Scripture: Mark 16:1-8
Sermon: Why Sunday?
Sunday is not the sabbath day of rest commanded in Ex 20 and Deut. 5. The "seventh day" -- the day to rest in God's good creation of all that is, and to remember God frees us of our enslavements -- is Saturday, and well into the fourth century Christians kept the Saturday Sabbath along with our Jewish brothers and sisters.
But Sunday also became a holy day to Christians because it is the day of Jesus's resurrection -- hence their reference to it as "the Lord's Day." In the Gospel stories (Mk. 16:1-8; Mt. 28:1-10; Lk. 24:1-12, 13-53; John 20:1-23, 26-29) it's Sunday when Jesus's followers see the emptied tomb and the risen Jesus appears among them -- helping them understand the Scriptures, breaking bread with them, speaking peace, and promising them power as witnesses to God's kingdom in the world. As they start a new week and they prepare to get back to their work-a-day lives, the risen Jesus appears in their gathering to help them see that life and the world are now different, that a new power of life is at work in the world, and that they carry it within them.
Christians continued to gather on Sundays, even though many also continued to keep the Saturday Sabbath. And because it was not a civic day of rest until 321 C.E. (under the Emperor Constantine), they gathered probably early in the morning before beginning work -- to read Scripture, break bread and give thanks -- all in the expectation that the risen Jesus would be in their midst, giving them what they needed to truly be God's people and the body of Christ in their work and in the world's life in the week ahead.
This Sunday we meet one last time with the folks of Wesley United for shared worship, before getting back to our own buildings and work for the fall. We'll read Scripture, break bread and give thanks. And one of the hymns Karen has picked for us is "Jesus, Stand Among Us."
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Sermon from August 25, 2013
This week, I was
watching the trailer for a film being shown next month as part of the Art
Gallery of Hamilton World Film Festival.
The film is titled BridgeWalkers, and it’s about indigenous leaders
around the world who gather to share the sacred knowledge of their people to
help us reconnect with Earth, the Creator and our own deepest hearts. They share their wisdom, their prophecies and
their ceremonies because, as one of the elders – Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, an
Inuit shaman from Greenland, explains, “we know from our ceremony what is going
to happen if only people would listen. The
gift of the red man [and others who still listen to spiritual ceremony] is a
vision that could unite [hu]mankind, to lay the foundation for the new life
that was prophesied and has arrived.”
It’s in ancient
and traditional ceremony with its rites, teachings, wisdom, and prophecies,
that the key to the future is held, that men and women learn how best to live
in the world, that the human heart is opened to the Higher Power, the Divine
Presence, the Word and Spirit of God.
Indigenous people
know this on a global scale. They also
know it on an individual, personal level.
Years ago I heard that the renewal and resurrection of the First Nations
people in Western Canada has been due in part to their high rate of
incarceration in our country’s prisons.
Not that our prison system is designed for spiritual rehabilitation, but
the native community in Western Canada committed itself to providing First
Nations’ elders and teachers to the prison population, and it’s been in prison
that many First Nations’ people have been re-introduced to the traditional
ceremonies, teachings and wisdom. And
it’s helped them find wholeness and a level of spiritual life they didn’t know
before they went in.
I wonder if Jesus
found and gained the same thing when he gathered in the synagogue to share the
rituals, the rites and the ancient teachings of his people. At the heart of synagogue worship was the
reading and veneration of the Word of God handed down among the people from
generation to generation. And the
reading of the Word was surrounded by interpretation of its meaning, prayers
for its fulfillment, and ritual to bring it and the people to life in the way God
intended them to be.
In the midst of
whatever life might be at the moment, whatever state the world might be in, and
whatever the world might be asking them to become – in the synagogue the people
of God gather to recite the One Holy story still unfolding, to remember the vision
of the world that is and will be, and to pray for the power of the future
now. It’s the vision and promise of a
healed and reconciled world, where sickness does not destroy, where community is
not be divided into clean and unclean, where none are excluded or devalued.
And this is what
then comes to be in Jesus. He hears it remembered
and sees it acted out in the sabbath rites, and then he acts it out and
performs it both inside and outside the
synagogue, both in the holy gathering and later in the home of one his friends’
mother-in-law. And as it says in the
reading, “at once his fame begins to spread throughout the surrounding region
of Galilee.” In the words of the Inuit
shaman, Jesus acts out “the vision that can unite [hu]mankind, to lay the
foundation for the new life that was prophesied and has arrived” – what Jesus
calls “the kingdom of God.”
And what about
us? Is it this way for us and among us
as well?
When I studied
theology a generation ago one of the images of worship I learned, is that
worship is a dress rehearsal – or even a little production of life in heaven, and
of the kingdom of God on earth. And
isn’t that true?
Think of the
image in Isaiah 6 of angels around the throne in the temple of God, high and
lifted up. Each angel has 6 wings – with
2 they cover their faces (because who can behold God and live?), with 2 they
cover their feet (because whose walk in life is clean enough to be worthy of
God), and with 2 they fly (because who lives all the time in God’s presence). And they call out to one another, “Holy,
holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of God’s glory” – the
first three words of which are the title of the hymn we used to sing every
Sunday. Isn’t this a description of what
we do when we gather here?
Think of our current
liturgy. We begin with a time and with
words of gratitude for God’s goodness and love.
Then we pray for openness to see ourselves and our world with clarity
and honesty. We take time to reflect on our life of the
past week -- giving thanks for times we were close to God, asking forgiveness
for times we were distant. Then knowing
God’s love and mercy, we offer one another assurances of the peace of Christ,
and take time to open ourselves to what God may want us to know and commit to
for the week ahead.
It’s simple. We do it every week. And isn’t it our way of living out the drama
of heaven and the kingdom of God on earth?
At its best the church’s worship is rich and poor, men and women and
children, young and old, straight and gay, black and white, strong and weak, even
believers and semi-believers – all together through ceremony and teachings and
rituals and ancient wisdom, finding our place again and again in the story of
the world as it is, and as it will be in God’s good will.
Is this, though,
what our worship is about? Is this what
it does for us?
I think our
reading this morning gives us a couple of questions to help us in this
direction. They come from what we see in
Jesus, and how he conducts himself in the synagogue. The questions have to do with the variety of
voices that can be heard, and how Jesus chooses to listen to them.
On one hand,
there are at least three familiar voices that are easy to hear. There’s the voice of tradition, traditional
piety, and the rules associated with it; this is the voice of the Pharisees,
who know what’s been done in the past to keep the tradition alive, and who
think they know what should always be done and not done. There’s the voice of common sense and of
consequence which in this case is the voice of the demons; the little powers of
this world that can capture our hearts, dominate our lives, and make us afraid
of anything unsettling or liberating.
