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Readings
Genesis 2:1-7 The seventh day of
creation
Thus the heavens and the earth were
finished, and all their vast array. And
on the seventh day God finished the work
that he had done, and he rested on the
seventh day from all the work that he
had done. So God blessed the seventh day
and hallowed it, because on it God
rested from all the work that he had
done in creation.
These are the generations of the heavens
and the earth when they were created. In
the day that the Lord God made the earth
and the heavens, when no plant of the
field was yet in the earth and no herb
of the field had yet sprung up--for the
Lord God had not caused it to rain upon
the earth, and there was no one to till
the ground; but a mist would rise from
the earth, and water the whole face of
the ground--then the Lord God formed a
human being from the dust of the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life; and the human became a
living being.
Matthew 12:1-14 Jesus: Lord of the
Sabbath
At
that time Jesus went through the grain
fields on the Sabbath; his disciples
were hungry, and they began to pluck
heads of grain and to eat. When the
Pharisees saw it, they said to him,
"Look, your disciples are doing what is
not lawful to do on the Sabbath."
He
said to them, "Have you not read what
David did when he and his companions
were hungry? He entered the house of God
and ate the bread of the Presence, which
it was not lawful for him or his
companions to eat, but only for the
priests. Or have you not read in the law
that on the Sabbath the priests in the
temple break the Sabbath and yet are
guiltless? I tell you, something greater
than the temple is here. But if you had
known what this means, 'I desire mercy
and not sacrifice,' you would not have
condemned the guiltless. For the Son of
Man is lord of the Sabbath."
He
left that place and entered their
synagogue; a man was there with a
withered hand, and they asked him, "Is
it lawful to cure on the Sabbath?" so
that they might accuse him.
"He said to them, "Suppose one of you
has only one sheep and it falls into a
pit on the Sabbath. Will you not lay
hold of it and lift it out? How much
more valuable is a human being than a
sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the
Sabbath."
Then he said to the man, "Stretch out
your hand." He stretched it out, and it
was restored, as sound as the other. But
the Pharisees went out and conspired
against him, how to destroy him.
True Christian Religion #694 Eternal
rest from labor
Eternal rest is not idleness, since
idleness reduces the mind, and with it
the whole body, to a state of
feebleness, lethargy, stupidity, and
sleepiness. These are not life, but
death. So they can't possibly be the
eternal life of the angels in heaven.
Eternal rest is a rest that banishes all
these ills and makes us alive. This can
only be something that uplifts our mind.
So it is some interest or task that
excites, enlivens, and delights our
mind. And this depends upon the useful
service for which, in which, and towards
which our mind is directed.
This is why the whole of heaven is seen
by the Lord as a vessel full of useful
activity; and the angels are angels
according to the use they serve. The
pleasure of service carries them along,
just as a favorable current carries a
ship, and gives them eternal peace, and
the rest that comes from it. This is
what is meant by eternal rest from
labors. Angels are alive just as much as
their mind is focused from providing a
useful service.
Sermon
So God blessed the seventh day and
hallowed it, because on it God rested
from all the work that he had done in
creation. (Genesis 2:3)
Today, as Sunday School starts up again
for this church year, it is our pleasure
and joy to have the children with us for
the beginning of the service. And it is
a special joy to have new families and
new children joining us and making our
church and Sunday School a richer (and
livelier!) place.
This year the
Sunday School will use Series 4 in the
Bible Study
Notes
by Anita S. Dole. And just as I have
done in the last three years, this year
I will usually (though not always) use
the readings that the children are
learning about in their Sunday School
classes as one of the readings for my
sermons. Though these stories have
become mighty familiar to those of you
long-time members who have followed the
"Dole Notes" for many years, I like the
thought of parents, and the rest of the
adults, following the same stories the
children are learning. For the parents,
it will provide common ground in talking
with their children about their lesson
for today. And for the rest of you, I
hope my sermons throughout the course of
the year will provide some new thoughts
and insights.
The genius of the Dole Notes is their
four year curriculum cycle, which guides
the Sunday School classes through the
entire sweep of the Bible story each
year. Each year offers a different
series of stories covering the major
events of the Bible narrative. Once four
years have passed and the cycle starts
over again with Series 1, most of the
children will have moved on to an older
class. They can then study the familiar
and well-loved stories at a deeper
level, appropriate to their age. This
continues right up through the adult
lessons, which delve most profoundly
into the spiritual meanings in each
story.
