I don’t remember exactly when he said it or even what
prompted his comment, but I’ve never forgotten his words. Many years ago, when I was working at a
church on Long Island, I was talking with the local denominational executive, a
guy named Tom Castlen. As we talked,
Tom looked at me with a serious air of concern in his eyes, and said. “Kennedy, you work too hard.”
And do you know what my first reaction was? I felt flattered. I thought to myself. “Really?
Gee thanks.” Then I realized.
Tom wasn’t giving me a compliment. He
was delivering a serious criticism. And the fact that his criticism flattered me
showed how right he was. To this day, I
struggle with setting healthy limits on my work, a struggle that has hurt me
more as a pastor than it has helped me.
But I don’t face this struggle alone. Americans have become the most over-worked nation in the developed world. A good
many Americans don’t take all their vacation, and even when they do, 6 in 10
report that they work then too, even while their family members complain. So what’s the big problem? Isn’t working hard one of those things that
makes America great? Here’s the
problem.
Research shows that that the levels of
depression, anger and resentment among workers has gotten higher than
ever. Nearly one in three report
feeling overworked and overtired on a regular basis. And when researchers ask children the one
thing they want the most from their parents, it was that they be less stressed
and less tired. And on top of all this,
the overworked workers report making far more mistakes than those who aren’t
overworked.
Here’s the painful truth. When work gets out of balance, it makes
everything worse. Your health
declines. Your family life gets more
conflict and less joy. And you don’t
even get better at your job. You get
worse. So how do you find the
balance? In these ancient words, God
shows the way. Let’s hear what God has
to say.
In a world that can demand more work than ever before,
demands that will make you more stressed and less healthy and happy than ever,
how do you step away from that madness?
How do you find a path where you can work well without hurting yourself,
your family, even your job? In these
words, God shows you the way. God tells
you. The answer ultimately lies in asking this question. Who are you really
working for and why? And as you discover
the real answer to that question, you will find a path to freedom that will liberate
you to work with energy and passion, even as it frees you to work less and play
more.
Too often when you think about these words we just
read, the number 4 commandment in God’s top ten, you think about all those
words on Sabbath, on taking a rest. But
the commandment doesn’t start there. It
starts by focusing on work. Working is
actually part of the command. God
doesn’t say. Hey it might be good for
you to work, but no worries if you don’t.
No, God says. You shall work six
days. Now why is God so focused on
work? It’s simple. God works. The very first thing the Bible tells us
about God is that. God works. That’s what God was doing in those six days
when he created the earth. God was
working. And God was loving it. Every day, God finished one part of the
job, and do you remember what he said?
It’s good. In fact, by the end,
when God got to working on us, God even moved the needle to very good.
And that should tell you something. God made you to work. God built in you a desire to do things, to
create, to build, to produce. It’s why
when I do a chore around the house, unloading the dishwasher, repairing
something, whatever it might be, my son, Patrick, wants to help. And when I tell him how helpful he was, I
can see the satisfaction that wells up.
Work, when it’s done right, brings you joy. What the playwright, Oscar Wilde said is
true. Work is much more fun than fun.
But here’s the problem with work. It’s the problem that led God to give the
commandment. In your work, without
realizing it, you start losing touch with what you’re working for. God gave you work so you could live out your
gifts, so you could become everything God created you to be. God gave you work to give you life. So if that’s the case, why are so many
people’s work killing them, killing their joy, their relationships, their
souls, maybe even their life?
They’ve forgotten why they do it, what it’s really
supposed to mean. I’d like to tell you
that when I was working so hard, so hard that a colleague criticized me for it,
that I was working out of joy and satisfaction.
And some of that was there. But
I was feeling way more anxiety than I was joy. I was anxious about looking good, about looking
like the toughest, most capable person in the room especially since I was
pretty sure I wasn’t. I was anxious to
be successful, whatever that looked like, and I was terrified that if I stopped
it wouldn’t happen. I would fail. And what would that say about me? I wanted people to like me, and I
discovered, never saying no, helped with that. And finally my “work” helped me avoid the
other work I really needed to do, on my relationships, on myself, work on my connection
with God, work that made me feel pretty uncomfortable. To put it simply, I worked to feel good about
myself, to find a way to confirm that I was good, valuable, worthy.
