What’s interesting about the concept of Sabbath is that it’s based on a seven-day week, which, of course, is ubiquitous around the world today. However, back when this Genesis text was written, not everybody observed a 7 seven day week. The Romans had an 8 day week. The Egyptians a 10 day week. The Chinese had a 15 day week. So it shows you how influential Judaism and Christianity became that now everyone has adopted a seven day week.

Seven in Judaism is thought of as the perfect number. It is the number of completion and it comes up again and again throughout the Bible. For our purposes today, perhaps the most relevant use of the number 7 comes from the Old Testament law that dictates what is known as the Sabbatical year: “For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the wild animals may eat. You shall do the same with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard.” (Ex. 23:10-11)

This law is obviously about agriculture. Because they didn’t have access to irrigation and fertilizers like we do today, if you planted too often on the same piece of land, you would suck all of the nutrients out of the soil so that nothing will grow. There’s no evidence that they ever followed this law as instructed in the text. More than likely, they would take their land and divide it into seven parcels and, through rotation, every year a different parcel of land would get the opportunity to rest. This makes sense because, if you were to follow the rule exactly as written, then you would plant nothing and, even if you have food stores, it’s very hard to survive.

But this concept, that every seven years, both the earth and humans need time for an extended rest is where the idea of a Sabbatical comes from. They actually started building this into the terms of call for pastors because the rate of burnout was so incredibly high. I’ve told you all before that the average amount of time a pastor remains in the church before leaving the pastorate completely is five years. And when I say five years, I don’t mean five years in a church and then they go to a different church. I mean five years before they choose an entirely different career.

I know a lot of you might be sitting there thinking to yourself, “You work one day a week, Alex! How hard could it be? You jump up into the pulpit, say some stuff off the top of your head, no problem, right!” Ah, if that is what you think, then the illusion has been successful. I work on average between 60-80 hours per week. When I’m preaching, which is 75% of the time, I never get a day off. Part of the reason why that happens is because memorizing the sermon requires four days of preparation, which includes Friday and Saturday. As I’ve told you in the past, depending on the complexity, my sermons require anywhere from 20-80 hours of preparation time.

But that’s just preparing for the sermon itself. That doesn’t include all the other aspects of the job such as working with leadership on the direction of the church; committee meetings to execute that vision (I have night meetings here at the church at least twice a week, sometimes every night of the week often for multiple hours after I’ve worked a full day at the office); fundraising (I have to raise money for my own salary as well as the salary of the rest of the staff, which frankly is very stressful).

By the way, I also have to manage the staff to make sure we’re working as a team and rowing in the same direction. Then I have to find time to meet with people and counsel them (which I enjoy doing, but there’s not a lot of time for it). As pastors, we are always having to help people who are in crisis situations; making sure homeless or near homeless individuals get food and lodging; performing funerals; performing weddings; doing home visits; running programs and teaching classes and then, on top of all of that, I have to spend time trying to form meaningful relationships with as many people as possible because I don’t just have one boss, I have hundreds of bosses. Every single one of you is my boss who, by the way, has an opinion about the quality of my work.

And you wonder why the average pastor only lasts five years before leaving the profession entirely? I’m going to preach a sermon in the fall about how pastors are asked to do the jobs of seven different people at once. In any other organization, you would have different people doing each of those jobs. Instead, we are expected to do all of these things and we’re expected be good at all of them, which is impossible. So yeah, I’m a little tired and I need a break.

And Jesus, he understood this. In the scripture that we read this morning from Matthew, Jesus finishes feeding the 5000, then the text says, “Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds.  And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone…” He spent time with all these people, ministering to them, then he took time to go off and be by himself. Jesus went to take a shabbat, a rest, so that he could recharge his batteries.

Anybody who’s in a caring profession like a pastor, nurse, doctor, counselor, social worker, teacher—they need time to recharge so they don’t burn out. I know a lot of people say, “Oh, the life of a teacher is so hard. They get the summers off.” I have trouble parenting two kids. I can’t imagine dealing with 20 or more every day. Teaching children is hard and requires a lot of focus. Getting the summers off as time to reset for a new year is really critical. So yes, you might complain that you don’t get summers off, but try their job for a year and I think you’ll quickly realize how important that summer break truly is.

