Download The God Who Rests - Wildwood Mennonite Church

The story of Sabbath begins with a dream, two dreams in fact. The Pharaoh, ruler
and demigod of ancient Egypt, was haunted by two nightmares. In the first,
Pharaoh saw seven sleek and healthy cows standing by the Nile, innocent
enough. Then seven more cows approached, but these seven were sick,
malnourished, rough-looking. As Pharaoh watched, the seven sickly cows went up
to the seven healthy cows, and ate them up, consuming the healthy cows but not
looking any better themselves. At that, Pharaoh woke up. When he went back to
sleep, he dreamed again. This time, he saw seven ears of corn growing on a stalk,
healthy and full. Then he saw seven more ears of corn, and these seven were
diseased, thin and without much grain. And as with the cows, the seven sickly ears
of corn devoured the seven healthy ones, devouring them but not gaining
nourishment themselves. And again, Pharaoh awoke and was deeply disturbed so
that he could not go back to sleep.
Pharaoh searched all of Egypt for someone to explain the meaning of his dreams to
him. Until he heard of Joseph, a young Hebrew man serving in an Egyptian prison,
who had a reputation as an interpreter of dreams. So Joseph was brought to
Pharaoh, and Joseph gave this interpretation. Egypt was about to go through seven
years of prosperity, plentiful harvests. But after would follow seven years of
devastating famine. This famine would destroy Egypt, Joseph said.
But there was hope. If they prepared well, if they stored up grain during the seven
years of plenty, they could have enough to last them through the famine years.
Pharaoh was impressed with this interpretation, and with Joseph’s plan for survival.
So impressed that he put Joseph in charge of food production and storage for all of
Egypt. Only Pharaoh had more authority than Joseph did.
Which sounds like a bit of an overreaction in hindsight, but it actually worked out
very well for Pharaoh. The next seven years were plentiful, and Joseph collected
and stored vast amounts of grain. And then the famine did hit, and people were
starving, and Joseph opened the great storehouses and sold the grain. As the famine
spread throughout the region, Egypt was the only source of food. So the
neighbouring tribes came to Egypt for food, and Egypt collected their wealth.
Joseph plan, Pharaoh’s food monopoly, built the Egyptian Empire.
Now, Joseph’s family was one of the tribes that came to Egypt during the famine
and stayed there. After several generations, these people known as Hebrews
became quite numerous, so that the native Egyptians saw them as a threat. And so
the Egyptians forced them into hard labor, for Pharaoh’s building projects. The
book of Exodus describes the irony: these descendants of Joseph were forced to
build the massive storage buildings, slaves in the system that Joseph had
created. The enterprise that had been their salvation had now become the
mechanism of their oppression.
I said that this was the story of Sabbath, and we’re getting to that. As the years
went by, the Egyptian’s domination of the Hebrews grew more and more harsh,
driven by fear and the ego of successive Pharaohs. Until, God heard the cries of the
Hebrews and called Moses to lead them to freedom.
As we heard/know, Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt and into freedom and the
promise of a new land of their own. But that’s not how it actually started. When
Moses and Aaron first approached Pharaoh, they didn’t demand that he set the
Hebrews free. Their initial request was for a holiday: Exodus chapter 5
Then Moses and Aaron said, “The God of the Hebrews has revealed himself to us;
let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness to sacrifice to the Lord our God,
or he will fall upon us with pestilence or sword.”
4 But the king of Egypt said to them, “Moses and Aaron, why are you taking the
people away from their work? Get to your labors!” 5 Pharaoh continued, “Now
they are more numerous than the people of the land[a] and yet you want them to
stop working!” 6 That same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the
people, as well as their supervisors, 7 “You shall no longer give the people straw to
make bricks, as before; let them go and gather straw for themselves. 8 But you shall
require of them the same quantity of bricks as they have made previously; do not
diminish it, for they are lazy; that is why they cry, ‘Let us go and offer sacrifice to
our God.’ 9 Let heavier work be laid on them; then they will labor at it and pay no
attention to deceptive words.”
