Third Sunday in Lent

Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Modern life seems to move at full speed. Many of us can hardly catch our breath between the demands of earning a living, nurturing family and friendships, and the hundreds of daily details like paying bills, cleaning the house, shopping for groceries, going to appointments, etc. More and more we feel stretched thin by commitment. We lament our busyness but have no clear sense of the alternative.

It’s challenging to know where to begin in dismantling this way of living. We may have people who depend on us, like children or parents. We may be terrified of slowing down and really listening to our lives. And yet, so many of us are exhausted and depleted.

Author Cole Arthur Riley ponders the way our society allots dignity dependent on a person’s usefulness. She writes:

“In our societies and communities […] you are no longer in the image of God, you are currency. We cannot help but entwine our concept of dignity with how much a person can do. The sick, the elderly, the disabled, the neurodivergent, my sweet cousin on the autism spectrum – we tend to assign a lesser social value to those whose “doing” cannot be enslaved to a given output. We should look to them as sacred guides out of the bondage of productivity.”

Rest, slowness, pausing are not a reward for good work but pathways to liberation of body and soul, They are an interruption of the system that would exploit our labor until we can work no longer, treating us, like Riley says, as currency. She points to those who are unable to “do” in a productive, capitalistic sense as sacred guides toward a liberation and restfulness that God has in mind for all creatures.

How can we practice restfulness in our daily lives, especially if going away on a retreat is not among our options? Where can we find opportunities for breathing spaces and slowness within our days?

The monastic tradition invites us into the practice of stopping one thing before beginning another. This acknowledges that the space of transition and threshold is a sacred dimension full of possibility.

Maybe we can allow just a five-minute window to sit in silence between appointments? Or, after finishing a phone call or checking our email, we just take five long, slow, deep breaths before turning to the next thing.

When we pause between activities in our day, we open ourselves to the possibility of discovering a new kind of presence to the in-between times. When we rush from one thing to another, we skim over the surface of life, losing that sacred attentiveness that brings forth revelations in the most ordinary moments.

The theologian Howard Thurman writes, “One could not begin the cultivation of the prayer life at a more practical point than deliberately to seek each day, and several times a day, a lull in the rhythm of daily doing, a period when nothing happens that demands active participation. […] the moment of holy pause, the point of rest, has its own magic.” No caffeinated drink, no sleep-deprivation technique can offer us the grace that a restful pause can.

In our daily lives, we are constantly crossing thresholds, both the physical kind when we go from one room into another, and the metaphorical kind when we go from one task to another. These threshold spaces invite us into stillness, invite us to let go of what came before and prepare ourselves to enter fully into what comes next.

The holy pause calls us to a sense of reverence for slowness, for mindfulness, and for the fertile dark spaces between our goals where we can pause and center ourselves and listen. We can open up a space within for God to work. We can become fully conscious of what we are about to do rather than mindlessly completing another task.

In her work “Staying Awake”, Tyler Sit offers this beautiful interpretation of the first creation story in Genesis. After working to create the universe, God rested. (The author uses female pronouns for God.)

“God discovered a point at which, even in her infinite expansiveness, even with all creation bowing to Her every word, even as the author of time itself, She took a break. And God didn’t apologize for it; She wasn’t dramatic about it. She rested because She wanted to rest, plain and simple. Then She blessed that day and made it holy. Holy! All the other days she calls “good”, but the Day of Rest is holy.”

Sabbath is a most vital part of spiritual discipline, precisely because it forces us to interrupt our focus on work and productivity, and instead allows us to taste another world, another way of being. Sabbath calls us to shift our priorities so that we can make resting in God the primary focus of our lives, our guide in considering what is truly valuable.

As a faithful Jew, Jesus kept the Sabbath. Once in a while, he healed on a Sabbath, but mostly he honored that one day a week as a time to cease from effort and striving. From sunset to sunset, Jesus stopped laboring and instead savored the delights and beauty of the world so lovingly made by the Creator who proclaimed such a day of rest as very good and holy.

As today’s gospel tells us, Jesus also practiced a rhythm of work and rest in his daily life. Every day, he goes to the temple to teach, and then he goes to the Mount of Olives to rest and retreat. He knows the necessity of replenishing his reservoir of energy.

How might we be able to incorporate some Sabbath into our days?

We already heard about the idea of marking transitions by a pause and a deep breath. We could breathe in, praying “I let go” and breathe out with the prayer “and rest”. “I let go – and rest.” Try it and see if it adds some restfulness and calm to your day.

You could also expand this pause and be more intentional in your praying. For example, thank God for what you just completed and ask guidance and strength for what comes next.

Another idea is to add intentional Sabbath time to your week. Mark the time in your calendar. Even if it is only half an hour, schedule some time of rest in your week. Do something that re-energizes you, be it reading or meditating, going for a walk or listening to music, watching birds or tending your garden, sitting in silence or creating something, journaling or taking a nap. Whatever it is that soothes your spirit and nourishes your soul, do that.

It helps to mark the beginning of Sabbath time with some kind of ritual. For example, turn off your screens and put away your phone, light a candle and say a certain prayer – something that marks your transition into holy time of rest.

Lent is a great time to experiment and grow in spiritual practices. I encourage you to try hard to incorporate some time for rest into your lives. In doing so, you invite you God into your day and into any task before you, and you build the reservoir of energy and love and faith you need for all that’s on your plate.

The author of the book that’s inspiring this year’s Lenten sermon series gleans much inspiration from the desert fathers and mothers, early church people of faith who lived as monks and nuns in the desert. One story she relates is from Abba Anthony about a hunter teaching another monk a lesson.

The hunter said to the monk, “Put an arrow in your bow and shoot it.” So he did. The hunter said, “Shoot another arrow,” and he did so. Then the hunter said to him, “Shoot yet again.” And the monk replied, “If I bend my bow so much, I will break it.” Then the hunter said to him, “It is the same with the work of God. If we stretch beyond measure, we will soon break.”

We live in a world that wants us to shoot arrows from our bow again and again, without regard to how stretched we feel, how close to breaking we often come with the multiple demands placed upon us. Western culture prizes productivity and busyness. We strive after accomplishments and checking things off our to-do lists. Yet so little of this truly satisfies us.

Jesus took regular times off for rest and slowness. We are encouraged to follow his example.

Let us allow ourselves time to rest, time to breathe, time for Sabbath, time for nourishing our soul. Amen.

A closing blessing:

Holy One, you call us to the lavish gift of rest.

Support us as we lay aside our plans, our tasks, our worries,

And turn to you with open hearts.

Whisper to us in the silence of your love for us, simply for who we are.

Bless us with the deep renewal that rest brings

And transform our daily patterns,

So we might weave Sabbath into every day.

Slow us down when our minds race,

When our calendars overflow with demands,

When our hearts flutter with overwhelm.

Hold us in that holy pause,

Reveal to us again the beauty of this world,

Of steam rising from coffee, of a dog’s pleading eyes, of the rose blooming.

Help us to see how everything in creation takes its time,

No rushing, no pushing.

In that open space, gather all of our scattered parts together

Into the wholeness of who we were created to be. Amen.