Discover the Rhythms of the Daily Office and Sabbath
Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, prt. 6
Wildwind Community Church
November 14, 2010
David Flowers
Monday through Friday. Get out of bed. Grab your morning coffee, and maybe some breakfast. Shower. Get dressed. Hopefully brush your teeth somewhere in there. Then out the door to work, to school, to get the kids where they need to go. Then home, dinner, maybe a chore or two, maybe a little TV or Facebook, then off to bed. You can customize this however you need to, but what I have just said probably pretty much captures the rhythms of American life for most Americans. But that’s just the weekdays. Let’s get the weekends into this too.
Saturday – Try to maybe sleep in, but probably wake up close the same time you always do during the week, much to your frustration. Maybe take a shower, maybe skip it – heck, it’s the weekend. Grab some coffee and breakfast somewhere, get teethbrushing in somewhere, then off you go. Where to? The answer, of course, is wherever the kids require you to take them. Band, sports, choir, robotics, the art fair, dance, gymnastics, and wherever else you are running to at such a pace that you almost have no choice but to stop and grab some fast food somewhere, despite your awareness that it’s terrible for you and the kids, and that you don’t really have the money to do this. Run, run, run, run, run, run, run, get home, catch a little TV, and then learn at the last minute that there’s another practice or event your child has to be at in 20 minutes. It’s 40 minutes away. Off you go. You get out there and it’s canceled. Even worse possibility – it’s NOT canceled, but it is almost half over now with your being late and all, so you sit in the parking lot listening to the radio, trying to kill some time. Your child comes out to the car after practice and there’s some poor kid whose parent hasn’t shown up yet to get them. You thank the coach and express your appreciation by assuring him you’ll take care of the abandoned child. You make a few calls and finally catch the parent at home, who has just awakened from a nap and can’t be out to pick the kid up for 30 minutes, spends the next ten minutes telling you how overwhelmed and busy they are, and asks if you can drive the kid home. So you do, because at least this way you know how much longer you’ll be involved in this whole affair. This child’s parent, obviously, is a wild card. You get back home and realize you haven’t touched your honey-do list yet, so you knock a couple things off of it – until the phone rings and it’s another couple inviting you to dinner and a movie. You haven’t said yes to an invitation in a while, and you’re totally exhausted and don’t want to accept this one either, but you and your spouse agree you need the time out, and you don’t want the other couple to think you hate them, so you agree. You’re supposed to meet them at their house in four hours. You spend the next 3 hours and 57 minutes nailing down babysitting. By the time the sitter gets there, you just want to hit the sack for the day. But you show up 30 minutes late to your friends’ house and off you go to enjoy a wonderful evening . That is, assuming the babysitter doesn’t call and announce that your child has a fever. You enjoy your time out, but in the back of your mind the whole time you are a) wondering how the kids are doing; b) trying to figure out when you’ll be home and how much you’ll end up paying the sitter; c) trying to stop thinking about how the last three times you have gone out the sitter has called and announced that the baby has a fever, or won’t stop throwing up, or whatever else has caused you to have to call off the whole night and go home early.
So there – that’s Saturday. This is fun, shall we do Sunday?! Get up, get your coffee, get in shower, grab some breakfast, brush teeth in there somewhere, head to church, go out after with people you love, even though you couldn’t afford it yesterday, and you definitely can’t afford to do it again today, only this time you actually WANT to go out. Head home, and then it’s pretty much exactly like Saturday, except somewhere around 8 pm as you’re starting to think about the kids heading toward bed, you ask them if all their homework is finished, since you asked them to do it yesterday. They look at your blankly and go, “Huh?” So you help kids with homework for the next two hours, and get them to bed 30 minutes later. You look at your spouse and they look back at you, and you shake hands and agree to pretend it was sex. You’re just too tired, and at least one of you (if not both) is tense about work tomorrow, crabby about where the weekend went, frustrated about critical things you needed to get done that didn’t get done, and speaking of that, you suddenly become aware that laundry is one of those things, and now neither of you has any underwear for tomorrow. If you’re lucky, you negotiate who’s going to throw some laundry in. If you’re not so lucky, that becomes your last irritated argument for the weekend. One of you hits the rack, and the other (whoever drew the short straw on the laundry) falls in bed an hour later. Thus ends our Sunday. Tomorrow we’re going to – well, we’re gonna get up and start the whole thing over again.
