TAKING A BREAK
Rev. Dr. Joyce Antila Phipps
Old First Church September 26, 2021
Texts: Genesis 2: 1-3; Mark 2:23-28
The man drove around my block twice, slowing down as he passed me working in my yard. “Joy-ce!” he shouted at me the second time and came over from his truck. “Do you remember me?” he asked. How could I forget that one? I thought. “Of course, how are you?” And then he looked at me, the spring mud caked against my jeans, and said, “Why are you working so hard? You should have someone help you.”
I then explained that this was my idea of relaxation -- so different than the head work I normally do. “But, Joy-ce,” he continued in the way many of my Latino friends say my name, “even God took a break!” I just smiled and caught up with the events that had transpired in his life -- the birth of a new grandchild, his mother’s death, his younger son’s graduation from college and return from service in Iraq. Yes, we still have troops there.
After Ediberto left, I thought about his comment, even God took a break. We all need a break from our regular routine, to be sure, and we all take our breaks in different ways. Sometimes we just need a break from the constant barrage of news about the economy, politics in Washington, the virus. There really are other things going on in the world, you know.
Some people need a break from their caregiving responsibilities for family members. It can be awfully draining to watch people you love slowly go downhill as you provide palliative care. Other people need a break from the constant struggle of paying bills, keeping their heads above water. Yesterday I listened to a young mother who said that all she wanted was her own place instead of the room she has in her mother’s house. After trying to get child support from her son’s father, she told me she would buy that lottery ticket as part of her dream.
The idea of Sabbath rest was actually quite revolutionary in the ancient world. All societies had slaves, including the Hebrew tribes. We usually just look at the first sentence of the fourth commandment: Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy. However, look at the rest of the paragraph: not only will you not work, but neither will your children or your servants or your slaves or the sojourner within the gates, and just to make sure that no one violated the rule, the cattle were not to be harnessed and put to the plow.
Romans, Greeks, and other empires worked their slaves seven days a week. In spite of the fact that Constantine declared certain types of work should not be done on Sunday, it took several centuries for the organized Christian church to institute Sunday as a day of rest primarily because of the desire of landowners to get as much out of their serfs as possible. The Church finally won out with the decrees of Pope Gregory IX in 1234; he was the pope who forced the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV to stand in the snow in bare feet for three days after being excommunicated for throwing out Gregory’s bishops.
The Reformation provided a new approach towards Sabbath rest, spiritualizing it so that any day could be used. This approach was one of Max Weber’s arguments in his classic Religion and the Rise of Capitalism crediting -- or blaming, depending on your point of view -- Protestantism with the development of the idea of a work ethic.
In the years that followed, however, our Puritan ancestors with their literal interpretation of Scripture, reinstituted Sunday rest by law. As an aside, animals were protected from being overworked as well. In 1657 Parliament passed what we might call the first animal rights act in forbidding driving cattle and horses seven days a week and forbidding games of chance, such as dog fighting.
The early industrial revolution factories ran seven days a week and children as young as seven worked fourteen hours a day. In spite of the fact that colonial legislatures passed laws enforcing Sunday rest for slaves, factory workers did not enjoy the same benefits. That came later with the growth of unions which managed to get Sunday rest and a10 hour day for children under 14 in Massachusetts, which became a model for other states. The poor and the immigrant worked seven days a week during most of the nineteenth century and again, it was the pressure from unions that gave us Sunday as a day for rest, not to mention the idea of a minimum wage, a 40-hour week, et cetera.
Okay, so now we’ve gotten a bit of history. So what does this have to do with our lives today? Our new mentality of work and the fact that so many people hold two jobs has led a return to the day of the seven-day work week. When do we get our rest? Our spiritual shot of energy?
Connected to the question of when is the question of how. How do we get our spiritual renewal? What kind of break do we give ourselves from our daily routine -- or does the spiritual renewal become part of our daily routine? We all need that break, that all important spiritual shot. None of us is so indispensable to the management of the world that we can’t take a break. Scripture tells us that Jesus often retreated into the wilderness to get away from the crowds. Even Jesus slept.
The question, indeed, the problem, becomes how we take breaks in a world that seems to demand our every waking moment and demands that we sleep less to get more work done. This is an issue I struggle with all the time. Every once in a while I think, if I could only spend more time at x, y, or z, I would get done. What nonsense! That kind of thinking drives us into early graves. We all need to take a break.
Now, let’s get practical. Our 15-day weather forecast from Accu-weather -- let’s hope it’s not a misnomer -- is for a day much like today, a bit cooler by the weekend, but sunny for the most part. I suggest that each one of us take a break -- even if it’s only for a few hours, and read that book, plant that bulb, walk on that beach and be grateful to God for life, for the day, and for rest.
Let us pray: Giver of all good gifts who has given us the gift of rest, bring us into a closer walk with you as we take a break from our regular routine so that we really feel the power of your presence in our lives. In the name of the One who came to give us rest, even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.