A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on May 18, 2008, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

            You know the story of the preacher called to a new congregation.  The elders all gathered in anticipation to hear his first sermon and they went away gratified because it was indeed a stirring proclamation of the Gospel.  The next Sunday they gathered to see if the preacher could top the first performance, but to their surprise the preacher used the same sermon again, word for word.  They decided to give the preacher the benefit of the doubt and said nothing until the same thing happened the third Sunday: word for word the same sermon.  The elders confronted the preacher after church, explaining that they were paying for new words each Sunday. The preacher replied, “Well, since I didn’t see any change in the congregation’s behavior after I preached, I thought I should stick to the same message until people put it into practice.”

            For preachers, most sermons seem like mayflies: they live for just a moment on the face of God’s earth and then they are gone—and we never see the effects of them.  Now I know that you like my preaching because you tell me so and you often tell me in great detail that something I’ve said made a difference in your life. That’s very gratifying, but mostly I take it on faith that preaching makes a difference.  The one notable exception in my twenty-eight year preaching career occurred on Trinity Sunday almost twenty years ago. I was the new preacher in a tiny congregation in a rural New Hampshire town, and when this morning’s readings came up in the lectionary, I was moved to talk about the Sabbath.  As I recall, I talked about my childhood.  Blue laws kept the stores closed in my home town and as a preacher’s kid, skipping church was not an option.  The result was a Sunday different from what most of us experience these days.  We focused on things we could do as a family and consciously enjoyed a day of rest—very different from the pressure to get out and accomplish things many of us feel, even on Sunday.

            I thought it was pretty much a ‘nothing’ sort of sermon.  Considering it was conservative, rural New Hampshire , I figured I was preaching to the choir, to people already steeped in the tradition of Sabbath rest.  I was to learn differently.  I was just dimly aware that the Smiths had begun attending church that Sunday.  Mostly, I was just glad that this family of four was in church most Sundays that summer.  I enjoyed getting to know them: Mom a billing clerk at the local hospital, Dad a computer engineer, a son who loved sports and comic books, and a ten-year-old girl who loved animals. It was a frosty day in October that disaster struck.  In a freak accident in their own driveway, the little girl was run over by the family car and killed. I was there in the hospital when they took the life support systems away and let her go.  We buried her from her new church and week by week I visited her family to grieve with them. About a month after the child’s death, I heard the story of the sermon.  “You know,” said the father, “We’ve never really been church people.  We just came that Sunday out of curiosity because we heard you were new in town.  But what you said changed our lives—maybe saved our lives.  You talked about taking Sundays off—reading the newspaper, hanging out together, doing stuff you can do as a family like going to church.  So we thought, what the heck--we can use a rest.  Let’s try it.  So we spent time together, and when we got through getting used to each other again, we liked what we found.  We had a beautiful summer with some real memories.  And now when we really need each other, we have the memories and a little grain of faith to keep us going.”

            What I have to say this morning isn’t really different from what I said twenty years ago.  The book of Genesis tells us that the pinnacle of creation is not the moment when God made humankind.  The pinnacle of creation is when God rested.  We who are formed in God’s image, are also creators.   Our Gospel reminds us that almost the last thing Jesus did for his followers was to define the work they were to do in his name.  But our work, like God’s work is punctuated by divine rest.  Our work is holy, but our time of rest is holy, too. A great rabbi called the Sabbath, “a cathedral in time:” space to contemplate God’s presence.  Our Jewish forebears took the fourth commandment seriously: kept the Sabbath free of business, allowed the fields to go fallow every seven years, forgave their debts on the jubilee year, the seven-times-seven year.  We do something holy and life-giving when we observe these patterns of Sabbath time. Taking a Sunday to do something as un-business-like as going to church and reconnecting with the family could turn out to change your life.

            I’m trying to practice what I preach.  In two weeks I’ll leave this place for three months of sabbatical leave. I know from past experience that it will be holy time and I’m grateful for the gracious generosity of this parish for making it possible. I urge you to make Sabbath time a life-long pattern for yourself as well.  Take time each day to pray.  Take a day each week to remember God’s presence in your life.  Take longer periods in your life away from the pressures of doing, just to experience the glory of being.  Do it now before it is too late.  And be assured of this: I will preach this message again until all of us have heard it.                                                        AMEN