These are the rhythms of the American life. We curse that rhythm. We often hate it. We love to complain about it. But the rhythms of the American life are the inevitable result of the song we have chosen to dance to – a song called The American Dream. The American Dream is a song about a mythical couple who have a few children and give them everything they want, who lack for nothing, who accomplish it all, who struggle to set limits and say no (to their children, their co-workers, and even themselves), and who on their journey to live happily ever after, come to discover that the individual moments of their lives add up to more exhaustion and frustration than happiness. The rhythms of your life are a direct result of whatever song you’ve chosen to dance to.
And therein lies my first difficulty, as I preach this sermon to largely overworked, underplayed, busy people. Good people, with good intentions, good hearts, and sincere desires to be all God would have them be. And though all of this is the case, what is also true is that most people do not realize they have made a choice in all this. When I talk about the song you’ve chosen to dance to, most people have never even considered that there was a choice on the table. We don’t even think that way. We don’t think about the dozens of choices that come our way each week that all affect the bottom line of whether or not we have any margin in our lives, any room to breathe, any room to enjoy creation and pleasure. All we think about is whether this is something the kids “want” or whether it will be “good for them.” How many nights out do our kids need every week? And remember, though we need to be mindful of our children and willing to serve them, we cannot lose ourselves and our marriages in the process. We must make time for ourselves and for each other.
Anyone not willing or ready to admit that choices are being made can tune out everything else I have to say, because this topic, like every other topic in our Emotionally Healthy Spirituality series, demands first and foremost that we – and we alone – accept responsibility for our own lives and choices. Failure to do this is failure at the starting line.
I preach this not only as your pastor, but as a parent. And I can honestly say I’m not sure we have set the limits we should set. I’m not sure we have NOT, either. In other words, it’s something I struggle with. I wrestle with how much to let our kids do. It’s easy to say, “As long as they keep their grades up....” and then just let them go crazy, but it’s bigger than that. That would be like saying of yourself that as long as you don’t run into any mailboxes or phone polls, it’s okay for you to drive at breakneck speed. Of course it’s not okay. Just because you haven’t crashed and burned yet is beside the point, for it is that very attitude that will lead to the likelihood of a serious crash sooner or later.
In a moment I want to talk to you about the rhythms of the Daily Office and the Sabbath. The Daily Office and the Sabbath help us to stop asking the question, “Can we fit this into our lives” and to start asking the question, “Should we fit this into our lives.” It’s like the difference between saying, “Can I afford this monthly payment” (which may be a definite yes), or saying, “Should I be making this monthly payment” (which may be a forceful no). As long as you ask, “Can I...” you are asking a question about the limits of your capability. And so you will find yourself living always at the very limit of your finances and your schedule, and maybe well beyond those limits. But if you ask, “Should I...” you are no longer asking what is possible, but what is prudent, what is wise. When applied to your money and schedule, “should I” questions are questions about values. But we rarely ask the “should I” question with regard to our schedules (or finances). We nearly always settle for “can I.” But “can I” has another title – it’s called The American Dream. Asking can I leads directly to those ridiculous rhythms and unreasonable expectations we’re trying to dance to. It’s because we ask “Can I” that we are exhausted and living at breakneck speed. But I don’t want to break my neck, or those of my children, and I know you don’t either. How do we slow down? Well, if you’re dancing too fast, you gotta put on a slower song. That’s all there is to it. When I say we need to slow down, many people say, “I can’t.” And in a sense they are quite right. They can’t do it if they don’t change the song.
But how do we do that? How do we put a new song on and start dancing to something slower? We do it by discovering the rhythms of the Daily Office and the Sabbath.
This whole thing is actually very simple. I’m not suggesting that it is easy (it seems that there’s not a whole lot about getting healthy that is easy), but it is simple. Here it is. Here’s what we know:
Psalm 46:10 (NLT)
10 “Be still, and know that I am God!
Psalm 37:7 (MSG)
7 Quiet down before GOD, be prayerful before him. Don't bother with those who climb the ladder, who elbow their way to the top.
We know, first of all, that getting quiet, coming out of the chaos and the scratch and claw of the world is essential for life with God.
Next, we know that the amount of time devoted to the Sabbath in the 10 Commandments dwarfs the amount of time given to any other commandment:
Exodus 20:8-11 (NIV)
8 "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping 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. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.
