Preached · October 15, 2023
Series · Holy Habits
My Worst Boss
Let me tell you about the worst boss I've ever had. I've been in paid professional ministry for about 13, 14 years, and I did ministry on a volunteer basis before that. So I've worked under a lot of pastors and ministry directors. And I'm going to throw one under the bus today.
This worst boss I've ever had—whenever I went on vacation, they would insist, they would nag me: check your email, always be available at all times, have your phone with you. That's what pastors need to do. They would have me set goals, and then I would achieve that goal, and the first question out of their mouth was, "Why didn't you surpass the goal?" Really discouraging stuff. I would go on vacation, and they would ask, "Are you sure that's a good idea? There's about a hundred more things that you could do." I would show up early, and they would be there already, and they'd be like, "Oh, how nice of you to show up." And then if I stayed late, they'd be there saying, "Hey, why aren't you spending more time with your family?" If I wanted to start a new project, they would interject with, "Why do you think that's a good idea? Why do you think you're the one to do it? There's probably someone more capable than you." If I tried to move a responsibility off my plate, that boss would be like, "Oh, you think you're too good for this? No job is beneath you. You're a pastor. You've got to be willing to do any job."
I could not win with this boss. And in fact, I still can't, because that boss is me. That boss is the inner monologue that's lived in my head for a very long time—about how I'm not quite good enough, could always be doing more, probably need to be checking the email more often, probably should feel bad about checking the email that often, probably need to spend more time at work and more time with family. We have this inner monologue that tells me: keep working, keep plugging ahead, never stop.
And I bring up this terrible boss inside of me because it's a boss that I think prevents me—and I dare say maybe quite a few of us—from engaging in things like restorative play.
Restorative Play
We've talked about Sabbath and rest a couple times already in my few years here at the Table. And in one of those conversations, I was talking with a small group of people. And almost to a person, as we talked about Sabbath and rest and play and taking breaks, every one of them said that just the idea of taking a break brought up anxiety within them. If I stop, if I put aside the work for a moment—whatever the work was—things might fall apart. Or if I stay still for too long, I just get antsy inside.
And I can relate to this. I just came back from a sabbatical this summer. I was off for the better part of June, July, August. That first month of sabbatical, I felt that anxious energy of "I need to be doing something." I wrote about this a little bit—that first month, I was cataloging every book in my library. And I was starting a newsletter. And I was taking everything that I had written from high school through grad school and putting it in a searchable database, because that was a good use of my time, apparently. I just felt this need to keep going.
So oftentimes, when we talk about Sabbath and rest, at least with some of the folks I've met here, it brings up this sense of: there's too much to do, the balls will drop, sitting around doing nothing sounds terrible. And words like Sabbath and rest can feel kind of passive to, honestly, a group of activists and justice seekers, folks who want to get stuff done.
Now, Sabbath and rest are not meant to be entirely passive—though a conversation for a different day is that maybe there's nothing terrible about passivity, but we'll talk about that some other time. Sabbath and rest are meant to be about engaging our souls and our bodies in ways detached from productivity, from producing something. Sabbath and rest are meant to be about reminding our humanity that we have value outside of what we get done.
And therefore, the value that we wanted to name as a church, as a community—that I think is both true of us, at least has been at times, but I feel like maybe one of the more aspirational values—is the idea of restorative play.
Now, kids get play. My kids will ask all the time for playdates. "Hey, can so-and-so come over and play?" We set playdates. We go to playgrounds. They ask mom and dad, "Can you play with me?" And grown-ups are not wired for this anymore. We're far too serious for play. We have work sessions and stand-up meetings and work lunches and work trips and corporate accounts. And if, at the end of the service, I were to say to one of you, "Hey, do you want to come over and play?"—you'd probably slap me and/or sue me. It's just a weird thing to say to a fellow adult.