And there’s the voice of self-centredness – in this case, the voice of
Jesus’ disciples and the townspeople who want Jesus to stay just with them and
relieve them of all their problems – be our messiah, and only ours, they say.
On one level all
three of these voices are true and worth listening. It is important to know how to keep the
tradition alive, and to keep the rites and ceremonies true to their ancient
roots. It is true as well that when the
power of God is unleashed, it is unsettling to the order we know and are
familiar with. It’s also true that we
want to be healed ourselves, that the kingdom of God starts at home, and that
we can’t really bear witness to God’s healing and reconciling power if we don’t
experience it ourselves.
But Jesus puts
all these voices in their proper place.
Without denying or disputing what they say, he also knows they are not
the only voices to be heard. Although
true, none of them tell the whole truth.
Even together, they do not tell the whole story.
To get the whole
story, there are two other voices Jesus opens his ears and his heart to. One is the voice of those in the world who
suffer – in this case, the man held in the power of a demon of his time,
Peter’s mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever, the people of the town who
crowd around the house that evening with all their diseases and demons, and
then the next morning in prayer, all the people in sorrow in all the other villages
and countryside of Galilee. That’s one
voice Jesus listens deeply for.
The other is the
voice of God – God’s Spirit of life, God’s Word of reconciliation and healing,
God’s vision and desire for what the world is created to be. Jesus listens intently for this voice as well,
because it isn’t always the same – doesn’t always say the same things as the voice
of tradition, of common sense, or of personal need.
And it’s hard to
know which he listens for harder and more deeply – the voice of the world’s
suffering and sorrowful, or the voice of God’s promise and power. Maybe, with Jesus, they just always go
together.
Whatever the
case, though, two questions to check our own practice of worship are quite
simple.
One: when we
gather in worship, do we put into proper perspective and into their proper
place the voices of tradition, of common sense, and of self-centredness?
And two: do we listen especially hard and deeply for
the voices of the world’s suffering and sorrow, and of God, so we too grow into
a vision that can unite humankind towards new life in the world … so we too feel
the Spirit of God renewed in us …so we too find ourselves learning the lines of
the kingdom of God on Earth that the world longs to hear us speaking and acting
out?
Monday, August 19, 2013
Towards Sunday, August 25, 2013
Scripture: Mark 1:21-39
Sermon: Sabbath -- Saying Yes and No
One Sabbath in Capernaum Jesus heals two people (and breaks a number of Sabbath and purity laws in the process). That night (when the Sabbath is over, probably because they don't want to break any Sabbath laws and have the Pharisees mad at them, too) the people of the town crowd around the house where he is, with their ailments and their ailing, and Jesus heals them all. Their ailments set them apart, make them seem cursed by God, and make them less-than-equal to other members of the community (do we still treat any classes of people this way today?), and Jesus sets them free to be part of the kingdom of God that he says is now. Then, the next day, after spending time in prayer, although there are still more people to be healed, Jesus leaves town.
Two things stand out for me in this story. One is the Sabbath and the way it seems to bring out the devil in Jesus. The Gospel tells story after story about Jesus and the Pharisees being at loggerheads about how best to keep Sabbath with God. It's how it all starts, and remains such a running battle all the way through to the bitter end (and we know who holds the power in that dispute.)
The other is the way Jesus doesn't seem to listen. Just think of all the voices Jesus doesn't heed -- sometimes doesn't even allow to speak, in this story:
Does keeping Sabbath help open Jesus to listen to other voices? If so, what are they?
And does this have any effect on what Sabbath is for us?
Sermon: Sabbath -- Saying Yes and No
One Sabbath in Capernaum Jesus heals two people (and breaks a number of Sabbath and purity laws in the process). That night (when the Sabbath is over, probably because they don't want to break any Sabbath laws and have the Pharisees mad at them, too) the people of the town crowd around the house where he is, with their ailments and their ailing, and Jesus heals them all. Their ailments set them apart, make them seem cursed by God, and make them less-than-equal to other members of the community (do we still treat any classes of people this way today?), and Jesus sets them free to be part of the kingdom of God that he says is now. Then, the next day, after spending time in prayer, although there are still more people to be healed, Jesus leaves town.
Two things stand out for me in this story. One is the Sabbath and the way it seems to bring out the devil in Jesus. The Gospel tells story after story about Jesus and the Pharisees being at loggerheads about how best to keep Sabbath with God. It's how it all starts, and remains such a running battle all the way through to the bitter end (and we know who holds the power in that dispute.)
The other is the way Jesus doesn't seem to listen. Just think of all the voices Jesus doesn't heed -- sometimes doesn't even allow to speak, in this story:
- the Pharisees and other traditionalists, and their understanding (which most people happily accept) of how best to honour God on the Sabbath
- the demons of his time (whose "common sense" he knows, from his own 40 days in the wilderness, can be very persuasive)
- his own disciples who simply want him to go back to where he was, to satisfy the people's desire for more healing -- and what can be wrong with that?
Does keeping Sabbath help open Jesus to listen to other voices? If so, what are they?
And does this have any effect on what Sabbath is for us?
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Sermon from Sunday, August 18, 2013
Scripture: Mark 2:23 – 3:6
Sermon: Sabbath – celebrating the presence of God
Catholics know
it. Every time they gather for Mass with
a priest who knows how to do the rite of the eucharist correctly, their
theology and their faith experience make it possible for them to know the Real
Presence of Christ in their worship.
Eastern Orthodox
know it. When they meet for holy worship
everything about their sanctuary and their style or worship – the gold and
silver, the candlelight and sunlight, the statues and icons and paintings, the
incense and the chanting and the ritual – all combine to let them know that in worship
they are in the anteroom of heaven, touching the very hem of the glory of the
God of all heaven and earth.
Pentecostals know
it. In the way they create a space of
freedom for uninhibited speech, movement, action and song, in their worship
they are able to know the movement and vitality of holy Spirit in their midst.
Quakers know the
same thing in a different way. Learning
to be at rest in body and mind, in quietness they bring to silence the chatter
of the human heart with all its thoughts and opinions and agendas, until one or
two, maybe three are able to bring to humble voice something of the Word and
Wisdom of the eternal God for that moment in their life.
Jesus knows it,
too. In the synagogue on a sabbath with
others to pray and hear the Word of God, he knows the Word as something that
God is speaking in the present moment, knows Spirit as something filling the place
where he is, knows God as alive and active right where they are for the sake of
healing and making whole, forgiving and setting free, calling and empowering
for kingdom life in the world.
