Ah, the good old days! Some of us are old enough to remember when no stores or other places of business were open on Sunday. Of course, that also included places that sold alcoholic beverages! All this and more was dictated by (so-called) “Blue Laws” which forbade any business being carried out on Sundays.

What was true in public was even more true in private. Sunday was not simply a day of rest; it was also a day for religious observance. There was Sunday school and Sunday worship and a Sunday evening service later in the day. My father recalled that in those afternoon hours he was not allowed to play outside. He could read “improving” literature but could not play any card or board games. I suppose some of this was beneficial – I think! – But much of it was unjustified and seemed to ignore the truth Jesus expressed when he said: “The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27) Huck Finn described the Widow Douglas in three precise adjectives: “dismal, regular and decent.” To older persons the same condemnation could be made of that old-fashioned Sabbath keeping on Sunday. But for anyone here this morning under the age of fifty, this all sounds like a different world and not an appealing world at that.

But no one should worry that those “good old days” will ever return. Those trying to turn back the clock are fighting a hopeless rear-guard action. In fact, the battle has been won by other extremists: the secularists. If Wal-Mart is any example, about the only day that businesses will not be open is Christmas and I wonder how long that will last. Our consumer-driven society wants to spend money 365 days a year.

About now, someone must surely be thinking: “So what? What’s the big deal?” That’s a good question and in the few minutes I have for this meditation I will try to answer. Let’s begin by recalling the fourth commandment:

“Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work – you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slaves, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day and consecrated it.”

(Exodus 20:8-11)

To us modern Liberal Christians, the notion that the Infinite God, Creator of the universe and still creating, that that God would need to take a break after six days of work seems absurd. Of course, it is, but the ancient author of the Commandment is making what I believe is still a vital truth. If you believe – as I do – that there is something of the divine in each one of us – the imago dei, the image of God – then we need to take with far more seriousness than most people do today what it means to be the holy, the whole, people of God. Let me put it this way: there is a rhythm to life expressed in seven day weeks. In the Bible, the number seven indicates a complete unit of time. If we ignore that critical boundary in our weekly life, if we live our lives without recognizing our critical need for a seventh day Sabbath, we will become less and less holy, less and less reflecting the image of God in our nature, and less and less human. Though we may think we are getting somewhere in our lives, we will actually be more like mice on a never-ending exercise wheel.

But I want to pass from the negative effects of ignoring the Sabbath, to the positive benefits it can have for all of us. This came home to me in a powerful way in the three months summer sabbatical that Pilgrim so graciously gave me. Yes, I know, few if any can have the gift of three months paid leave. Some of us are lucky if we have one or two weeks of vacation every year. But here is what I have learned: the amount of time is not as important as the meaning and purpose we find in whatever time we have. Thank God, on this Labor Day weekend, for the bravery of the Labor movement and others who insisted on a six day work week and then later on a five day work week. Frankly, I think it is shameful that too many corporations and businesses are denying their workers a weekly Sabbath by the ploy of part-time employment. I know I risk sounding like a Marxist but too many corporations and businesses see their employees not as persons of worth and value, but, rather, commodities to be used to increase profit and then discarded when they are no longer useful. But, again, I know I am drifting into the negative.

Even given the circumstances in which each of us labor, we can set aside Sabbath time sometime in our week to renew us and remind us who we truly are: children of God. When we intentionally decide to keep the Sabbath in whatever weekly time we can, I believe we will find three blessings.

The first blessing is a refreshment of mind and body and spirit that can only come through rest and relaxation. Instead of constantly striving to meet deadlines and accomplish tasks, we need time for idleness, time for doing nothing at all, or for doing things that are entirely unrelated to our regular routines. If we don’t have time, than we must make time. The important things of life require time. A loving relationship takes time. A warm family relationship takes time. A close friendship takes time. Creative thinking takes time. Time to sit quietly and reflect, opening the windows of our minds, exploring this idea and that. In science this is known as pure research as opposed to applied research. Some of the greatest discoveries in human history have come as a result of pure research, of imagination, of playful thinking.

All of us need time for rest and relaxation so we can be at our creative best. But as important as this is, it is only part of the Sabbath blessing. The Sabbath is also an opportunity for reflection. In Jewish thought, the Sabbath is always linked with the Exodus – the deliverance of the Hebrew slaves from their Egyptian taskmasters. The Exodus symbolizes freedom – freedom from the bondage to time, from daily demands, in order to reflect on the One who is Lord of all time and of all life. Thus, for the ancient Hebrew as well as the modern Jew the Sabbath is a weekly reminder of our relationship with God. By keeping the Sabbath, we affirm that our ultimate loyalty is to the Lord God of the universe and not to any lesser loyalty, whether it be country or job or family or possession.

Eartha Kitt was one of the great jazz singers of our time. Yet, in spite of her success, she felt lonely and lost. I read somewhere that she said, “More than anything else, I want time off for a little privacy. Now that I’m no longer hungry, I want just to be myself for a while again, and get re-acquainted with me. Who am I? I’ve been so busy I no longer am sure.”

This sensitive woman has touched on a problem we all share to some degree: the busy-ness of our lives with all its little questions can keep us from asking the big questions, from sorting things out, from seeing the whole picture. Life lived from moment to moment is a journey of fits and starts that never really ends.

Years ago, I remember seeing a cartoon by Walt Kelly in which Pogo is resting one day beside a fallen log. Suddenly the rabbit rushes past. “Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!” the rabbit pants. When Pogo asks him where he is going in such a hurry, he replies that he doesn’t know but that he must meet some emergency. “What’s all the hurry if you don’t know where you’re going?” Pogo asks, and the rabbit replies, “Man! That’s jes’ it! It’s when you don’t know where you is goin’ that you gotta be in a hurry!” At the risk of seeming to insert a commercial into this service, may I respectfully suggest that one of the primary reasons this or any church is in business (so to speak) is to provide the means for weekly reflection on who we are and what we should be doing with our lives.

Rest – reflection – and then? There is a third quality to the Sabbath blessing that is not so much ignored as unknown. This is the experience of re-creation, the sense of being completed as a human being, of being whole. I don’t know how it is for you, but one of the most frustrating aspects of my life is the experience of never really finishing anything. I complete one job and there are two others waiting. As soon as I clear off the top of my desk, a new batch of papers arrives. Even when I do finish something, my sense of satisfaction is quickly swallowed up by remembering that there is more I could have done.

Actually, what I am describing is what the Bible calls sin. Sin is a much-misused word. Though in a trivial sense it means doing naughty things, in its most serious sense, it means that you and I are finite, imperfect, incomplete. Nothing that we ever say or do is perfectly right. Close, maybe, but never at the center of the bull’s eye. And the awful thing is that we know it. As Paul said, we know the things that we have left completely or partly undone, and we know the things we have done all-too-imperfectly. And there are times when, with Paul, we cry out, “Who will deliver us from this body of death?” Because that is what death is – finally – the ultimate moment of incompleteness. The good news is that God doesn’t demand completeness or perfection from us. God loves us and forgives us and accepts us – just as we are. We don’t have to spend our lives in endless attempts to be perfect. As Whittier’s magnificent hymn expresses it:

“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.”

And be very sure of this: the order of which the poet speaks is not something that we can impose on ourselves or others. It is an order, a wholeness, a harmony, which is the gift of a loving God. Such a vision of life, of our life, is what we seek week by week in worship. And the promise is that they who seek will find.

Refreshment, reflection, recreation – those are the blessings keeping the Sabbath can give us. I need those blessings. You do, too. So let’s take a break together each week.