The result for children, teens, and
adults who follow the Dole Notes for a
number of years is a grasp of the Bible
as a seamless whole: a story with a
beginning, a middle, and an end. Along
with this is a growing sense of the
Bible as a vast parable telling a
spiritual story. It is the story of
our own spiritual rebirth and growth. It
is also the story of the spiritual
progress of humankind as a whole. And,
of course, at its deepest level the
Bible is the Lord's autobiography,
telling us in rich metaphorical language
about who our Lord, God, and Creator
is--and especially about his infinite
love for us, his infinite wisdom in
taking care of us, and his infinite
power in drawing us into his arms just
as much as we will let him.
Of
course, the Bible is a huge, long
book--well over a thousand pages in most
editions. And despite the masterful way
in which the Dole Notes give us not just
one, but four one-year-long overviews of
the Bible, we can still get lost in all
that detail, and miss the big picture.
There is so much complexity that we may
be tempted to throw up our hands in
despair of ever grasping it all, and of
seeing how it all relates to our own
spiritual journey.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons that
the Lord has given us a summary of the
whole spiritual story in just
thirty-four verses at the very beginning
of the Bible. That summary is the story
of the seven days of creation. Two weeks
ago in our final summer informal service
we explored what some of those seven
days mean in terms of our spiritual
stages.
It
all begins with our minds shrouded in
spiritual darkness, when we are still
focused on our own comfort and pleasure
and on the things of this world. And
then God says, "Let there be light," as
the light dawns on us that there is a
higher purpose to our lives; that God is
calling us to leave behind our
self-centered and worldly focus and move
toward a life inspired from within and
above. The first six days of creation
give us an amazingly beautiful summary
of every spiritual development along
that path. They give us a living picture
of each birth within us of new
capacities for understanding and love at
deeper and deeper levels--and of all our
struggles, trials, and triumphs along
the way. And at the end, the creation
story gives us the beautiful promise of
that seventh day of rest from all our
labors:
Thus the heavens and the earth were
finished, and all their vast array.
And on the seventh day God finished
the work that he had done, and he
rested on the seventh day from all the
work that he had done. So God blessed
the seventh day and hallowed it,
because on it God rested from all the
work that he had done in creation.
However, before we go on to explore the
spiritual meaning of this final day,
let's take a brief look at its literal
meaning as it developed in the Jewish
Church, the Christian Church, and
finally in the new Christian Church that
we believe is now dawning upon this
earth.
To
start out, there is no better way to
summarize the ancient Jewish perspective
on the Sabbath than to read the Fourth
Commandment:
Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it
holy. Six days you shall labor and do
all your work, but the seventh day is
a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it
you shall not do any work, neither
you, nor your son or daughter, nor
your manservant or maidservant, nor
your animals, nor the foreigner within
your gates. For in six days the Lord
made the heavens and the earth, the
sea, and all that is in them, but he
rested on the seventh day. Therefore
the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and
made it holy. (Exodus 20:8-11)
This commandment refers directly to the
description of the seventh day of
creation. From the statement that God
rested from his work on that seventh
day, it concludes that people, and even
animals, should not do any work on that
day either. So for the ancient Jews, the
Sabbath was especially a day of rest
from labor and from business. It was
also a day set aside for the ritualistic
worship of animal sacrifices and grain
offerings.
Of
course, even today the practice of
taking at least one day per week off
from work continues throughout much of
the world. Not only does our body need
regular periods of rest so that it can
repair and rejuvenate itself, but our
mind also needs regular breaks from
focusing on its work. Otherwise, like an
overused muscle, our mind loses strength
and elasticity, and our work becomes an
increasingly uphill grind, while we
become less and less efficient, and less
satisfied in it. The ancient admonition
to take regular periods of rest from our
labors continues to have force in our
lives today.
However, as our reading from Matthew
shows, the Lord interpreted the Sabbath
differently than the ancient Jewish
church in which he grew up. He had been
taught a Sabbath of strict rest from
labor, codified in many detailed laws of
what could and could not be done on the
Sabbath. He rejected that view not only
theoretically, but in practice.
Of
course, this got him into hot water with
the Pharisees--one of the leading groups
of religious lawyers who saw it as their
job to enforce not only the original
laws of Moses, but also the many laws
that had grown up around it over the
years. Even such a simple act as picking
heads of grain and rubbing them together
to separate the grain from the chaff in
order to eat the grain was considered
unlawful labor, and thus was condemned
as Sabbath-breaking.
