem back in the day, but that’s not true. Theologian Soren Kierkegaard worried about the invention of the railroad in the mid-1800s and how that would speed up the pace of life. Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote about the rapid pace of life… in the 1930s. We see how careers, travel sports, constant connection to one another through our phones, all have been added… nothing has been taken away. We’re overscheduled as a society. We move at too rapid a pace. It’s why the Sabbath is needed now more than ever.

A time to give to God. A time to be… bored. To have nothing on the schedule. Bored enough to notice the little things in life. Notice people we taken for granted and thank them for the impact in our life. Notice the autumn colors and give thanks to God for this life we get to live with such beautiful scenery in it. Thankfulness to our pets and how they bless us with love. Thankfulness to our homes and our furniture and for this lovely building we get to worship in.

By taking time to notice and ponder and be thankful… we find things. We discover things. For me, I am accepting that I am powerless to direct my ministry toward my own ideas of what a church should be. I am starting to see myself primarily not as a preacher, teacher, healer or administrator or any of the vague titles Dr. Barrett described… but as a host — a convener. My greatest asset is not my knowledge or my degrees or my charming personality… but my position in our community. I know many of your stories… What I’m wondering is how to get us comfortable in sharing our stories more widely and without shame. My job then is to summon the gifts of others. Your gifts. Your time.

Moses did so by getting his leaders together, our sacred stories seem like a great place to start! I have committees and a council. I’ve asked the committees to take a look at their bylaws and see if we are being served by our structure or are we serving the structure. The goal is to talk about our life together and what groups are thriving, what groups might need some help or focus, and what groups need to be retired. I am not concerned with the outcome as much as the conversation. I have no final plan or agenda; my agenda is to simply talk about our structure and life together.

Our moderators and the council are convening a group to look at a comprehensive safety plan. We have been gifted with Ken Zuehlke who has spent his career doing this work. We have Maureen and her love of our church. We have Julie and her mind and positive nature. We have amazing council members. We have a deep sea of gifts here. A new member turns out to be a retired trauma nurse. We have other members who are so interested in working on issues of safety and having this conversation. It builds energy!

If I were to do this myself, it wouldn’t be half as good. I wouldn’t have even thought about having these conversations! My agenda is to gather us, spend time together, and have good conversations. It’s not about being flashy or impressive, it’s about being faithful.

The Sabbath is the refusal of the rat race. The Sabbath shows us that we are enough. We don’t need what our neighbor has. We don’t need to go to war or conquer others like the Pharaoh would do. Comparing ourselves to other churches leads us to an anxious idolatry. The Sabbath is a rhythm to help us follow God out of what bonds us and into the wilderness of faith and truth in God.

The Sabbath is the refusal of the rat race. Who cares if your neighbor is the big cheese when we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread”? Who cares that your neighbor got that new car or painted their house? Who cares that the church down the road is doing something really cool? We can be free of all that. We don’t have to covet. We can learn to use our time and find that the Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

In these things…. Nothing will be taken away from your life… only added. And we will have life, and life abundant together in Christ. Amen.

 Bibliography

Barrett, Lee C. Kierkegaard. Abingdon Pillars of Theology. Abingdon Press; Nashville, TN. 2010.

Fosdick, Harry Emerson. Successful Christian Living. Harper Brothers; New York, NY. 1937.

Works Cited

^[1][1] Speech given the UCC National Synod in Milwaukee, at the Lancaster Theological Seminary luncheon, Sunday June 23, 2019.

^[2][2] Informal poll taken in a pastor’s group on Facebook in May of 2017.

^[3][3] Money and Possessions page 24-25.