Standards

First draft of the sermon for October 1, 2011

North Hill Adventist Fellowship

On Monday, I walked into Valley Medical Center and signed a piece of paper giving the medical staff pretty much total freedom to do whatever they thought necessary. Since I was a little wobbly on my feet, they put me in a wheel chair and some one pushed me down the hall, into an elevator, down another hall to some distant department whose name I don't remember.

I crawled onto a bed and allowed total strangers to take over my life. There were two or three nurses. There was a really old guy who looked kind of funny. I don't think he was a nurse. He wasn't a doctor. I don't know what his title was. He went and got a warm blanket for me a couple of times.

Eventually, a doctor came in. I had met him for the first time earlier that morning at his office.

Once the doctor got there, a nurse gave an injection that I knew was going to make me unconscious. At that point I would be truly, totally at the mercy of strangers. They could have put me in a car and shipped me off somewhere else. They could have gone through my wallet. They could have walked away and left me there for hours. I would be absolutely incapable of opposing anything those people wished to do. I would be unable to remember anything they did.

It's kind of an interesting experience – putting your life in the hands of complete strangers.

But I wasn't worried. Why? Because of standards. Every step of the process was guided by standards of care. The paper work, doses of drugs, the way the various electrodes were attached, what they did with my shoes – everything was governed by best practices, by routines that have been developed over decades of hospital practice.

The doctor looked like a kid. But I wasn't worried. He was not inventing some new procedure just for me. He was not going to be creative. He was going to something is done thousands of times by thousands of doctors all over the country. I was being treated according to standards. And because of that I was completely at ease.

The procedure worked. When I went to sleep, my heart was beating irregularly leaving me weak and faint. When I woke up, my heart was beating with a steady rhythm. They called Karin. She came and picked me up and once the anesthesia had completely worn off I felt as good as new. I was ready run a few miles.

Standards are a wonderful thing.

Jesus talked about standards for church life:

If you cause one of the little ones who believe in Jesus to sin, it would better for you to have a large millstone tied around your neck and to be heaved into the ocean. Matthew 18:6

The first standard for church life: Don't hurt kids. It would be better to put on a pair of concrete boots and have a mafioso drop you in Commencement Bay.

This is not an ideal. It is not a dream we work, hoping some day we'll finally figure it. This is a standard – the minimum acceptable level of performance. Don't hurt kids.

If you are hurting kids, we will do everything we can to stop you. We will not allow you access to kids here at church. Don't call kids names. Don't berate them. Don't neglect them. (This is starting to get challenging.)

We can walk into a hospital, place ourselves in the hands of a bunch of strangers, people we have never met, and do so with confidence because of standards. Minimum acceptable levels of performance.

It should be the same at church. Our standards should protect people.

What are the appropriate standards for the church? What are the minimum acceptable levels of performance?

Don't hurt the kids is a pretty good place to begin. Expanding on this concern for kids,

Then little children were brought to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray fort hem. But the disciples rebuked those who brought them. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom belongs to such as these.” When he had placed his hands on them, he went on from there. Matthew 19:13-15

“Do not hinder them.” That's a pretty broad command. It's a challenge. Do our kids see church as a welcoming place, a welcoming community? Do we fuel their dreams or stifle them? Does our life with God entice them or repel them?

Do our rules help them or harm them?

A second standard:

If you will not forgive people who have wronged you, God will not forgive you. Matthew 6:15.

“ . . . this is how your father in heaven will treat you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart. Matthew 18:21-35.

The church is to be a community of mercy. Love our enemies, do good to those who despitefully use us. On occasion Jesus could be stern, but that was not the dominant tone of his ministry. He was not a scowling condemner of evil people, but a generous savior. He was the Lord of the Second Chance as the song puts it. He regarded people with hope and good will. And so should we.

It is a horrible embarrassment that in the United States, self-described Christians are more vocal in favor of war and capital punishment than the general population.