And it scares the
heck out of the Pharisees, because this is not what they have been trained
for. They have been trained to read the
Scriptures and interpret them to the people.
They have been educated to know the tradition, and help the people carry
it on. They are practiced in following
the law, and helping the people do the same as much as they can.
For the
Pharisees, the presence of God is mostly past and future. In days of old, God acted in great and
marvelous ways to save our ancestors and make us a people. In days to come God will act again and we
pray for the day to come; we fervently long for it. And to help in its coming, in the present
moment we do what we can to be faithful to the tradition, to keep it alive, and
keep it pure.
That concern for
the purity of the tradition is why in the story we’ve read today Jesus doesn’t
do anything to heal the man with a withered hand. He knows the Pharisees’ concern not to break
the law about not doing any work on the sabbath. Keeping sabbath is one of the things that
sets the people of God apart from the rest of the world. It’s central to being a Jew, so the Pharisees
are very fussy about it.
Jesus isn’t very happy,
though, with the way they go about it. Verse
5 says he looks at the Pharisees in anger for the way they understand the
sabbath and what God desires. It also
says he feels sorry for them, that he grieves their hardness of heart and the
way it limits what they can accept and be open to.
But aware of what
they feel, and not wanting to cause offence about the wrong thing, he simply
speaks two words of command to the man – first, to come forward and stand in
front of everyone in the synagogue (nothing wrong with that), and then to
stretch out his hand (nothing wrong with that).
The problem for
the Pharisees is that when the man stretches out his hand, his withered arm is
no longer withered. It’s healed. Jesus has not touched him, massaged his arm,
lifted him up, put paste on his arm or done any of the things often done in
acts of healing. It’s not Jesus but God
who has done this thing. It’s
God who is in their midst and doing great and marvelous things to heal and save
in the present moment.
And this is not
something they’re ready for, not something they’re trained to manage, not
something within their control. So they decide
pretty quickly to put a stop to it.
Which brings us
to the question of us, and how we prepare for and respond to God’s presence in our
worship – of whether the God we know in worship is God of past and future, or
God who is moving and doing great things here and now in our church and in the
world in the present moment?
Sometimes we’re
anxious about the future of the church, and I wonder if our anxiety makes us
think maybe God isn’t here, or makes us forget to focus on how God is present. We focus instead on things like finances and
membership and programs and trends in society.
But while it’s good that we talk about these things, and about what we
need to learn, and how maybe we need to change and grow into something new as a
church, do these things and our need to change and to grow mean that God is not
here right now?
A few weeks ago
Gary Patterson, our church’s moderator, was at a gathering in Naramata at which
the precarious future of the church as we know it was being considered. In the midst of that conversation, though,
Gary asked to participants to reflect for a few minutes on some recent
experience they may have had of the church really being the church – of
“church” really happening even in the midst of all our concerns about its
future. And what people had to offer was
really quite amazing – it was “good news” story after story
where people have experienced “real church,” a moment in the life of their
faith community when they felt connected with the Spirit, with God; where they
have been consoled, or stretched, or forgiven and supported, inspired or
filled; moments when they were thankful that what they dreamed of, as church,
actually happened.
I’ve also
mentioned here the story in The Hamilton Spactator just over a week ago about
the church that happens on Sunday afternoons in the sanctuary and on the
grounds of St. Paul’s Presbyterian in downtown Hamilton – Eucharist Church,
that’s made up of a few hundred mostly-youngish people who gather to share the
presence, the promise and the love of God together. The article mentions that it’s not any flashy
program that attracts them – no rock music, praise bands, high-tech shows, glitter
and glitz, or ultra-smooth performance.
Their worship and the liturgy they follow is actually quite traditional
– even more traditional than ours in their use of ancient prayers and
rites. What attracts them is quite
simple – the experience in that setting and with those rites of being able to
be honest and open about who they are, what they think, and what they wonder
about, with one another in the presence of God.
Sabbath is
a time to celebrate the presence of God with us – not just the past of God, not
just the future of God, but the presence of God – the God who is here with us
right now in this place, at this time, to heal
and make whole, to forgive and set free, to call and empower us and others for
kingdom life in the world.
Sometimes we fear
God is not here, or we act as though God is not. We talk about God as though he’s not right
here listening to us.
So within our own
liturgy, what is it that helps you know God is here? Let it do its work.
Within this
sanctuary and our style of worship, what is that helps open you to the Spirit
that is given? Let it do its work.
Within our
liturgy and pattern of worship, what is it that helps you hear the Word that God
is speaking to us for our life and our living right now? Let it do its work.
Pharisees are
never quite ready to be in the presence of God.
But God is here. And sabbath is a
time for celebrating together the presence of God.
Monday, August 12, 2013
Towards Sunday August 18, 2013
Scripture: Mark 2:23 - 3:6
Sermon: Sabbath - Sharing (in) wholeness
There is more going on in these two stories than just a few Sabbath rules being broken.
In the story of healing (Mark 3:1-6) Jesus actually doesn't break any rules, because he doesn't do any work. In fact, specifically to accommodate the Pharisees' hard-hearted insistence that no work be done (see v. 5), instead of doing what he normally does in healing (e.g laying his hands on the person, raising the sick one up, etc.) quite literally Jesus does nothing. He simply speaks two orders (for the man to stand up, and to stretch out his hand) and on doing that the man finds his hand healed.
So if it's not about Sabbath rules being broken, what is it that so bothers the Pharisees that they want to do away with Jesus (and so desperately, that they themselves break the Sabbath command not to undertake plans or business, just to get things underway)?
In the first story (plucking heads of grain on a Sabbath) commentators point out that "having Pharisees suddenly pop up in the middle of a grainfield on the Sabbath to object to the disciples' activity strains credibility. It almost looks like something out of a Broadway musical." And they suggest this story is exactly that contrived -- that it's a story created within the early church to say something about the meaning of Jesus, that is more than just whether he and his disciples are allowed to pluck grain on a Sabbath or not.
So what's the point of the story?
Maybe it's the way it likens Jesus to King David, and Jesus's disciples (the first disciples as well as all others after them) to the members of David's company? Maybe the message is that in the same way as God raised up David (an unlikely poor shepherd) to replace a king (Saul) who proved to be not a good king, God has now raised up Jesus (an equally unlikely candidate) to replace all other rulers (past, present and future) who don't rule well? (And now that would be a threat to the Pharisees and others in power, worthy of their attention!)
