Sermon:
March 5, 2006
Morning Services

Scripture:
Luke 4:1-13

“HELP!!! I’VE LOST MY FOCUS!” 

That’s the title of an article in the January Time Magazine with the subtitle: “E-mail and cell phones help us multitask, but they also drive us to distraction.” The authors begin: “Spend a few hours with Hollywood producer Jennifer Klein and you might want to pop a valium. Or slip her one. From the moment she rises at 7:00 a.m., she’s a fidgety, demanding, chattering whirling dervish of a task juggler. Motto: never do just two things at once if you can possibly do four or five.” 

Then they say: 

Klein’s action- and anxiety-packed work style may be extreme, but she’s really only a couple of juggling pins ahead of most of us. By now, every modern office worker knows that the gadgets designed to lighten our loads also ensnare us; the dingling digital devices that allow us to connect and communicate so readily also disrupt our work, our thoughts and our private lives.                               (Time Magazine, January 16, 2006, page 73)

All this multi-tasking and screen-sucking has left us frazzed and pizzled…and if you are not familiar with those terms, you may also not be aware that a “Blackberry” is not just a fruit! 

And to those of us who are ready to shout “Help! I’ve lost my focus,” Jesus says, “A person does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.” 

The first temptation of Jesus was simply this: “Turn these stones into bread.” 

“Come on, Jesus, you can do it. Use your talents, your power, your energy to meet your own needs, to satisfy your own physical and material wants and desires, to get all the goodies life has to offer.” 

And Jesus says, “Ah, life is more than that. Life is more than the latest gimmick and gadget and the mere accumulation of material things. Life is more than material toys and trinkets, more than bread for the belly and the accumulation of more stuff. Life is all about the soul, the heart, the spirit. It’s about a Word coming from the very mouth of God.” In response to the temptation to throw himself into the rat race of material satisfaction, Jesus finds a calm center, an anchor in the Word of God. And that centered faith will enable him to deal with all the other temptations to come. So it was with Jesus. And so it is with us.

Like Jesus, we will find our focus in the depth of our inner lives, the strength which comes “out of solitude,” a calm center. 

In Biblical language, that’s “Sabbath”:

• a time and space for relaxation and renewal

• a time and place to encounter God and get in touch with our souls

• a day of rest

1.  Sabbath: a day apart from the days of our lives. 

The tradition begins, of course, with God’s day of rest. In the Genesis story, the storyteller says God worked himself silly for six days, and at the end of it he stepped back and said: “That’s good! Now I’m exhausted. I need a break!” And on the seventh day, God rested. Now whether you take this story literally or not, isn’t the most obvious question: “If God needed a day of rest, what makes us think we can get along without it?” 

One of the most tragic and telling terms coined in our day is a simple one: “24/7” 

24 hours a day, 7 days a week
Always on call
Always on duty
Always available
24/7

Even God didn’t work that kind of schedule. God settled for a 24/6 work week, and on the seventh day, God rested.  

And so the tradition of Sabbath began with a day set apart, a day meant to be different from all the rest, a day to stop the running and slow the pace, a day to renew our lives and our souls in the presence of God. To this day in the Jewish community, when the sun sets on Friday night, life almost comes to a standstill. The family gathers, lights a candle and breaks bread, and the world seems to pause in anticipation of rest. Throughout their wanderings and persecutions, from generation to generation the saying goes, “It was not that the Jews kept Shabbat, rather Shabbat kept the Jews.” 

Laurie Haller, pastor at First Church Grand Rapids, is part of a book group currently studying a book called Girl Meets God. The author—from a Jewish background where observing Sabbath was an integral part of life—asks the question: “What is the most counter-cultural thing a Christian can do today?” And her answer: “Rest. The most counter-cultural thing we can do is take the time to rest.” 

Laurie comments:  

Certainly you and I are well-meaning. We want to solve the world’s problems. We want to make a difference. But if we and our children and grandchildren do not have unscheduled time to rest, to play, to listen to our spirits, we will not be effective. When we rest, God can shape us, but when we are frenetic, God can’t even catch up with us.”        

(Rev. Laurie Haller, FUMC Grand Rapids, MI, February 19, 2006)

Physically, emotionally, spiritually, we were created in the image of God, and like God, we have a need for rest, for renewal, for Sabbath. On the seventh day, God rested…and so should we. 

Rev. Ralph Richardson was the pastor of my baptism and confirmation. Can you believe he met with a bunch of seventh graders every Saturday morning for confirmation? Honestly, I don’t remember much he taught us, but I will never forget his warm, gentle spirit. I remember his love of poetry and I remember him quoting from the American poet John Greenleaf Whittier: 

O sabbath rest of Galilee
O calm of hills above,
where Jesus knelt to share with thee,
the silence of eternity,
interpreted by love.    
                      (UM Hymnal, page 358) 

The call for Sabbath…a day apart from the days of our lives. 

2.  And Sabbath…a time apart within the days of our lives. 

In the midst of our routine, our busyness, our round of activities, we need to find those quiet moments to center our lives in Christ. Call them mini-Sabbaths, if you like.

• Sabbath moments

• A pause in the midst of the rat race for rest and renewal

• Moments of solitude with God

Rev. Talitha Arnold is the pastor of the United Church of Santa Fe. Inspired pastor, writer and activist, her life is filled with the demands of ministry, family and world. Remembering her mother, she writes: 

My mother used to sit. As a widowed parent of four children, a science teacher, volunteer at church and 4-H, she had little time to sit. Yet every morning before we got up, she’d sit in her chair in the living room, a cup of coffee in one hand, her Bible in the other. If the afternoon permitted, she did the same, but with the newspaper instead of the Bible and a cup of tea.