Forgiveness is not an ideal. It is not something we aim it. It is a standard. It is a minimum acceptable level of performance. If we do not practice forgiveness, we are not Christians. (In the Q&A time, we can talk about the experience of forgiveness. The experience is frequently messy and difficult. This standard was not given by Jesus as a barrier to participating in his kingdom. It was given to safeguard the kingdom from becoming a hideout for people who use “righteousness” as a cover for anger, bitterness and resentment.)

A third standard:

If you call your brother a fool, you are in danger of hell fire. Matthew 5.

In the church, God's church, we are required to show respect for those we disagree with. Jesus forbade us from calling those who are in error, idiots. It is always tempting to demonize those we disagree with. We assume any one with a modicum of intelligence and integrity will see things the way we do. It is so easy to dismiss those who see it otherwise as being idiotic or perverse. Jesus established the standard: If you call your brother a fool, you are in danger of hell fire. So don't do it. And don't listen to those who do.

One of the dangers of talk radio is getting sucked into the scorn and derision that characterize so much of it. Don't spend time listening to scorn and derision. It is toxic to spiritual health.

The most famous list of standards is the Ten Commandments. Lying, stealing, killing, philandering are not permitted. Period. Don't do that. Sabbath-breaking and trashing our parents are not tolerated among us.

Jesus stated emphatically that he had no intention of relaxing that standard. Instead, he raised the standard.

Here are North Hill, I'm advocating that we add some standards.

Adventists have long made not eating pork a standard in our concern for health. I want to add a new standard:

Exercise every day. Once a day do something. If you go to the store, park an extra fifty feet from the door. If you can't walk, do curls with a can of beans or a jar of jelly. If your arms don't work, stretch your neck and work on range of motion, side to side. Do something, every day.

If you didn't do something yesterday, do two somethings today.

In the area of money, Adventists have echoed the Bible teaching of devoting ten percent of our income to God. I'd like to propose an additional standard: I want everyone to have a $1000 dollar emergency fund. As Dave Ramsey advocates, get an extra job, sell something, fast. Do whatever it takes to set up a $1000 dollar emergency fund.

Why because life works better that way.

Do you need $1000 for God to love you? No. Do you need $1000 in order to be saved? No. Do you need $1000 in order to qualify for membership in the church? No.

But when you have a $1000 dollar emergency fund, it eases the stress of life. It smooths things out.

Of course, there are exceptions for every rule. Jesus and his disciples carried a lot of money around with them. At the last supper Jesus instructed his disciples to carry a money bag. But at least once during their training Jesus sent the twelve out on the road with no money, no food, no extra clothes. Standards are made for ordinary situations. They are made for most of us most of the time.

And most of us, most of the time, should have an emergency fund equal to a month's rent, or a major car repair, or the cost of replacing the refrigerator or furnace in our house. Having that emergency fund protects us from the onerous cost of pay day loans and the terrible burden of worry.

But if you've been out of work for a long time, or you have some other exceptional situation, this may be completely irrelevant. But for ordinary life, for young people who are building their lives and creating the habits they are going to pass on to their children, having a $1000 emergency fund should be regarded as a standard. It is something that smart people do.

The same with doing some exercise every day. It is not a condition for getting God to love you. Failing to meet this standard will not damn you. It will increase your risk for being sick and in pain. Failing to meet this standard will decrease your quality of life.

And God wants to increase your quality of life.

Its the same with Adventist standards on tobacco and alcohol. These arise from our desire to help each live well. Smoking causes cancer and emphysema and accelerates aging of the skin on your face (Most people will interpret that as being less beautiful.) So don't do it.

Alcohol use is associated with domestic violence and, of course, alcoholism. Not everyone experiences these dire consequences, but enough people do that we want to create a society where avoidance of alcohol is part of the culture.

I am here today, healthy and vigorous because the doctors and nurses at Valley Medical Center practiced the standards of care for people with Afib.

