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?
Monday, August 12, 2013
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.
Friday, August 02, 2013
Towards Sunday, August 4, 2013
Summer Series: Sabbath -- what it means for us today
Sunday 1: Sabbath as rest
Scripture: Exodus 20:8-11; Genesis 1:31 - 2:3
This week we begin a five-week exploration of Sabbath, starting with the commandment to keep the Sabbath in the Exodus 20 version of the Ten Commandments. (Next week we look at the Deuteronomy 5 version, which is a little different.)
In commanding a Sabbath for humanity in its life on Earth, Exodus 20 says we do it to pattern our lives after God who after working with Earth for six days to make it good, rests on the seventh day. And if God takes a break from working with Earth after six days (giving Earth a rest as well from being tinkered with and improved) who are we not to do the same? Do we do harm to Earth, maybe even undo its goodness, by not resting? Do we do harm to ourselves? Is constant work and no Sabbath rest an offence to God?
A big question, though, is what we mean by keeping Sabbath and taking Sabbath rest.
We often lament the passing of Sunday as a legally enforced day of rest from work and commerce. But Jews and Muslims in our society find ways to keep Sabbath without having their Sabbath day enforced by civil law. And maybe keeping Sabbath doesn't only and always mean being in worship in a church building Sunday morning.
Two questions to think about:
1) Why does God rest on the seventh day?
2) When, where, and how do you rest deeply in the goodness of God? Not just relaxing, but intentionally and consciously resting in God and in the fullness and goodness of what God has given. Where, when and how does this happen (either sometimes or regularly) for you?
I've been thinking about these things myself, and I'll post my Sunday-morning sermon here Sunday afternoon.
Sunday 1: Sabbath as rest
Scripture: Exodus 20:8-11; Genesis 1:31 - 2:3
This week we begin a five-week exploration of Sabbath, starting with the commandment to keep the Sabbath in the Exodus 20 version of the Ten Commandments. (Next week we look at the Deuteronomy 5 version, which is a little different.)
In commanding a Sabbath for humanity in its life on Earth, Exodus 20 says we do it to pattern our lives after God who after working with Earth for six days to make it good, rests on the seventh day. And if God takes a break from working with Earth after six days (giving Earth a rest as well from being tinkered with and improved) who are we not to do the same? Do we do harm to Earth, maybe even undo its goodness, by not resting? Do we do harm to ourselves? Is constant work and no Sabbath rest an offence to God?
A big question, though, is what we mean by keeping Sabbath and taking Sabbath rest.
We often lament the passing of Sunday as a legally enforced day of rest from work and commerce. But Jews and Muslims in our society find ways to keep Sabbath without having their Sabbath day enforced by civil law. And maybe keeping Sabbath doesn't only and always mean being in worship in a church building Sunday morning.
Two questions to think about:
1) Why does God rest on the seventh day?
2) When, where, and how do you rest deeply in the goodness of God? Not just relaxing, but intentionally and consciously resting in God and in the fullness and goodness of what God has given. Where, when and how does this happen (either sometimes or regularly) for you?
I've been thinking about these things myself, and I'll post my Sunday-morning sermon here Sunday afternoon.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Towards Sunday, June 16 (Fathers' Day)
Reading: I Kings 19:8-18
Elijah's crisis and "the still small voice"
Elijah is in a mess.
Things had started out well. A new prophet on the scene, Elijah had some early success -- naming the evil of his time, denouncing the king and his policies of corruption, finding community with the poor, and bringing healing and new life to those who suffer. From there he went on to a public confrontation with the entire bureaucracy behind the king's misguided policies, and he utterly destroyed them. His rise was meteoric and he has became a sensation.
But then comes the reality check.
The king and queen put a price on his head. The powers that be start to turn public opinion against him. Rumours start to circulate. He is more vulnerable than he thought he would be. His career may be over as quickly as it started, and his fall seems as tragic as his rise was miraculous.
Did he make a mistake in the way he went about things? Is he really cut out for this? He once thought he was gifted and special; now he is just one more ordinary failure. Maybe he should just quit. Who was he to think he could ever be make a difference? And why does he feel so alone?
Is there any one among us who has never been in this position? Never felt this way? Never faced these doubts? Never asked these questions of ourselves?
Is it time to go home to mom and dad?
Feeling sorry for himself, defeated and utterly alone Elijah does not go home to mom and dad. Instead, he goes to Mt Horeb, the mountain of Yahweh.
In some ways, though, this is kind of like going home to dad, because Yahweh is the one who got him started in this prophet-thing, the one who taught him all he knows, the one who showed him the ropes and encouraged him to "go get 'em, tiger!"
So, looked at in the light of Fathers' Day, is there anything about Yahweh's "fatherly" response to Elijah in this critical moment that's worth our noting? Anything about how Father Yahweh helps save Elijah's self-image and career, that's good for us to think about?