And maybe the issue in the healing story is not so much what Jesus did (or, said), but the spirit in which he did it (or, said it). It's the spirit of fulfilment ... of the power of God being present ... of the kingdom of God being here. It's like in Luke 4:16-30 (a shorter version of which appears in Mark 6:1-6) where on a Sabbath in the synagogue of Nazareth, Jesus reads a passage from the prophet Isaiah about the Spirit of God's kingdom being poured out upon a messiah and upon the people, and he says, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
As long as worship of God is focused on past (what God did in the past, and how we can understand our tradition) and on future (what hope our Scriptures teach us to have), the Pharisees (both then and now) are pretty much in control, because they're the ones educated in the tradition and in Scripture, who the people have to listen to.
But when worship becomes focused on the present (what God is doing now, how Jesus is present today, how holy Spirit is alive among us all, how the kingdom of God is here), the Pharisees (both then and now) lose control. Worship becomes a matter of God and the people celebrating their present relationship.
QUESTION: which kind of worship do we experience at Fifty on a Sunday?
As a Pharisee-ish scholar of Scripture and tradition, I wonder what I will be led to say about this, and what kind of worship I will be led to lead, this Sunday?
Sermon: Sabbath - Sharing (in) wholeness
There is more going on in these two stories than just a few Sabbath rules being broken.
In the story of healing (Mark 3:1-6) Jesus actually doesn't break any rules, because he doesn't do any work. In fact, specifically to accommodate the Pharisees' hard-hearted insistence that no work be done (see v. 5), instead of doing what he normally does in healing (e.g laying his hands on the person, raising the sick one up, etc.) quite literally Jesus does nothing. He simply speaks two orders (for the man to stand up, and to stretch out his hand) and on doing that the man finds his hand healed.
So if it's not about Sabbath rules being broken, what is it that so bothers the Pharisees that they want to do away with Jesus (and so desperately, that they themselves break the Sabbath command not to undertake plans or business, just to get things underway)?
In the first story (plucking heads of grain on a Sabbath) commentators point out that "having Pharisees suddenly pop up in the middle of a grainfield on the Sabbath to object to the disciples' activity strains credibility. It almost looks like something out of a Broadway musical." And they suggest this story is exactly that contrived -- that it's a story created within the early church to say something about the meaning of Jesus, that is more than just whether he and his disciples are allowed to pluck grain on a Sabbath or not.
So what's the point of the story?
Maybe it's the way it likens Jesus to King David, and Jesus's disciples (the first disciples as well as all others after them) to the members of David's company? Maybe the message is that in the same way as God raised up David (an unlikely poor shepherd) to replace a king (Saul) who proved to be not a good king, God has now raised up Jesus (an equally unlikely candidate) to replace all other rulers (past, present and future) who don't rule well? (And now that would be a threat to the Pharisees and others in power, worthy of their attention!)
And maybe the issue in the healing story is not so much what Jesus did (or, said), but the spirit in which he did it (or, said it). It's the spirit of fulfilment ... of the power of God being present ... of the kingdom of God being here. It's like in Luke 4:16-30 (a shorter version of which appears in Mark 6:1-6) where on a Sabbath in the synagogue of Nazareth, Jesus reads a passage from the prophet Isaiah about the Spirit of God's kingdom being poured out upon a messiah and upon the people, and he says, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
As long as worship of God is focused on past (what God did in the past, and how we can understand our tradition) and on future (what hope our Scriptures teach us to have), the Pharisees (both then and now) are pretty much in control, because they're the ones educated in the tradition and in Scripture, who the people have to listen to.
But when worship becomes focused on the present (what God is doing now, how Jesus is present today, how holy Spirit is alive among us all, how the kingdom of God is here), the Pharisees (both then and now) lose control. Worship becomes a matter of God and the people celebrating their present relationship.
QUESTION: which kind of worship do we experience at Fifty on a Sunday?
As a Pharisee-ish scholar of Scripture and tradition, I wonder what I will be led to say about this, and what kind of worship I will be led to lead, this Sunday?
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Sermon from Sunday, August 11, 2013
Scripture
Reading: Deuteronomy 5:6, 12-15 and Exodus 3:16-22
Sermon: Sabbath as remembrance of freedom
The Pharaoh – king of Egypt, is right not to want to let the people go. As long as they see themselves only as workers, earning their keep and justifying their lives by the work they do, everything is alright. But if he ever gives them a break – a sabbatical, to go out to the desert to worship and renew acquaintance with their God, who knows where that will lead? They’ll surely start thinking differently of themselves, start looking for a better land than Egypt is – a land of blessing for all, and Pharoah and his empire will never see them again. And then where will the empire be?
Abraham Joshua Heschel, a Polish-born rabbi and theologian of the last century, once wrote that sabbath and the weekly discipline of worshipping God is the world’s greatest hope for redemption and for the progress of humanity, because “in the tempestuous ocean of time and toil, [the sabbath is an island] of stillness” where men and women regain a deep knowledge of who they are, who God is, and what the world is to be. Sabbath frees us, he says, from what the world is and what it makes us to be, to live towards what the world is meant to be and how we shall live within it.
This came true in Heschel’s birthplace of Poland. In 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and a 19-year-old man named Karol Wojtyla was forced into hard labour as a quarryman and blaster, and then as a worker in a chemical factory. The Soviet liberation of Poland only extended the oppression for Wojtyla and all his countrymen.
In the midst of this, though, he felt a call to know and serve God. He entered an underground seminary and began to preach, build up churches, and lead weekly worship of God. Out of that, he wrote and published poems about a Christian humanism that helped give a whole generation of Poles an alternate perspective on life. His work inspired an unemployed electrician named Lech Walesa to form the country’s only trade union – Solidarity, and Wojtyla himself rose in the church to became bishop, archbishop, and then Pope John Paul II. And between J2P2 and Walesa, between the Church and trade union, the Polish people were led to freedom and the Soviet empire began to collapse.
Same thing in Central America a generation before, when weekly Mass and community-based Bible study energized people and radicalized priests to stand up against American-backed dictatorships. It was no mere coincidence or accident that Archbishop Romero – a leading voice of the movement, was assassinated by agents of the state while he was celebrating the eucharist, because it was in that weekly rite of worship that people and priest together came to know the body of Christ and to know themselves as that body for the sake of new life in the world.
There is also Archbishop Tutu – another man whose life, politics and personality have been shaped by weekly sabbath eucharist. He led and helped shape the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and plays a role still in the work towards a just and equitable society for all after apartheid.
The sabbath, Heschel says, is a moment of liberation, a glimpse of what is to come and already coming to be, and of our capacity as children of God to be part of it.
We also know this on individual and personal levels. The first three steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs are to admit we are powerless to overcome our addictions and disorders, that a higher Power can restore us to sanity, and that we surrender our will and our lives to the care of God. And is this not what weekly worship is? The reason we come here? The reason we need sabbath worship for our lives to be whole and good?
