https://www.facebook.com/universityfriendschurch/videos/281591476757484

September 5, 2021

Message: “Message:  Work and Rest 

Scripture:  Exodus 20:8-11  

Welcome & Announcements  

• Welcome to worship at University Friends! 
• Thanks for technical support by Michael Barrett, Joe Dawley, and Erin DeGroot, with music coordination by Dawn Blue.   

• Thank you to those who are in person for wearing your mask to help protect the unvaccinated among us.  – We are monitoring the current situation and believe the safety measures we have in place are good enough. 
• Offering plates are near the front and the back of the meeting room.  Thank you!  
• We are worshiping in person and live streaming on Facebook and the church website (wichitaquakers.org).  
  • Please feel free to share our worship with your Facebook friends by posting a link.   
  • Please also feel free to comment on the Facebook page with prayer concerns, announcements, or words of ministry.  
  • And if you worship with us online only and would like to be more connected, please leave a message on the Facebook page or the church website.  

Church activities this week:

• Sunday, September 5, 11:00 am, 205 Sunday School Class
• Monday, September 6, Labor Day
• Tuesday, September 7, 5:30 pm, Outreach Committee
• Tuesday, September 7, 7:00 pm, Good Times Squares Dance
• Friday, September 10, 7:30 pm, Good Times Squares Dance
• Saturday, September 11, 8:30 am, Assets Committee

Call to Worship: Matthew 11: 28-30 (The Message)
Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.  

Centering Meditation

Music:  “O Love” by Elaine Hagenberg (video)

Prayer Concerns 

• Our church’s pastoral search (One person has applied.)  
• Karen Walker is having hip replacement surgery on September 7.
• Adversity around the world, for example, Afghanistan and Haiti, as well as those suffering from Hurricane Ida, the pandemic, and forest fires
• me as I look for what’s next;
• Greg Newby’s knee replacement Sept. 15
• Molly Loesch and family at the death of her cousin David
• Refugees coming into Wichita

Pastoral Prayer

Creator of the world, we open our lives and hearts to your spirit.  

On this Labor Day weekend, we give you thanks for the gifts of stewardship and work. May we do our work in truth and beauty and for the common good.

God of justice, we pray for all workers, that they would receive fair compensation and treatment in their labor. We pray for all those who seek work, that they may find jobs that satisfy both body and soul. 

May those who provide jobs find ways to treat their workers with respect and fairness.  

May all of us find a healthy balance of work and rest. 

Message: “Message:  Work and Rest”

Scripture:  Exodus 20:8-11  

Since this is Labor Day weekend, I decided to offer an opportunity to reflect on work.  I’ll begin with a selection from a book called The Quilter’s Apprentice by Jennifer Chiaverini.

“Sarah leaned against the brick wall and tried to look comfortable, hoping no one walking by would notice her or wonder why she was standing around in a suit on such a hot day.  She shaded her eyes with her hand and scanned the street for Matt’s truck – their truck – but she didn’t expect to see it.  He wasn’t late; she was early.  This interview had been her shortest one yet.

“A drop of perspiration trickled down between her shoulder blades to the small of her back where her silk blouse was tucked into her navy skirt.  She removed her suit jacket and folded it over her arm, but she knew she wouldn’t feel comfortable until she was back in her … T-shirt and shorts. …  

“The handle of her briefcase began to dig into her palm.  ***

“Sometimes Sarah thought back to those first years after college and wondered how she and Matt ever could have been so hopeful, so optimistic.  Of course, their prospects had seemed brighter then, colored by newlywed joy and professional naïveté.  Then the newness faded from her job as a cost accountant for a local convenience store chain, and the days began to follow each other in an unrelenting cycle of tedium.  Matt enjoyed his job working on the Penn State campus, but just after he had been promoted to shift supervisor, the state legislature slashed the university’s budget.  College officials decided that they could do without new landscaping more easily than library books and faculty salaries, so Matt and many of his coworkers found themselves out of work.  

“They soon learned that open positions were hard to come by….  Matt couldn’t find anything permanent, only occasional landscaping jobs for some of his former agricultural science professors. … 

“Eventually even Matt’s natural optimism waned, and he grew more discouraged every month.  Soon Sarah found herself slinking off to work every morning, wondering if she should be doing something more to help Matt find a job and fearing that if she did get more involved he’d think she doubted his ability to find a job on his own.

“As time passed, the sharpness of her worries dulled, but they never completely faded.  Matt made the best of the part-time work he managed to find, and Sarah was proud of him for it.  She watched him persevere and tried not to complain too much about the drudgery of her own job.  Instead, year after year, she put in her hours and collected her paychecks, and thanked her boss for her annual bonuses.  She knew she should be grateful, but in her heart she felt something was missing” (Jennifer Chiaverini, The Quilter’s Apprentice, pp. 5-7).

