Exodus 20: 3-11
July 17, 2022
God’s grace and peace be with you…
For the past few weeks, a few moments of each Sunday service have been set aside for silent reflection … for contemplation … and for prayer.
The plan is for this time of stillness to remain part of our worship until we host our “Back to Church” service in early September and we begin a new lectionary year.
What has become clear since these moments have been introduced is that some of us don’t do quiet very well.
After the first time, one person asked me why we had to be silent for 10 minutes … I pointed out that we were silent for about two.
But it’s clear that … especially in our covid-affected lives … we want our time filled with sound … voices … music … or with activity … with anything. For some, the two minutes of stillness seem like an eternity … or at least ten minutes instead of just a 120 seconds.
But … in the stillness … in the calm … we can reset ourselves … we can consider our actions or inactions.
We can give our minds a respite after a week filled with details, actions, clutter and noise and before the pastor begins his weekly yammering.
Silence … inactivity … rest … that is what God wants for God’s people and for creation.
Today, the freed slaves are still encamped at the base of Mount Sinai.
In the previous chapter of Exodus, God calls on Moses to remind the people about all the things that God had done for them … they had been liberated … nourished … and brought through the wilderness to Sinai.
Now that they are free, God sets down his plan for the type of community … the type of kingdom … that the people are called to form.
It will be a kingdom that will be the polar opposite of the one they had just left … rather than be a kingdom focused on wealth and power for the privileged … it will be a priestly kingdom … a holy nation … where all are blessed … and all are treasured.
It will be a nation born out of God’s love and kept through the people’s commitment to that love.
The first part of the commandments set out in today’s reading … those that guide the people’s relationship with God form what is known as the “First Table.”
The commandments that follow are intended to guide the people’s relationship with their neighbours.
All relationships are to be built upon love … and such love will to be the hallmark of the community. This has been made possible through the promise the God has made and living into … following … the commandments is the people’s response to God’s actions in their lives.
In the stillness of this morning, let’s consider the final commandment in the First Table:
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.”
God also called for the land to enjoy a time of inactivity so that it could be refreshed and renewed without having demands placed upon it. Every seven years, the land was to lie fallow so that an abundant harvest could be enjoyed in the future.
It was important for the freed slaves to hear such divine instructions.
They had just left a culture that forced them to work from sun-up to sundown, seven days a week … no days off and complaints were met with brutality or indifference. They had been Egypt’s working poor.
In their new life, the seventh day was to be a day of rest and of justice and of equality. Everyone was to share in its benefits … even strangers and foreigners.
Walter Brueggemann is a renowned Old Testament scholar.
He wrote “Sabbath as Resistance” a few years back.
In the book, he says that the Sabbath was actually a protest against a 24/7 consumer society where only a few enjoyed an abundance. Such a society creates and worships idols as the people pursue possessions and status.
Perhaps, things haven’t changed so much since then.
If you look beyond the “First Table,” you’ll notice that the commandments deal with possessions and trusting each other not to place items before others’ wellbeing.
Telling the people to rest … allows them to reset their priorities … to reflect on the love they receive and are to freely share … and to live in the stillness of the day without fear or worry associated with the need to be productive in the eyes of the world.
Such a weekly reset in lives filled with activity and obligations allows us to renew the relationships with God and others in our lives … and allow love … grace to envelop those around us and ourselves.
Brueggemann wrote: “The ‘other gods’ are agents and occasions of anxiety. But we, by discipline, by resolve, by baptism, by Eucharist, and by passion, resist such seductions. In so doing we stand alongside the creator in whose image we are made. By the end of six days God had done all that was necessary for creation … and so have we!”
God has been active in our lives … and we have received the gift of grace through Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection.
There’s no more we need to do in that regard.
So, perhaps we can make those moments of stillness part of our days … moments when we can just be … not reading … not texting … not calling … not working on the computer … not doing … not worried about producing a thing … not filling them with anything or worrying about our supposed obligations … and just immerse ourselves in silence and calm … answering God’s call to rest and renew.
And in these few moments … or maybe even in the quiet rest of a day … we can remind ourselves that we are a loved … a treasured … people.
AMEN