There are all kinds of things that enslave us, that make our lives a misery, that make us less than our spirits really long to be. And worship of God in community helps free us.
Gary Patterson, our Moderator, recently led a workshop on the current state of the church and asked people, in the midst of concerns about our future, to identify some recent moment when church really happened for them. One of the comments was a simple testimony of a man (or woman) who came to worship one Sunday morning in a small country church, struggling with depression, in tears, and felt a hand on his (or her) shoulder from a fellow worshipper, who quietly said, “Remember, love is all around you.”
What a moment of sabbath rest and worship! What a gift of new life and strength from God!
It all depends, of course, on really opening ourselves to worship God when we come here, and whether, no matter where we are, we practice an honestly God-centred sabbath, because there always are ways of making sabbath into something else and something less.
For one thing, there is always some pharaoh to contend with – either out there in the world, or in here within our own heart. Today no less than long ago in the days of Moses there are pharaohs out there who do all they can to make us see ourselves only as workers, consumers and spectators and to be content in these roles, for the simple reason they find it much easier to control and manage us according to their agenda when that’s all we see ourselves as, and expect to be.
And there’s also a little pharaoh inside each one of us deep inside our psyche that is loath to give up control of our life to a God who is greater than our selves, that encourages us to think we know best, and that just wants us to be empowered and reassured in what we already think and do and want. It’s the part of us that always tries, and often succeeds in making God over into our own image.
We have to remember, though, that when Israel leaves Egypt to worship God at the foot of Mount Sinai, it is not just a simple hop, skip and jump to get there – not just a pleasant day’s outing. It is a hard and dangerous journey. Really getting to the presence of the Divine requires leaving our comfort zone and safety nets behind. It means being willing to journey into hard and unknown territory, and then willing beyond that to start living towards a new and better land than the one we have come out from and are familiar with. In both political and personal terms honest sabbath means being open to new vision and transformed living.
I mentioned South Africa and Archbishop Tutu’s role in its transformation. In that same situation, though, there was also the Dutch Reformed Church and Afrikaner Calvinism that saw apartheid as God’s good will and that every Sunday allowed people to worship, and sing and pray to a god who gave them what they wanted, kept them in power, and helped them feel good about it.
In Nazi Germany as well, although a minority of Christians who gathered each week in underground worship opposed the Nationalist Socialist regime and its policies, the majority of the country’s church leaders and members supported what the Hitler government was doing.
We’re always tempted to worship a god of our own design who simply gives us what we want and helps us feel good about how we are, even when it’s not right – whether in the political landscape of our time, or the landscape of our individual lives and spirits. We have to be careful and honest about the God we make the centre of our Sabbath.
And when we are – when we find our own way of regularly surrendering ourselves to the Divine Presence that is greater than us, and of allowing ourselves to be opened to and drawn towards the world, the life and the way of being that God says is really ours, then we really are freed from the misery that too often dogs both us and the world we live in.
Rabbi Heschel remembers how the people of Israel took special care to revitalize their worship life in times of national decline and degeneration. He says:
Zion is in ruins. Jerusalem lies in the dust. All week there is only hope of
redemption. But when the Sabbath comes and enters the world, men and
women [who give themselves to it] are touched by a moment of actual
redemption; it is as if for a moment the spirit of the Messiah moves over the
face of the earth.
The Jesuit priest and poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, puts it this way in a poem titled “God’s Grandeur.” He’s not writing specifically about the sabbath, but the poem wonderfully expresses the need we have for eyes to see what the world really is, and the openness to God’s good will and glory that honest sabbath can offer us:
Sermon: Sabbath as remembrance of freedom
The Pharaoh – king of Egypt, is right not to want to let the people go. As long as they see themselves only as workers, earning their keep and justifying their lives by the work they do, everything is alright. But if he ever gives them a break – a sabbatical, to go out to the desert to worship and renew acquaintance with their God, who knows where that will lead? They’ll surely start thinking differently of themselves, start looking for a better land than Egypt is – a land of blessing for all, and Pharoah and his empire will never see them again. And then where will the empire be?
Abraham Joshua Heschel, a Polish-born rabbi and theologian of the last century, once wrote that sabbath and the weekly discipline of worshipping God is the world’s greatest hope for redemption and for the progress of humanity, because “in the tempestuous ocean of time and toil, [the sabbath is an island] of stillness” where men and women regain a deep knowledge of who they are, who God is, and what the world is to be. Sabbath frees us, he says, from what the world is and what it makes us to be, to live towards what the world is meant to be and how we shall live within it.
This came true in Heschel’s birthplace of Poland. In 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and a 19-year-old man named Karol Wojtyla was forced into hard labour as a quarryman and blaster, and then as a worker in a chemical factory. The Soviet liberation of Poland only extended the oppression for Wojtyla and all his countrymen.
In the midst of this, though, he felt a call to know and serve God. He entered an underground seminary and began to preach, build up churches, and lead weekly worship of God. Out of that, he wrote and published poems about a Christian humanism that helped give a whole generation of Poles an alternate perspective on life. His work inspired an unemployed electrician named Lech Walesa to form the country’s only trade union – Solidarity, and Wojtyla himself rose in the church to became bishop, archbishop, and then Pope John Paul II. And between J2P2 and Walesa, between the Church and trade union, the Polish people were led to freedom and the Soviet empire began to collapse.
Same thing in Central America a generation before, when weekly Mass and community-based Bible study energized people and radicalized priests to stand up against American-backed dictatorships. It was no mere coincidence or accident that Archbishop Romero – a leading voice of the movement, was assassinated by agents of the state while he was celebrating the eucharist, because it was in that weekly rite of worship that people and priest together came to know the body of Christ and to know themselves as that body for the sake of new life in the world.
There is also Archbishop Tutu – another man whose life, politics and personality have been shaped by weekly sabbath eucharist. He led and helped shape the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and plays a role still in the work towards a just and equitable society for all after apartheid.
The sabbath, Heschel says, is a moment of liberation, a glimpse of what is to come and already coming to be, and of our capacity as children of God to be part of it.
We also know this on individual and personal levels. The first three steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs are to admit we are powerless to overcome our addictions and disorders, that a higher Power can restore us to sanity, and that we surrender our will and our lives to the care of God. And is this not what weekly worship is? The reason we come here? The reason we need sabbath worship for our lives to be whole and good?
There are all kinds of things that enslave us, that make our lives a misery, that make us less than our spirits really long to be. And worship of God in community helps free us.