God created the church as a hospital for people like us – regular people with checkered histories who need the assurance of forgiveness, the promise of a better future and help living well here and now. Let's make sure that our standards of care for one another and for the strangers who bless us promote hope and health and healing.

It's what we're here for.

God on Vacation

Sermon for North Hill Adventist Fellowship Sabbath, September 24, 2011

Summer is barely over and I'm already dreaming of my next vacation. I'll drive south on I-5. At Salem, Oregon, I'll head east over the Cascades. On the far side of the Cascade crest, down where the dense forest of fir trees begins to thin into the open woodlands of Ponderosa pines, I'll start to breathe easier. I'll relax. I'll feel like I'm on vacation.
For me, vacation is sunshine, wide open spaces, heat, and the open roads of the eastern Oregon and Nevada. My little car—a four-wheel drive Geo Tracker—and will crawl up jeep trails through juniper and pinion forests. We'll venture across snow-white playas. The sky will be deep blue, spotted here and there with giant cumulus clouds.

Vacation! Perfect!

When I asked. Vacation! Perfect! When I asked folks at church their favorite vacation destinations, they told me places like Italy and Hawaii, Australia and Mexico. Exotic places (for us here in the rainy Northwest). Places where the sun shines and there are few demands and few deadlines. Places to relax with the people you love. Tranquil places. Some people dreamed of Whisler in the winter or Sun Valley, Idaho and the excitement of black diamond ski runs. What united all of these vacation dreams was a picture of a perfect world. For a week or two we imagine living without the hassles and disappointments, the pressure and pain of ordinary life. In short our ideas of vacation are snapshots of the world “as it should be.”

So where does God go on vacation? What are his dreams of the world as it should be? The Bible offers some beautiful clues. Obviously, these images are symbolic, metaphorical. They are put into language and imagery that make sense to us. Which is a good thing.

One of my favorite “heavenly vacation” passages is in Isaiah 11.

The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox,. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child will put his hand into the viper's nest. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isa. 11:7-9).

Herefords and grizzlies happy together in a field, the bears eating blackberries, the cows munching grass, the cubs cavorting with bull calves and heifers. A two year old child laughing at the antics of his friend, the cobra. It doesn't get more idyllic than that. Every thing at peace. Every creature happy. That's God's dream vacation. That's God's dream for the world. It's what the world would be like if God had his way uncomplicated and unhindered. In God's dream world, “they will not hurt or destroy.” They will not be hurt or be destroyed. Then comes the line, “for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” When God is fully, completely, and universally known . . . no one will hurt or destroy. In God's dream world there is no violence, no aggression, no coercion. This vision of a world at peace is echoed by the prophet Micah:

Many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths. For the law will go forth from Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. 4:3 He will judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off. They will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks. Nation will not lift up a sword against nation, neither will they learn war any more" (Micah 4:2-3).

When God teaches us his ways and we have mastered them, the world will be at peace. God's dream is peace.

A final passage from Isaiah:

God says, Look! I am creating new heavens and a new earth—so wonderful that no one will even think about the old ones any more. . . . It will not be like the past, when invaders took houses and confiscated the vineyards. . . . The wolf and lamb will feed together. The lion will eat straw like the ox. Poisonous snakes will strike no more. In those days, no one will be hurt or destroyed on my holy mountain. I, the Lord, have spoken (Isaiah 65:17-25). 

That's God's dream. That's what vacation would look like for God. God's dream of a perfect world is a world full of people. God likes people. He likes you. Jesus told his disciples that his ultimate goal was, “I will come again and receive you to myself, so that where I am, you will be also.” In the visions of Revelation, Jesus pictures his people seated with him on God's throne (Revelation 3:20). Paul wrote about God's vacation in these words: “and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” If God went on vacation, he would take us all with him. You are indispensable to the joy of God.