For most of us, work is (or has been or will be) a huge part of our lives.  We might find work meaningful or not.  We might figure out how to keep a good balance between work and rest, or not.  In any case, work makes a great difference in how we experience our lives as a whole.  

I used to teach online classes for Indiana University East.  Pretty much every semester, I taught a philosophy course in applied ethics.  That course talked about a variety of topics (such as sex, abortion, and discrimination), and one of the units dealt with work.     

Among other things, the textbook for that class contrasts meaningful work with alienating work.  The book says that meaningful work is “inherently valuable and fulfilling” (291).  Sure, we work for the income, but when the work is meaningful, it seems important and useful, satisfying and rewarding, beyond the paycheck. 

The example the book gives of meaningful work is a waitress, not a job that we usually think of as particularly satisfying.  But this waitress sees her work differently.  

A large part of the inherent value derives from the personal relationships [Dolores] has with co-workers and members of the public she serves.  These relationships bring recognition and a sense of cooperative endeavor and are, for the most part, based on mutual respect.  She works with a clear sense of the connection between her work and the good of customers and coworkers (Martin, Everyday Morality, 291).

For Dolores, good relationships and a sense of making positive contributions to the lives of others help make her low-paying job meaningful.

That’s a lot different from alienating work.  Such work is not fulfilling.  It produces misery rather than well-being.   It leaves the worker feeling exhausted and kind of worthless.  Pretty much the only good thing about it is the paycheck.  

One semester, I asked my students to write about their experiences of meaningful work and of alienating work.  

Here are some examples they gave of alienating work:

• Bagging at a big chain grocery store
• Being a janitor
• Working at a book binding company standing in the same spot for over 8 hours putting together calendars for customers
• Managing a local restaurant
• Making pizzas 
• Majoring in economics in college
• Serving as a nanny
• Assistant youth camp director
• Executive manager at a finance firm 
• A physician supervising drug screens 
• Pushing carts and sweeping floors at a home improvement store

One of my students explained her experience: “I work[ed] in a factory for a summer … and I would consider my job there to be very alienating work. I am a night owl and this job required me to work 6am to 2 or 4pm five to six days a week, so I spent most of my time that summer being tired both physically and mentally. A majority of the people that I worked with complained about their jobs which didn’t make my time there any more enjoyable.”

How about you?  What experiences have you had with alienating work?  [Wait.]

Here are examples my students gave of meaningful work:

• Volunteering at vacation Bible school
• Babysitting my niece and nephew
• Playing college football
• Receptionist in the Human Resources department of a large gold mining company
• Serving as a church secretary
• Helping out around my father’s store after school 
• Teaching special needs children how to swim
• Flying with the U.S. Air Force, actively engaging the enemy
• Coaching basketball at a middle school
• Designing hair and makeup 
• Nursing
• Working with a Christian urban youth organization
• Animal room tech for a research facility
• Crisis intervention counselor
• Keeping ready all the parts and equipment needed to maintain aircraft and support equipment
• Studying for the Law School Admission Tests
• Volunteering at art camp
• Passing trays to patients at a hospital 

And here’s this, about a porta-potty attendant:  “I was at an outdoor sporting event where portable toilets were provided,” Denise recalled. “One unit was on a trailer and there were several stalls in the trailer. The lady working in this unit was extremely happy and handed every patron a paper towel when they washed their hands and even held the water on for them if she wasn’t otherwise occupied.  I commented to her about her dedication to her work and she told me, ‘I love my job.’”

How about you?  What experiences have you had with meaningful work?  [Wait.]

I have mostly done meaningful work – as a pastor and as a teacher, even a relief house parent for a Goodwill group home – but the most meaningful work was when I taught college classes at the New Castle Correctional Facility.  It wasn’t always easy, and sometimes it was scary, but I saw lives changed through education. I have often said that if I could afford to, I would teach college courses in prisons for free.  

Sometimes work is alienating.  

Sometimes, it is meaningful.  

For much of our lives, we have to do it, no matter how satisfying or demoralizing it is.  

And no matter how meaningful our work is, we also need rest.  

The scripture for this morning talks about the need for a day of rest.  As one of the Ten Commandments, it is part of the instructions God gave Moses about how the people of Israel were to live with God as the focus of their lives.  Our passage comes right after no other gods, no idols, no wrongful use of God’s name and right before honor your father and mother, and don’t murder, commit adultery, steal, lie or covet.  

Exodus 20:8-11 (New Revised Standard Version):

⁸Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. ⁹Six days you shall labor and do all your work. ¹⁰But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. ¹¹For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.

One day out of seven, don’t work.  Nobody was supposed to work, not men, not women, not children, not slaves, not animals, not immigrants.  And here, the reasoning is based on the example of God, who rested on the seventh day of creation.  Exodus 20 says God rested, so you should rest too. 