Hope to see you Sunday.
Elijah's crisis and "the still small voice"
Elijah is in a mess.
Things had started out well. A new prophet on the scene, Elijah had some early success -- naming the evil of his time, denouncing the king and his policies of corruption, finding community with the poor, and bringing healing and new life to those who suffer. From there he went on to a public confrontation with the entire bureaucracy behind the king's misguided policies, and he utterly destroyed them. His rise was meteoric and he has became a sensation.
But then comes the reality check.
The king and queen put a price on his head. The powers that be start to turn public opinion against him. Rumours start to circulate. He is more vulnerable than he thought he would be. His career may be over as quickly as it started, and his fall seems as tragic as his rise was miraculous.
Did he make a mistake in the way he went about things? Is he really cut out for this? He once thought he was gifted and special; now he is just one more ordinary failure. Maybe he should just quit. Who was he to think he could ever be make a difference? And why does he feel so alone?
Is there any one among us who has never been in this position? Never felt this way? Never faced these doubts? Never asked these questions of ourselves?
Is it time to go home to mom and dad?
Feeling sorry for himself, defeated and utterly alone Elijah does not go home to mom and dad. Instead, he goes to Mt Horeb, the mountain of Yahweh.
In some ways, though, this is kind of like going home to dad, because Yahweh is the one who got him started in this prophet-thing, the one who taught him all he knows, the one who showed him the ropes and encouraged him to "go get 'em, tiger!"
So, looked at in the light of Fathers' Day, is there anything about Yahweh's "fatherly" response to Elijah in this critical moment that's worth our noting? Anything about how Father Yahweh helps save Elijah's self-image and career, that's good for us to think about?
Hope to see you Sunday.
Thursday, June 06, 2013
Towards Sunday, June 9, 2013
Reading: I Kings 17:8-24
The story of Elijah, a poor widow, a dying son and Yahweh
Elijah is sent by God to spend some time with a poor widow in Zarepath. We ask: where on earth is Zarephath? Elijah might wonder the same thing.
Elijah, a prophet of God, is deeply discouraged by current events in the kingdom of Israel. The king, Ahab, is as bad if not worse than the kings before him. And now through marriage to Jezebel, princess of the neighbouring kingdom of Sidon, Ahab has brought a culture and an ethos into Israel very different from what Israel has been. As far as Elijah can see, the kingdom is being changed irrevocably for the worse.
God's response is to send him to spend some time with a widow in Zarepath -- a town in the kingdom of Sidon, the "enemy culture." The foreign widow, like Elijah, is poor and marginalized in her own land, and her son is dying. All is not well in Sidon either, and as the widow and Elijah come to open themselves to one another in risky and generous ways, they come to know surprising abundance, feeding, healing and even resurrection from death. In other words, under the radar of the misguided kingdoms of their time, they come to know the kingdom of God where they are -- the same kingdom of God the Gospels talk about in the stories of Jesus, as being among us always.
Elijah is rightly worried about the changes being made for the worse in the kingdom of Israel, and he stands up to challenge them as strongly as he can. That was last week's story (I Kings 18).
But at the same time, through relationship with others on the other side who also suffer from the corruption at the top, he finds himself -- much to his surprise, sharing with them the gifts of the kingdom of God in the world even as it is.
In worship on Sunday, we'll try to explore and find our way into the truth of this story.
The story of Elijah, a poor widow, a dying son and Yahweh
Elijah is sent by God to spend some time with a poor widow in Zarepath. We ask: where on earth is Zarephath? Elijah might wonder the same thing.
Elijah, a prophet of God, is deeply discouraged by current events in the kingdom of Israel. The king, Ahab, is as bad if not worse than the kings before him. And now through marriage to Jezebel, princess of the neighbouring kingdom of Sidon, Ahab has brought a culture and an ethos into Israel very different from what Israel has been. As far as Elijah can see, the kingdom is being changed irrevocably for the worse.
God's response is to send him to spend some time with a widow in Zarepath -- a town in the kingdom of Sidon, the "enemy culture." The foreign widow, like Elijah, is poor and marginalized in her own land, and her son is dying. All is not well in Sidon either, and as the widow and Elijah come to open themselves to one another in risky and generous ways, they come to know surprising abundance, feeding, healing and even resurrection from death. In other words, under the radar of the misguided kingdoms of their time, they come to know the kingdom of God where they are -- the same kingdom of God the Gospels talk about in the stories of Jesus, as being among us always.
Elijah is rightly worried about the changes being made for the worse in the kingdom of Israel, and he stands up to challenge them as strongly as he can. That was last week's story (I Kings 18).
But at the same time, through relationship with others on the other side who also suffer from the corruption at the top, he finds himself -- much to his surprise, sharing with them the gifts of the kingdom of God in the world even as it is.
In worship on Sunday, we'll try to explore and find our way into the truth of this story.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)