The next thing we notice is that God has plans for ending turmoil and conflict. God is going to bring about tranquility and rest. He is going to create a world where the chaos and clamor stop. He is not going to create this sweet peace by getting rid of people but by transforming them, by fixing them.

This is really great news for people suffering from mental illness. If you are tormented by depression, if your life is wrenched this way and that by the effects of bipolar disorder, if schizophrenia has invaded your mind, this is unbelievably good news. A year, a decade, a century of life untormented? Days, weeks and even months of uninterrupted inner peace? That is unimaginable, but that is just what Isaiah and Micah, John and Paul actually do imagine under the inspiration of God. The bears and cows in our own minds will learn to live together in peace. The wolves and lambs that battle inside us will come to a glad and happy peace. If your mind is broken, if your inner torment is driving you crazy, hang on. It gets better.

Notice that in these visions of the perfect world, there is no mention of hell and punishment. God is not dreaming about retribution. He's dreaming about redemption. There has been a deep undercurrent of fascination with destruction and hurt in Christian theology. Some Christian preachers, even famous ones, honored by the church as brilliant theologians and godly preachers, have gotten sucked into visions of hurt and destruction. They have developed horrific pictures of hell, then preached these visions as the mind and dream of God. But when they do this, they've missed the boat.

And when we get sucked into their fascination with hurt and destruction, we are missing the boat, too. I've known people whose minds are permeated with fear. They worry about whether they can ever escape the destruction at the end. They worry they may have committed the unpardonable sin. They read the passages in the Bible that warn of rejecting the Holy Spirit and wonder, “Is that me? Have I gone too far?” Those questions have two sources: first a highly sensitive conscience. These people see vividly their own complicated motives. They are aware of times when they chose the wrong path or when they chose the right path for the wrong reasons. Their awareness is so vivid, so keen, they can't imagine how they could ever fully recover.

The second source of this relentless self-condemnation is dark preaching, preaching that imagines people will be helped toward heaven if they could just see clearly the awfulness of sin. Unfortunately, for many people, a clear vision of the awfulness of sin is just depressing and discouraging. It does not serve as an effective instrument for getting people to dream of heaven.

A third source of this relentless self-condemnation is preaching that is too bright. Some preachers tell us that what God demands is flawless, unwavering, total, conscious devotion. We are to be aware of the presence and direction of Jesus every waking second. This is not possible unless you withdraw from life. I don't want my brain surgeon thinking about Jesus while he's operating on me. I want him to give one hundred percent attention to my brain. If you're on a date, you don't want the man or woman you're with to be thinking about Jesus. You want them to be paying attention to you.

A high level of holiness can be cultivated. We can learn to be always open to heavenly impulses. We can go through our days frequently in conversation with God. But the notion that we are failing in holiness when we give full, undivided rapt attention to a lover or to a physics problem or to glitch in the software you are charged with maintaining is simply false. God does not scold us for giving intense attention to the interesting and challenging and endearing things of this life. In Isaiah 65, part of God's dream of the future was that people would be building houses. They were not going to spend all their time on their faces in front of the throne!

How do we counter intrenched self-condemnation? Begin dreaming with God. Deliberately imagine the eternal vacation that God is dreaming of, a vacation that includes you. When we fill our minds with the pictures of the future God is dreaming of, it will begin to shape how we live here and now. We will find ourselves figuring out ways to divert energy from preparing for war to providing for people. Instead of praying for the destruction of our enemies, we will pray for their transformation. Instead of dreaming of hurting our enemies, we will dream of healing them. This will affect our lives at home, at work, at school. It will affect our politics. It will play into the way we view education. It might influence our habits of TV consumption and news consumption. We will limit our exposure to people who encourage us to hate, to fear, to fret. Instead we will fuel our own dreams of the heavenly vacation. We will read encouraging things. We will fix our eyes on beautiful things. We will find ways to remind ourselves frequently of the sweetness of the future God imagines with us.