Gary Patterson, our Moderator, recently led a workshop on the current state of the church and asked people, in the midst of concerns about our future, to identify some recent moment when church really happened for them. One of the comments was a simple testimony of a man (or woman) who came to worship one Sunday morning in a small country church, struggling with depression, in tears, and felt a hand on his (or her) shoulder from a fellow worshipper, who quietly said, “Remember, love is all around you.”
What a moment of sabbath rest and worship! What a gift of new life and strength from God!
It all depends, of course, on really opening ourselves to worship God when we come here, and whether, no matter where we are, we practice an honestly God-centred sabbath, because there always are ways of making sabbath into something else and something less.
For one thing, there is always some pharaoh to contend with – either out there in the world, or in here within our own heart. Today no less than long ago in the days of Moses there are pharaohs out there who do all they can to make us see ourselves only as workers, consumers and spectators and to be content in these roles, for the simple reason they find it much easier to control and manage us according to their agenda when that’s all we see ourselves as, and expect to be.
And there’s also a little pharaoh inside each one of us deep inside our psyche that is loath to give up control of our life to a God who is greater than our selves, that encourages us to think we know best, and that just wants us to be empowered and reassured in what we already think and do and want. It’s the part of us that always tries, and often succeeds in making God over into our own image.
We have to remember, though, that when Israel leaves Egypt to worship God at the foot of Mount Sinai, it is not just a simple hop, skip and jump to get there – not just a pleasant day’s outing. It is a hard and dangerous journey. Really getting to the presence of the Divine requires leaving our comfort zone and safety nets behind. It means being willing to journey into hard and unknown territory, and then willing beyond that to start living towards a new and better land than the one we have come out from and are familiar with. In both political and personal terms honest sabbath means being open to new vision and transformed living.
I mentioned South Africa and Archbishop Tutu’s role in its transformation. In that same situation, though, there was also the Dutch Reformed Church and Afrikaner Calvinism that saw apartheid as God’s good will and that every Sunday allowed people to worship, and sing and pray to a god who gave them what they wanted, kept them in power, and helped them feel good about it.
In Nazi Germany as well, although a minority of Christians who gathered each week in underground worship opposed the Nationalist Socialist regime and its policies, the majority of the country’s church leaders and members supported what the Hitler government was doing.
We’re always tempted to worship a god of our own design who simply gives us what we want and helps us feel good about how we are, even when it’s not right – whether in the political landscape of our time, or the landscape of our individual lives and spirits. We have to be careful and honest about the God we make the centre of our Sabbath.
And when we are – when we find our own way of regularly surrendering ourselves to the Divine Presence that is greater than us, and of allowing ourselves to be opened to and drawn towards the world, the life and the way of being that God says is really ours, then we really are freed from the misery that too often dogs both us and the world we live in.
Rabbi Heschel remembers how the people of Israel took special care to revitalize their worship life in times of national decline and degeneration. He says:
Zion is in ruins. Jerusalem lies in the dust. All week there is only hope of
redemption. But when the Sabbath comes and enters the world, men and
women [who give themselves to it] are touched by a moment of actual
redemption; it is as if for a moment the spirit of the Messiah moves over the
face of the earth.
The Jesuit priest and poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, puts it this way in a poem titled “God’s Grandeur.” He’s not writing specifically about the sabbath, but the poem wonderfully expresses the need we have for eyes to see what the world really is, and the openness to God’s good will and glory that honest sabbath can offer us:
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out,
like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a
greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then
now not reck’n his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared
with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell:
the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the
dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eatward,
springs –
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with
warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
May that
brooding, warm spirit of new and holy life spring into brightness for all to
see in our sabbath openness to God.
Monday, August 05, 2013
Towards Sunday, August 11, 2013
Series: Sabbath - what it means for us today
Scripture: Deuteronomy 5:12-15 (also Exodus 3:16-20)
Sermon: Sabbath - remembrance of freedom
This version of the Commandments -- in fact, most of the Book of Deuteronomy (at least, chapters 5-28) was written in the mid-seventh century B.C.E. as part of a program of nationalist reform.
At this time the kingdom of Israel (established as a united kingdom by David around 1000 B.C.E.) is no longer what it used to be. It isn't a single kingdom any more, having divided some time before into Israel (the northern kingdom) and Judah (the southern kingdom). In 722 B.C.E. the northern kingdom was destroyed by Assyria, and by the time of Judah's King Josiah (641-610 B.C.E.) the southern kingdom is under threat as well.
In response, Josiah and Judah's leaders support a movement to reform the kingdom and restore its strength as a kingdom of God. The old traditions and laws are dusted off and adapted to the present situation, beginning with the Ten Commandments. In one way this is a return to "the old-time religion" to try to re-create "the old-time prosperity." But it is also an attempt to up-date the traditions, and to chart a way ahead that is appropriate for the needs of the day.
What kind of religious reform are people attempting today, to meet our current needs?
The wording of the Commandment in Deuteronomy 5 is interesting for the way it differs from the wording in Exodus 20 (the version of the Ten Commandments we are more familiar with). In Exodus 20, the Sabbath is related to God's rest on the seventh day in the creation of Earth in Genesis 1. In Deuteronomy 5, the Sabbath is related to God's liberation of the people from slavery -- a reference to how in the exodus-story (Ex 3:16-20) the people are set free from slavery to Egypt so they can worship God beyond Egypt's control and learn to live in the world as God's people.
It's easy to see why Josiah and Judah emphasize the liberating effect of Sabbath; they want to remain free of Assyrian domination and control of their lives. They want to be free to live as God's people in the world.
What might we need to be freed from today? How does a practice of Sabbath-rest help free us for the kind of life we are called by God to live?
In the Deuteronomy 5 version of the Commandment, more than in the Exodus 20 version, it's also emphasized that a reason we keep Sabbath-rest is so that others (our family, servants, animals, strangers, and Earth itself) can rest as well. Is this relevant to the state of the world today? Is the world today enslaved to something not completely good, and not free to be what God intends it to be?
I'll be ruminating about these things this week; I hope you will be, too. And Sunday afternoon, I'll post the preached sermon that comes of it.
Scripture: Deuteronomy 5:12-15 (also Exodus 3:16-20)
Sermon: Sabbath - remembrance of freedom
This version of the Commandments -- in fact, most of the Book of Deuteronomy (at least, chapters 5-28) was written in the mid-seventh century B.C.E. as part of a program of nationalist reform.
At this time the kingdom of Israel (established as a united kingdom by David around 1000 B.C.E.) is no longer what it used to be. It isn't a single kingdom any more, having divided some time before into Israel (the northern kingdom) and Judah (the southern kingdom). In 722 B.C.E. the northern kingdom was destroyed by Assyria, and by the time of Judah's King Josiah (641-610 B.C.E.) the southern kingdom is under threat as well.
