August 23, 2026

Indianola Presbyterian Church

“The Bell”
Sermon by Rev. Trip Porch 

August 23, 2026                                                                                                                                    Based on Exodus 20:1-11

This spring, a friend invited me to go with him on a silent retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Trappist, Kentucky. Thomas Merton's abbey. It has been on my bucket list ever since I found out it was only fourish hours from Columbus.

I said yes immediately.

Now, when I told people what I was doing, most of them looked at me like I had announced I was running off to join the circus.
Wait. You don't talk?
Silence… For three days?
Yes. That is exactly what it is. 

And in a world where everything is shouting for our attention, where the news wants my outrage and the ads want my money and the apps want my thumb, three days of silence sounded like the best thing anyone had ever offered me.

So I decided to go further. 

If I was going to be silent, I was going to be silent all the way. I turned my phone off and left it in the car. I told Brittany, if you need me, call the abbey. Or call my friend, he'll have his phone.

And friends, it was magical.

I got there and I found I had all this time. 

So much time I didn't know what to do with it. I unpacked my bag. I put my clothes away in the drawers, which, if you know me, is not a thing I do.

I went to dinner. Then I went for a walk, and I sat down on a bench and I just noticed things. The light. The sounds. How much noise there actually is in a place that calls itself silent.

Then my animal brain kicked in and told me I was bored. That I needed something. Anything. A screen, a task, a distraction. That itch you get when your hand goes to your pocket before your mind has even decided to reach for it.

I sat there anyway. And after a while, it passed. I pulled out a book, and I read, and I lost track of time, then the bell rang.

Compline. The last of the seven services of a monk's day. One final prayer before bed. I had never been, and I hurried over.

The abbot began, and the monks stood up and started to chant. They sing the psalms. I stood with them. And I was transfixed. It felt ancient and it felt like mine, my own tradition, and at the same time completely foreign to me. I felt like I was in a trance. I felt like I was reconnecting with God in a way I had not done in a long, long time.

And then I felt a tap on my shoulder.

It was my friend. Holding his phone.

The internet at our house had gone out. Randomly. Hours ago. And it had not come back. And Brittany and the kids had called him three times, because they needed logins and passcodes so that they would not have to spend their own unplanned weekend silent retreat.

So here is what I want you to know. You can be a pastor. You can plan for months. You can drive four hours to a monastery specifically designed, over centuries, for the sole purpose of helping human beings pay attention to God. You can turn your phone off and leave it in a parking lot. And life will still find you. Responsibilities will still find you. The router will still go out.

Which is exactly why God gave us these words.

We're in Exodus 20 this morning, the first part of the Ten Commandments. And before we get into what they say, I want to say something about what they are.

We call them commandments. In Hebrew they are called something a little different. The aseret ha-dibrot. The ten words. The ten utterances. And I love that, because when you actually look at how the tradition counts them, the very first one is not a command at all.

It's this: I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt. Out of the house of slavery.

That's it. That's the first word. No instruction. No requirement. Just God saying who God is and what God has already done.

Which means everything that comes after it stands on that foundation. God does not open with a list of conditions you have to meet before you get to belong. God opens with a rescue that already happened. You are already mine. I already came for you. Now, here is how to live so that you can stay close to me.

Last week we talked about how nineteen comes before twenty. How God builds the relationship first, and then gives the law. This is the same move happening inside the law itself. Grace first. Always grace first.

But why do we need words at all?

If God has already come for us, if the relationship is already secured, why do we need rules and habits and structures to keep us facing in God's direction?

Because human beings drift. That's the whole answer. We drift. It is the oldest story there is. Give us a little time and we will find something else to look at.

And here is the part I want to be honest about. It is usually not sin that pulls us away. Not in the dramatic sense. It's the good stuff. It's the job we care about. It's the kid who needs a ride to practice and then needs help with the homework. It's the friend going through a divorce who calls at nine at night, and you take that call, because that's what love does. It's caring about the world enough to keep reading about it.

The things that crowd God out of our lives are mostly things we would defend in court.

And then there's the other thing. The thing in your pocket right now. The screens in every room and every hand, engineered by some of the smartest people alive for one purpose, which is to take your attention and sell it. That is the actual business model. You are not the customer. Your attention is the product.

The first table of the commandments, the part that's about God, is not protecting God from competition. God does not need protecting. It's protecting you. It's protecting the part of you that can still be still. Because if you spend all of your attention, every day, on things that all have a real claim on you, there will be nothing left over for the One who made you.

So how do we get back?

Let me tell you about the bell.

