NOTE: Here are today's worship notes closing the five week "Becoming Wise" series.
Introduction
One of the
most vexing – infuriating – creatively challenging – professionally troubling and
+ Marriage equality
is now the law of the land and embedded in the hearts of a super majority of
our kin as an essential human right, and, at the same time, candidates for a
variety political offices openly advocate hatred and even the possibility that
their opponents be brought to death by second amendment gun enthusiasts.
+ We have
become a creatively diverse community of peoples racially, ethnically and
spiritually, taking the American experiment with equality to new levels of
beauty while violence and discrimination wound our sisters and brothers of
color with growing intensity.
+ Our economy
is stronger while the white, middle class shrinks. We have made a quantum leap
in reversing fluorocarbon pollution yet continue to experience climate change
tragedies of biblical proportions like that the recent flooding in Louisiana.
And America’s fastest growing demographic is interracial children in the land
of opportunity even as hate crimes are ascending.
As Krista
Tippett so persuasively reminds us, a new Reformation is beginning to take
place all around us as we realize that the old economic, religious, educational
and political structures are not working. We can’t yet discern what these new
forms will be, but they real. “We have riches of knowledge and insight, tools
both tangible and spiritual to rise to this challenge…” alongside immense fear and
social confusion. It is into this context that once again our ancient tradition
invites us to reconsider what it means to practice and honor the Sabbath as
holy.
The ancient prophetic poet of
Israel, Isaiah, wrote in the 5th century BCE:
If
you refrain from trampling the Sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my
holy day; if you call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or
pursuing your own affairs; then
you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will
make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage
of your ancestor Jacob… Then you shall call, and the Lord will
answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
Jesus of Nazareth, celebrating
the wisdom of his Jewish tradition, put it like this two thousand years ago: Hypocrites! Does
not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and
lead it away to give it water? And
ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long
years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?” When he said this, all his
opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the
wonderful things that he was doing.
And Walter Brueggemann, 21st
century Bible scholar and prophetic teacher in our tradition, said: Sabbath, in
the first instance is NOT about worship – it is about work stoppage. It is
about withdrawing from the anxiety system of Pharaoh, the refusal to let one’s
life be defined only by production and consumption and the endless pursuit of
private well-being. Sabbath, you see, is about caring for our neighbor and
making certain we have the time, energy and vision to do so.
So today I
want to share with you why I
believe it is critical for us – First Church – to reclaim a
You see, I
believe God is working within
and among us – and some of us are
passionate to respond – but we are so nervous about trusting the Lord for
guidance that we slide back into old habits of privilege that prop-up the status
quo more than the kingdom of God. Some,
of course, don’t really care what happens and others are burned out. But I
believe there is a critical mass among – small but eager – who willing to go
the extra mile in creativity and commitment – and I’m talking to you today. The great American scientist who fled Nazi
Germany, Albert Einstein, once observed that, “We cannot solve our problems
with the same mode of thinking that created them in the first place.” So let me
first share two insights with you about honoring the Sabbath: one from Isaiah and one from Jesus. And then
I will give you three broad themes about doing ministry in this era that I am
passionate about.
Insights
In the text
appointed for today from Isaiah 58, we would do well to recall that it takes
place after Israel’s best and brightest have lived for 70 years of exile in
Babylon: their grandchildren have
returned home to Jerusalem, they have begun to build a fortress wall around the
city to protect the new temple and differentiate between who is an insider and
outsider, and are hoping to renew lives that celebrate the favor of God’s
grace.
But something
is going wrong. After experiencing and
accepting God’s judgment and their own season of grief in exile, inwardly Israel
has embraced the Lord’s forgiveness for their sins but outwardly fear, anger
and discord rules the day. They pray along with their priests Psalm 103: As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has
compassion for those who fear him… the steadfast love of the Lord is
from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to
children’s children to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his
commandments – but something is out of whack. And a careful reading of the prophet tells us two truths that have
implications for our own congregational dilemma: First, the people are fasting but God
doesn’t appear to notice; and second, there is no sense of compassion active in
the community. The wealthy hoard their
resources. The Sabbath becomes a forum for commercialization. Those with privilege look out for themselves
without passionate concern for the common good.
