Sabbath and Service Worship Theme

HOOK: As they are able, have people in your congregation stand in silence until they are tired. As they become tired, have them sit down. After a certain amount of time (5-7 minutes), have those who are still standing (if any) to sit. Touch on the idea that we all need rest in addition to the service/work we do.

THEME: Sabbath and Service. This theme centers around balancing work and rest.

SCRIPTURE: Gen 1.-Gen 2.2; Ecclesiastes 3.1-8

EXPERIENCE: [Saint] Benedict was quite precise about it all. Time was to be spent in prayer, in sacred reading, in work and in community participation. In other words, it was to be spent on listening to the Word, on study, on making life better for others and on community building. It was public as well as private; it was private as well as public. It was balanced.

With the invention of the light bulb, balance became a myth. Now human beings could extend the day and deny the night. Now human beings could break the natural rhythm of work and rest and sleep. Now human beings could begin to destroy the framework of life and turn it into one eternal day with, ironically, no time for family, no time for reading, no time for prayer, no time for privacy, no time for silence, no time for time.
Joan Chittister (Wisdom Distilled From The Daily (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1990) 74-75.

Real leisure, holy leisure, Sabbath leisure, contemplative leisure, has more to do with the quality of life and the depth of our vision than it does with play and vacations. The rabbis taught that the purpose of Sabbath was threefold. The first purpose of Sabbath, the rabbis said, was to free the poor as well as the rich for at least one day a week, and that included the animals, too. Nobody had to take an order from anybody on the Sabbath. The second purpose of Sabbath, the rabbis teach, is to give people time to evaluate their work as God evaluated the work of creation, to see if their work, too, is really life-giving. And finally, the purpose of Sabbath leisure was to give people space, to contemplate the real meaning of life. If anything has brought the modern world to the brink of destruction, it must surely be the loss of Sabbath.
The purpose of holy leisure is to bring this balance of being, not a balance of time, back into lives gone askew, and to give people time to live a thoughtful, a contemplative as well as a productive life.… Holy leisure, in other words, is the foundation of contemplation. And contemplation is the ability to see the world as God sees the world.

The great Benedictine abbot, Dom Cuthbert Butler, wrote once, “It is not the presence of activity that destroys the contemplative life. It is the absence of contemplation.” You are as much required, and I am as much required, to the contemplative life as any cloistered monk or nun. Otherwise, how shall you explain the union of Jesus with God the Creator as He walked from Galilee to Jerusalem, taking animals out of ditches, raising women from the dead, and curing lepers? In Benedictine spirituality, life is not divided into parts, one holy and the other mundane. To the Benedictine mind, all of life is holy. All of life’s actions bear the scrutiny of all of life’s ideals and all of life is to be held in anointed hands. No, personal comfort, purposeless play, vacuous vacations, however rich, however powerful, have not saved the world. Ask the Romans. We need the wisdom of holy leisure now.
—Joan Chittister
Trinity Institute Benedictine Spirituality Conference, 2003

-Let the space be a place for true rest. Do people need to sleep? Have space available for napping. Do people need family time? Have games available. Do people need space and quiet to read a book, magazine or newspaper? Have a “reading room” space available. If we are really not getting time to rest, make this space on this day available for rest and relaxation with God and self/family.

-Another idea is to make this time and space a spiritual retreat time for your congregation and God. Offer space for quiet; space for reading Scripture; space for prayer; space for quiet music; a place for resting, etc…people could rotate through the various spaces or choose one and remain there for the duration of the service. What are the needs of the congregation in terms of rest? This can be asked ahead of time and then those types of spaces could be created.

-third option is to have people try what the rabbis suggest Sabbath is for: 1. True rest; 2. Evaluate their actions over the past week-what was good and where are the growth areas?; 3. Contemplate the real meaning of life. Create space to do these things. It could be that you have three separate stations through which people rotate or do all three things together as a group.

SENDING: Yes, we are sent out into the world to be servants, and yet even God rests. As day is to night, service is to Sabbath. May you find both for there you will too find God.

-By Becky Jones, Pastor