Labor Day weekend usually means a lot of endings.  Last time at the pool or beach.  Last long, warm weekend, and of wearing white.   For us it’s the final Sunday before our two service format.  One thing I hope we don’t put away is our summer Sabbath psyche.  For many of us the summer is more relaxing.  Church life slows down.  Schools take a break.  Travel and vacations allow us to have a kind of Sabbath rest.  And that is good for us.  We’ve enjoyed that.  It allows us to develop some refreshing and healthy patterns.  It would be a pity if we let it all go away come fall.  Let us pray.  God of the storm and God of serenity, illuminate your word for us this morning.  Help us to seek your peace and help us to find peace in you.  Amen. 

Christians usually talk about God’s activity.  After all, the church has spent much of its history trying to convince people not only that God exists (we’ll talk about that next Sunday), but that God is active in the world.  An emphasis on an active God is particularly important to the Reformed Tradition.  Our tradition emphasizes the sovereignty and providence of a God who is active in our lives.  On Labor Day weekend the church often sings “Come Labor On” as we have this morning to acknowledge the Reformed tradition’s emphasis on calling and hard work.  John Calvin and John Knox believed firmly that we should try to live in response to God’s actions. They did so because they saw that the Bible is full of stories of God acting towards God’s people.  For example, when we teach Genesis 1 and 2, we typically focus on God’s active creation.  Moreover, our second lesson this morning is part of a series of stories of Jesus actively performing miracles. 

But there is inactivity afoot as well.  In the creation story at the beginning of Genesis, when we read of how God acted to create the world, think of what God did next.  Did God publicize God’s work, continue immediately to refine them or move onto another creation?  No, God rested!  God’s inactivity matters as well. 

What about Jesus’ actions in our lesson?  Matthew, chapter 8, records what must have been a terrifying boat ride for Jesus’ disciples.  By the way, it is no coincidence btw that we are reading from Matthew’s Gospel on our new music director’s Recognition Sunday.  Jesus beckoned them to join him in the boat.  They began to sail when a mighty storm arose.  The wind whirled and began to thrash the boat around.  2000 years ago the boats were not as stable as ours today, so the disciples must have been quite scared. 

And where was Jesus?  At the tiller guiding the boat?  On the boom, holding the sails tight?  No, he was asleep in the back of the boat.  Matthew records that the disciples had to go to him and wake him up.   If God’s activity was all that mattered, why would the Bible, from Genesis to the Gospels, describe God’s resting and Jesus’ sleeping at critical times?  Because resting and sleeping are critical activities. 

The question is, are we neglecting these actions?  Ours is a society where rest has become a four letter word, and not just literally.   James Gleick writes in his book Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, that Americans today have become a people who rush from one activity to another.  Mobile technology keeps us in constant contact with our offices and responsibilities.  This promotes productivity but not relaxation.  I read about an advertisement recently for an edible product targeted for people “who don’t have time for minute rice.”  Talk about fast food.  The comedian Steven Wright has joked in watching the Indianapolis 500 car race that they “should have started it earlier and then they would not have to go as fast.”  A recent U.S. News and World Report cover story on adult attention deficit disorder found that we Americans are spun in so many directions that we’ve developed an aversion to not being stimulated and feel guilty resting.  As if staying still was a phobia we needed to address by moving onto the next activity quickly. 

Part of our hard charging attitude goes back to American history.  American hustling could have started with Benjamin Franklin.  Franklin himself was not very religious but Franklin’s father was a devote Calvinist who was a great influence in his son’s life.  He shared ideas about John Calvin’s focus on the importance of work as a calling.   Obviously, initiative and hard work helped Ben Franklin, and humans from history to the present, become successful.  We are meant to use our gifts actively in the world.  We are also called to try and change the conditions of the world that are problematic and inconsistent with how we understand God’s will. God expects us to take ourselves, our gifts and our commitments seriously.  But not more seriously than the God who created us.  When we step back and look at God’s creation, there is a balance to it.  The creation story in Genesis is all about balance, as God created light and dark, earth and sky, man and woman.  And it ends with a balance of work and rest on the 7th day.  We see that balance reflected in plant life today.  If certain plant species do not lie dormant in winter, they will not bear fruit in the spring.  If this continues for more than a season, the plant begins to die. 