One of the
deceptive dangers of privilege in any generation is that we think we can walk
away from a problem and it won’t matter because our life doesn’t change. But
that is short sighted and illusionary deceptiony because what wounds one eventually wounds us all. White America walked away from attending to
race hatred for 50 years after passing a variety of laws in the 1960s only to be shocked two years ago at the horror
that people of color still endure daily when social media documented murder and
cruelty run amuck at the hands of some law enforcement agents in Black, Latino
and Asian neighborhoods.
The same
could be said of climate change – we were able to look the other way, dispute
the hard facts of science and exist in privileged indifference – until the
floods came or the heat baked once productive soil into dust. Our spiritual
tradition, you see, teaches that we were made for community and caring: when we wound or ignore some, all of us bear
the consequences in time. So Isaiah, called
by the Lord, must awaken God’s
privileged people, call out their self-centered addictions and urge them to
become passionately reconnected to the common good: This is the kind of fast day I’m after: to break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the
oppressed, cancel
debts. What I’m interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes
on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families. Do this and the lights will turn on,
and your lives will turn around
at once. If you
watch your step on the Sabbath and don’t use my holy day for personal advantage, if
you treat the Sabbath as a day of joy, God’s holy day as a celebration, then
you will be free.
Sabbath, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel taught,
is practicing trust: we trust God to be
in
And that is what
Jesus was doing in the second lesson related to Sabbath keeping. He was not
taking on Judaism or suggesting a better way with Christianity; Jesus was
passionately reminding both the scholars and the crowd that compassion and work
stoppage are at the core of Sabbath. The
Tanakh of Israel, the code of sacred law, enjoins work on the Sabbath,
yes; but never defines what constitutes work. Do you grasp that nuance?
What Jesus is actually asking here is what good the embodied values of our
religious tradition if they don’t set people free? That’s a great question for us, too: What does it matter if we are the oldest
congregation in Pittsfield if our presence doesn’t help set people free?
In
Luke’s gospel, there are five times when Jesus brings healing to a person on
the Sabbath: So let us be clear:
Jesus is not anti-Semitic nor superseding his own faith tradition. In fact, all of his healing on the
Sabbath – the demoniac in Capernaum, Simon Peter’s mother-in-law in Galilee,
the man with a withered hand, the woman crippled for 18 years and the man with
dropsy or arthritis who was cured outside the home of a Pharisee – are acceptable
in Jewish law. The Law of Judaism proclaims “Pikuach nefesh”
–saving a life – always
overrides any other Sabbath obligation. And the fact that the crowd cheers Jesus
at the close of our lesson suggests that they too find no violation of halakhah – Jewish ethical regulations. This
story asks us to wrestle with whether or not our understanding of tradition is
liberating and about human freedom or keeping people locked out of love and
hope because of an obsession with tradition?
Sr. Simone Campbell, whom some of know as the face of the “Nuns on the
Bus,” puts it like this: God asks us to
ask ourselves, “Am I responding to this moment or situation with generosity or selfishness? Am I responding in a way that builds up people around me, that builds me up, that is respectful of who I am?” Or am I tearing things down with
cynicism? That is precisely what Jesus asks, too.
Those who
practice and honor the Sabbath know that Sabbath is about saving life in all
its forms – starting with rest – but moving into justice, freedom and
compassion, too. Now, just as we know religious zealots in our day who advocate hatred
and cruelty in the name of God, this text tells us that this problem has been
around forever. It happened in the time of Moses, it hadn’t gone away for the
prophet Isaiah and Jesus had to take it on during his ministry. And if that was
true for the founders, it is not likely that we’re going to escape its poison
in our generation either, right?
So pay careful attention to the fact that in this
story the word faith was
never mentioned in connection with freedom:
No reminder that your faith has made you well – or by faith we see God’s
grace as through a glass darkly – not at all. There is simply a sense of
needing to love this woman back into
wholeness and sharing love with her in humility. This strikes me as an authentically pro-life
commitment that is not truncated by narrow ideological or political
limitations. Sr. Joan
Chittister once said: "I do
not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion, that that makes you
pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all
you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child
housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any
tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. And we need a
much broader conversation on what the morality of a true pro-life ethic
is all about” if we’re serious about following Jesus.
