“The Christian Wallet: The Joy of Simplicity” Matthew 6: 19-21

If you picked up the devotional for last week you would have noticed that the first four days were about work - our work for Christ in the world, what it means to be a laborer in God’s vineyard, but then you got to Friday, and what was the topic about? Rest. Sabbath rest. Because the truth is work and rest are connected. 

In Genesis 2:2 we are told that after God created everything - the sky, the waters, the stars, the animals, human beings - God rested. On the seventh day after God finished the work that he had done, God rested. 

We live in a culture that honestly, does not know how to rest well. The two greatest markers of success defined by the world around us are 1.) what do you have? And 2.) How busy are you? If you have something nicer than your neighbor and your calendar is so full that you have to turn people away, then you must be important. 

But that isn’t what is important in God’s economy at all. For God it’s not about how busy you are, because God is the God of relationship. God’s very self is a relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. God is in relationship with us. And God created us for relationships as well. But there has to be time to nourish those relationships. 

Enter the idea of rest. A lot of time we talk about Sabbath as a day set apart to worship God. And that is 100 percent true. In Exodus 20 we find these words, “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work.  But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.” On that Sabbath day we are to rest in the Lord. 

But when we think that Sabbath is simply about going to church, and that is what we equate with worshipping God, then we can make the Sabbath like any other day as well. I’ll go worship in the morning, but then from the afternoon on, I’ll try to fit in everything else I couldn’t get done Monday through Saturday. 

I’ve shared before that we are so confused about rest and Sabbath that we often bat back and forth between extremes. Sometimes we can make Sabbath too legalistic, a list of thou shall and thou shall nots. The image of Laura in Little House on the Prairie comes to mind, with how much she deleted Sundays because she wasn’t allowed to play, all she could do was sit quietly and listen to the Bible being read. On the other extreme is the idea that the Sabbath exists for whatever we want to do, so long as we don’t consider it “work” for our job.

I think the true meaning of Sabbath lies more in the middle.

In the Gospel of Mark (2:27) Jesus tells his disciples “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath” In other words, God didn’t need to rest, but God modeled what rest is for us, because we do need it. We need a place to have margin in our lives to breathe and to breathe deeply. 

Knowing that God created us for relationships, I think if we are honest, that’s what the Sabbath exists for. First and foremost, it exists for our relationship with God. It gives us intentional time to worship God. Now should this be the only time throughout the week that we focus on God? Absolutely not. But worship can be a place where we learn to focus on our attention on God throughout the week as well. 

But Sabbath is also made for our relationships with other people. Many of you have told me of the times when you used to go and visit with family on Sundays, driving from one family members house to another. Or of the Sundays you would spend with the neighbors on the porch. Why do these memories come up time after time? Because they are something that we treasure. And for some of us they are something that we deeply miss in this world. 

As we have moved into treating Saturday and Sunday like any other day, what happens is that Saturday, this day that we used to have to catch up on the things we didn’t get done during the week, like errands, bleeds into Sunday, and pushes out the margin in our lives that we need for vital relationships. Time with ourself. Time with God. Time with others. And when we don’t have that time set aside on the Sabbath, it becomes that much harder to retool ourselves to claim that time throughout the week as well. 

Our scripture lesson from Matthew is speaking about just that today, is it not? Jesus is telling us to consider what we truly treasure, what is really important to us. Is it getting as much as we can in this world in terms of material things and being as full in our calendars as we can be? Not really. Its the most important things, the things that give us life our very self, our relationships.

Friends, I have yet to sit by the bedside of someone who was dying who said, “Gee, I wish I would have put in more hours at work”, but I’ve sat at far too many bedsides of those who said, “I wish I would have spent more time with my family.”

The question is are we so dedicated to the idea of what matters most that we are willing to change and simplify our lives? Are we really invested in relationships as God is invested in relationships, or do we give it lip services but not any of the work?

Whenever I do premarital counseling, I will talk to the couple about what it means to be invested in the hard work of marriage. We talk about how to love one another even when you disagree. And how to make time for one another in life. Because the truth is, too many folks who come in preparing for marriage think all of that comes easily. When really it requires work. 

It also requires work to be in relationship with God. Like some engaged couples who think of course you will make time for your spouse, we think that about God, until one day we sit down and realize its been a really long time since we simply spent time with the God who created us and loves us. 

So how do we shift our mindset from one of consumption and busyness to one of relationships? First, we need to realize that we are stewards not owners of that which we have. Every single thing and dollar and penny we have right now, is really God’s. We are just the caretakers of it. So we need to do the long, deep thinking that comes with being a steward. What would honor God best in how I use this? How can I use that which God has blessed me with in a way that values what God values? This is not the way of thinking that we often grew up with in the world, and it may be hard at first. But as we live more and more into being a steward we start to see the blessings God has given us as a way to bless others.

Second, we need to look around our lives and ask ourselves what we are most grateful for in our lives. Is it the things that we have? Or is the people? Is it that new thing? Or is it our relationship with God? And after we have considered what we are most thankful for, we can then move on to howe we can live into that gratitude more fully in the world. 

Friends, for far too long we have bought into the lie that we are in relationship with the things that we have. It is time to reclaim the value and place of the true relationships in our lives - those that we treasure the most. Amen.