Anyone want to take a guess at what this is? It’s a lovely little pouch with a print of a night sky on it. I made it many years ago while on retreat with our youth. We did a lot of retreats back before covid that focused on things like how to keep sabbath and how to have a healthy relationship with your smart phone; both of which connect to this little pouch.

Anyone want to take a guess at what it might be?

It’s a cell phone sleeping bag…a cell phone sleeping bag that I’m ashamed to say, has never been used. I made it with the intention of putting my smart phone to bed while I observe sabbath. Has anyone ever heard of that sort of thing? It’s called a digital sabbath.

How about the idea of sabbath itself? Is that new for anyone?

Alright then: sabbath, for those of you just tuning in, is the Judeo-Christian practice of taking one day off in every seven to rest from work and worship God.  And it’s actually a commandment. One of the big 10, just so you know.

Inspired by that idea, there are now people -whether they are religious or not - who make it a practice to turn off their digital devices for one day each week - unplug from their phones, computers, and televisions - because they see the wisdom in resting from the constant connectivity and barrage of information we are subject to.

Unplugging allows them to re-set their nervous systems and refocus on other aspects of their lives. 

Has any one ever experimented with taking a digital sabbath? Well I don’t know about you, but I am terrible at it. Terrible! Which is why this poor little pouch has never been used.

I can walk away from my laptop, no problem. I’ve even gotten pretty good at putting down my work on Fridays when I observe my sabbath. But the phone, man, the phone is a whole other story, because it’s not just a phone anymore, is it? No.

I find it’s all but impossible to put it away because my phone is also my wallet, my camera, my to do list, and my calendar.  It’s how I know where our kids are, what we are having for dinner, and how many seasons of Brooklyn Nine-Nine we’ve watched. I use it for parking, directions, recipes, and music.

And if I’m using it for all that, it’s really hard not to use it to check the news or social media while I’m at it. And yet, the moment I do…let me tell you, whatever sabbath I thought I was on, is over. Kaput! Especially nowadays.

I don’t know how seriously you all take the practice of sabbath and I am not here to judge. As an Enneagram 3 whose greatest joy lies in accomplishing all the things, really keeping sabbath in spirit and truth is my great white whale. I think it’s important. I know it is has the power to keep me sane and preserve my soul. And I think there are any number of ways to go about it.

But what I want to say to you all today is that incorporating a break - once a week - not just from work, but  from the news and whatever technology delivers it, (even if it’s just the good old fashioned printing press,) feels so important to me right now that I think it deserves special mention. Taking a break feels essential, not just to keeping sabbath but to maintaining one’s mental health and spiritual wellbeing.

Because, my friends, you know as well as I do that we are living in an age of information that capitalizes on our fear and outrage to make money, and all that fear and outrage is bound to get you down. Everyone I talk to right now seems to be somewhere on the spectrum between low grade depression and full on panic. And friends, I’m right there with you.

The news is dominating my consciousness and I feel the heaviness of it here (my heart) and here (me head).

I’m also about to send my son off to his first year of college and I know that is part of the heaviness I am carrying too. But the news doesn’t help. The truth is, I am worried all the time, which keeps me even more glued to my phone - clicking and scrolling - to see if things have gotten worse since the last time I looked… and usually they have.

It’s a vicious cycle that I know isn’t good for me, but it also feels irresponsible to look away. (You know?) I know it isn’t good for me, but it feels almost impossible to look up.

I know it isn’t good for me, but it is so hard to stop.

The great theologian Karl Barth once said: “A being is free only when it can determine and limit its activity.”

“By that definition,” says Barbara Brown Taylor, “I have a hard time counting many free beings among my acquaintance. I know people who can do five things at once who are incapable of doing nothing,” she says. “Since I have been one of these people, I know that saying no is a more difficult spiritual practice than tithing, praying on a cold stone floor, or visiting a prisoner on death row.”

Saying no - no to work, to our addictions (hold up the phone), to just a little bit more, whatever that more might be - is hard. And the truth is, it always has been.

It is hard to stop, which is what sabbath is all about.

It is hard to stop, which is why sabbath is so important.

It is hard to stop, which I why sabbath is so hard to do.

It actually makes me wish the synagogue leader in today’s story was still around. Honestly, I could use someone like him in my life right now, someone with the authority to tell me in no uncertain terms to put down my work and my phone and go play outside.

I know Jesus gives him a hard time, but there’s a reason this man comes across as so cranky and callous.

It’s no fun being the heavy; the one whose job it is to tell everyone they can’t just do this one little thing when they’re constantly coming up with reasons why they really should be able to. But that’s what the Rabbis have always had to do, because as good as sabbath is, the truth is that even before smart phones, taking a full day to rest has always made people restless.

I think you all know that we’re supposed to rest on the sabbath because God rested on the seventh day of creation. After 6 days of work, God took a full day to do nothing but look around at all God had accomplished and delight in the fact that it was good. And so, in the book of Exodus, the 4th commandment instructs God’s people to rest in imitation of God.

And I mean, really, completely, allow everything to come to a full stop to such a degree that not only were the Israelites to cease working, but so was everyone one around them -their kids, their servants, even their animals.

But of course, as much as one might want to slow down, the truth is that life goes on. It’s not easy to lay your work or your worries down for a whole day, especially when the world around you is going right along with its business as if your Sabbath was just a day like any other. 