We will encourage ourselves and others in doing things here and now that align us with God's dreams. We will dream of giving God a bit of vacation now, that is, we will arrange our lives so they look something like the world God imagines: a world where the cow and grizzly happily share a pasture, a world where people beat their swords into plowshares. A world where no one hurts or destroys. Hurting and destroying are not in God's dream – which strongly suggests the Christian fascination with hell is misplaced. The classic horror of eternal torment is erroneous. The Adventist idea of a momentary hell is a step in the right direction. Perhaps eventually we will learn that the whole notion of ultimate retribution was merely a stop-gap measure to help us understand God's abhorrence of hurting and destroying. Maybe Isaiah's picture of a world in which no one hurts or destroys is not just the final picture, maybe it is the truest picture, the ultimate picture of the way the universe works under God. This I know for sure: The more deeply we imbibe that vision, the sweeter will be our influence here in this world. The more ready we will be to participate fully in the grand vacation God is planning for himself and his children.

Pilgrims Headed for the Heavenly City

Sermon for North Hill Adventist Fellowship, September 17, 2011 Imagining our lives as a journey through a hostile land to the blessed destination of heaven has been a common place in Christian preaching for centuries. Abraham's journey from Ur to Canaan, Jacob's flight from Canaan back to Mesopotamia and subsequent return, and Israel's exodus from Egypt have all served as models and inspiration for preachers making sense of the believer's journey through or from this present earthly realm to the glorious destination of the New Jerusalem. (Pilgrim's Progress is a classic of Christian devotional literature. It is the tale of the travels of the hero, “Pilgrim” from the City of Destruction (earth) to the Celestial City. According to Wikipedia, “It is regarded as one of the most significant works of religious English literature, has been translated into more than 200 languages, and has never been out of print.”) Great classic songs have incorporated the pilgrim image: “I Am a Poor, Wayfaring Stranger,” “I'm but a Stranger here, Heaven is my Home,” “I've Got a Mansion, Just over the Hilltop.” In these songs, the writers lament the pain and difficulties of this present world and affirm the promise of eventual arrival in the sweet homeland of heaven. Here and now is not all there it. The glory of the destination justifies the struggle of the journey. Hebrews 11 describes Abraham as the archetypal pilgrim:

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. . . . [Abraham, Sarah, Jacob and the other ancients] were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers (KJV: strangers and pilgrims) on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them (Hebrews 11:8-16).