This is a conflict about work: the God of the Hebrews was calling them to a time of
rest, but Pharaoh was consumed with production and efficiency, demanding even
more productivity as punishment for their perceived laziness.
Of course this backfired for Pharaoh. As the conflict with the Hebrews’ God
escalated, his whole economy was ground to a halt by plagues. And when the
Hebrews were finally allowed to leave, they left for good. And not only did
Pharaoh lose his slaves, but the Egyptians were so eager to see them go that they
gave them much great gifts of gold and silver to hasten their departure. And so the
Hebrew slaves plundered the mighty economy of Egypt.
So this is not just a story of an amazing rescue, it’s also a story about economics,
production and consumption and industry. (Happy Labour day, by the way…)
Let’s follow the story just a bit further. God led the Hebrews through the Red Sea,
and out into the desert wilderness as planned. Where they quickly faced a familiar
problem: they have nothing to eat. The rules of the regional economy had only one
solution to this problem of famine: Egypt controlled the food market. And some of
the Hebrews could see no other way: take us back to Egypt, they said, though we
were slaves, at least there was food.
God answered them by completely turning the Egyptian system on its head. “You
want food?” God said to Moses, “I’ll give you meat in the evening and bread in the
morning, and then you’ll know that I am God.” And God did. Every evening, a
flock of quails descended on the Hebrew camp, easy to catch and cook. And every
morning, a mysterious seed-like, frost-like, flour-like substance covered the ground,
manna that could be boiled and baked into bread. Food, every day, enough for that
day.
And so God provided. But not in the way of Egypt. The meat came from birds; the
Hebrews couldn’t control them or herd them, and in the desert the meat wouldn’t
keep for long at all. And the manna, whatever that was, went bad after just one
day. There was no way to farm it or preserve it, certainly no way to store it or turn
it into an industry, much less a monopoly that could be used to build an empire.
God’s system of providing for God’s People was the complete opposite of
Pharaoh’s system in Egypt. Pharaoh relied on productivity; God’s people relied
only on God. Pharaoh’s system was about storage and sustainability, long-term
planning to survive the tough times yes, and also dominating the market so as to
grow the economy and gain control over the region. Pharaoh would have been
hailed as a visionary leader at the G20 summit—these laws of production and
control is what nations have always been built on.
But God’s system allows for none of that, no storage, no industry, no monopoly.
And in this context, God introduced the commandment of Sabbath. (Whew, you
knew I had to get to that eventually… :)
The manna that appeared on the ground every morning went bad if they tried to
keep it overnight. It had to be collected fresh every morning. Except on the sixth
day, God told them, on the sixth day they could collect enough for two days and it
would last. On the seventh day, no manna would appear. They would not starve,
the food left over from the day before would be sufficient, but there would be no
collecting, no labour. The seventh day was to be a day of rest, a sabbath to the Lord.
Sabbath comes from the Hebrew shavat, meaning to stop, to cease. Stop gathering,
stop producing, stop providing. Stop.
Under Pharaoh, there was no stopping, no end to the work. But the God of the
Hebrews commands it:
8 Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all
your work. 10 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 slave, your
livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. 11 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 sabbath day and consecrated it. (Exodus 20)
Not only does the God of the Hebrews not demand maximum productivity from
God’s People, not only does this God mandate a regular stoppage of work for the
whole society, but this God also rests.
In the very act of Creating the universe, God rested.
Walter Brueggemann says that God’s rest on the seventh day of the creation story
reveals three things.
a) God is not a workaholic. A workaholic feels compelled to their work--it meets
some deep need within them that they can’t otherwise deal with, their work gives
them worth, defines who they are, fulfills them, drives them.