In response, Josiah and Judah's leaders support a movement to reform the kingdom and restore its strength as a kingdom of God. The old traditions and laws are dusted off and adapted to the present situation, beginning with the Ten Commandments. In one way this is a return to "the old-time religion" to try to re-create "the old-time prosperity." But it is also an attempt to up-date the traditions, and to chart a way ahead that is appropriate for the needs of the day.
What kind of religious reform are people attempting today, to meet our current needs?
The wording of the Commandment in Deuteronomy 5 is interesting for the way it differs from the wording in Exodus 20 (the version of the Ten Commandments we are more familiar with). In Exodus 20, the Sabbath is related to God's rest on the seventh day in the creation of Earth in Genesis 1. In Deuteronomy 5, the Sabbath is related to God's liberation of the people from slavery -- a reference to how in the exodus-story (Ex 3:16-20) the people are set free from slavery to Egypt so they can worship God beyond Egypt's control and learn to live in the world as God's people.
It's easy to see why Josiah and Judah emphasize the liberating effect of Sabbath; they want to remain free of Assyrian domination and control of their lives. They want to be free to live as God's people in the world.
What might we need to be freed from today? How does a practice of Sabbath-rest help free us for the kind of life we are called by God to live?
In the Deuteronomy 5 version of the Commandment, more than in the Exodus 20 version, it's also emphasized that a reason we keep Sabbath-rest is so that others (our family, servants, animals, strangers, and Earth itself) can rest as well. Is this relevant to the state of the world today? Is the world today enslaved to something not completely good, and not free to be what God intends it to be?
I'll be ruminating about these things this week; I hope you will be, too. And Sunday afternoon, I'll post the preached sermon that comes of it.
Sunday, August 04, 2013
Sermon from Sunday, August 4, 2013
Sermon Series: Sabbath -- what it means for us today
Scripture: Exodus 20:8-11; Genesis 1:26 - 2:4a
Sermon: Rest in Incompleteness
When God gives ten rules for good life, keeping sabbath is number 4. Of the ten this may be the one we worry about most because it seems black-and-white and easily measurable.
The other commandments seem open to interpretation. Like honouring God and having no other gods or idols – we break these two fairly often, but there’s so much room for interpretation that as long as we honour God and only God more often than not, we figure we’re doing okay. And the others – like honouring father and mother, not coveting or bearing false witness, not killing – as long as we’re not cold-blooded murderers, treat people close to us with decency, and don’t get too greedy, it’s easy to believe we’re on the right side of what God intends.
But keeping sabbath feels different, because it’s easy to tell when someone is working and not keeping the day of rest, and to count who’s in church and keeping the day holy and who’s not. There seems a clearer line between commandment-keepers and -breakers.
Until we look more closely. We lament Sunday shopping, for instance, but who has never shopped on Sunday? Maybe even on the way home from worship? And people who work in retail or in a service industry, even if they’re good church members and people of deep faith – even minister’s wives, often don’t have much choice.
I remember no Sunday sports. In 1962 the Bombers and TiCats were in the Grey Cup at Toronto’s Exhibition Stadium. The game, as always, was Saturday afternoon and when heavy fog rolled in from the lake and the game had to be suspended in the second half, the commissioner decided the game would be finished the next day – on a Sunday, even though people wondered if they could really do that. Wasn’t it wrong? An offence against God and the fourth commandment? We still watched it, though, after getting home from church.
Years ago in Bruce County I heard about a church member’s grandparents with their own sabbath fights. Grandma was staunch Presbyterian – no work of any kind in or outside the house on Sunday. But grandpa was a practical, hard-working farmer, and if Sunday was the only good day for haying in the field behind the house, he’d be out there on his tractor cutting it – as well as dodging the stones his wife would be throwing at him from the back porch every time the tractor took him near enough the house.
It’s so easy to throw stones about the sabbath. And so easy to beat ourselves up as well.
Look at me. I’m in church and in worship. But it’s work – some say the only day of the week I work. Probably I should read more of the articles in clergy journals about alternate days and alternate ways for clergy to practice real sabbath.
Which raises the question of what sabbath really means. Muslims and Jews – close companions of ours among the world’s faith communities, keep sabbath on Friday and Saturday, and in different ways than we do. So what is sabbath really about? What is it we are really trying to keep?
Over the next five weeks we’ll look at different answers, starting this week with one of the versions of the sabbath commandment – the one in Exodus 20, because this is the one we usually think of first when thinking about sabbath. This is what we have read this morning:
Is Earth maybe always a work still in progress? Is this what we agonize about every time something bad happens, whether the disaster is natural or human in origin? Maybe also what Jesus refers to when he says his Father is still working and life is still in the making?
This is hard for us to understand. We’re addicted to perfection and the perfectability of all things – even of ourselves. We’re used to making things over to suit ourselves. We don’t always understand “good enough” or the sufficiency of the imperfect. We wonder how God can allow imperfection and flaws. We assume God hates them as much as we do. And we drive ourselves to exhaustion, our kids and grand-kids sometimes to depression or despair, and Earth to the brink of tragic destruction in our relentless pursuit of “something better.”
But when we sit with God on the seventh day ...
... and just rest with what is, maybe one thing we see is that God loves us as we are, and we don't need to fuss and worry and make everything over to be something it's not, for God to approve of us.
Which leads maybe to a third thing that flows from this image of God – that the goal of it all is peace – peace in ourselves, peace within the world, peace among us, the world and God together.
Doesn’t it seem that God’s rest is a matter of seeing that all things that are, have a place and exist together in good and right relationship? And as we sit with God on the seventh day, put our tools and our toys away, put our hands in our lap (or maybe clasp them or raise them heavenward in prayer) we can learn to love and be at rest in this kind of peace as well.
We start life on Earth with a sacred experience of the peace of all things, and sabbath is about keeping this experience and vision alive – remembering that such peace is real, is possible, is God’s good design, and is the one thing we are called to live from and live towards.
And maybe whatever helps us do this – whatever day and practice and time and place helps us to sit with this image of God and then live it out in the world, is sabbath – the kind of sabbath Exodus 20 commands us to keep for the good of all life – both our own and the world’s.
Scripture: Exodus 20:8-11; Genesis 1:26 - 2:4a
Sermon: Rest in Incompleteness
When God gives ten rules for good life, keeping sabbath is number 4. Of the ten this may be the one we worry about most because it seems black-and-white and easily measurable.