That’s what happens.
The goals may be different for different people. Some may work to make money, to achieve
security, to provide for their family.
They may work for recognition or fame.
Heck, you may not even know what you’re working for. But whatever it is, in that motivation,
something goes seriously wrong. You
stop working out of the joy or satisfaction it gives you. Instead, you work out of fear, out of
insecurity and anxiety. You work to fill
a void that you feel aching inside of you, and if you can’t fill it, at least
your work helps you ignore it’s there.
That’s why God gave this command. The word, Sabbath, Shabbat in Hebrew, has a
simple meaning. It means stop. Stop.
Why? It’s because when you don’t
stop, you lose perspective. You lose
who God created you to be. You become
less human, and in doing so, you make people you don’t even know less human
too.
When I was growing up, it was the strangest
thing. Lots of stores had a day that
they closed. I mean, they closed all
day, and they did it once a week. And
lo and behold, you hardly had any stores that stayed open 24 hours. And somehow people still got food, clothes,
all sorts of things. But it meant a
lot of people weren’t working hours that took them away from their families;
that hurt their health; that made their lives miserable. When God talked about the whole slavery in
Egypt thing, he wasn’t just taking a walk down memory lane. God was saying to the Israelites. Don’t become the Egyptians. Don’t do to others what your slave masters
did to you.
But God isn’t just giving this commandment because
of that. God is giving it to remind them
of two things they desperately need to remember. First, God is saying. You’re not God. You didn’t get yourself out of Egypt. I did that. That’s why I’m God and you’re not. So if you stop for a day, the sun is still
going to rise. Life will continue
on. You’re not that important. And that’s a good thing. You can let go for a little bit, and not
everything will collapse. And if you
practice that one day each week, you might start believing it.
And second and most crucially of all, God is
reminding you. You have value. You have worth, not because of how useful you
are to me or to others. You have worth
and value simply because you are. God
didn’t intend Sabbath to be a day off, a day to run errands or catch up on
laundry. God made Sabbath as a day for
you to do nothing, to play. That’s why
you worship on the Sabbath. Worship is
playing. It’s doing something that has
no obvious productive or practical purpose.
That’s what play is.
Strangely enough, researchers are discovering that
we need it. One researcher,
Stuart Brown, put it this way. “The
opposite of play isn’t work – the opposite of play is depression.” Basically, God created you to play as well as
work. And if you stop playing, then your work will
stop working so to speak. Or as Brown
put it: “In the long run, work does not work without play.”
But God is saying more than that. God is saying. One day a week you have to stop and play,
because one day a week you need to remember who you are. You’re my creation, my child, and my love
for you has nothing to do with what you do.
It has everything to do with who you are.
That’s why God wants us to baptize babies. Because, let’s get real, what do babies
do? They don’t really do much of
anything but eat and poop. You pretty
much have to do everything for them.
And that’s the point. All of us
come into the world, doing nothing of value but simply existing. And guess what. That’s enough. That’s enough for you to be loved and valued
and cherished. And one day each week,
God orders you to remember that, that simply existing is enough for you to be
loved by the creator of the universe.
But if that’s true, why didn’t the Israelites get
it? Why does our world not get it? Why do you maybe not get it? It’s because you don’t yet believe it, really
believe it. But if you look at the cross, if you really
look at what God in Jesus did for you, then more and more that belief will
break through. God went through that
cross when you had done nothing for him, when in fact your screw ups put him
there. God went through the exhaustion
of it, the agony of it, the humiliation of it, why? God didn’t do it out of duty or even so you
might like him. God did it out of joy,
the joy of loving you, of bringing you home.
God entered into that slavery to free you from a bondage to proving
yourself that drives you with fear and shame.
On that cross, God endured the most brutal work of all to give you the
rest you desperately need, a resting from proving yourself, from hiding from
yourself, from restlessly seeking love when the love you need has been waiting
for you all along. And the more that love rests in you, the more
your work will become work rather a place to prove your value. And you will find the freedom to work joyfully,
and to play joyfully, and to rest in the love that loves you no matter what. So in the name of God, stop, cease your work,
and remember who you are and believe it.
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