The monks at Gethsemani gather to pray seven times a day. Some of them have been doing it for fifty years. And they do not do it because they wake up every morning overflowing with spiritual enthusiasm. They do it because a bell rings.

Benedict wrote his Rule for a reason. He wrote it because people drift. Including people who sold everything they owned and moved to a monastery for the express purpose of not drifting. Merton lived in that abbey for twenty seven years and filled journal after journal with complaints about his own scattered mind.

The bell exists because monks forget.

That is what a commandment is. It is not a test of how spiritual you are. It is a bell. It is a structure that carries you on the days when your own good intentions have completely run out. And your good intentions will run out. Mine do, roughly every Thursday.

Which brings us to the fourth word. Remember the Sabbath day and treat it as holy.

One day a week. No work. No output. No producing. Just being. Being a creature, made by a Creator, made good, and worthy of rest without having earned it.

Here in Exodus, the reason given is creation itself. God made the world and then God stopped, and called that stopping holy. Rest is woven into the structure of things. It's not a reward for finishing your list. It was there before there were any lists.

But when this same commandment shows up again in Deuteronomy, God gives a different reason. Remember, God says, that you were a slave in Egypt, and I brought you out.

Think about what that means. This commandment was given to people who had never in their lives had a day off. Pharaoh had no seventh day. Pharaoh had quotas. More bricks, less straw, faster. That's all Egypt was.

And when God sets them free, one of the first things God does is hand them a day when nobody works. Not them. Not their children. Not the people who work for them. Not their animals. Not the immigrant living in their town, which is right there in the text, verse ten.

Sabbath is a weekly declaration that you are not property. That your worth is not your output. And that nobody in your household is a machine either.

So when we skip it, when we fill every hour, we are not just tired. We have gone back to Egypt and taken a job.

Now here is where I want to be careful, because some of you are already doing the math. Some of you work Sundays. Some of you have a newborn. Some of you are caring for a parent who does not know what day it is. Some of you are working two jobs and still coming up short at the end of the month, and the last thing you need is your pastor adding rest to your to-do list.

Hear me. This is not one more thing to fail at.

I did not achieve the perfect unplugged weekend either. I got tapped on the shoulder in the middle of the holiest moment I'd had in years. The interruption came. It always comes.

The commandment is not a standard you clear. It is a rhythm you return to. Over and over. After every interruption.

And let me say what is hopefully obvious, since I've spent twenty minutes talking about silence at a monastery.

You do not need a monastery. You don’t even need silence. Sabbath is about dedicating time to be in God’s presence, no matter how best that suits you.

Sabbath can the garden on a Saturday morning, hands in the dirt, no podcast in your ears. It's a long dinner with people you love, where nobody looks at the time. It's a nap you take without apologizing for it. It's fishing, whether or not you catch anything, which is sort of the point of fishing. It's a walk down in the ravine. It's sitting on the porch watching the neighborhood go by. It's cooking something slow. It's playing an instrument badly in a room by yourself. It's a car ride with the radio off.

Here's the only thing that turns rest into Sabbath. Attention. Rest is what your body needs. Sabbath is rest with God in the room.

So it can happen anywhere. A pew, a porch, a park bench, a kitchen table. Anywhere you stop long enough to remember that you are a creature, made good, and that the world will keep spinning without your help for a couple of hours.

So start small building your own sabbath keeping practice.
Small enough that you could actually begin this week.
One hour. One meal with the phones in a drawer.
One walk without headphones. 

Our Jewish siblings consider the beginning of the day at sundown, which means the day starts with rest and the work follows, rather than rest being the thing you finally collapse into. You could try that. Friday night, sundown, phone off, until dinner is over.

Whatever it is, make it small and make it real.

I keep thinking about sitting on that bench at the beginning of my retreat.
Sitting there with my hand twitching toward a pocket that was empty. Feeling bored. Feeling like I was wasting time.

And then it passed. And I read. And then the bell rang, and I stood up with a room full of men who have been ringing that bell for longer than I have been alive, and for a few minutes I remembered what I was made for.

Life is this rhythm. This ebb and flow of directed purpose, and distraction. Work and rest.
The commandments give us a reminder to bring us back to God’s rhythm.
A bell that rings to remind us to put things down and give our attention to God.
The bell will ring again and again. That's the promise of it.
Every seventh day, the bell rings again, whether you were faithful last week or not.

So when you hear the call…
Come back. Sit down. Let your time be holy. Amen.