Industrialization, the increase in technology—all of this had this promise that we would have more leisure time. It used to be that the way you could tell a "successful" society from a not-so-successful society was the number of people and the number of hours that they had for leisure, for rest, for play. But as more people moved to the city and fewer people were attached to the agricultural calendar, as industry grew more efficient, we were promised an age of relaxation. And instead we got an age of more and more demand for productivity. The number of total hours any given person has for leisure has dropped over the decades. Americans have around 15 hours of leisure per week. And the number of hours each person works in a week has only gone up since the '70s, hovering around an average of 55 hours. And the younger you are—congratulations—the more hours per week you generally put in.
Part of it is that we may have some terrible bosses, either real-life ones or internal ones. But the fact of the matter is, play, rest, restoration—it's necessary. It's a necessary part of being human. It's a necessary part of actually contributing to a community. And it is following in the path of Jesus and the way that God has set out for us.
How Play Shapes the Brain
A couple things about how play shapes the brain. Play is critical not only to being happy, but also to sustaining social relationships and being a creative, innovative person. When the expectation is that you just produce or create or make all the time, and there's never any margin for rest or play, you're diminishing your ability to be creative and productive and to sustain social relationships.
Play is a catalyst. The benefits of getting just a little true play can spread out through your entire life, actually making us more productive and happier. Play speeds up learning. It enhances productivity. It increases job satisfaction. It increases bonding and communication. Playfulness reduces stress. It increases coping skills. It attracts romantic partners.
But play is not just a tool to become a more useful cog in the machine of society. Play is what it means to be in the imago Dei, the image of God. There are verses in Proverbs and Job where God creates out of just pleasure, out of the desire to be playful. It's part of what it means to not just be a machine.
Gillian Lynne
There's a story of a young woman growing up in 1930s London. This young woman was always doing terribly in school. She was fidgeting. She never paid attention. People today would probably diagnose or label her with something like ADHD, although that diagnosis wasn't available at the time. Instead, school officials told this young woman's parents that she was mentally disabled.
So the mother took her daughter to see a specialist, to talk to the girl about school while the girl sat on her hands, trying not to fidget. After about 20 minutes, the doctor asked to speak to her mother alone in the hallway. As they were leaving the office, the doctor flipped on the little radio so there would be music in the room for the girl. And when the doctor and the mom were in the hallway, the doctor pointed through the little window back into the office and said, "Look, your daughter is not sick." Because the little girl had gotten up and started to dance with the music. "Your daughter is not sick. She's a dancer."
And that young girl, her name was Gillian Lynne, who went on to become the principal dancer in the Royal Ballet and eventually a West End choreographer. The things inside of us—that once wanted playdates and playgrounds as a kid—eventually get squeezed out through the process of higher education and the need to get a job and make a paycheck. And so we're either diagnosable, or it's just this thing that sits at rest inside of us but is not allowed to come out anymore.
What This Has to Do with Scripture
Now, what on earth does this have to do with Scripture and with being a Christian community?
Well, to begin with, in the very first story of Scripture—Genesis 1 into the first couple of verses of Genesis 2—you have a story about God creating and then resting. A story about God engaging in rhythms of making, and also giving creation the ability to create itself. And then on the seventh day, God was finished with his work and he rested. It's this fundamental story, set at the very first verses of Scripture, that even the Creator of all the cosmos, all the universe, desires, wants, needs rest.
You see this pattern set up throughout the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures, where this is meant to be the rhythm of all of society—there are times for resting and there's a time for work. And notice that the very first day the human is alive is a day where God says, "Now rest." You are created, I have breathed life into you, I have given you a job to attend to creation, and day one of the job is rest. So this notion of not working so that you can rest, but rest comes first and then the work comes out of the rest. And then there are larger rhythms as well: every seven years letting the ground lie fallow in an agricultural society; every 49 years releasing debts. All of that is set out in the Hebrew Scriptures.