I think we kids knew that sitting made all the other activity possible. It didn’t solve our problems, but sitting offered my mother a chance to catch her breath, to remember life was more than the task at hand, and to tap into some sense of peace in the midst of the maelstrom.

(Talitha Arnold, Christian Century, Oct. 23, 2002, page 19) 

And then I wonder…what would my kids remember of me? Always running to church meetings, always busy, or would they remember me napping by the lake or sitting by a campfire? Did they ever just see me sit? 

In the midst of Jesus’ own personal maelstrom, his personal wilderness wrestling with temptation, Jesus paused. And in that pause, he discovered the answer—life is more than food and body more than clothing; we do not live by bread alone, but every word which comes from God.  

Sabbath…moments of solitude within the days of our lives.  

A couple of summers ago, on my way to Estonia, I had an overnight flight through London. We landed in the morning with a couple hours’ layover, so I couldn’t miss the chance to take the express train into Victoria Station, a hectic two-hour dose of things British to feed my anglophile addiction. Dashing through St. James Park, trying to make the most of my brief visit, I stopped to take a picture of Buckingham Palace. And there on the lawn in front of me, the viewfinder picked up a young man in a stylish business suit, obviously from one of the surrounding office buildings. He had kicked off his shoes, stretched out, and was taking a nap on the grass. Here, in the center of the city, in the midst of his hectic day, taking a nap on the lawn. And it made my hectic pace seem so silly.  

So when I got back, I decided to give it a try. Out on the front lawn of First Church Ann Arbor, right there on the corner of State and Huron, in middle of the day, you could find me on the lawn once in a while, taking a nap. And so this summer, if you find me sprawled out on the front lawn on Maple Road, you will know what I’m doing.  

Again from the words of Whittier, how we need to pray: 

Breathe through the heats of our desires
thy coolness and thy balm;
let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
speak through the earthquake, wind and fire,
O still, small voice of calm.  

Sabbath…a day apart from the days of our lives.
Sabbath…a time apart within the days of our lives.

3. Sabbath…a time together for the sake of our lives. 

Jesus’ temptation was deeply personal. The Gospel writers say he struggled with the power of evil in the wilderness…alone. And so do we. There are those times when it feels like Satan himself is wagering for our souls and our very integrity hangs in the balance. The deepest struggles often come when we are alone. But Jesus knew that strength for the battle comes from those times of shared life. In the company of others, we find the focus, the center, the still point, the anchor for the temptations ahead.  

The Jewish Shabbat begins around a family table as the sun sets on Friday evening. The mother lights the candles. The father breaks the bread and offers the prayer. The Sabbath comes. And around the table, there is joy and there is comfort and there is nurture and there is rest. Jesus would have experienced it time and again as a child, and when he found himself alone in the wilderness, he called on the strength which had been nurtured at the table.

So we gather at the table in this season of Lent. 

We gather together, out of our own personal journey, out of solitude. The ancient symbols of Jewish tradition take on new life. The bread and the cup become his body and his blood, and in community we experience Sabbath together…for the sake of our very lives. Here, in our multi-tasking, screen-sucking, harried, frazzed and pizzled 24/7 world, we regain our focus. We remember that we don’t live by bread alone, but by the bread of God’s mercy and the wine of God’s grace.

One last verse from John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem. He lived before the days of iPods and Blackberries, cell phones and pagers, but his poem couldn’t be more appropriate: 

Drop thy still dews of quietness, till all our strivings cease;
take from our souls the strain and stress,
and let our ordered lives confess
the beauty of thy peace.  

Sabbath: a day apart from the rest of our lives.
Sabbath: a moment within the days of our lives.
Sabbath: together, for the sake of our lives.  

I don’t know why I ended up with so much poetry in this sermon.  Maybe it’s because the IXOYC and Covenant Choirs were singing in these services—do they still teach you to love poetry in school? I hope so. And I hope in addition to John Greenleaf Whittier, you learn about Jane Kenyon.  

Jane Kenyon and I were born in the same year, 1947. She was born in Ann Arbor, graduated from the University of Michigan, and ultimately became the poet laureate of New Hampshire. She died much too young in 1995. In this incredible poem, she uses the image of evening to call us to Sabbath time, to calm and to rest.  

Let the light of late afternoon

shine through the chinks in the barn moving

up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing

as a woman takes up her needles

and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned

in long grass. Let the stars appear

and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.

Let the wind die down. Let the shed go

black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop

in the oats, to air in the lung

let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t

be afraid. God does not leave us

comfortless, so let evening come.  

Let Sabbath come: a day apart for the days of our lives.
Let Sabbath come: time within the days of our lives.
Let Sabbath come: time together for the sake of our lives.

So let Sabbath come.

Notes: 

The Jane Kenyon poem, “Let Evening Come,” can be found on various websites…simply search for “Jane Kenyon.” Some believe she is speaking of death, and she probably is, but as with all good poetry, it is open to a variety of interpretations and it certainly seems an appropriate invitation to Sabbath rest. 

This is the first sermon in a series related to the Lenten study book, Traveling the Prayer Paths of Jesus by John Indermark, available from The Upper Room and from the church office.