Midweek Lent 2022
April 6, 2022
Good Shepherd, Wells, MN
Deuteronomy 5.12-14; Luke 13.10-17
After graduating from college, graduate school wasn’t in the cards, so I decided it would be a good idea to look for a job. I’d taken a couple of business courses in college, so I gave that a whirl, landing a management trainee position at Minnesota Fabrics, a retail fabric chain. I entered what I found to be an excellent training program that’s served me well both in my business career and as a pastor. But I also found a business started by two strong Christians who lived their values in the workplace. One of those values was not to be open on Sundays, to create a Sabbath day for employees. The owners reasoned that customers would adjust to the stores being closed on Sundays by finding plenty of other opportunities during the week to shop. I think they were right.
We’ve come to the final session in our Lenten series on “Remembering Sabbath,” an invitation to explore ways to experience rest and renewal. We began by learning that Sabbath is rooted in the creation story and that we who are created in God’s image are to rest just as God has done. We then explored ways that Sabbath can refresh us in those activities that renew our spirit, freeing us from the myth of endless work and the tyranny of efficiency and productivity. Last week we heard that Sabbath releases us from anxiety by reminding us of God’s abundance.
Today we end where we began by realizing that, although Sabbath is always personal, it’s never private. The owners of Minnesota Fabrics recognized the communal nature of Sabbath by granting Sabbath to those working for them, but they also recognized that their customers benefited from their employees’ Sabbath, if indirectly. That’s something that Jesus tries to convey to the religious authorities of his day. They’ve lost sight of Sabbath’s purpose, to set us free from whatever is binding and crippling us. They’ve also forgotten that the Sabbath is for the benefit of communal relationships. They were so obsessed with the letter of the Sabbath commandment that they dowsed the spirit of it.
As I’ve thought deeply about what this means for us, I had both a “wondering” and a question. My wondering has to do with what Sabbath might mean for our most intimate relationships, especially our marriages and families. A number of years ago, I met my brother for dinner at a Twin Cities hamburger place. While we were eating, I happened to notice a family sitting at a table near to us and that five of six were on their phones, not talking to each other. Now, I don’t want to judge, but I wonder if there are ways we can take a Sabbath from those things that keep us apart, even though they’re supposed to bring us together. What would that mean in your family?
Now onto the question. The question I have might not have an immediate answer, but I want to get your juices flowing and think about this. How can Good Shepherd Lutheran Church provide Sabbath to members of the Wells community? In other words, is there a particular group of people or demographic that are stretched beyond their limit? How might this congregation “unbind” that group of people and bring them refreshment, if only for a bit? Bless you as you continue to explore ways to grow closer to God and one another through Sabbath. Amen.
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