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Now that the Syracuse football team has three games under their belt, it might be good to tell a story about basketball...

Seven Days with God: Day Seven: God Adds Sabbath - Genesis 2: 1-4; Mark 1: 29-39 - September 16, 2007 - Cicero united Methodist Church - Everett J. Bassett

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Now that the Syracuse football team has three games under their belt, it might be good to tell a story about basketball. Actually, it's a story about keeping the Sabbath. Many years ago now, my son was in a Junior High CYO basketball league in Auburn. It was an interesting season, and the theme of the season became, "Hurry Sundown." It seems that his team had a young man who had had an early growth spurt, and who stood head and shoulders over the rest of the league. He was also a very skilled player, and that combination of height and skill made him the dominant player in the league. When he was in the game, our team was unstoppable.

Here's the thing: he was from a strict, Seventh-Day Adventist family, and he was forbidden from playing basketball on the Sabbath. The Sabbath, for him, was sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday. The games might start anytime from 2 o'clock to 5 on a Saturday afternoon. Some games he missed altogether. But most games, he would come dressed in his uniform, equipped with the exact minute the sun would be down, and he'd sit on the bench and wait for the moment he could come into the game. It was actually pretty dramatic - the team's strategy was to keep the game close, call lots of timeouts, and we all thought, Hurry Sundown, until the star could come in.

I suspect that we parents, and this boy's teammates, would occasionally privately think, "Oh, come on. What harm would it do to bring him in a little early? We'll all say an extra prayer later. Why be so rigid?" But I also suspect that there was no small measure of admiration for the strength of belief. I suspect that many of those young people and their parents had to think through the meaning of the Sabbath on the basis of that young man's example; obviously, I still remember him.

Since we are already - whether we like it or not - in the middle of a presidential campaign season, we might recall the 2000 campaign, and the way the Sabbath became an issue. It seems that one of the vice presidential candidates - Joe Liebermann - is a Sabbath-observing Jew. He did not campaign on the Sabbath. This caused a lot of questioning - could someone be vice-president of the United States, and still keep the Sabbath? And eventually, Liebermann had to make statements saying that, indeed, in cases of national emergencies, he would break the traditional Sabbath if he needed to. But at least one writer asked an interesting question - Al Gore, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney - are all professing Christians - aren't they supposed to keep the Sabbath, too?

The fact is, to a large measure, American Christians have turned away from the Sabbath. Let me be clear at this point - when I talk about the Sabbath, I'm not talking about a particular time of week for everybody - all day Sunday. The fact is, if we followed the Bible strictly about Sabbath, we would be meeting for church on Saturday instead of Sunday. Christian tradition fell onto Sunday as the day of worship and rest, because Jesus was raised from the dead on the first day of the week. But, in fact, God rested on the seventh day, not the first. The Sabbath that Jesus observed was on Saturday. But Jesus taught that even on that day, some have to work. So, right from the get-go, Christians are not slavishly locked in to a particular day of Sabbath.

When I say that American Christians have turned away from the Sabbath, it's not so much about blue laws, or sports practices on Sunday morning. It's about the fact that many people who call themselves Christians take hardly any time for God at all.

In fact, we have a thinly veiled pride in the idea that we are always on the go. It's as if we define our value by how busy we are. We must be important if we are constantly finding demands on our time. I've heard prideful statements about how productive the American worker is, especially compared to say, Europe, where people take more time off from work for leisure and perspective. There are plenty of reasons to take pride in the productivity of American workers. But there is also a crisis among American workers ­many of them are emotionally drained, physically out-of-shape, relationally hurting, and spiritually empty. And that has to do with not having time for Sabbath.

Why did God rest on the seventh day of creation? Today's sermon concludes the series on seven days with God, as described in Genesis 1. For the other six days, we talked about how God added light, we talked about God adding balance, we talked about life, we talked about awe, we talked about variety, we talked about humankind. On the seventh day, God rested. Surely we don't believe that God was tired, and needed to kick back and take a nap. God rested, I suspect, to get perspective on what He had accomplished, and to establish the Sabbath - the pattern of slowing down and taking stock; the pattern of one in seven for thinking, for praying, for letting all things rest. Christian teacher James Ashbrook wrote, "We need spaced-out periods of time to assimilate what has been going on. If you don't stop and put it together, you have no character, no soul, no memory, no future."

