The Brothers Grimm told a story about a merchant who had done good business at the fair; he had sold his wares, and filled his bag with gold and silver. Then he set out at once on his journey home, because he wanted to be in his own house to be ready for the next market day before night came.
At noon he rested in a town. When he wanted to go on, the stable boy brought his horse, saying: “Sir, a nail is failing in the shoe of your horse’s left hind foot. Should I take it to be fixed?”
“Let it be,” answered the merchant; “the shoe will stay on for the six miles I have still to go. I am in a hurry.”
In the afternoon he got down at an inn and had his horse fed. The stable boy came into the room to him and said: “Sir, the shoe on your horse’s left hind foot is missing. Shall I take him to the blacksmith?”
“Let it go,” said the man; “the horse can very well hold out for a couple of miles more. I am in a hurry.”
So the merchant rode on, but before long the horse began to limp. He had not limped long before he began to stumble, and he had not stumbled long before he fell down and broke his leg. The merchant had to leave the horse where he fell, and unstrap the bag, take it on his back, and go home on foot.
“That unlucky nail,” he said to himself, “has made all this trouble.”
As if it was the nail’s fault! The merchant and his horse could have benefited from one simple thing – – slowing down and paying attention – – and that would have made all the difference in the world! But the merchant just couldn’t. He had his own interests in mind and chose to push on through.
We live in a culture that glorifies and rewards productivity, pushing ourselves hard, being busy. Think about it. When someone asks us “How have you been?” it feels like the most common answer anymore is “Busy,” and for some reason we congratulate each other for that. Busy is equated to industrious, fulfilled, and important. But what is busy doing to our lives? What is busy doing to our relationships? What is busy doing to God’s churches and God’s people?
Busy will break us. Busy will be the loose nail that nags at us until the shoe is faulty, the foot is damaged, and we find ourselves broken in the ditch. The pressure to be busy seems to come from a few different places. Sometimes it comes from our own desire to feel important. Sometimes it comes as a result of greed – our own or others – that pushes us to work, work, work to achieve what is desired. So sometimes it is a choice and sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes we are the busy ones and sometimes we are the ones making others busy. Well, God has something to say about being on either end of the equation.
Stop, we hear in Exodus. Stop being busy. Stop pushing yourself beyond your limits. “The seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God…. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day.” Rest is both a gift and a commandment, and not just for the rich and powerful and those who are deemed important by some earthly standard. No one may work on the Sabbath, God says, not the assumed audience of male heads of household, not their children, not their slaves, not their livestock, not even the foreigners who live in their towns and worship other gods.
Rest is so important for our human relationships, for the right treatment of each other and all of creation, for our relationship with God, that God put it right there in the top 10 list. Keeping Sabbath helps us remember that God alone is the source of all that we need – not our work, not our productivity, not our busy-ness – and all people are worthy of time and space to recognize that.
I think sometimes that “all people” part is something we forget, the part about Sabbath being not just for us or even just for our families, but for the workers we have responsibility for, for neighbors and strangers, people like us and people different, even for creation. Sabbath is about more than just our own need for rest, renewal, and relationship with God. In fact, the prophet Isaiah delivers a pretty strong condemnation to God’s people who only see it that way. Like many of the prophets, in this portion of his prophecy Isaiah is delivering an important word related to God’s desire for justice and wholeness for all people, and he does it by comparing and contrasting the self(?) righteous practice of religious piety with the way God’s people treat others – in this case, their workers.
The people, it seems are being attentive to their religious fasts and displays of humility, but they are completely ignoring their workers. Their interests are being served as they bow their heads and keep sacred fasts and even honor at least part of the Sabbath commandments, but while they do all this, they strike their workers, quarrel with them, burden them with the yoke of work. They hold their food in their fists, even if they are not eating it, while letting others go hungry.
Not unlike the merchant in the fable, they are paying attention to what they need and what they want, while ignoring the health and wellness and spirits of their workers. He was too wrapped up in himself, in his schedule, in pursuing his own self-interest that he pushed himself and his “employee” farther than he should, and in the end it all broke down.
The history of our national Labor Day, established by an act of Congress in June 1894, is, in a way, a similar story. Individual cities and states had been celebrating Labor Day as a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country for almost ten years at that point, but the federal government had been slower to get on board.
It came about in a time when most work was hard work. Twelve hour days and six or seven day workweeks were the norm. Wages were low; there were no sick days nor pensions and very few holidays. There was certainly no unemployment insurance. The business of this nation was business, and its success was evaluated by the gain of the people at the top, not the well-being of the whole population.
During the economic depression known as the Panic of 1893, workers for the Pullman Car Co., one of the country’s largest train car manufacturers, walked off their jobs when Pullman tried to cut wages and fire workers, while simultaneously raising their rent in their company-owned homes. They were joined by hundreds of thousands of workers in a nationwide walkout. In a move that some say was just an attempt to appease strikers and unions, President Grover Cleveland established the federal Labor Day in June 1894. However, just a month later, facing a strike that would shut down US railroads, President Cleveland dispatched 12,000 federal troops on the premise that the strike interfered with the U.S. Mail. In the ensuing violence, at least 13 strikers were killed and many more were wounded.
Like the horse with a faulty nail in its shoe, our country’s workers could only be pushed so far before they reached their physical, financial, and spiritual limits. They, however, were not left broken in a ditch, but instead demanded the overhaul of the whole system. Of course, that overhaul didn’t happen all at once. It was more than a decade later that strikes and attempts to organize unions at Bethlehem Steel turned violent when the state police were brought in at the request of management. And to this day there are still workers and their allies in this country and around the world who need to pushback against unjust employment practices and wages that don’t honor the risk, effort, and skill of those who earn them.
And to this day, individually and communally, we sometimes run the risk, particularly in our workplaces and our community life, of trampling the Sabbath, trampling the gift of rest, not necessarily because we don’t take it for ourselves, although that might be one part of it for some of us. But if I had to guess, we are probably more likely to err on the side of serving our own interests without considering the interests of others, pursing our own affairs without allowing our neighbors to pursue theirs, insisting on our own freedom, our own rest, our own safety, our own daily bread without pausing to see that everyone around us is cared for and satisfied and thriving.
God recognizes that risk in us. God knows us and our tendencies because they are, as we’ve heard, a tale as old as time. But with grace, if with some sternness to start, with a point that is driven home most importantly, not through threats or punishment, but through promises, God offers us a vision of a better way of living. What if, God asks, instead of fasts that only serve ourselves, what if instead of denying ourselves food that comforts, we shared our bread with those in need? What if instead of solely protecting our own time for rest and rejuvenation, we made sure that that blessing is available to all people?
God’s vision that Isaiah paints tells us “what if.” It tells us what the world looks like when this happens, and here’s the good news – goodness, abundant life, security, and blessing they are not a zero sum game. In fact, we are made stronger together. Our light shines brighter. Our healing – all of our healing – springs up quickly and we will see God’s presence all around us in the presence of our shared humanity. When we are parched and thirsty for water or for community, it will be there. When our bones are tired and we are feeling weak, we will be made strong and we will flourish like a garden well watered. Not just some of us, not just the people at the top of the org chart, not just the powerful and well-connected, but all of us.
This is the promise and the gift of God for us and for all people, this day and always. Amen.
How do my sabbath practices honor this gift from God?