WE GATHER IN AWE AND PRAISE

PRELUDE                                     “Welcome, Welcome, Sabbath Morning”                     arr. Anne Britt

WELCOME                                                                    Rev. Trip Porch

One: This is the day that the Lord has made

All: Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

*CALL TO WORSHIP                                                                                 

One: Set the phone face down. Let the notifications wait.

Many: We have come to be here, and nowhere else.

One: God has been speaking all week, under the noise of it.

Many: We have come to listen.

One: The God who made the world stopped on the seventh day and called it holy.

Many: We have come to receive that day as a gift. Let us worship God.

*HYMN 392                                        “Jesu, Tawa Pano”                                         JESUS, TAWA PANO

*PRAYER OF CONFESSION    by Thom Shuman                                         Bob Concitis     

Even with those simple commandments, Eternal Love, we manage to get it wrong. We misuse your name on an almost daily basis, and dishonor our friends and neighbors by talking behind their backs. We hunger for what others have, and think we can put you in a box, storing you away on a shelf. We find little enough time for our families, for ourselves, you - much less setting aside an entire day for that rest you call Sabbath. 

Forgive us, Abiding Love. We think we are so wise with the choices we make, only to end up with all that keeps us from you. Your Word has come, to fill our speech with grace, with hope, with peace. As we journey to Jerusalem, may we invite others to join us as we seek to follow Jesus Christ, our Lord, our Savior.

Silence is kept… 

*ASSURANCE OF PARDON                                                         

*RESPONSE OF PARDON 582 “Glory to God, Whose Goodness Shines on Me” GLORY TO GOD

*PASSING OF THE PEACE                                                               

     One: The peace of Christ be with you!

      All:      And also with you.

WE LISTEN FOR GOD’S WORD

MUSICAL OFFERING                 O Rest in the Lord” from Elijah                           Felix Mendelssohn

                                                                              Betsy Tullis, soloist                                                                                               

CHILDREN’S MESSAGE                                                                 Robin Murray

PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION                                                                    

SCRIPTURE   Exodus 20:1-11   The VOICE

Then God began to speak directly to all the people.
“I am the Eternal your God. I led you out of Egypt and liberated you from lives of slavery and oppression.

You are not to serve any other gods before Me.

You are not to make any idol of other gods. In fact, you are not to make an idol of anything in the heavens above, on the earth below, or in the waters beneath. You are not to bow down and serve any image, for I, the Eternal your God, am a jealous God. As for those who are not loyal to Me, their children will endure the consequences of their sins for three or four generations. But for those who love Me and keep My directives, their children will experience My loyal love for a thousand generations.

You are not to use My name for your own idle purposes, for the Eternal will punish anyone who treats His name as anything less than sacred.

You and your family are to remember the Sabbath Day; set it apart, and keep it holy. You have six days to do all your work, but the seventh day is to be different; it is the Sabbath of the Eternal your God. Keep it holy by not doing any work—not you, your sons, your daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, or any outsiders living among you. For the Eternal made the heavens above, the earth below, the seas, and all the creatures in them in six days. Then, on the seventh day, He rested. That is why He blessed the Sabbath Day and made it sacred.”

One: Holy wisdom, Holy Word,

All: Thanks be to God

SERMON                                                                            Rev. Trip Porch                 

WE RESPOND TO GOD’S WORD

*HYMN 393                                       “O Day of Rest and Gladness”       ES FLOG EIN KLEINS WALDVÖGELEN 

PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE  followed by the Lord’s Prayer using debts and debtors.

TIME OF OFFERING   online giving is available at  www. indianolapres.org/give

OFFERTORY                        “Sarabande” from French Suite No. 6 in E Major, BWV 817                    J.S. Bach

*OFFERTORY RESPONSE  709              “God, We Honor You”                                    ABUNDANT BLESSINGS

*PRAYER OF DEDICATION

Generous God, everything we offer began as a gift from you. You gave first. You always do. Take what we bring and turn it into love our neighbors can feel: food, welcome, justice, rest. We give because you first gave to us. Amen.

*HYMN 81                             “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken”                               AUSTRIAN HYMN

BLESSEING OF DEPARTING MEMBERS 

Faithful God, keep, preserve, and protect Elena and Brian throughout all their days.

By the power of your Holy Spirit, make them salt of the earth and light for the world as they settle into their new community in Santa Barbara. Lead them to new ministries, secure in the faith that binds us forever in the body of Christ. Amen.

TIME OF COMMUNITY SHARING

CHARGE & BENEDICTION                                                                                                  

POSTLUDE                                 “O Day of Rest and Gladness”                                               arr. Mark Rippe

 Acknowledgments: Unless otherwise indicated, all texts and music are printed and broadcast under OneLicense.net license #A-702452