Sermons at St. John's Presbyterian Church

Renew, recreate, refresh

Walking on Water 4

Transcribed from the sermon preached March 27, 2011

The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

Scripture Readings: Gen.2, Ps.148,  Mt 15

I never really allowed myself to enjoy surfing until I went to seminary.  It wasn’t goal oriented or productive.  There is no purpose or rules, no boundaries and the surf doesn’t fit well with Western notion of time and productivity.  My dad is a sports fanatic, but he doesn’t really care to talk about surfing: there is nothing to record, no statistics, points, teams, uniforms, no winner or loser.  And while my mom always had a rebel streak in her, and liked the idea that her son might be hip, she liked the idea of worldly success better.  And since my parents paid for my undergraduate work, I always felt like I was cheating them somehow by slipping off to the ocean.  And it is true I didn’t fully commit myself to my studies, though surfing was not the main culprit. 

Finally, when I got married and went to seminary and started to pay my own way, I decided that this time around I was going to give school 100% effort.  So the first semester all I did was study.  Study, study and more study.  I was all-serious.   I did well and felt good about myself. That is until I gained twenty pounds and hurt my back.  We ignore rest, exercise and Sabbath at our own peril. 

Still wanting to be a new, responsible, American adult, I went down to the local gym and see about a membership.  I figured torturing myself by lifting weights and running like a hamster in an enclosed, controlled environment was the responsible American way to stay fit.  But then I realized with down payment and monthly fees, the gym would cost more than a surfboard and wetsuit.  Wow, what a revelation.  I started surfing when I was seventeen.  It took me till I was 28 to be set free to enjoy myself at   something I truly loved, to really accept the joy and health that comes from play with God’s creation.  I started giving myself a break from study to go out to the ocean, and I fell in love with the beautiful Marin and San Mateo coast.     

It seems from the perspective of the Gospels that Jesus doesn’t get a lot of breaks.  But that doesn’t keep him from trying.  He is always hiking off by himself for a little quite time on a hill or by the sea when people find him and want healing.  He heals them, and teaches, then persuades them to have a picnic; then off again he goes into a boat where the people can’t follow.

In Genesis this morning we catch the last day of the second Creation Story to enter scripture.  God looks around at the whole Creation, notices that it is good, then takes a break, a Sabbath.  Now Sabbath, a day of mandatory worship and rest, has got to be the greatest single act for sustainable economics ever. 

Everybody, including God, gets a day off.  The workers, the animals, the land, everyone gets a day of rest.  Now Sabbath law extends out beyond the week.  Every seven years, the sabbatical year the land is to rest.  Then, every seven times seven years, every 49^th year, is a Jubilee year: the land rests, the people rest, and debts are cancelled and land that had been foreclosed on goes back to the original owner. Slaves are freed.  This was to keep the balance of the distribution of the land of Israel, to keep land and people rested so they could continue on. Sabbath gives us time to observe our relationship with God, Nature and others.

When I asked the Session why they take a Sabbath and come to worship; they said, ‘It opens me to the “It keeps me grounded.”  “It sets my clock for the week.”  “It orients my time and priorities.”  In our culture, with its combo of the Protestant work ethic and capitalist competition, a Sabbath doesn’t seem an efficient way to spend time.  It seems like the more prestigious the job you have, the more you are expected to work 60 or 70-hour weeks, and to ignore your need for Sabbath.   

Early on in western civilization, work and the useful arts and science were thought to be profane, earthy non-spiritual activity better left to the women and lower classes.  But as the image of work was transformed into the “fruit of the Spirit” and a means to rise above fallen nature and reach for the Kingdom of heaven, restful contemplation, relaxation and enjoyment were set aside for the damned.

David Noble in the Religion of Technology, notes that

“In the sixth century, Benedict of Nursia made the practical arts (technology) and manual labor in general vital elements of monastic devotion, alongside liturgical praise of God and the meditative reading of scripture…The Benedictines eventually turned their religious devotion to the useful arts into a medieval industrial revolution, pioneering in the avid use of windmills, watermills, and new agricultural methods...The social elevation of the arts signified at the same time an ideological elevation of mankind above nature.  In theological terms, this exalted stance vis-à-vis nature represented a forceful reassertion of an early core Christian belief in the possibility of mankind’s recovery of its original God-likeness,” which we lost in the fall from Grace in the Garden.