And THAT,
beloved, is where my passionate sense of calling for our congregation
+ First, we have a unique constellation of artists here – men, women and children
who are not just musicians (although we have more talented music makers among
us than many places) – but also dancers, poets, actors, visual artists,
sculptors, cooks and more. We also have profound relationships with artists and movers and shakers
throughout this community – people of many faiths and no faith – who care for
the common welfare of all as sisters and brothers. So why not harness these gifts in a passionate way to build common ground and
hope? Why not dedicate ourselves to
documenting an alternative to hate and fear through bold acts of beauty shared
for the well-being of all? Why not create artistic expressions of Sabbath
freedom so that we might move beyond cynicism into celebration? We could do that – we could use this place to
be a showcase of artistic hope for the whole Berkshires – if we were called
with passionate about it. I have a dream that we could create a travelling
showcase for God’s grace where for 45 minutes we share stories, music, images
and poetry while some of our great cooks prepare a feast. And then sit down to break bread together and
practice deep listening and storytelling so that we come to know one another
and trust one another and stand-up for one another when their backs are up
against the wall. That’s one way aspect
of a passionate presence in Pittsfield that is unique and essential for the
healing of our broken community.
+ A second involves grounding our presence in Pittsfield in Sabbath
rest. Our generation has lost touch with awe and reverence. We no longer know
how to grieve and then move back into lives of holy trust. Too many are trapped in depression or
cynicism. Fundamentally because all we really know is how to work and fret and
distract ourselves from the haunting anxiety of our age with chemicals, cheap
sex and entertainment. But our tradition is steeped in prayer and play,
contemplation and creativity, feasting and fasting, laughter, tears, hope and
carrying one another’s burdens beyond our alienated addiction to work and
business metrics. Like Isaiah said: Do
this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at
once. If you
watch your step on the Sabbath and don’t use my holy day for personal advantage, if
you treat the Sabbath as a day of joy, God’s holy day as a celebration, then
you will be free. Everywhere I go I hear people talking about their hurts, wounds, fears
and anxieties. We have the resources to become a small center of healing
alternatives for our wounded culture if we honor the Sabbath, practice our
spiritual disciplines and share them with joy. So what’s holding us back?
And then there is our calling to be an Open and Affirming
community: Pittsfield has a superabundance of charity centers from St. Joseph’s
Kitchen to the Food Bank – and they are all needed and necessary – but we don’t need to become another. What Pittsfield doesn’t have is a playful,
compassionate justice church that
celebrates diversity, advocates and organizes for the poor and cuts across all
divisions to honor human dignity in the real world. Three years ago I gave a lot of time to
helping bring BIO to birth – Berkshire Interfaith Organizing – and a few of you
including our moderator, Lauryn, did vital work in the early days, too. Well,
BIO needs our help – and the Berkshires need a force for creative, practical
justice making beyond slogans and the ups and downs of our emotions - so, like
Rabbi Hillel once asked, I wonder: “If not now, tell me when?”
Conclusion
Three objectives that I
am passionate about: focusing our
artistic blessings on behalf of
Burton recalls that on the morning of
September 11: “…her
bookstore was mobbed by people not buying books but looking for a place of
support, empathy and community because – and listen to this with care – because
her bookstore was more inclusive that our churches, more communal than cultural
events and more intimate than a bar.”
One of my spiritual mentors, Jean Vanier of the
L’Arche Community, explains that people of love must learn to love what is real
– not what was in the past, not what we expect or desire the future to be, and
not what our fantasies or fears suggest, but what is real right now. For when we bring God’s love to bear on
reality, then Isaiah becomes true for our generation: Do this
and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at
once. If you
watch your step on the Sabbath and don’t use my holy day for personal advantage, if
you treat the Sabbath as a day of joy, God’s holy day as a celebration, then
you will be free. May it be so within and among us,
for God’s sake – and ours as well.
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