Mark chapter 6. The apostles—the twelve—have been sent out on a mission of discipleship, of telling people the good news about the kingdom that is coming to earth. And then the disciples come back. This is Mark 6, verse 30:
They gathered around Jesus and began to tell him all that they had done and taught. And because so many people were coming and going, they didn't even have a chance to eat. Jesus says to them, "Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest."
So here's Jesus, who may have some notion that he's got a limited time on earth. He's got his disciples, who have a limited time on earth. They're doing what is probably the most important thing that could possibly be done—announcing the coming of the kingdom of God. And Jesus says, "Come away with me to a quiet place and get some rest." They go on a retreat.
So many of Jesus' ministries, so much of the Jesus story, is about Jesus just relaxing. As Jesus was walking along the sea, such and such a thing happened. As Jesus was lounging and eating with some friends, such and such a thing happened. The very first miracle of Jesus is making 500 gallons of wine so the wedding party can keep raging on into the day and night. Jesus knew something about what it meant to play. And of course, we read the stories in the Gospels about all the other stuff, and we skip over these: "And then Jesus took his disciples to a quiet place to get away." "And then Jesus went to a quiet place and rested," or prayed, or was alone, or was with some good friends.
Paul picks up on some of these themes in Colossians chapter 1. This is the Message translation; I like the powerful way this translation puts it. Paul's talking about the ways that the church in Colossae, out of a desire to be holy and pure, have created all these tenets of a religion that Paul doesn't recognize. And so Paul says:
So then, if with Christ you've put all that pretentious and infantile religion behind you, why do you let yourselves be bullied by it? "Don't touch this! Don't taste that! Don't go near this!" Do you think that things that are here today and gone tomorrow are worth that kind of attention? Such things sound impressive if said in a deep enough voice. They even give the illusion of being pious and humble and ascetic. But they're just another way of showing off and making yourselves look important.
I don't know if you're anything like me. I've definitely been in religious circles that create lots of rules about what you can and cannot do—the music you can listen to or not, the movies you can see or not. You know the phrase, "Don't drink, don't chew, don't go with girls who do." And it's all done out of a desire to be pious. It's that inner boss again. You don't want to be seen, you don't want to be noticed doing the wrong thing, don't even want the impression of being evil. And Paul's like, you're sucking the joy right out of your relationship with Christ, because you're granting power to things that have no power. So this pious asceticism that says there are all these things you cannot touch, ways that you cannot play, ways that you cannot waste your time—that form of religiosity will kill you from the inside out.
It's important to bring up at this moment the restorative part of restorative play. If you're anything like me, you're lying in bed or on the couch and you're flipping through TikTok. And you'll see the most hilarious comedian that you've ever seen, and it will get this from you: the little nasal exhale of laughter. "That's hilarious." Flip. There's not much restorative about that. The intention of what that comedian is doing—creating laughter—is being filtered through a thousand layers of dissociation, so that the thing that is meant to make you laugh in community with others gets the nasal exhale, and that's it.
Restorative play does require some intention. It's hard to accident your way into restorative play, because it means you have to create the margin. You have to push things out of the way. You have to be willing to say no to the nasty boss inside your head or in the glass office. You have to be willing to say no to all the distractions that want you just dissociating on a couch, and rather say, "I choose to spend my time to play in this way." There are a lot of pressures in our society that want to make those choices for you, so that you don't actually get any restoration out of the play, and the play turns into work again.
My rubric for this: it's restorative if you feel better afterwards, and it's dissociation if you don't. If you've got an hour-long TikTok session, and that's how you intended to spend your hour, and you feel better—great. If you've got an hour-long TikTok session and you just kind of feel like crap afterwards, it might be time to question whether that was the best use of your time. Was that restorative or not?
Another scripture—one that goes in my list of scriptures that I could just about quote every single sermon. This is Matthew 11, verses 28 through 30:
Are you tired, worn out, burned out on religion? [This is Jesus talking.] 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 and watch how I do it. [And this is Eugene Peterson's translation, and this is what makes Eugene Peterson the rock star.] 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.
Let me read that again without the interruptions:
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.
