Genesis 1.1-2.3, Matthew 6.25-34
The Second Sunday Before Lent, 12 February 2023
Here is a poem about taking time to rest, by taking wonder in creation, as composed by the farmer and writer and ‘American sage’, Wendell Berry:
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. [1]
It is good to rest, in the grace of the world; for God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.
At Cheshire Oaks, where the M56 and the M53 motorways intersect, stands the Mitchell Group car showroom. A big notice outside gives the opening times as Monday to Saturday. This is followed by the line: 'Sunday: at home with the family.'
The Mitchell Group is one of the North-West’s leading car dealers; established over 30 years ago it now has an annual turnover reaching £40 million. Yet, unlike any of its rivals, it closes on Sundays. This is because the managing director, Mark Mitchell, is a practising Christian who has refused to compromise his belief in the sabbath as a day of rest. He says that his company attracts motor-industry professionals who love the trade but who ‘want to ensure a healthy work/life balance’; high-quality candidates, drawn to the company because of their Sunday policy. [2]
Now, some of us have to work on Sundays - so have to take our sabbaths on another day, or in another way. For if you’re a farmer, for instance, then you need to work every day - so you have to find ways to build your sabbath rest into the pattern of each day, a morning hour by the kitchen table, an evening quiet time.
The point is that God put rest into creation. Without it creation would not function properly. Just as God put sleep into our human framework, and as God put the need for seeds to die and lie hidden in the ground before being wonderfully reborn, in their time:
So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.
It is good to rest from our work, when we can, because when we do then we open ourselves to God's blessing. It is good to take sleep, when we can, because when we do then we allow God to restore our bodies and souls. It is good to rest, when we can, ‘in the peace of wild things’, to soak in all the goodness of the creatures and the land around us so we can appreciate our place in God’s ongoing work of creation.
So this is a sermon in celebration of sabbath rest. Now you might think, ok, Genesis is in favour of the sabbath, but didn’t Jesus always resist those who tried to impose it on others? He seems to sit lightly to it. Many times we find him healing people on a sabbath, or picking food to eat, while the autocratic Pharisees condemned him.
Jesus wasn’t against sabbath rest; he was against the way that powerful people had turned the Sabbath into a thing which exploited or oppressed others to their advantage. A recent survey found that 75 per cent of working fathers and 55 per cent of working mothers say that they work at the weekend; over 70 per cent of these said that they have no choice. [4]
Sabbath-like measures such as two-day weekends, limits on working hours, annual leave and parental leave have been secured by campaigners over the years. We are living through another historical moment where workers of all kinds are striving together for fair pay and conditions, including an end to oppressive working hours. You might say that they’re struggling to restore sabbath values into employment practices. [5]
This raises questions for people of faith and goodwill. About those medical staff burnt out after weeks on 16-hour shifts: what changes are needed so that they can ‘rest in the grace of the world’? About those zero-hour workers yoked to their unpredictable working patterns: what adjustments could be made so that they are able to get out of their homes to ‘rest in the peace of wild things’? [6]
It is good to rest, in the grace of the world. It’s something worth celebrating. It’s something worth fighting for.
Notes
This sermon is dedicated to the memory of Paul Skirrow, who died on 2 February 2023 and whose funeral and memorial services take place this week in Nidderdale. Paul and I were ordained together, having already known each other through Paul being in industrial chaplaincy and me a community worker in Toxteth. I valued him very highly as an educator and agitator with and for working people, and as a good friend through the formative years of our respective ordained ministries. We re-established contact when I moved to North Yorkshire and I'd hoped to have seen him some more, then COVID came along... I am blessed to have known and been ordained alongside him, a people's priest of theological depth and a passion for social justice which he longed for the church to share (as typified in this 2019 letter to the Church Times).
[1] Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things from The Peace of Wild Things And Other Poems. ‘Wendell Berry is the most important writer and thinker that you have (probably) never heard of. He is an American sage.’ James Rebanks
[2] Julia McGuinness, ‘I’m not taking you for a ride’. Church Times, 15 July 2005. Financial details updated from About, Mitchell Group website, 8 February 2023.
[3] From my sermon Genesis 1 - Creation, preached in Croxteth, July 2005.
[4] Rachel Harden, Keep Sunday Special, in Julia McGuinness, ‘I’m not taking you for a ride’. Church Times, 15 July 2005.
[5] Sinead Butler, 8 things that trade unions have done to make work better for all of us. Indy100, 1 February 2023
[6] For some answers to these questions currently under consideration see Good Work: The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices (July 2017); Wikipedia: Taylor Review; and Workers (Predictable Terms and Conditions) Bill, sponsor: Scott Benton, Conservative MP for Blackpool South. It is a work in progress: Adam Forrest, Sunak accused of ‘abject failure’ on workers’ rights as broken promises revealed. Independent, 7 February 2023.
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