Let's Be Human Beings, Not Human Doings

"Jesus said to the apostles, 'Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest.'"

Mark 6: 31

The house in which I grew up in Flat Gap, VA had a basement, which was my sanctuary.  It was in that basement that you would find the cinderblock wall and baseboard heater that I beat up practicing my pitching.  You'd find (for many years) the only TV in the house.  You'd find a wood-burning stove by which I would warm myself and my dog Broderick in the winter time.  You'd find the ping-pong table, at which I would dominate!  And, of course, you would find my Transformers collection.  That basement, that sanctuary, was the place to which I would always return.  It didn't matter if I were in Kentucky, California, or South Carolina, I would always come back to that place.  It was where I could just be.  I didn't have to do anything when I was there.  It was my Sabbath Place.

Jesus called the apostles to find their Sabbath Place.  After having been sent out 2-by-2 the apostles return to Jesus, no doubt exhausted but still eager to tell him of all the things they had seen and done.  Jesus tells them to retreat, to come away and rest.  He does not tell them to somehow prove to him how well they did their jobs while they were out there.  He calls them to a place of refreshment, to a place where they can just be, even if for just a little while.

Sabbath is something that is mandated by God (it's the Fourth Commandment), yet it doesn't really have anything to do with Sundays.  Historically Christians still worked on Sundays, returning to the fields after their worship.  God's Sabbath, of course, is Saturday, the seventh day on which God rested.  As a Seventh Day Adventist once told me during my chaplaincy days, "Sundays or Saturdays, it doesn't matter.  God just wants to make sure we're taking time to rest."

Unfortunately, we have somehow developed a theology that says that over-functionality will lead us to a better seat in the Kingdom.  Folks, I got news for you:  we all get the same seat!  We all have the same place reserved at the banquet table with Jesus.  Over-functioning, working way too hard, in the hopes of gaining some kind of extra grace is a false theology.  We are saved by grace alone.  Simple as that.  Yet we live in a society that tells us to give 110% at our jobs, at our family lives, at whatever we do.  Guess what…we can't give 110%!  It's mathematically impossible!!  So why do we praise folks who do so?  Why do we think that we have to work until we are exhausted or until we physically, emotionally, and spiritually damage ourselves and those we love?

As someone told me in church yesterday, we're human doings now, not human beings.  I think that's the key.  We have become so concerned with doing the we have forgotten how to just be.  Case in point:  what's one of the first things you say to a person when you meet her?  "What do you do?"  It's because our society defines us by our jobs, our titles, and how hard we are working.  But God does not work that way.

God does not care for our titles, for our jobs.  God knows that there is nothing more that we can do to earn that eternal love and that place in the Kingdom.  God loves us just the way we are and wants us to focus more on being, rather than doing.

We do this by honoring our Sabbath.  Perhaps it's a day off that we take (mine is Friday).  Perhaps it's a vacation spot to which we retreat regularly.  Our parish has a little creek running by the church building, and many parishioners come by and simply sit at the creek and be.  I envy my clergy friends who insist on taking time each month to find rest and relaxation, perhaps at a monastery.  These folks know where their Sabbath Place is, and they make sure that they find the time to go there.

What is your Sabbath Place?  Wherever it is, make time to go there.  Go to the place where you don't have to worry about your labels, where you don't have to work so damn hard, where you can just be who God called you to be.  Know that God loves you just the way you are.  You don't have to try so hard!  Who you are is enough for God.  Let it be enough for you.  Take the time to rest.  Take the time for Sabbath.  Take the time to just be.  And that, brothers and sisters, is Good News indeed.