Life with Jesus should feel like freedom. And if it does not feel like freedom, I'm pretty sure it's not Jesus. So these unforced rhythms of grace cannot demand that you work yourself to the bone, even in the name of something great.
Values That Work Together
And that's why these values, these holy habits, interweave together. If you want radical friendship, then you're going to need some curiosity toward the other people in your life. And that curiosity works really well with restorative play, because curiosity and playfulness go really well together in terms of learning. And learning and curiosity and playfulness are what we need for revolutionary justice—to recognize what is right in the world and what is wrong in the world, and to gather with some friends and have some time together, so that then we can enter into the world that desperately needs a word of hope and a word of freedom, and restore something worthwhile in this broken, dark world.
You need all of these to mix together, because if all you focus on is radical friendship, there's a lot of suffering people who need radical friends that you're just going to ignore. If all you focus on is justice, you're going to wear yourself to the bone noticing everything wrong with the world, and then exhaust yourself and burn yourself out and do no one any earthly good anymore, because you died at the tender age of 22 wondering how you can fix everything. And if all you focus on is restorative play, that can go awry as well. These all have to work together, and we all need to hold each other accountable: Have you rested recently? Have you made a move toward friendship recently? Have you shown any curiosity recently? Have you improvised—left the plan behind so that you can embark on something new? We need that mutual invitation in each other's lives so that we can flourish together.
So life with Jesus should look like freedom—those unforced rhythms of grace—and then that freedom should lead to mutual thriving. If your freedom comes at the cost of someone else's slavery, you ain't living in freedom. If your freedom comes at the cost of somebody else's suffering, you're not living in freedom. Freedom needs to lead to mutual thriving together. So those unforced rhythms of grace are not merely an invitation to you; it's an invitation to the broader community. And so restorative play is not just you on a getaway alone somewhere. Maybe every so often you'll need that. But if that's all it ever is, then you're forsaking the mutual thriving of the community, of the city, of the neighborhood.
So these values work together. Friendship needs curiosity, which can accomplish justice. To accomplish justice, we'll need friends. We'll need margin to rest and to play. We'll need to be adaptable. We'll need to learn how to improvise. We'll need friends to help us. We'll need to be able to play and laugh at ourselves.
Invitation and Challenge
So my invitation and my challenge for you this week is: one, if you have an inner boss that's awful toward you, fire them. Fire the inner boss that says you do not have permission to rest or play, that it's a waste of your time, all that anxiety that builds up when you dare to sit back for a moment. Fire that boss if at all possible.
And then, the invitation and challenge to quit something. To say no. The ability to have restorative play in your life means you've got to be able to say no to things and to build margin, so that then you can give your best yes to what matters and what counts. So you fire the inner boss that's telling you that you can't do this, and then you quit something so that you can say yes to something better.
Prayer
Would you pray with me?
Triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit, Mother of us all—you, in the very first pages of Scripture, show us the way. You give us the gift of creation, the gift of community, the gift of people, the gift of being made in your image. And the image of God is invited to rest. And so, God, may we not forsake those commands. May we not pretend that rest and Sabbath and play are just frivolous extras, but rather core and integral to what it means to be human and what it means to be a community patterned after the way of Jesus.
God, we pray that you would grant us the margin, the time, and the moments to reclaim, so that we can have friends, we can play games, we can laugh with our whole bodies—our whole diaphragms engaged, and not just little nasal exhales. God, we all know that this world throws at us constant, continual turmoil—hard things, tragedies in our own lives and the lives of our friends and family and our neighbors in this city and across the world. God, may we not believe the lie that the solution to tragedy is to burn ourselves out. May we not believe the deception that in order to be the most on fire, the most on purpose, the most productive we can be, we have to say no to every opportunity to rest. God, may we trust instead that when you invite us to get away with you and to rest, you will care for all things—that you are God, and we are not.
This is a transcript of the sermon as preached, lightly edited for readability.