Now I’ve been an ordained pastor for 13 years and I’ve been working in the church for a total of 20 years. Do you know how long Jesus’ ministry lasted? Depending on which gospel you read, anywhere from one to three years. Granted he was going, going, going all the time, but 1-3 years is manageable. So, in this instance, we can’t really look to Jesus as the example of how to do the long-term work of being a pastor. We have to look to the guys who took over for him—Peter, James, John and Paul—these guys had to be in it for the long haul, so they had a different mentality.

As you probably know, Paul travelled all around the Mediterranean, planting churches. Travel in those days took a long time, so after working really hard in a certain city to setup a church, Paul would move on. He would use the travel time, which would often take weeks or months to rest and recuperate before starting all over again. Compared to 2000 years ago, travel today is almost instantaneous. There is no real break between going from one point to the next. Therefore, we don’t have that built in downtime, which they had. We have to create it for ourselves.

Hence, the Sabbatical, which I greatly appreciate you all allowing me to do. Some of you are aware that I was planning on taking my Sabbatical back in the summer of 2020, but then the world shut down and that became impossible. I’ve been putting it off for two years and, finally, after multiple waves of different variants, I made it!

I want to spend a little bit of time laying out for you what you can expect over the next three months while I’m away. The first thing you need to know is that we will be travelling to the United Kingdom and Europe. I will be out of contact with all of you. I’m removing my e-mail from my phone and I’m going to be changing my phone number. In other words, you will be unable to contact me and, even if you find a way to do so, I won’t respond.

The truth is the church is something I think about 24/7. I never stop thinking about it, so in order to really get some rest, I need to completely detach. While I’m gone, Judy will become the acting head of staff. She will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the church and for making sure everything runs smoothly in my absence. Judy will not be in contact with me, so she can’t deliver any messages on your behalf. It’ll just have to wait until September.

Of course, this means that Judy is responsible for most of the preaching, along with other guest preachers. Who knows, once the word gets out that I’m gone, the church might fill up again! Normally, during a Sabbatical the pastor uses it as a time for personal study. They usually have some project they are working on while they are away. The Session has given me permission to use the time abroad to finish the last 4 chapters of a new book I’ve been writing.

It’s called Restorative Beauty and the concept of the book is to address the topic of spirituality (I know, ironic right that I would be writing a book about spirituality!), but it’s a book about spirituality for those who would not consider themselves to be spiritual. This summer will be a great help in finishing the main body of the text. My hope is that once I have the all the academic notes and the editing finished, it will be ready for release by the spring of 2023.

I’ll let you know how it all goes once I’m back, but in the meantime, I just want to encourage you all with a couple of things. First of all, please don’t just check out for the summer because I’m no longer around. Although many people see the church as being about the pastor, the truth is that the church is much more about you. So please make it a priority to come to church and participate in our programs over the summer.

The second thing is to please continue your financial support of the church while I’m gone. I mentioned earlier how I have to fundraise my own salary and those of the staff. If I return from this trip and our giving has taken a major nosedive, then that’s going to be an immediate source of stress. Therefore, let me say thank you up front for continuing to support the church in my absence.

The third, and final, thing is the staff here really does need your support while I’m gone. They are going to do their very best to make sure everything happens the way it’s supposed to in a timely manner, but just remember that we are used to working with three pastors and now we’re down to one.

She will have some help, but the truth is, if it’s anything where there’s a personal history, she’s not going to send the interim pastor. Something I learned from when Judy was gone, having Steve around was great for some things, but when someone died, particularly if it was someone important to our community, I couldn’t pass that off to him. Therefore, I’m just asking for you to have patience and know we are doing our best.

Finally, I just want to say thank you again for giving me the time. There are a lot of churches that cannot afford to allow their pastor to go on Sabbatical. We are in a privileged position where that can happen. I promise I will take lots of pictures and, as is my custom, I will likely put together a short video of my adventures so that upon my return so you can get a flavor of what it was like. Have a great summer, get some rest and relaxation for yourself and I’ll see you in September! Amen!