11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
Without question this commandment is the one most routinely broken by Christians, with the possible exception of the one that we should not covet what other people have. [Like busyness, wanting what we don’t have is an American virtue. Our economy begins with wanting what we don’t have, and it is moved forward as we work ourselves sick trying to get it for ourselves and our children.] Not only do Christians routinely break the command that we honor the Sabbath, but when you mention it, you will see eyes start to roll, and the excuses come out for why it can’t be done. If a preacher preaches Thou shalt not murder, no one will roll their eyes or start making excuses about how there really are stupid people in the world who need to die and it’s just impossible not to kill them. But we are militant in our disobedience of the command to honor the Sabbath. Most of us do not even intend to obey it, or even to begin rearrange our lives so that it is possible.
And yet the Sabbath is our only hope. The Sabbath is that which demands the restructuring of life that makes real life possible. Sabbath both whispers and screams to us, “You have sold out – your priorities are not kingdom priorities – you are slaves to the grind – to a relentless system that is using you, chewing you up, and that is right now using you as an instrument to train your own children how to serve that system as well.”
Here’s something else we know. We know that God rested from creation, and we know that Jesus rested in prayer in the mornings and had a routine of doing this. Something else we know is that there is very little difference schedule-wise between today’s Americans and the ancient Hebrews in slavery in Egypt. The Hebrews were demanded by their slave masters to work 7 days a week, year after year. And many of us demand this of ourselves. No rest. No down time. No peace. And if we do rest, it is in what we consider “stolen” moments. We do not plan for it, we do not work it into our lives. We dance to the rhythm of the relentless American Dream, and if the song ever lets up or slows down, we enjoy a little rest – but we’re still doing whatever the song dictates.
In Sabbath, we intentionally set aside a 24 hour slice of our lives once a week to rest. First, we stop our relentless activity. Second, we rest. Nap, or get quiet, or sleep in. We just rest. Rest from whatever has its fingers around your neck the rest of the week. Third, we delight. We find things that refresh us and bring us to life (NOT WORK!!) We slow down to delight in people, in places, in things, in creation. We spend the day in delight and in thanksgiving. Fourth, we contemplate. In other words, we spend the day in conscious awareness of God. This might involve prayer. Scripture reading and memorization. Listening to music that elevates our spirits. Something that keeps us plugged into God the whole day. That is Sabbath and it is essential in every mature Christian life. There are people right now desperate to know God intimately, who would find rest and peace and love in the presence of God, but who will simply not stop, rest, delight, and contemplate. Without these things, we cannot know God. So many of us want a day off, but God has actually insisted that we take a day of rest once a week. That’s 52 days, or 7.5 weeks of rest per year. Can you imagine how that would transform your life, your ability to listen to and hear God, your view of yourself, and your understanding of who God is?
I want to end speaking about the Daily Office. The Daily Office (the word “office” literally means “work”) is simply a time two to four times a day where you choose to be with God. It can be two minutes long, or twenty or forty minutes long – your call. But it pulls you out of the rhythms of the American Dream and gets you into the new rhythm of God’s song for you. Between the Sabbath and your daily offices, you begin structuring your life intentionally not around the American Dream, but around the presence of God.
See, here’s what we have going for us. We might be dancing relentlessly to The American Dream, but we grew into it. Most of us were never taught any other way. Aren’t you sick of that song? You have a chance to CHOOSE the song you will dance to. How about THIS song: “I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses. And the voice I hear falling on my ear, the Son of God discloses. And he walks with me and he talks with me – and he tells me I am his own. And the joy we share as we tarry there – none other has ever known.”
Many people listen to music, but not to words. They don’t know what the songs are actually saying. In the same way, we listen constantly to the song of the American Dream, but have never noticed it only has two words: “More” and “Go.” We don’t know the words to the American Dream song because we’re just busy doing what those words say. And we don’t know the words to the song of rest because we have never been willing to change the tune, to put on a new song, and then to listen. In the Daily Office, and in the Sabbath, we change our tune. We stop whatever we are doing, center our attention on God, go into a time of silence, and meditate quietly on scripture. Two to four times a day. Do you see how radically the practice of these two things – Sabbath and Daily Office – would transform your life? Do you see how it would move you gently toward a view of God that fills up your whole world?
I am teaching a Discovery class right now, and in Discovery, I teach that the Christian life is simply life with God. Not a one-time commitment, or avoiding this or that bad habit, or judging this or that person or group or behavior as wrong, but learning to live life – all of life – with God, in the presence and love of God. How’s that sound? It can happen, but we have to be willing to change our tune!