Jesus had no patience for this type of
literalistic, legalistic interpretation
of the Law. He pointed out places in the
Scriptures themselves where David--the
great king of Israel--had broken the
literal law by eating the sacred bread
of the Lord's presence, which only the
priests were supposed to eat. And the
priests themselves, he pointed out,
break the Sabbath by working on it. (We
ministers have to take a different day
off!) He then gave a new and more
spiritual interpretation: "It is lawful
to do good on the Sabbath."
This shift from a literal and legal
interpretation to a more spiritual
interpretation of the Sabbath had its
effect on the Christian Church, which
tended to be less rigid about
prohibition of any kind of physical
labor on the Sabbath. Of course, some of
the more conservative Christian branches
and sects have practiced a prohibition
of labor on Sunday (the Christian
Sabbath) that rivals that of the ancient
Jews. However, it is universally true
among Christians that the focus of the
Sabbath has moved away from not working,
and toward the practice of worship and
of learning about God and spirit. Sunday
is seen by Christians primarily as a day
to focus on the Lord, the Bible, and
learning about spiritual life. And
especially since the last Jewish temple
was destroyed in the year 70 AD, this
has become the focus of the Jewish
Sabbath also.
Swedenborg picks up on this new focus
for the Sabbath. He writes:
When the Lord was in the world . . .
he did away with the Sabbath as an
occasion on which representative
worship--the kind of worship
established among the Israelite
people--took place, and made the
Sabbath day a day for instruction in
teachings about faith and love. (Arcana
Coelestia #10360)
Today we join other Christians in
observing each Sunday as a day of
worshipping the Lord and of learning the
ways of spiritual life.
However, we still haven't dealt with the
Lord's teaching that "it is lawful to do
good on the Sabbath." Doesn't this
explicitly violate one of the Ten
Commandments, which says we are not to
do any work on the Sabbath?
If
we read the commandments literally, yes.
But Jesus also said, "The spirit gives
life; the flesh counts for nothing"
(John 6:63). And Paul explained, "He has
made us competent as ministers of a new
covenant--not of the letter but of the
spirit. For the letter kills, but the
spirit gives life" (2 Corinthians 3:6).
In other words, in establishing
Christianity, the Lord laid aside the
old covenant based on adherence to
external, ritualistic laws, and replaced
it with a covenant based on following
the Lord's spirit from within.
This clears the way for us to understand
how the Lord's teaching that it is
lawful to do good on the Sabbath does
not abolish, but fulfills the Law.
Swedenborg's spiritual interpretation of
the law of the Sabbath provides the
missing link.
Physically, we labor when we are working
against resistance. If we are digging a
hole in soil that is full of rocks and
roots, or scrubbing a floor that has
many tough, greasy, ground in stains, we
really feel the effort. We literally do
our work in the sweat of our brow!
However, if the soil is already a loose,
rich loam, or the floor simply has a
minor spill on it, we hardly think of it
as work, because it is so easy to do.
If
we think of labor this way--as working
against resistance--then we can get a
clearer picture of the spiritual meaning
of the six days of labor. The six days
of labor are the times in our lives when
it is a struggle to keep ourselves on
the right path and do the right
thing--or to keep up our spirits in the
face of frustration, discouragement, and
despair. Spiritually, we labor when we
are working against the resistance of
our own old habits and lower tendencies,
and against all the forces around and
inside us that tend to tear us down. We
labor when part of us wants to follow
God, and live a constructive, kind, and
spiritual life, but another part wants
to forget all that, and just do what
feels good to me right now. We labor
when we get so discouraged that we start
to think there is no way we could
possibly live the kind of life shown to
us by the Lord.
We
do have to go through our six days of
labor, over and over again. Our old self
does not simply lie down and play dead
because we have decided we now want to
live a spiritual life. It fights against
us every step of the way. Our old habits
and our old character die hard.
Overcoming them, and putting the Lord's
path in their place, is our spiritual
labor.
The promise of the Sabbath of rest is
that if we will do our labor through all
of those six days; if we will stay the
course and overcome our old
self-indulgent and defeatist self; if we
will turn to the Lord to give us the
will, the understanding, and the
strength to engage in that labor, then
in the end, we will come to a time when
our inner labors are at an end. We will
come to a time when we love to do
the work of serving others; when doing
our daily work does not feel like work
at all, because we are busy in the
Lord's work--and we enjoy every minute
of it!
This is the eternal rest from labors
that the angels enjoy. It is not a rest
of idleness, but a rest of joyful,
single-minded useful activity--and, of
course regular breaks for worship,
leisure time, and fun! This is resting
in the Lord. Amen.
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