Ps. 46:10; Mat. 6:19-34; II Tim. 6:6-10

3/2/03 Crestwood United Church of Christ

Pastor: Marcia Sietstra

Last week I talked about taking Sabbath time, because times goes by so quickly, and unless we intentionally carve out time to rest our minds and our hearts, we will miss what is most important in life. I talked about the Sabbath as a space of time, not necessarily Sunday, when you move away from worry and work, toward rejuvenation. Sabbath is a prescription, not a prohibition, toward doing what makes us healthier emotionally or spiritually. Today I want to continue that theme of ‘taking time apart’, and will talk about how our culture makes it so difficult for us to use our time in ways that foster spiritual growth.

If I had gotten this far last week, I would have had the jazz quartet play a few measures of ‘We’re Just Wild About Harry,’ because our theme song as a culture might be ‘We’re Just Wild about Hurry!’ Life has accelerated at a dizzying speed since I was a child. Take, for example, your plans for this afternoon if you are a family with two working parents. I bet it looks nothing like Sunday afternoons when we were growing up, and people would actually spend all day Sunday lazing around after church. People would actually drop by at a friend’s home, unannounced and uninvited, on Sunday afternoons, and—hard as it is for us to believe now—we would sit down and visit for hours, without a thought of using Sunday to run errands, shop or catch up on housework, laundry and homework. I wouldn’t dream of dropping by uninvited these days, for fear of keeping people from their activities. Besides, the odds are, I wouldn’t find anybody at home!

We have seen the acceleration of just about everything! We communicate faster because we have email and cell phones—course now we have to spend ½ hour every morning answering email. We eat fast food because we don’t have time to cook. We multi-task, not because we like it so much, but because we feel we have to, to keep up. I am told that the word multi-task is a relatively new word, used first to describe what computers do, not people.

Recently in the children’s section of a major bookstore, there was displayed a lovely children’s book entitled 30-Second Bedtime Stories. Just what are we saving time for, if not to spend time with those we love the most? My awful confession is this: I might have been real attracted to that book of 30-second bedtime stories when James was little and I was going to seminary, building a new house, and doing the bookkeeping for my husband’s optical business, all at the same time!

We worry that as a culture we have attention deficit disorder. We joke about forgetting things because our minds are suffering from overload. We say we want more balance and we complain—why can’t it be like it used to be? Or we go to the beach and see someone with a cell phone, and think, ‘Gosh, can’t they even leave their phones behind on the beach!’ And then one day we find ourselves with a cell phone at the beach, and wonder—how did we get to be this way?

I’m sure there are a host of reasons, but there’s one I’d like to suggest. First let me tell you about a remarkable experiment in slowing down. In 1930, at the start of the Great Depression, W.K. Kellogg replaced the traditional, three daily 8-hour shifts in his Battle Creek, Michigan, cereal plant with four 6-hour shifts. By adding one entire shift, he reasoned, thirty percent more jobs would be added at the plant—jobs desperately needed by the unemployed in the city.

As Benjamin Hunnicutt describes in Work Without End: Kelloggxs six-hour day was an instant success. In 1932 the U.S. Department of Labor sent a research team to Battle Creek to interview Kellogg’s workers. They found that nearly eighty-five percent preferred the six-hour shift, primarily because it provided ‘more time for family activities and home duties and leisure’ and because it helped some of the unemployed find work. The great majority of the Kellogg workers used freedom or closely related words when the agents asked them to compare the eight-hour and six-hour shifts.

Talking to Hunnicutt a half-century later, workers recalled the pleasures of the six-hour shift: For Susan Smith, the extra time she had as a result of the six-hour shift allowed her to get her housework out of the way and get on to what she saw as the real part of the day: reading, walking, writing. She was self-educated, and it was in the few hours between routine housework and the job that she could keep the life of the mind and spirit alive, and find time to be involved in her community.

Josephine Isley spoke enthusiastically about canning at home’a family project that ‘we all enjoyed.’ After they were recruited, Isley recalled that her ‘sons opened up to talk freely’ and that during such activities ‘we were the most together as a family.’ Because of such activities ‘we were better parents.’ She contrasted such complex activities with ‘silly’ kinds of leisure pastimes (TV and video games) which, together with modern jobs, take all the time from family activities.