The other commandments seem open to interpretation. Like honouring God and having no other gods or idols – we break these two fairly often, but there’s so much room for interpretation that as long as we honour God and only God more often than not, we figure we’re doing okay. And the others – like honouring father and mother, not coveting or bearing false witness, not killing – as long as we’re not cold-blooded murderers, treat people close to us with decency, and don’t get too greedy, it’s easy to believe we’re on the right side of what God intends.
But keeping sabbath feels different, because it’s easy to tell when someone is working and not keeping the day of rest, and to count who’s in church and keeping the day holy and who’s not. There seems a clearer line between commandment-keepers and -breakers.
Until we look more closely. We lament Sunday shopping, for instance, but who has never shopped on Sunday? Maybe even on the way home from worship? And people who work in retail or in a service industry, even if they’re good church members and people of deep faith – even minister’s wives, often don’t have much choice.
I remember no Sunday sports. In 1962 the Bombers and TiCats were in the Grey Cup at Toronto’s Exhibition Stadium. The game, as always, was Saturday afternoon and when heavy fog rolled in from the lake and the game had to be suspended in the second half, the commissioner decided the game would be finished the next day – on a Sunday, even though people wondered if they could really do that. Wasn’t it wrong? An offence against God and the fourth commandment? We still watched it, though, after getting home from church.
Years ago in Bruce County I heard about a church member’s grandparents with their own sabbath fights. Grandma was staunch Presbyterian – no work of any kind in or outside the house on Sunday. But grandpa was a practical, hard-working farmer, and if Sunday was the only good day for haying in the field behind the house, he’d be out there on his tractor cutting it – as well as dodging the stones his wife would be throwing at him from the back porch every time the tractor took him near enough the house.
It’s so easy to throw stones about the sabbath. And so easy to beat ourselves up as well.
Look at me. I’m in church and in worship. But it’s work – some say the only day of the week I work. Probably I should read more of the articles in clergy journals about alternate days and alternate ways for clergy to practice real sabbath.
Which raises the question of what sabbath really means. Muslims and Jews – close companions of ours among the world’s faith communities, keep sabbath on Friday and Saturday, and in different ways than we do. So what is sabbath really about? What is it we are really trying to keep?
Over the next five weeks we’ll look at different answers, starting this week with one of the versions of the sabbath commandment – the one in Exodus 20, because this is the one we usually think of first when thinking about sabbath. This is what we have read this morning:
Remember the sabbath day…the seventh day is a sabbath to God; so you
shall not do any work, either
... in six days the Lord made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord
blessed the
sabbath day and consecrated it.
It
bases the practice of sabbath on Genesis 1, where God works six days in making
the world good and rests on the seventh, and where we are commanded to live in
God’s image – to pattern our way of being on Earth after God’s way, which in
this case means setting a limit to work and keeping a day of rest.
I’ve
been on the look-out at different times for images of God, and this is one I
encountered a few years ago on the grounds of Loyola House, a Jesuit centre in
Guelph where I have sometimes been on retreat.
It’s
a statue of Joseph, the carpenter father of Jesus, with mallet in hand, but
sitting at rest in body and in spirit.
His work, I’m sure, was never finished.
But at this moment he is at rest, and peacefully so.
Could
this also be an image of Jesus’s heavenly Father, creator of heaven and earth, as
God is on the seventh day? If so, is
this how humanity – how we, would have first experienced God, and the image of
God that we’re called to practice?
Just
think of the chronology of the seven days.
For
six days God works – calling things into being, setting things in order,
calling life forward, making places for everything, ending with the making of humanity
which makes it all very good. Then the seventh
day is a day of stepping back, stopping work,
taking hands off, and affirming that what is and has been done is good, good
enough, very good as it is.
For humanity, though, this is the first of our days. We are made on day six and told we’re to be God’s
partners or agents in managing Earth and its life.
So imagine humanity’s – our excitement when night comes on day six and we
go to sleep with dreams in our heads of all we’ll start doing the next day.
But when the day dawns, we’re told it’s a day not for work, but for
rest – a sabbath. All our ideas, schemes
and dreams to make the world good – to take it in hand, bend it to our wishes, make
it all better than it is, and make ourselves masters of all we behold are put on
hold. Before we do anything to Earth or
ourselves we are called to spend time with God just sitting with what is,
resting in it, learning gratitude for what’s been given, learning how the goodness
of Earth as it is reflects the fullness of God.
And what does sitting with this image of God teach us? Three things come to mind.
One is that the world is not ours, but God’s. We are not makers of Earth; rather, we are
part of the world God has made, and the well-being of life – ours and Earth’s,
depends on how well or poorly we live by God’s good design. Earth has an integrity, a meaning and a
mystery beyond us and our needs or desires, and sitting at rest with God the
Maker helps us become good stewards of what is given.
A second thing is that God loves us – Earth and us, as we
are. I was taught once that Earth on day
seven must have been perfect in all its parts and this is why God rests; but is
that necessarily so? Could there maybe
instead be some truth in Charles Bragg’s vision – and his picture, of “The
Sixth Day”?
Is Earth maybe always a work still in progress? Is this what we agonize about every time something bad happens, whether the disaster is natural or human in origin? Maybe also what Jesus refers to when he says his Father is still working and life is still in the making?
This is hard for us to understand. We’re addicted to perfection and the perfectability of all things – even of ourselves. We’re used to making things over to suit ourselves. We don’t always understand “good enough” or the sufficiency of the imperfect. We wonder how God can allow imperfection and flaws. We assume God hates them as much as we do. And we drive ourselves to exhaustion, our kids and grand-kids sometimes to depression or despair, and Earth to the brink of tragic destruction in our relentless pursuit of “something better.”
But when we sit with God on the seventh day ...
... and just rest with what is, maybe one thing we see is that God loves us as we are, and we don't need to fuss and worry and make everything over to be something it's not, for God to approve of us.
Which leads maybe to a third thing that flows from this image of God – that the goal of it all is peace – peace in ourselves, peace within the world, peace among us, the world and God together.
Doesn’t it seem that God’s rest is a matter of seeing that all things that are, have a place and exist together in good and right relationship? And as we sit with God on the seventh day, put our tools and our toys away, put our hands in our lap (or maybe clasp them or raise them heavenward in prayer) we can learn to love and be at rest in this kind of peace as well.
We start life on Earth with a sacred experience of the peace of all things, and sabbath is about keeping this experience and vision alive – remembering that such peace is real, is possible, is God’s good design, and is the one thing we are called to live from and live towards.
And maybe whatever helps us do this – whatever day and practice and time and place helps us to sit with this image of God and then live it out in the world, is sabbath – the kind of sabbath Exodus 20 commands us to keep for the good of all life – both our own and the world’s.
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