And even if you can, well, what do you do if your cow goes into labor, or your neighbor locks himself out of his house? Can you help or would that be work? 

Plowing the fields is laborious, but what if weeding the garden actually helps lower your blood pressure?

Taking the day off from worrying to light some candles and enjoy a good meal with your family sounds lovely, but how can you when things are getting worse by the day and you know their are children starving in Gaza?

“This,” says Barbara Brown Taylor, “is how the rabbis were finally forced to spell out all the kinds of work that are forbidden on the Sabbath – because people kept trying to find ways to get to yes (yes it’s okay to do that) instead of no;” leave it for tomorrow the better to be still and know that God is God (An Altar in the World p 137). 

As time went on the “not to do list” got longer and longer and more and more detailed, and I’m sure that after awhile it was a real drag to always be the one telling people to cut it out.

“No, that’s not OK to do on the Sabbath!” “No, no that’s not OK either.” 

I can totally understand why the synagogue leader in today’s story was so annoyed with Jesus. I can see him in my mind’s eye, putting his hands up in frustration and saying, “ Absolutely not! You can do this tomorrow. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times: “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath day.”

I’m telling you, he wasn’t such a bad guy.

But good or bad, Jesus heals her anyway, because you see, Jesus knows full well that as long as the “not to do” list for Sabbath has become, there’s another list in the running as well; the list that says it’s ok to help your cow if she goes into labor on the Sabbath, it’s ok to step in and save a person’s life, it’s ok to untie the animals and lead them to water.

It’s okay, because the Sabbath is not just about rest, the Sabbath is also about freedom. You might not have known this before today, but the Ten Commandments actually get listed twice in scripture and in Deuteronomy the justification for keeping sabbath is different from Exodus.

According to Deuteronomy the Israelites were to rest because God had freed them from slavery in Egypt, freed them from having to work every single day.

In Deuteronomy the Israelites are commanded to rest simply because they can, rest because they are no longer slaves, rest because God has set them free.

And yet, think of that poor woman bent over the way she was.

It may have been the sabbath and she was there to observe it, but think of all the ways her condition would have prevented her from truly experiencing it as such.

Think about how her bent back would have limited her movement and her vision, her ability to delight in the goodness of creation. Think of how it bound her.

Jesus freed her so she could rest and revel and recreate with everyone else. Healing her, then, didn’t violate the sabbath, it set her free to experience it. Sabbath in all its glory is about rest and freedom, about having the freedom to rest.

Now remember Barth’s words, “a being is free only when it can determine and limit its activity.”

Friends, God doesn’t merely suggest or grant us permission. God commands us to rest because God knows how hard it is for us to do. That command frees us up to do the hardest thing of all, say no.

Sabbath sets us free to say no - for one day a week - to all the things we have to do so we can simply be. One divinely sanctioned day to lay down our busyness and our burdens and trust that God can hold it all while we rest and recover. God doesn’t just call us to rest, God commands it, a command meant to set us free.

So my question for you this morning is: are you experiencing that freedom?

Are you experiencing that kind of rest?

I want you to think about the last time you truly observed the sabbath or just had a day off - a whole day to revel in the beauty of this world. Did you spend it like Maria in the sound of music, spinning and singing at the top of a mountain?

“The hills are alive with the sound of music.”

Or did you look more like this woman from Luke when she entered the synagogue, hunched over a little phone, captive to a screen, gazing through a tiny little window at all the world’s heartache and pain?

Were you chilling with Jesus in green pastures beside still waters or were you using your….free….time… to drink from a fire hose of despair?

My friends, there is a time and place for everything but we don’t have to live that way, at least not all of the time.

Last week, thanks to a gift from a parishioner, I had the privilege of spending my day off at Kripalu and I went kayaking with a guide on the Stockbridge bowl. Midway through our time, he had us stop and meditate for a bit in our kayaks and then he had us open our eyes and look out across the water.

“Looking out at a vista actually calms your nervous system,” he said. And it did. I could feel it in my body. Turns out, if you look out across a large expanse you can see what is coming. If there is no threat on the horizon then your body knows it’s safe to rest. You can relax and simply be still.

Conversely, if there is a threat, your vision narrows. Your world shrinks to focus solely on what you fear.

Friends, if we’re solely and continually focused on the news, the news is going to focus us. It’s going to focus all of our energy on everything that's wrong.  It’s going to make our world smaller and smaller even as it makes every threat feel larger and larger till it binds us all as surely as that woman was bound.

Or, we can let God free us - for at least one day a week - free us to look up, to look out, to look around and see, not just the brokenness of this world, but its beauty. We need that view, that wider, softer focus, not just to reset but because it reminds us of what we really ought to be working for the rest of the week - a world where all God’s people can live and thrive and not be afraid at all.

If we don’t rest, we stay locked in this doom spiral and we’re no good to anyone. But if we allow God to free us to rest, it gives us the space to thrive and figure out how we can free others to thrive as well.

The world doesn’t need your anxiety right now. It has enough. What it needs is your loving action. More information isn’t going to help you be of help to others, but sabbath just might.

So join join me, won’t you, in putting your phone, your work, and your worries to bed - for just one day a week - that together we might wake more rested and open and ready to help this world become the world God still dreams it can be. Amen.