September 2, 2012 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Bricks, Breaks, and Brakes

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 145:10–21
Deuteronomy 5:12–15
Matthew 11:28–30

The sabbath as a day of rest, as a day of abstaining from toil, is not for the purpose of recovering one’s lost strength and becoming fit for the forthcoming labor. The sabbath is a day for the sake of life.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894 to pay tribute to the contributions of American workers. It was one of the quickest actions taken by the United States Congress, who unanimously voted for it. President Grover Cleveland signed it into law only six days after the end of the Pullman strike here in Chicago. They feared further conflict after a number of workers had been killed by the US marshals and military during that strike and hoped this action would help prevent that.

Most of us don’t know that history or spend the holiday honoring workers. For many of us, what Labor Day symbolizes is the end of summer. In US sports, Labor Day marks the beginning of the NFL and college football seasons. In high society, Labor Day was considered the last day of the year when it was fashionable to wear white or seersucker. (I don’t know if that is still the case, not being part of high society.) But I am among the ranks of those who primarily look forward to Labor Day as a day to rest. Labor Day is a day to celebrate that I don’t have to labor.

In difficult economic times like now, when many are without work, it is a blessing to have paid employment. But the fact that many primarily view this long weekend as a time to relax says a lot about our current historical context. When time-saving devices began to be produced in the 1950s, it was thought that our work-week hours would lessen, and we would have more leisure time. Instead, by the 1990s the average worker was putting in 164 extra hours of paid labor each year—the equivalent of an extra month of work. The two-income household became the norm, bringing new pressure at work as well as at home. The tools of technology have made us constantly accessible through cell phones, email, and texting if we choose and have increased expectations that we respond quickly. If we want to stop working so much, whether paid or unpaid, we must put on the brakes.

Putting on the brakes means doing less. The Swiss theologian Karl Barth said, “A being is free only when it can determine and limit its activity.” Through the Ten Commandments, God has set some limits for us. “Thou shalt not work” is in the same set of teachings as “Thou shalt not kill” or “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

Old Testament scholar Walter Bruegemann says that the most important and most difficult of the Ten Commandments to obey is “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 slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.”

We are commanded in our faith tradition to rest from work by keeping the sabbath. Some of us remember when stores were closed on Sundays. And some of you grew up in families where certain activities were prohibited on Sundays, such as playing cards or seeing movies. It could lead one to feel that what the Bible says is instead “Remember the sabbath, and keep it boring.” But there is good reason why certain disciplines were practiced around the sabbath. Honoring the sabbath requires setting limits, putting on the brakes, and saying no to constant busyness.

Why is it so hard for us to live within limits, to say no to more activity? Partly it is the pleasure of saying yes. Saying yes acknowledges that someone wants you—wants to be with you, wants you to do something that you do well, wants to do it with you. We also live in a can-do country, where the ability to do many things at high speed is not only an adaption to our fast-paced culture but the mark of a successful human being. Even though many of us complain about having too much to do, we harbor some pride that we are in such demand. I speak as a recovering workaholic myself. I know the “high” that comes from feeling productive or achieving a job well done.

The spiritual practice of saying no is difficult to do.

“No, I want to stay home tonight.”
“No, I have enough work for now.”
“No, I have all the possessions I want to take care of.”

These can sound like death wishes. If there is nothing more you want to do or have, then why go on living? As Barbara Brown Taylor says, if you are going to say no to perfectly good opportunities for adding more to your life, then what is the point? (Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World, p. 122).

The ancient wisdom of the sabbath commandment—and also of the Christian gospel—is that we cannot say yes to God without saying no to God’s rivals. No, I will not earn my way today. No, I will not make anyone else work either. No, I will not worry about my life, what I will eat or what I will drink, or about my body, what I will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

Bruegemann says the reason that keeping the sabbath is so difficult is because we live in a world that follows the narrative of scarcity. In the time of Moses, Pharoah was a lead figure of the scarcity narrative. The scarcity story goes like this: A sense of scarcity leads to anxiety. Anxiety leads to accumulation. Accumulation leads to monopoly.

Pharoah feared scarcity. In his anxiety he accumulated more and more wealth, which led to his building a monopoly. Monopolies always need cheap or slave labor. Pharaoh’s royal anxiety permeated the nation. Pharoah drove his slaves to make more bricks, make more bricks, make more bricks. Such an anxiety system rules out the sabbath. Can you imagine Pharoah choosing to lose a day of production?