The idea of a day of rest comes up again in Exodus 31, among instructions for how to set up the worship space:

¹²The LORD said to Moses: ¹³You yourself are to speak to the Israelites: “You shall keep my sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, given in order that you may know that I, the LORD, sanctify you. ¹⁴You shall keep the sabbath, because it is holy…. ¹⁵Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the LORD…. ¹⁶Therefore the Israelites shall keep the sabbath, observing the sabbath throughout their generations, as a perpetual covenant. ¹⁷It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day [God] rested, and was refreshed.”

Here, a day of rest is a sign of God’s relationship with the people of Israel.  God makes the people holy, so they should keep the day holy, as a sign.  

And the idea of a day of rest shows up again in Deuteronomy, which restates the Ten Commandments as part of Moses’s farewell address, before he dies.   This version has some in common with the other two, and it also has a different emphasis.

Deuteronomy 5:12-15:

¹²Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. ¹³Six days you shall labor and do all your work. ¹⁴But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. ¹⁵Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.

Here, the point is not to remember God’s work of creation or to keep a holy day as a sign of God’s relationship, but to remember God’s bringing the people out of slavery, to remember that God cares.  And it’s a day to remember that slaves are human too.  

The website, Judaism 101, explains the Sabbath from a Jewish perspective.

The Sabbath (or Shabbat, as it is called in Hebrew) is one of the best known and least understood of all Jewish observances. People who do not observe Shabbat think of it as a day filled with stifling restrictions, or as a day of prayer like the Christian Sabbath. But to those who observe Shabbat, it is a precious gift from G-d, a day of great joy eagerly awaited throughout the week, a time when we can set aside all of our weekday concerns and devote ourselves to higher pursuits. … 

In modern America [the website continues], we take the five-day work-week so much for granted that we forget what a radical concept a day of rest was in ancient times. The weekly day of rest has no parallel in any other ancient civilization. In ancient times, leisure was for the wealthy and the ruling classes only, never for the serving or laboring classes. In addition, the very idea of rest each week was unimaginable. The Greeks thought Jews were lazy because we insisted on having a “holiday” every seventh day. http://www.jewfaq.org/shabbat.htm  

In Judaism, Shabbat is a day of rest and spiritual enrichment, a day off for everyone.  

When I was a child, people observed the Sabbath (actually on Sunday) more strictly than we tend to do these days.  Lots of businesses were closed on Sunday.  Some still are – Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A, for example.   

I remember from childhood some conversation about what exactly was allowed on Sunday.  Was Uncle Milton breaking the Sabbath by working on cars on Sunday afternoon?  My Uncle Milton was a truck driver, so working on cars wasn’t his job; it was his hobby.  He had two or three little British-made Morrises.  I imagine they might have needed quite a bit of tinkering to keep them running well, and that’s what Uncle Milton liked to do on Sunday afternoons.  

I guess some people thought that wasn’t quite right.  Others thought that since it was his hobby, not his job, it was OK.  

I don’t recall anyone discussing whether women were breaking the Sabbath by cooking big meals for Sunday dinner.  ☺ 

In my own experience, I have trouble with work.   I don’t mind work.  I actually enjoy it, but I have trouble figuring out what work is.  I first became aware of this problem when I was a seminary student.  The guys I went to seminary with thought of school as work – they went to school, did their homework, and their time at home was time off.  That’s not how it was for me.  I had three grade-school-age kids at home, and for me going to school was time off, while being at home was work.  I didn’t get paid for either one, but I enjoyed school more than I enjoyed doing dishes and laundry and keeping the kids from killing each other. ☺  

For three years, I taught full-time as a fill-in professor at Earlham College.  During that time, I was pretty stubborn about taking Saturdays off from work related to my job.  It was a good day to do self-care things like laundry and cooking for the week ahead, but also reading for pleasure or getting out of town.   Sunday afternoons I tended to begin to pick up job-related work for the week ahead.  

I find I sleep better when I get down time, and I have more energy for work when I take a day off.  

How about you?  What do you do to rest physically and spiritually?  In what ways do you remember God’s work of creation, God’s relationship with you, God’s care for you?   [Wait.]

Work can be meaningful or alienating or some of both.  In any case, we need to take time for rest.   

When the work of creation was done, God rested. 

Taking a day of rest is a sign of our relationship with God.

Taking a day of rest reminds us of God’s compassion. 

Open Worship

Enjoy the quiet as a respite from life’s busyness.

Connect with God and with one another in prayer.

Open yourself to the healing Light of God’s Spirit.

Find grounding in love and gratitude.

Share vocal ministry as God leads.

Benediction

Original given at Irvington Friends 9/2013

Revised for New Castle Friends 9/5/16

Revised for University Friends 9/5/21