Sabbath and sabbatical rest...

What a treat!  After spending the afternoon cleaning and raking the yard, I stopped at the local grocery store for some supplies and the clerk said, "Don't I know you?  You were just in the paper, right?" When I mentioned that the Berkshire Eagle had done a photo story last week, she continued, "And now you are going on some music study trip, right?" OMG... she not only saw the story and remembered but she recalled details from yet another. It was humbling and sweet.

Today's worship was lovely for the low time right after Easter: we had about 60+ dedicated souls. My worship notes re: Sabbath and sabbatical are below. We played some deeply tender jazz and then tore it up with Monk's "Well You Needn't." Perhaps the highlight, however, was a young woman's singing of "Dream" by Priscilla Ahn: study, vulnerable, pitch perfect and packed with real emotional integrity.

Introduction

Today, in anticipation of our upcoming shared sabbatical, we’re going to talk about Sabbath rest: what it means, why it matters and how to do it in the 21^st century.

+ The poet Maya Angelou put it like this: Every person needs to take one day away.  A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future.  Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence.  Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.  Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.

+ Fr. Ronald Rohlheiser said: True restfulness… is a form of awareness, a way of being in life. It is living ordinary life with a sense of ease, gratitude, appreciation, peace and prayer. We are restful when ordinary life is enough.

+ And Jesus of Nazareth told us:  Come unto me all ye who are tired and heavy laden and I will give you rest.

Each of these masters knew – and practiced – the one commandment in the whole Decalogue that most of us willingly and intentionally violate:  the Sabbath. I can’t imagine anyone here ever saying:  You know, today I think I’m going to go out of my way to break one of the 10 Commandments. Let’s see, maybe I will commit… murder.  Or how about adultery? Can you imagine anyone saying out loud: let me pick a commandment and violate it today?  Oh and just for the hell of it, let me take the Lord’s name in vain, too. It just wouldn’t happen.

And yet we wear our busyness like a badge of honor on our lives and consciously violate God’s call to keep the Sabbath holy without ever really counting the cost – until, of course, we become deathly sick or burned out.  No wonder Eugene Peterson reworked today’s gospel lesson from St. Matthew like this:  Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly… just as God intended.

We ALL are in need of Sabbath rest – we ALL could benefit from some sabbatical living – and I mean ALL of us: young, not-so-young, old and everyone in-between. I believe that is one of the reasons why God has blessed us – as a congregation - with a season of sabbatical living so that we might practice being more playful, restful and at ease with ourselves, our Lord and our world.

Insights

As you know – and if you don’t I’m going to tell you again – in 18 days Dianne and I leave for four months of rest, renewal, prayer and play.  And my sabbatical has been planned as part of your sabbatical – so that this sabbatical will be our shared sabbatical journey into rest, renewal, prayer and play – because ALL sabbaticals are connected to God’s commandment to practice and experience Sabbath rest.

Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. For six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. Deuteronomy 5: 11-13

·     Both sabbatical and Sabbath share the same Hebrew root – shavat – a word that can mean rest but literally means the cessation of all work.

·     Sabbath is the only religious ritual contained in the 10 Commandments and is considered the holiest and most revered holiday in all Judaism. It is observed 52 times a year and has been called “a cathedral into time” by Rabbi Heschel.

·     For Sabbath not only commemorates the Lord’s satisfaction with creation as a blessing to behold since the beginning of time, but also marks God’s call to freedom and shalom in the Exodus story.  As one of the rabbi’s tell us: Shabbat is a time to remember (zakhor) and observe (shamor) the goodness of the Lord:  to actually taste and see the goodness of the Lord.

·     That is why two candles are lit on the traditional Jewish Sabbath table:  one for the word observe and the other for the word remember – shamor and zakhor – the essence of Sabbath spirituality.

So as partial preparation for our shared sabbatical – our extended time for Sabbath rest – I would like to think out loud with you about what it means to both remember and observe Shabbat, ok?  You see, Christians are not exempt from honoring and savoring the Sabbath. Yes, we act like it – but we also pay a heavy price for banishing Shabbat from our lives. So please remember this: when Jesus told his disciples – and by extension you and me – that if we followed him he would give us rest, he was speaking as a practicing Jew to other practicing Jews. And they all knew that part of making space for grace involved honoring and keeping the Sabbath holy:  Practicing a cessation of work and worry and withdrawing from the cares of the world which will not withdraw from us is essential for receiving the blessings of God’s holy rest.

So think with me about what it means to remember Shabbat.  There are a variety of reminders about Sabbath rest in the Bible but the two key texts are the way the 10 Commandments are presented in both Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. The Exodus version asks us to recall God’s work in creation – it is an invitation to look backwards in time to what Genesis 1 and 2 call “…in the beginning” – and what do you remember from that story of the start of creation? After all of creation had been formed from out of God’s loving imagination and power – after order has been imposed upon chaos and beauty infused into nature - God saw everything that had been made, and indeed, it was good – very good:

So there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.

