Exodus 20
“Fast-Food
Living”
Last week, we started a summer sermon series on
Sabbath. In the creation story, God
works for six days, creating this world in which we live and then on the
seventh day, God rests. God takes time
to enjoy the creation, blessing time and creation. God creates a rhythm for living, six days of
work and one day of rest, one day to set aside to be present in God’s being, a
sacred break from the toils of work.
We jump ahead today to the Ten Commandments, and again
are reminded of Sabbath keeping. The
Hebrew people have been living in Egypt for around five hundred years. They trace their arrival to Egypt back to
Joseph who arrived as a slave and rose to privilege and power by interpreting
Pharaoh’s dreams. His eleven brothers
arrive during a time of famine and the extended family settles in the land and
prospers. By the time of Moses and the
Exodus, one estimate of the Hebrew population is as high as two million
people. The scripture states that there
were six hundred thousand men which does not include the women or the
children. Together, this massive group
of people, leave the oppression of slavery and follow Moses into the wilderness
on their journey to the Promised Land.
It takes the people three months to reach Sinai where
they camp at the base of the mountain and Moses climbs the Mt Sinai to receive
the Ten Commandments. Just prior to
this, Moses goes to his father-in-law asking for advice as to how to be present
for all of these people. There are many
complaints among them, and Jethro advises that Moses should call elders from
the people to help handle complaints and be present to the people’s
concerns. Three months into the
wilderness and these people that had only known a life of oppression under
Pharaoh are now struggling with how to live as free people. It is an incredible change, from a daily
routine of work to this new life of journeying, a new life of not really
knowing where they are heading, a new life of putting trust into Moses and this
God that Moses proclaims is leading them into their future. This was all new to them. And so God gives them a code of living, a
short list of laws in which they are to practice is they begin to form their
lives as a new culture, a new people, a people set aside to be God’s
people.
When many people think of the Ten Commandments today,
they think, sure, these are easy enough to follow: I don’t steal and I won’t
kill anyone, unless it is in self-defense.
Those are the two that seem to have risen to the top of how to summarize
the Ten Commandments. But what about
commandment number four? This one is not
written as a Thou Shall Not, but rather as a positive: Remember the Sabbath. And unlike the others, it is given with an
explanation. Remember the Sabbath –
because – because even God rested on the seventh day. Again, this is all new to the people, they
had been living in Egypt and living under Egyptian law, rituals and
practices. They knew Egyptian Gods and
now, they are beginning the process of learning about this one God that is
molding them into a Promised people. As
an oppressed people, a people forced to work, learning to set aside a day of
rest is a gift.
Do we think of Sabbath keeping in our lives today as a
gift? I found a cartoon on-line that has
two young people talking and it says this:
Our grandparents called this day Sabbath, our parents call it Sunday and
we call it the weekend. We ask each
other, what you doing this weekend? And
the response of going to church or taking a Sabbath rest is rarely the answer. The Ten Commandments were not meant to be a
list of Laws forcing people into a strict way of living. They were intended to be a way of life in
which people lived with respect for each other and respect for God. Where people worked, lived, and rested
remembering that they did these actions because a loving God established a
world in which this should be the way to live.
Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. I asked last week, what would this look like
for us in our lives today? Other than
attending church, do we keep Sunday just as another Saturday? Perhaps we can look deeper into our culture
and pay attention to who works on the Sabbath.
Some people, such as myself, do work on the Sabbath, but we have the
gift of taking another day off. Friday
becomes my Sabbath, my day of rest, a gift given by God, commanded by God. But what about the people all around us that
don’t have a day of rest. In this
Fast-Food world we live in, there are many people that are working seven days a
week, holding several jobs, just to try to make ends meet. All we have to do is go across route 10 and
walk through Kohls, or Walmart, or eat at McDonalds, or Wendys and we will
encounter people that might be working multiple jobs, seven days a week. If, we choose, in our freedom on this Sabbath
day, to go to the grocery store, or have brunch at a local restaurant, let us
lift up in prayer those that are working.
We often don’t know their stories, but everyone has a story. Some are working because they don’t have the
financial freedom to have a day of rest.
While others are given a day off on another day.
I came across a church that has taken this Fast Food
Living as a ministry. Believing that
Sabbath is not a luxury, believing that Sabbath is not just for those that can
afford it, this church felt called to providing Sabbath rest for those that are
truly overworked. It is a simple gift of
a free meal, not the gift of a whole day, but a start. A church saying, we know you are there, we
know you are working hard, we know we benefit from your labor and we would like
to give you the gift of rest. Come and
Eat and we will serve you. First we
start with prayer. Let us pray for the
overworked, for those that desire Sabbath rest but cannot. Then let us pray for the greater church, for
the ways in which our Presbytery might be able to work together as God’s people
to name the Sabbath as a Commandment given by God with the same weight and
importance as Thou shall not steal and thou shall not kill. Remember the Sabbath, keep it holy, because
God labored for six days and on the seventh day rested.
