Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
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There are times in all of our lives that you are so worn down with everything that you don't just want a break, you need it.
I was at this point towards the end of winter in my time in Helena. My life had been a constant barrage of motion for the past several weeks. I was pretty tired, and, looking back, my work was showing signs of becoming stale.
Fortunately my mentor Heidi understood the importance of Sabbath, of rest, in a way that I'm not sure I did. She arranged for me to go to Sacred Heart Retreat Home in Colorado for close to a week. I met with a spiritual director every day and spent time journaling, reading scripture, and exploring the retreat home grounds.
During that time, I worked on renewing my relationship with God. The result was I came back to Helena feeling truly refreshed. My sermons had much more vigor, vitality, and soul to them. I felt renewed in my spirit. I felt revived in my soul.
Not only do we need rest from time to time, but we need rest where we are present and living with God. It is our time of rest with God that we are refreshed and renewed. It is our time with God that revives our soul.
Our psalm today says that "the law of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul." These words mean that if we are doing what God intends for us, it is not a burden, but rather it gives us peace. It renews us, because we are living as we are made to live.
One of the laws that God puts forward for us, as we hear this morning, is the Sabbath. In Exodus, we hear, "Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy."
Sabbath means rest. But Exodus doesn't just tell us to take a break from work. Our sabbath, as we are told, is meant to be "a sabbath to the Lord." It is a day in which we are to honor God.
In Exodus, it is explained that the sabbath day of rest mirrors God's own rest from creation at the beginning of Genesis. There is another explanation for the sabbath too. We receive the 10 Commandments once again in Deuteronomy, and the account there explains that the Sabbath is a day for the Israelites to remember being freed from the land of Egypt.
For us, Sunday serves a similar purpose to the Jewish Sabbath. On Sunday, we remember the Resurrection, the day Jesus freed us from our sins and helped begin creation anew. This is why we should rightly keep Sunday as the first day of the week in our calendars. Sunday is the new day of creation. It's the day we are reborn, refreshed, renewed, and restored.
The Sabbath isn't just about rest. It's about thankfulness. It was about thankfulness for freedom for the Hebrews and it is about thankfulness for freedom and new life for us as Christians.
The Sabbath is the day where we stop from our normal pattern of life to remember who it is we owe our very lives to. The Sabbath is the time for us to show our gratitude for all God has given us.
At times, Sunday worship might just seem like another thing we have to do during the week, but that misses the point of it. Aren't we thankful for the hope of the Resurrection? Aren't we glad that we have been restored from sin? Aren't we glad that we actually have something to live for?
Sunday worship is the time when we can give thanks to God for all He has given us. We do this best through the celebration of Holy Eucharist. That is why our Prayer Book says from the start that "The Holy Eucharist is the principal act of Christian worship on the Lord's Day." It is in this act that we proclaim Jesus' death until His coming again, as Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians. In remembering His death, we remember Jesus' resurrection, and in remembering the resurrection, we remember the act which we "always and everywhere should give our thanks and praise" to God on high.
And perhaps just as importantly, and just as I experienced in my retreat to Sacred Heart, our Sabbath worship, our time removed from our normal pattern of work and life, our time when we are closest to God, that time restores us. It is how we are meant to live our lives. We are meant to constantly take the time to be with God. And it is living our lives as we should, as we see in the Psalm, that our souls are revived.
Don't see what we do here today as an act you are compelled to perform out of duty. Don't look at it as an act of work. See our worship for what it actually is. See it as a way to give thanks to God for restoring our lives through the Resurrection. See it as an opportunity for you to be closer to God in Jesus Christ. See this day as a day of gratitude and rest meant to restore and revive your soul, just as Jesus renewed and restored your life through His death and resurrection.
Keep coming. Keep renewing and restoring yourself. And encourage those who are not here at this time to do the same.