This tells us about the goodness of creation and the blessings of God’s order.  It most likely hails from the time Israel was living in slavery in Babylon – sometime just after 587 BCE and the first destruction of the Temple – when the priests and rabbis were trying to inspire a broken and discouraged people. Their take of the commandments, therefore, emphasizes the importance or re-establishing God’s holy order as the way back into blessing.  The call to Sabbath is Exodus goes like this:

Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For 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.

The other reminder about Sabbath rest comes from Deuteronomy 5 – the passage I read earlier – and it is slightly different. Do you recall how?  It speaks of the Exodus – the time when God inspired Moses with the courage and vision to liberate his people from slavery in Egypt and bring them to the rest of the Promised Land. This commandment codifies the story of freedom and justice – shalom and compassion – the word made flesh.  It is the older commandment, dating back to perhaps the 7^th century BCE.

So with these two versions of the commandment to keep a holy Sabbath, there are two broad

themes: the beauty of resting in and trusting the order of God’s creation AND the sacrifice of living in the realm of justice, freedom and peace.  Why is this important? Why does it matter? 

+ First is the call to remember the Sabbath: –zakor – and then we are told we are to observe Shabbat – shamor – and keep it holy. In the old way observing the Sabbath meant following some clear albeit creative guidelines.  The Hebrew Bible tells us that it is not just any work that must cease, just work that stems from the word melachah – creative work, work that “exhibits dominion or control over our environment.”

+ This word probably comes from the Hebrew word for king – melekh – which is our clue:  just as God is the King of the Universe who quit all creation for rest, we, too are called to cease creative work that exerts control over anything, any person or any event. These would include everything from baking to shearing wool, plowing, sowing or reaping and all other forms of creative work.

The tradition is clear: to everything there is a season, yes? There is a time to work and a time to rest.  If, however, violating the observance of the Sabbath would save a life that is the sacred exception. The Sabbath is intended by God to help us live life – and strength life – so that hope and justice become flesh within and among us. 

So what are you thinking about the importance of observance and remembrance of the Sabbath? Why does it matter? How could it matter more for you?

Conclusion

Biblical historians have discovered something that strikes me as fascinating:  our spiritual ancestors in Judaism seem to be the first people in the Middle East to practice Sabbath keeping.  The Egyptians didn’t do it nor did the Babylonians, the Hittites or Canaanites – only the Jews. Other Middle Eastern people honored covenants, worshiped their gods, built temples and had strict codes for justice and moral honor.  But only the Jews articulated a holy obligation to both remember and observe a holy Sabbath rest.

Nobody knows exactly how or when this sacred wisdom became normative in Judaism. We have the mythological archetype of Moses to give shape and form to the call of freedom – and we know that by the 7^th century BCE Judaism was practicing some form of shared Sabbath living – but it continues to be one of many mysteries of history about exactly when and how this revelation was born.  All we know for certain is that it can be life-giving – even life-saving – if it is remembered and observed and reverenced.  We also know that when Jesus spoke of God’s rest – the unforced rhythms of grace – he was pointing towards the practice of Sabbath rest in all of its beautiful forms.

He knew that our religion must make our lives better: we practice it to bring us more refreshment, more strength for the journey, more comfort and more of a soul for justice. So while there is no one size fits all when it comes to Sabbath keeping – and rest for 1^st century Jews in Palestine will look different from Sabbath keeping among 21^st century American Christians – each generation will be blessed if we remember to keep it holy.  And that’s what I would like for you to consider: how will you – how do you – remember and observe to keep the Sabbath holy in your life?

To help you, I’m going to ask Katharine and my band mates to come up here and share with you this song: Dream.  In its own way I hear a call to Sabbath keeping in it. During one of our recent youth group meetings Katherine turned me on to this song and said, “You know, I’d kinda like to share this in church…” It will give you a little more quiet time for your consideration of how you can strength keeping a holy Sabbath.  So now on this first Sunday after Easter as we prepare to enter into our shared sabbatical born of Sabbath keeping, I invite you to take Jesus up on his promise:  Come unto me ALL ye who are tired and heavy laden – learn from me the unforced rhythms of grace - and I will give you… rest.

There are 18 days before we leave.  Today we raked the yard, dug a drainage ditch for rain run off and opened our windows for the first time in five months. Next week we will sing three of my favorite tunes:  Paul Winter's "Canticle for the Sun and Moon," "All Blues" by Miles Davis and our treatment of Herbie Hancock's reworking of Peter Gabriel's "Don't Give Up." Both Di and I are so very grateful for our community of faith - and especially our mates in liturgy and music. And so the countdown ripens...