What wisdom does this idea of the Christian life as the long trek of a pilgrim provide? What's Real? What Matters? Our notion of reality, especially our notion of what really matters, is shaped by something other than – and more than – our surroundings. We dream of a better country. When we face incurable disease or the apparently relentless degradation of the environment or the incurable oppression of depression or other mental illness – when it seems life is not worth living, we remember we are headed to a better place. Our difficult days here are connected to wonderful days there. The pain of the journey is justified by the fantastic beauty and delight of the destination. Some critics of religion blithely criticize this “destination-based hope” as dysfunctional, wishful thinking. Many of us who are on the journey know otherwise. The hope of that brighter, better world adds quality to our life here and now. The happiness of the future world actually seeps into this world and improves the quality of our lives here and now. This is not just the opinion of starry-eyed believers. Psychological and medical studies have measured real life benefits that flow from hope. We do better, we manage life better, when we are hopeful. Holy Dissatisfaction A second benefit of thinking of ourselves as pilgrims, as travelers headed to a better land: We deliberately cultivate a healthy dissatisfaction with the way things are, and we set about to improve them. In the 1700s and 1800s one of the driving forces behind the abolition of slavery was a vision of heaven. Will we have slaves in heaven? No, I don't think so. Then why do we have them here? Shouldn't people who are getting ready to live in the better land begin practicing here and now? Will we go to war in the new earth? No. Then why are Christians so eager for war here? Multiple studies have found that in the United States the people most eager to send American soldiers on aggressive missions overseas are people who describe themselves as “born-again Christians.” What's up with that? Our vision of the new earth should influence how we live here and now. Isaiah pictures our destination this way: The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox,. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child will put his hand into the vipers nest. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isa. 11:7-9). If that is our future, if that is what life is like at our destination, it makes sense to begin practicing here and now. Jesus taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We are know this world is not our permanent home. We dream of the better land. Then we pray that God will act to make this world more like that better world. Then – and this is vital – we line up our lives with our prayers. We take action to make things better. We refuse to completely assimilate. We are not only earthlings. We do what we can to make this place more like that place. Jeremiah told the Jews who were living as pilgrims in Babylon: Settle down and take care of yourselves. Also take care of the towns and cities where you are living. Sure, keep alive your dream of returning to Jerusalem. God has plans for your future – plans that have you back in the Promised Land, plans that have you leaving Babylon behind. But between now and then, take care of Babylon. (See Jeremiah 29.) Similarly we are called to take care of our world. We have an extraordinary wisdom that comes from our lively awareness of how things are done in a better place. So we seek to bring those better practices, that better way of living and loving, into this world, here and now. Sometimes we may near collapse with fatigue. Sometimes the horrors of this world overwhelm us. Then we come to church and meet other pilgrims and remember this world is not all there is. Sometimes we may get so caught up in present realities, we may forget we are citizens elsewhere. We may become too settled. We may go with the flow the way a dead fish floats down stream. Then we come together and in music and preaching, in fellowship and shared work, we renew our vision of the Promised Land. We drag ourselves off the benches or sofas where we have collapsed and step again onto the path, headed home. We work to smooth the path so that those who are traveling behind us will find it a bit easier. And we learn to sing again, celebrating the hope and promise of the glorious destination. We're pilgrims headed home. Practical applications: 1. They speak a different language in the home country. It's valuable to keep alive our native language. Part of the benefit of church is meeting with other people who know the language of heaven. Reading authors who are fluent in the heavenly language is another way to keep alive our fluency. While we want to be able to communicate easily with the citizens of this world, we don't want to become so completely assimilated we lose our heavenly accent. If we are new to the journey toward the heavenly city, it makes a lot of sense to be very deliberate in mastering the language of our new homeland. Daily Bible or devotional reading is a wonderful habit that can help us move that direction. 2. Celebrate the privilege of citizenship. Create and enjoy Sabbath feasts. Create and invite others to festivals. Make music. Rejoice. Deliberately savor the delight that flows from being fully aware of the delight that is waiting at the end of the journey. 3. Know that we have a guide who will get us there. Jesus is the good shepherd. He never loses his sheep. Jesus is the friend. He would rather die than miss out on spending eternity with you. He promises he will never leave you or forsake you. So don't be afraid. Jesus is a warrior. He never loses a war. He is a physician. He never loses a patient. He is the captain of the ship. “No storm or wind can ever sink the ship where lies the master of earth and sea and skies.” You're in good hands. The Savior saves. Count on it. The leader will take us through. So, no worries. 4. Share the wealth. Be generous, magnanimous, benevolent, merciful, forgiving, courteous, gracious, compassionate. That's the way life is where we're going, so we might as well get in practice now.

You're Good

Sermon for Sabbath, September 3, 2011.
North Hill Adventist Fellowship


In 1980 Rosie Ruiz stunned the running world. She completed the Boston Marathon 2:31:56. It was the fastest time for a woman in the history of the Boston Marathon at the time. It was the third fastest time for a woman in any marathon. She was a phenom. Her finish was front page news in New York where we lived at the time.

Then people started asking embarrassing questions. Other front runners had never seen her go by. At the finish line she didn't look exhausted. When she was asked about some of the details of the course, her memory was completely fuzzy. A couple of students reported seeing her come out of the crowd of bystanders and onto the race course near the finish line. The reason she had the fastest time a woman had ever recorded for the Boston Marathon is that she covered most of the distance in an automobile. Oops.