Through work and technology, humankind would rise above and separate itself apart from fallen earth and climb ever closer once again to that original imago dei or image of God we lost in the Garden.  We were now seen as coworkers with God working toward the establishment of God’s kingdom.  (Noble, David F.  The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention. Penguin Books. NY.NY. 1997.p14)

  By the Reformation in the sixteenth century, hard work and advancement of prosperity and technology, a separation and dominion over flesh and nature had become a sign of grace, a sign that one was among the elect.  Remember Calvin emphasized salvation by grace through faith, and that it was not by works but by the predetermined grace of God that we are saved.  That notion that it was God’s preordained choice and not our works that determined who was saved, ironically led people to attempt to demonstrate they were saved by working, that is by producing the fruit of the Spirit.  By education, hard work and frugality Christians would set themselves apart and establish dominion over nature, moving ever closer to the new heaven and new earth.  Also the Protestant notion that the end was near, that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, compressed our notion of time and left us anxious about tomorrow.

This Protestant work ethic helped lead to some incredible advances in technology and toward the industrial revolution which did indeed lead to many things that gave us greater control over the material and natural world, and many other nations and peoples.  The downside of the protestant work ethic, is that in our desire to prove we are among the elect, we remain anxious and guilt ridden, fearing that if we stop to relax and enjoy ourselves we may slip off God’s list of elect or slide down a class.  We have a hard time resting and enjoying ourselves in the moment.  Nature has come to be seen as something to rise above and subdue.  It is the fallen enemy that would drag us down with it.  A simple example of this above nature mentality are high rise hotels that stick out rather than fit in with nature or water parks and man-made lagoons next to the most beautiful beaches in the world.

The secular version of the prosperity Gospel in American society has us exploiting nature to create our own heaven on earth separate from nature’s processes.  Lights and air conditioning, fountains and sprinklers on golf courses in the desert, Cities below sea level, nuclear power plants near fault lines, strip mining and logging as if there were no end to earth’s resources create a world against nature. 

But I believe there is relief for both humanity and nature in Sabbath, in the notion that even God took time to look around and see that things were good, to rest, relax and regenerate.  Sabbath is a time to stop and give thanks and worship the Creator, our “Original blessing” as Matthew Fox calls it, to take and give rest to ourselves, to those who work for us, and to the land and animals.  Sabbath gives us time to enjoy, to rest, to recreate, to worship and give thanks.  It sets our time and grounds us for the week.

In 2001 the Church I served in Salinas made up basic survival backpacks for a bunch of the Lost Boys of Sudan.  After arriving in San Jose, some of the boys came down to worship with us in Salinas.  The boys who came to stay with us were from the Dinka ethnic group and were orphaned during the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005).  These boys were tending the cattle when the attack came to their village.  Their parents and sisters were raped and murdered, their houses burned.  They fled into the bush and then proceeded to walk 1,000 miles to a refugee camp in Kenya.

As Americans we wanted to offer our guests nice accommodations.  But when we gave the brothers separate rooms with nice beds they asked if they could be together and sleep on the ground.  One of the things they had been threatened with at night on their journey was lions.  Lions had eaten several of the boys they had traveled with.  So they got used to sleeping together. 

After a nights sleep, we ate and went to worship.  We sang, giving thanks and praise to our God.  It was a great worship service, because if these guys can sing out in such joy and praise, then we better recognize our blessings too.

Then after worship some of the church members including my wife and two boys took the boys down to visit the beach in Monterey.  Now this is Northern California and it was foggy and cold.  The boys only had their “Sunday-go-to-meet’n” clothes so our leaders stopped and bought them some sweat pants. 

Now we know there is beauty and things to be thankful for around but we get used to them and take them for granted or we are hypercritical about why we can’t quite relax and enjoy ourselves today. Too often we just drive past the beauty in our natural surrounding and don’t even notice.  And if we do we are sure to restrain our expression of joy…we don’t want to stick ourselves too far out there, look foolish or uncool.  Or maybe there is some of that old Protestant notion that we shouldn’t enjoy ourselves much yet, we shouldn’t show our attachment to this material world, and with all the evil and suffering going on, we should refrain from being happy.

But when the boys pulled up to the beach and got out of the cars, they all immediately ran with childlike glee into the water, with their new sweats on.  They had never seen the ocean before.  Their gratitude and joy was contagious.  And as a woman came along on a horse, a couple of the boys ran up to take a look.  And they got to ride, laughing all the way.