The Deuteronomy basis for sabbath-keeping is that our ancestors in Egypt went for 400 years without a vacation (Deuteronomy 5:15). Never a day off. The consequence was that they were no longer considered persons but slaves. Hands. Backs. Work units. As Eugene Peterson notes, they were not people created in the image of God, but equipment for making bricks and building pyramids. Humanity was defaced (Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles, p. 49).

The sabbath restores us to our true selves, valued as human beings made in God’s image and not just for our usefulness, our productivity. The blessing of the sabbath is that it helps us remember that our lives have a focus and meaning larger than day-to-day activity. The sabbath is a time to regain perspective and recognize that God’s goodness permeates all of creation and life (Don Postema, Catching Your Breath, p. 33).

Jesus taught, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Doesn’t that sound good to us, who are so weary? We are overly busy and overly anxious, says Walter Brueggemann, “because we believe one more . . . call, one more committee meeting, one more polished article, . . . one more staff review, one more check to make sure the lights are out and the dishes are washed and the mail answered, one more anything will make this a better place and enhance our sense of self” (Walter Brueggemann, Mandate to Difference: An Invitation to the Contemporary Church, p. 42).

Bruegemann says we bear heavy burdens “because…we are coerced, driven kinds of folk, responding to the endless echoes of some Pharoah in our present life or from our past life. Pharoah, of course, has insatiable demands, and as long as we live in the regime of some great Pharoah, we will never make enough bricks.”

We find ourselves weary because we are anxious. We are too anxious to rest or take refreshment. We do not trust in the abundance that God has woven into creation. We imagine we know better than God. “We spend ourselves in the futility of trying to take the place of the life-guaranteeing God. We are weary because in the end we can guarantee the life of no one and certainly not the life of the church” (Walter Brueggemann, Mandate to Difference, p. 43).

What we do will never be enough, because our anxious sense of responsibility will never touch the truth of creation, for the truth—without any regard for us or our need to make it right—is that God has ordained life with abundance. God fashioned the world so that creation exudes fruitfulness. God blessed the plants, the animals, the birds and fish, every living creature so that they can have more than enough. As Psalm 145 says,

The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food in due season.
You open your hand,
satisfying the desire of every living thing. (Psalm 145:15–16)

God gives us life, and we receive it. God creates life and renews us when we’re tired. God even takes a break to rest when God is depleted, confident that there is provision for all and all is well. Creation will perform its life-giving exuberance without us, as long as we do not get in the way. Like birds and lilies, we are called to trust the abundance of God. We need to allow God’s goodness to come to us, rather than our trying to make it, or the world around us, on our own.

The sabbath allows us to stop and give thanks, to praise God. When we keep the sabbath we are living outside the “Royal Anxiety System” of Pharoah. We embody an alternative to the plot of scarcity. Trusting in God’s abundance leads to thanksgiving. Thanksgiving leads to freedom to rest and praise God. Praising God leads to remembering that it is God, not we, who is the Source of life.

Jesus, says Walter Brueggemann,

issues an invitation, “Come to me.” It is not an altar call. It is a call to an alternative existence, away from deeds of power, away from brick quotas, away from things “too great,” away from control and domination and success. Away from the way the world wants us to be. . . . Imagine yourself away from your wisdom, your intelligence, your capability, your drive, your effectiveness, and imagine yourself a good respondent to the one who invites, the one who is gentle and humble in heart. (Walter Brueggemann, Mandate to Difference, p. 42)

There is still a yoke that Jesus invites us to carry, but it is an easy yoke. It is not the yoke of Pharaoh’s bricks or Jewish law or Roman demands or capitalist competition or the Protestant work ethic or constant online access. It is an easy yoke of trusting discipleship. Our life need not be lived as a victim or a perpetrator of always seeking more. We can put on the brakes to anxiety. We can move away from “make more bricks” to “take more breaks.”

After the 9:30 worship service this morning a couple came up to greet me. The husband said, “I was going to do some chores for my wife today, but now I’m not. Thank you!”

Barbara Brown Taylor encourages us to honor the sabbath this way:

At least one day in every seven, pull off the road and park the car in the garage. Close the door to the tool shed and turn off the computer. Stay home not because you are sick but because you are well. Talk someone you love into being well with you. Take a nap, a walk, an hour for lunch. Test the premise that you are worth more than you can produce—that even if you spent one whole day being good for nothing you would still be precious in God’s sight—and when you get anxious because you are convinced that this is not so, remember that your own conviction is not required. This is a commandment. Your worth has already been established, even when you are not working. The purpose of the commandment is to woo you to the same truth.

I repeat: your worth has already been established, even when you are not working. Keep the sabbath holy. It will free you to revel—and rest—in God’s abundance.