From glory to ignominy. From impressive athlete to a ridiculous cheat.

Now, imagine a mythical guy named Jack Turtle. He competed in the Tacoma marathon this past may. And like Rosie, he did not run the entire distance. He also rode part of the way.

A couple of years ago when he was fifty-one, he decided he was going to run a marathon before he died. He was about 35 pounds overweight. He hadn't run a mile in years. But he set about training. Slowly adding distance and dropping weight. By race day he had lost 20 pounds and had worked up to being able to run twenty miles if he kept it slow and easy. For the race, the weather was unusually hot. In the excitement of the crowd, Jack started way too fast. He tried to slow himself down, but he was so pumped and the running seemed so easy, he just couldn't help himself. He had planned to take regular walking breaks. He didn't. At twenty miles, he was completely wasted. At twenty-one miles he collapsed. He crawled to the curb and sat for awhile thinking he would recover enough energy to keep going. He only made it another hundred yards or so. When someone asked him if he was okay. He should his head. They offered to drive him to the finish area. He accepted. Back in downtown, he crawled out of the car and hobbled over to the finish line to find his wife and kids. A complete, ignominious failure. A year of training down the drain. A total waste. He was embarrassed, ashamed. His kids would have none of it. They greeted him like a hero. Daddy had run a marathon! He kept trying to correct them. Daddy had not run a marathon. Daddy had tried to run a marathon.

They ignored him. At school they told all their friends, our Dad ran a marathon. His two sons, especially, loved telling their friends how terrible he looked when they saw him. He looked horrible. Sick as a dog! He had even puked before he gave up, they exclaimed with glee.

If you are a runner, dropping out of a race feels like a miserable failure. Accepting a ride to the finish line is not success. BUT, if you are the son of a middle-aged, pudgy, would-be runner who has just completed any portion of a marathon, your drop-out Dad is a champion. While dad is beating himself up for the inadequacy of his training, for his failure to adjust his pace for the heat, for the stupidity of getting sucked in by the excitement and running too fast early on – While Dad is berating himself, the sons are bragging, “Our dad ran a marathon!”

The way the kids see it: How many other dads in their class have run twenty miles. Why none of the other dads have even run five miles. How many other dads have run so hard they puked? Dad's participation in the race is sufficient cause for swaggering.

My first point: the only shame is faking it. No one knows how fast Rosie Ruiz cam really run. No one cares. She is dismissed as a cheat. What about Jack Turtle? Is he the fastest man in Tacoma? No. But we do know he is a runner. He can run farther and faster now than he could a year ago. He's given his kids something to brag about. An ideal of honest, strenuous striving.

While Jack feels dumb for the mistakes he made that kept him from successfully completing the race, his friends and family are proud of him. There is no shame in failing in the pursuit of a worthy goal. There is only shame in faking it.

The spiritual applications of this are obvious.

There is another lesson we can draw from this race parable: At some point the race is over. No matter how far you've made it. No matter how far you HAVEN'T made it. This race is finished. It's time to stop running, or walking or crawling or slithering. What you've done, you've done. It's time to quit. There will be another race. There will be future chances to improve your time, to refine your strategy, to adjust your pace for the heat. You will have time to do better training. To lose more of those extra pounds. When it comes to marathons, there is always tomorrow, but at some point, today's race is finished. The roads are reopened to traffic. So, stop already. It's time to get a shower, rest a bit, then enjoy a feast.

God must have had marathons in mind when he wrote the Sabbath commandment. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you are to push yourself, work, study, clean, fix, calculate, compete, strive, strain. Then quit. Keep the seventh-day holy. Rest. Take it easy. Feast. Relax. Visit. Stop racing.

The way the Sabbath command is written, there is no need to fake accomplishment in order to enjoy Sabbath rest. Sabbath does not come to us as a reward for our accomplishment or even our effort. It just comes. Period.