George Howard wrote that ‘the six-hour shift let Dad be with four boys at ages when that was important.’

What I found most interesting is that the Kellogg’s workers often spoke of the shorter hours as a moral act, stressing their willingness to share their good fortune with others. In plant-wide votes taken in the 1930’s and ‘40’s, they voted three to one for a 6-hour shift. A survey in the 1940’s indicated that there was a strengthening of traditional institutions that thrive when people have free time: amateur sports, clubs, churches, and community service.

In WW II, the Kellogg plant went to three 8-hour shifts in compliance with Franklin Roosevelt’s executive order, but management promised workers they could return to the 6-hour day as soon as the war ended. After the war, management offered generous financial incentives to workers in an effort to keep them working longer hours, but the workers voted three to one in 1945 and again in 1946 to return to the short shift. ‘I need the extra money,’ one explained, ‘but I need the time at home more.’

According to Hunnicutt, the tide began to turn as consumerism took hold in the 1960’s. A new generation of workers no longer used words like freedom and family to describe the benefits of work. They insisted that money was the only real job benefit in light of all they wanted to buy. Shorter hours for less money was seen as ‘stupid,’ ‘silly,’ ‘wasted,’ and only for the ‘lazy.’ Finally, in the 1960’s and 1970’s mass amusements—notably television—began their domination of leisure time, and passive consumption—going to the mall, began to replace traditional activities. Time for family, loved ones, and community activities was no longer perceived as being as valuable as what one could buy with money. On Dec. 11, 1984, workers voted to return to the longer, 8-hour shift. W.K. Kellogg’s bold and creative experiment had come to an end.

Here is the question Wayne Muller asks in his book about time. He says, Although we purchase twice what we did in the 1950’s, can we honestly say we are happier for it? Do we sense that our friends, families and neighbors are more at peace, joyful, or at ease? Do we feel in them a sense of well-being and delight? If not, why not? We have, in short, everything we ever wanted. Or do we?

The Sabbath is a revolutionary invitation to consider that the fruits of our labor may be found in the restful and unhurried harvest of time. In time, we can taste the sweetness of peace, serenity, well-being, and delight. The truth must be told: With all the money in the world, and no time, we have nothing at all.

My generation, and the next, are suffering from a time famine, and most of us don’t slow down long enough to even figure out what the problem is. We need to take some time to stop and gain perspective, time in which we honor the values that grow in time. Our culture will not change unless we start being the change we want to see. Here’s what the writer of 2nd Timothy says: Those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction’in their eagerness to be rich some have ..pierced themselves with many pains. But as for you, people of God’ pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Earlier he writes: There is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it. (2 Tim. 6:6-12)

We need Sabbath time to rest and enjoy our loved ones, to value things like friendship and laughter and sympathy and tears. ‘If we do not rest, if we do not taste and eat and serve and teach and pray and give thanks and do all those things that grow only in time, we will become more impoverished than we will ever know.’ (Muller, p. 112).

What grows in time? Relationships, children’s character, citizenship. The average time spent shopping per week by Americans is now 6 hours. The average time spent playing with children per week by American parents is now 40 minutes.

What is the answer? I’m not sure, but I think the church needs to start identifying the idolatry of consumerism. God put us on this earth for something much better than getting and spending, and worrying incessantly about having enough. Fear of not having enough is often a symptom of a deep spiritual emptiness.

I have a new Bible Study that I want to use with an adult group sometime, entitled Living Simply: Studies in learning to live as Jesus did. Its author suggests that when we are too busy, we tend to react to situations instead of acting with foresight and wisdom. He says you will be able to make better choices if you develop the ancient Christian wisdom of inner simplicity, which consists of 3 things basically:

‘ First, it means taking time to reflect on what we believe, and what is truly important in life, so we act from a sense of purpose.

‘ Second, inner simplicity means seeing life through God’s eyes, and deciding what, or more specifically, who we value in life, and what isn’t of ultimate value.

‘ Third, inner simplicity is the place where we find the contentment of a life that is balanced, a place where we consciously decide on a reasonable level of consumerism and rest contented, instead of always thinking we need more. To know contentment, he says, is to find rest

Is it time to make a change in your life? Lent just might be a good time to think about it. Amen.