August 26, 2007

The business of life goes on at a breakneck pace. Americans work long hours compared to people in other developed nations. We are the go-getters, the people moving at the speed of business, business now moving at the speed of light. "Permanent Whitewater" is how our times have been described. It means life used to have calm waters between the rapids, now we live navigating one long rapids. No wonder we need vacations.

I have been on vacation. Thank you. Now it's Pastor Amy's turn. Karen and Siri and I went to a family camp near Ely. I always feel at home in the northern woods. Graham wasn't there because he was, guess what? Working.

Vacation is a necessary time of rest. It is a bit like Sabbath, at least in the sense of staying away from work. The Isaiah text mentions the Sabbath, and its blessings. Sabbath time is an essential element of the covenant between Israel and God.

I hope you have had some rest time this summer. Summer vacation is a good thing. When the State Fair rolls around, we know summer is nearly over. We return from vacation and go right back into the whitewater rapids.

When we read this passage from Isaiah, we hear wonderful promises. The LORD will guide you continually... you shall be like a watered garden... your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt... you shall be called the repairer of the breach... Nice picture.

A good vacation can water the garden, so to speak, can give us time to breathe and rebuild. We rejoice in the promises spoken by the prophet.

The promises ARE beautiful. The LORD will guide you continually... you shall be like a watered garden... your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt... you shall be called the repairer of the breach...

This all sounds wonderful. Israel had plenty of ruins to deal with. A people defeated and exiled was now faced with the daunting task of rebuilding and restoring. How do you begin as you face a pile of rubble? Perhaps a promise from God will help you begin.

Maybe after vacation, your desk looks like a pile of rubble. We need God's promises. We want Sabbath. WE need Sabbath.

But here, in Isaiah, the Sabbath promises sound conditional.

IF you remove the yoke... IF you offer food to the hungry... IF you refrain from trampling the Sabbath...

Alas. Along with announcing these wonderful promises, the prophet has the difficult duty of pointing out what is wrong. Amid these beautiful promises we also read a litany of what is sinful in the community: putting workers under a yoke, pointing fingers, speaking evil, withholding food from the hungry, and pursuing one's own interests on the Sabbath day.

It would be easy to turn these words into a kind of religious system. We want a system of rewards and punishments and we want all of life to be fair, predictable, and manageable. And here are the terms, it seems- follow this map and life will be good. Do this, don't do that, and all will be well.

The trouble is, we see signs that it doesn't work that way. A woman who was on television because her house was destroyed in a Minnesota flood was in tears. She looked utterly bewildered and lost. It may only be my imagination, but I thought I also saw a kind of shock. Shock that meant this sort of thing is not supposed to happen to me. I'm not a bad person, not a monster, and if God's system were fair, I would not lose my house to a flood.

Life makes its demands.

A truck driver is driving his truck. That's his business. A bus driver is driving her bus. That's her business. A mother is driving her car with her daughter as her passenger. That's her business. A construction worker labors beside the traffic lanes. Road maintenance is his business. All the others I mentioned pass his work-zone on their way to other places. All of them and more were on the 35W bridge.

People were going about their business when the bridge collapsed.

But people were going about their business back when the bridge was built. People were going about their business when the de-icing system was installed. People were going about their business year after year as the steel began to deteriorate.

Truth be told, people went about their business the day after the bridge fell. Not because they are heartless, but because of obligations, duties, the needs of others and the commitments all of us make. However sad, or scared, or changed, life goes on for the survivors.

Life goes on for me because I was not on the bridge. Life goes on for me because my house did not get flooded like those in Southeast Minnesota.

I'm sure some of the people who lost their homes are Christians. I'm sure some of the people on the bridge attended worship. People who make Sabbath for time with God, still have calamity.

How can this prophet say that IF we do thus and so, we will be a watered garden, and live in high places?

Must we conclude that our bridges fall and our rivers overflow because we do not properly keep Sabbath?

Pursuing the business of daily life is not a sin. Making money in business is not a sin. Prosperity is not against the will of God. In fact all through scripture God is said to be a God of plenty.

But it may be true that the relentless pursuit of career of profit, of prestige, our trading of nearly all our time in exchange for more luxury or wider profit margins- these things do have a cost.

God calls us to Sabbath because of that cost.

Sabbath is the profound embodiment of a biblical truth. God will provide. There IS enough. You don't need to rush so hard that vacation becomes a rare and desperate island in the raging whitewater.

I don't have enough time or talent this morning to try to sort out Sabbath as worship, and Sabbath as rest. I just know that honoring God will sometimes take the form of counter-cultural stances where business is not the dominant force of life, and where time is not always something to be sold, but sometimes, merely released. God gives us the fruit of our labors, but God also guarantees that we have value in being, not just on doing.

If we do honor God, if we Do take a rest, if we Do admit that something is more valuable than competition, then we are experiencing Sabbath.

It's not a map, not a system. It is not a button to press to get a reward. IT is a gift and call. It means worship, but it also means trusting God more than we trust our cars, our levees, or our bridges. It means honoring life so much that we will never cut corners in building or maintaining levees and bridges. It means following God's guidance so that no worker is ever underpaid, or exposed to a known danger.

Finally, the prophet is announcing this. God's people enjoy a radical decree that God is involved in covenant with human beings. When it comes to our time, our business, and even our losses, we have a partner on a cosmic conversation.

God has stepped onto the stage of human history to give human life value and purpose. God will your prosperity, so your prosperity is not solely the result of hard work. And God does not approve of any prosperity that robs the chance of well-being from another.

That which endangers or degrades others in daily life is condemned. That which enables wellness and well-being is affirmed. We do have guidance, and the possibility of the well-watered garden.

Under God's guidance and mercy, the truck driver still drives and the bus driver still chauffers and the mother still teaches and nurtures and the roads are still maintained, but always for the good of all and not a few. Always for a trustworthy world.

Thank God we don't have to get it all for ourselves.