Several years ago when I participated in the Tacoma marathon, the literature stated in bold letters that the course would close after six hours. You could keep racing if you wanted to, but the race was over. The time keepers were going home. The crossing guards were leaving their stations. The streets that had been closed to automobile traffic would again be filled with cars. At six hours, no matter where you were on the course, the race was over.

This is God's message in the Sabbath commandment. When the sixth day is over, it's time to quit. No matter where we are in the process of checking things off our to-do list. Sabbath comes to those who have goofed off all week and gotten nothing of value accomplished. Sabbath also comes to those who have worked skillfully and intensely all week. Sabbath comes like weather moving in from the west. There's no stopping it. Of course, we can ignore it and fail to receive any benefit from its coming. But we do not make it come and nothing we do can keep it from coming. It is as inexorable as the movement of the sun or the rhythm of waves on the beach.

The Sabbath command is a beautiful fusion of duty and grace. God orders us to quit working. That makes it a duty. When we comply with the order, we are yielding ourselves to his approval and affirmation. We are experiencing grace.

Sabbath celebrates God's original satisfaction with all creation including human beings. God's first delight in human beings arose from the simple fact that we are his, not from any accomplishment we had chocked up.

The Sabbath commandment speaks of the rhythm of work and rest, of the back-and-forth swing of doing and relaxing that is characteristic of healthy live. “Six days you are to labor and do all your work but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. On it you are not to do any work.”

Healthy living, healthy relationships, healthy religion – all of these involve moving back and forth between effort and rest, between activity and relaxation, between trying and saying, 'good enough.'

The Seventh-day Adventist Church has historically emphasized the importance of pursuing holiness.

Do the right thing.
Eat right and exercise.
Manage your money wisely.
Support the church generously.
Get all the education you can.
Focus your sexual desires so that your hormones are supportive of marriage.
Read the Bible.
Pray daily.
Be kind to your neighbors.
Be courteous.
Be honest.
Religiously avoid vulgarity and flippant use of God's name.
Don't smoke, drink or chew.

Whew, that's quite a list! Doing all this is a daunting challenge. And it is a piece of cake compared to the challenge Jesus issued: Love your enemy as yourself. Do not worry. Do not fear. Whatever you want others to do to you, do to them.

This is a very challenging job. It is hard work.

The church makes no apology for calling you to give this your best, to train, to pour energy into the accomplishment of these objectives.

Then Sabbath comes with a very different message: You've done enough. You're okay.

On Sabbath, figuratively we gather at the finish line. The race is over. Some of us got here in a car. Some of us were carried. There is no shame in arriving at the finish line of the marathon in a car as long as you don't pretend you ran the whole way. In fact, there is a certain respect due to those who attempted the course and failed. How brave to get out there and run. How courageous to attempt such a marvelous feat!

Pretending is really the only thing that is not allowed. Puking is allowed. Falling down is allowed. Running of energy is allowed. Hitting the wall is okay. Getting lost and going off course is a cause for bemused laughter. These things are not recommended. But if they happen, you are still invited to the party at the finish line.

On Sabbath, we are all invited to celebrate with the heavenly family. We are all invited to feast. Whatever you've done, or haven't done, on Friday night, it is enough. Quit racing and enjoy the feast.

Keeping Sabbath brings us together in a celebration of the rich feast God has in mind for his people. Sabbath is a divine party, a time to let the weight go, let the pressure go. Quit working. Quit trying. Quit pushing. Rest.

Sometimes we wonder, can we ever do what God asks? Can we ever measure up? Can we ever accomplish God's will?

Thinking of the marathon, it seems dauntingly impossible. We'll never be able to run that fast, that far. Then Sabbath comes. God closes the course and announces his will for us all: Quit. Stop. Sit down. Take it easy. Next week will bring us another opportunity to wrestle with our dreams of accomplishment, but on Sabbath all that must be laid aside. We are done.

You've done enough.

You're good.