This, I believe, is why God rested. It is why remembering the Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments. It is why Jesus, in our scripture lesson, after a long day of healing and teaching, drew apart by himself. And it is why keeping the Sabbath is essential to the life of any person who wants to truly be a person. Without Sabbath, we lose our way.

Let's list some of the reasons the Sabbath is so important in God's plan. First of all, it's about health - physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health. Our go-go-go attitude is loading us down with stress that attacks everything from our blood pressure to our emotional equilibrium. One heart doctor said, "Half the medication I prescribe would be unnecessary if people as a whole just learned to step back, take a deep breath, and focus on finding a little inner peace." He might as well have said, take a Sabbath.

It has often been pointed out that the perfect example for a healthy lifestyle could very well be Jesus. The Middle East diet of whole grains, fish, olive oil, and wine would be a very healthy one; his chosen mode of travel seems to have been the perfect exercise: a brisk walk - miles of it; and, most of all, he knew to step back We see it again and again in the Bible - Jesus going to quiet places, and inviting his followers to do the same. Especially at the times of high stress, he took the step back. Was it because he had caught up - got the work done? No. There was always another person to heal; always another teaching to give. But Jesus knew that those things were so important that he had to make sure that he was operating with a full tank. Somehow along the way, some Christians, including in the early days of Methodism, felt that you weren't being a follower of Christ unless you burned yourself out. I don't know who those folks were following, but it wasn't Jesus. Jesus had balance; he knew how to observe the Sabbath.

Secondly, it's about relationships. It is pretty hard to relate to a stressed-out, unfocussed person. To build a truly anchored relationship takes unstructured, relaxed time. It takes rich, quiet soil where the seeds of sharing can sprout. Now, time spent building a deep relationship isn't identical with Sabbath time. You can't substitute earthly human relationships for time spent in spiritual communion with God. But the two things are shaped by similar practices. Both involve slowing down, taking time, setting different priorities, learning about your true self, and giving of yourself for another.

You can't build the best relationships in life on hurried time. Parents believe they are blessing their children by running them all over the place, and working two jobs so they can give their children everything; when most likely the result of that feverish pace will be stressed-out, spoiled, children, who mostly crave undivided, unhurried time with their parent. Marriages are complex entities, and very unique arrangements; but one thing that is almost universally applicable is that the best and deepest bonds require quiet soulful times of sharing, when couples can really get to know each other. Friendships are formed the same way. Again, you can't substitute those human relationships for your relationship with God - but there is great overlap. The ability to step back and take Sabbath time with God will help shape the ability to take such time for human relationships as well. And a bonus occurs when families and couples and friends share the Sabbath together - pray together, study the faith together, worship together. There the bonds can grow even stronger, cemented by the power of shared faith.

Third, it's about prayer. The most important of all relationships by far is that with the One who created us in his own image; who watches over our lives; who sent His Son to die for us; who alone can offer us the inner peace and strength we long for. Sabbath is about communion with God - and it may not be on a Sunday; it may not be in a traditional hour or place or manner. But it better be someplace, sometime, regular and often - or you will simply lose your way. Lose your perspective. As Ashbrook said it: ­no character, no soul, no memory, no future.

That is simply not what God has in mind for us. That stressed-out, feverish, yearning feeling is not the life God intended. And I know there are very busy people here. I know life is fast-paced and goes by at breathtaking speed somehow. But I also know every one of us gets seven days in a week, and 24 hours in a day. And if we can schedule work, play, all kinds of appointments and activities - we can find time for God as well. Maybe it will be a prayer group, or a Bible study. Maybe it will be writing your thoughts in a journal; retreating to a park; listening to spiritual music; thinking, listening. Maybe you will be antsy at first, bored, distracted. But I have never known anyone who truly invested time and priority into quality time with God who didn't end up believing it was the best time they spent. It made everything else fall into place. When all is said and done, life is too busy and too demanding to try to do it without a Sabbath.