Where do we reflect that balance and rest in our lives?  Have we taken the time to even ask ourselves that question?  My grandfather used to say that the “Art of relaxation is the most difficult of all arts.”   And under-appreciated.  Given all the distractions of life, it takes purpose to do inactivity well.  I must admit that I struggle mightily with this.  I admire those people who have mastered the art of relaxation.  Jesus was one of those people.  Rest is not a four letter word to him.  He went to quiet places to pray and he lived with a sense of calm that encouraged others to rest.  Jesus offered it saying, “Come to me all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.” 

So as we get to Labor Day and school begins, Congress reconvenes, church programs resume, the calendar gets packed and work schedules get really packed again, maybe this is the year we do something different to avoid becoming too frantic with it all.  Is there a summer Sabbath psyche you can take forward into fall? 

You are here on the Sabbath.  And Sabbath matters.  God does not get tired the way we do.  So after creation, God didn’t need to rest on the 7th day. God could have ended God’s creative work at the end of the sixth day, because it seemed at that point that God had provided everything humans needed for life.  So why did God rest on the 7th day?  Because God had not given us all that we needed for life.  Humans needed rest and God created it.  God blessed and sanctified the Sabbath as time for rest and spiritual growth. 

The theology of Sabbath reverses our expectations and priorities.  We too often rest on Sunday for the sake of the week, so we can do more work on Monday.  The idea of a Sabbath is just the opposite.  The theology of a Sabbath holds that we work during the week for the sake of what we do on the Sabbath. 

Having rituals of calm, exercise, family time, reading, and rest are so important.  For people who need to be doing something in order to be doing nothing Sabbath gives us that permission because inactivity can be purposeful.  A Washington Post crossword puzzle I saw recently contained the quote, “the time you waste is not wasted time.”  The theology of Sabbath inspires us to purposeful inactivity.

Now you might say that a new attitude sounds great but that you don’t have time to add one more thing to your fall schedule.  The good news is that you don’t have to add anything.  The attitude I am talking about requires us to let go.  Each summer there are activities we stop doing for the summer.  Perhaps we don’t need to add them back.  Or maybe there was something you were planning on doing this fall that you make the decision to remove from the calendar.

One of my goals and great gladness of this fall is having our full team at church in place.  Now my opportunity is to let go and allow them to lead in their own way.  Perhaps that is your challenge in your own context too?   Much of our lack of rest comes from some spiritual pride – that we think we are indispensable and need to do it all ourselves.  Self-justification is a dangerous idea that will invariably leave us disappointed.  We do better to rely on colleagues. 

And trust in God.  Jesus asked his disciples, “why are you afraid, you of little faith?”  Let go of your need to do it all yourself and trust God.  God has invested in a lot in creating and recreating us and God wants to protect God’s investment by making sure we care for ourselves.

Let go and let God.  Niebuhr prayed, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” As the Psalms put it, “I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.”   “I have calmed and quieted my soul…my hope is in the Lord.”

Last Sunday I talked about our daughter Cathleen’s walking on the beach.  This summer was also her first time sailing.  When we were up in Cape Cod and I took her out, a friend was sailing it, and we held her in the boat.  But the boat began to tip a bit and she held on tight, gripping us in fear.  But then our embrace let her know she was ok and she was calm.

During the storm in the Sea of Galilee, Jesus slept in the boat while the disciples panicked.  But when he was ready, Jesus calmed his friends and he calmed the storm.  It is the same calm he brings in the storms of life.  It is the same calm that we all know we need.  It is calm that God requests of us through our spiritual practices, through observance of Sabbath, self care and sleep, and through prayer, rest, and worship.  It’s a Sabbath psyche that many of us developed over time this summer.  And that we might just take with us into fall. 

This summer my mom showed up on one of her visits with a hammock.  An old one.  One my grandfather had bought for an old cabin he had 60 years ago.  It was remarkably well preserved for its age.  And it fit nicely between two trees in our backyard.  We were nervous though that it wouldn’t hold.  It was made 60 years ago.  But our kids put it to the test.  They all climbed into it at one point.  And it held.  So all summer we enjoyed it.  It’s great to lie in the hammock and stare at the trees above, a very peaceful feeling indeed.   This is a memory I’ll take from this summer.   And I plan to lie in it early and often this fall.   Particularly when I feel stressed.  And hopefully feel at peace.  

I hope you and I will take a bit of summer’s attitude into fall.  Lying on the hammock last week I thought about a J.G. Whittier poem and it made me feel peaceful indeed.  He wrote,

“O Sabbath rest by Galilee! O calm of hills above, Where Jesus knelt to share with thee, The silence of eternity, Interpreted by love!

Drop thy still dews of quietness, Till all our strivings cease;

Take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess,

The beauty of thy peace.”  Thanks be to God.  Amen.