God is not like that. God does things, but God is not defined by do-ing. God does
not cease being God when God is not working. Sabbath reminds us of that.
b) God is not anxious about the full functioning of Creation. Much of our work is
driven by anxiety--if I’m not there, who is going to help those people? If I don’t
finish this, it won’t be done properly. If I call in sick, they might realize that they
don’t actually need me anymore. I’m not pointing any fingers, I was up past
midnight working on this sermon, because of my anxiety around needing to perform
and to have you all like me… God is not like that. God doesn’t worry that
everything will fall apart without him, or that she needs to do something about those
earthquakes before she goes to bed. Creation is Good, God says, and rests in that
knowledge.
and c) the well-being of creation does not depend on endless work. Sit with that for
a minute. In some deep corner of my spirit there’s a very small farmer that thinks
this is ridiculous. Of course there’s always more work to be done, more animals to
feed, more fields to be planted, more buttons to push, more children to teach, more
fires to put out, more wounds to heal, more words to parse. Surely this is work that
has to be done!
But God rested, and the world did not cease to function. The world is designed to
function on its own; it does not need our 24-7 supervision and assistance.
In the practice of Sabbath, the God of the Hebrews is calling for a society that
remembers these things, enacts them on a weekly basis. Sabbath is a signal to
ourselves and also to others, what Brueggemann describes as a “decisive, concrete,
visible way of opting for and aligning with the God of rest.” (p10)
Sabbath reminds us that we are made in the image of the God who rests.
We’ll pursue the meaning of this further over the next couple of weeks. Today, I
want to pose a simple question: What would happen if we stop?
We are heavily invested in the world of Pharaoh. We build our identities on what
we produce and contribute. We take pride in our work ethic. We are dependent on
the system of production and consumption. Brueggemann describes our society as
restless, driven by anxiety of not having enough, not being enough. Like the
Egyptians, he says, we are consumed by “the gods of insatiable productivity.”
What do you think about that? I’m not saying its all bad, the wisdom of Joseph to
store up food in time of plenty so that there would be food during the famine is
good. But somewhere along the line, the system went off the rails; it became not
about providing but about controlling, dominating, enslaving.
How far along that path are we? How did we get here? What are the full
implications of this system, for ourselves, for the people we share the world with,
for Creation itself? This is how the world works, but does it have to be this way?
And what would mean to stop, to Sabbath, to rest as God does?
Throughout this series we are going to take communion together. The bread and
juice of the communion ritual are first a Passover celebration, rooted in the Exodus
story. The Hebrews did nothing to deserve God’s rescue, it was simply a gift.
We’ve done nothing to earn salvation in Jesus; his body and blood was truly a gift.
And in reality, all of life is a gift. We harvest the grain and crush the grapes, but
both the harvest and the strength to harvest are not willed into being by us.
The invitation to communion is a practice of Sabbath. To stop, if only for a
moment. To receive the goodness of God.
After I say the words of the ritual, all are welcome to come to the table and eat and
drink. There are also grapes on the table, symbols only of the goodness and
sweetness of life. If for whatever reason you’d rather not participate in the bread
and juice, come and eat some grapes. They’re really good. 
Brothers and sisters: on the night before Jesus was crucified, he shared a holiday
Passover meal together with his friends. During that meal, Jesus took bread, and
when he had given thanks, he blessed it and broke it, shared it among them: This
bread, Jesus said, this is my body, broken for you. Eat it, in remembrance of me.
Jesus also took a cup of wine, and when he had given thanks, again he shared it
with all of them. This cup is the blood of the New Covenant, Jesus said. This is my
blood, poured out for the many, for the forgiveness of sins. Drink, in remembrance
of me.
Let’s pray: Creator God, all that is good comes from you. You bring the harvest
from the earth, you bring to us the breath and strength and community that turns
the grain into bread and the grapes into juice. Your goodness never fails, your
steadfast love never comes to an end. Fill us with gratitude, nourish and sustain us,
and lead us into the rest of your arms.
Amen.
The body and blood of Christ, the gifts of God. Come and find rest.