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Commentary
COMMENTARY: Leave some work undone Eric Van Meter, Jul 21, 2010
Eric Van Meter
By Eric Van Meter Special Contributor
Sometimes less is more. At least when it comes to pitching.
Every summer as I begin my spiritual discipline of listening to baseball games, I hear the debut performances of major league players who usually take a while to adjust to the big stage.
This is especially true of pitchers. They tense up. They try too hard. They grip the ball too tightly and forget the mechanics to make it dip and swerve. In baseball lingo, they overthrow.
Fueled by competition and amped up on adrenaline, pitchers rare back and fling the ball toward home plate as hard as they can. Instead of traveling at 88 mph, the ball might come in at 92 mph.
Logic says that the faster a ball travels, the harder it will be to hit. But that’s misleading. Big league hitters can handle speed. What they find more difficult is the unexpected movement a pitcher loses when he overthrows.
A good pitcher should be able to use the laws of aerodynamics to make a baseball change its arc as it approaches a hitter. By trying to throw harder, he may get lax in his stride or arm angle, and the ball will not move as it reaches the catcher. In fact, it will probably not reach the catcher at all, unless he happens to be in the left field bleachers.
Less velocity in pitching sometimes equals more movement. I suspect we might find the same to be true in church, were we ever to slow down enough to ponder it.
Overworking habit
A recent e-mail from a colleague made me wonder about the pace of church life. She was quite upset after hearing that campus ministers get a break after the spring semester. She assumed we need to defend ourselves against perceived laziness—to make it known that we work as hard as any other pastors.
We campus ministers often hear suggestions that we should grow up and be real pastors. Most of the time, it’s good-natured kidding, yet it still communicates the assumption that real ministry only happens in a local church.
But so many of my clergy colleagues have an indefensible habit of overworking. They miss watching their kids grow up. They get ulcers or develop heart problems. They drive up our insurance premiums and too often die younger than necessary.
As pastors, our ministry suffers when our lives stretch too thin. We are no longer the witnesses that Irenaeus or Wesley insisted upon. Instead we become shallow lakes, superficially stretched over vast expanses.
To make matters worse, we aren’t quite sure how to remedy this. When our ministries grow thin, we search not for rest, but for better tools. We read books and attend conferences. We reach back for a little extra so that we can keep up with the fast-paced needs of our congregations.
In short, we overthrow. And so do our faith communities.
Sabbath needed
We want very much to be faithful servants. We want good numbers in those areas our church bureaucracy values: attendance, financial giving and facilities. But we also want things that are not the hallmarks of American success—justice, service and love.
How do you retain your stamina under the constant demands of serving people in Jesus’ name? How do you work until the job is finished, when your job has no end?
The short answer from Exodus is that you stop to rest, like it or not. You leave your work undone and give yourself over to Sabbath.
Sabbath offers the cure for overthrowing. Sabbath doesn’t say, “Dig deep and find that extra energy.” Rather, Sabbath says, “Take a break. Relax. There will be time enough.”
Sabbath does not come easy for most of us. How do we rest when our desks are piled six projects deep and the grass on the lawn is ankle high? How do we resist over-programming on the one day where there is little competition?
Sadly, most of us can’t resist these temptations. We continue our frantic pace even on the Christian Sabbath, and tell ourselves it’s all OK as long as we mention God in our running.
Ironically, we use Jesus’ behavior on the Sabbath to justify ourselves. After all, he broke all kinds of Pharisaical rules about the seventh day—from healing the sick to picking grain. Shouldn’t we follow Jesus’ example?
Well, yes. Except we misunderstand the example he set.
First, Jesus is correcting a different set of problems related to Sabbath. He speaks out against the compulsive legalism that sucks joy and life out of rest. He makes Sabbath less an obligation to God and more a gift to those who want to live in rhythm with God.
Second, Jesus actually does keep the Sabbath himself. He emphasizes the goodness and necessity of Torah. He redirects some of the teaching about Sabbath, but he never suggests we should do away with it. Just because he rested in a different way than the Pharisees doesn’t mean he never rested at all.
Yet we disregard the Sabbath without thought or guilt. We busy ourselves with activity, all the while shushing the little voice inside that warns we are becoming less and less like the one we profess to emulate.
Our addiction to activity will be difficult to break. Still, we have to learn to rest. We have to teach ourselves not to overthrow, lest we end up with all velocity and no movement, and results that don’t matter in the end.
The Rev. Van Meter is director of the Wesley Foundation at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Ark.
Eric Van Meter
