Morning Prayer: Tom Lyda Choral Amen Hymn of Restoration Witness of Scripture: Genesis 2: 1-4 & Exodus 20: 8-11 Anthem *There Is a Time* Craig Courtney. Stephanie Clinton, soprano; Jenifer Buyten, piano; John Riester, organ Sermon *Essentials: Sabbath*
Recorded on September 1, 2024
Do you ever imagine conversations? Maybe you are cleaning or cooking or driving and your mind formulates soliloquies of great wisdom affirming the ones you love or challenging the ones who frustrate you.It’s amazing how articulate we can be.Sometimes, I imagine God thinking or working or speaking. In those imaginative moments, I am never telling God something; instead, it is God talking. Somehow, this makes God feel closer or more accessible. Obviously, there are dangers in doing this kind of thing—we must never confuse our thoughts about God with the reality of God; but at least for me, this kind of exercise can be helpful. Maybe it is even some form of prayer.
Take for example the story of creation told in Genesis 1. I can imagine God delightfully, exuberantly spinning the galaxies with creative, energizing love. Without having a clear image or form for God, I can still imagine God the artist and musician painting, composing, singing while enlivening creation because the creative energies are flowing, and God is joyful. When it comes Genesis 1 as Israel tells its origin story, God is reveling in creating!
At the conclusion of this creative fervor in the beautiful liturgy that is Genesis 1, God takes a rest. So here is today’s short quiz. Did creation, as told in the first of the two creation stories in Genesis, take 6 days or 7?God worked for 6 days, then rested on day 7. Maybe there is not a right answer, but consider the possibility that the response might be 7, because creation is incomplete until God enjoys it, receives it, rests in it. As it is with God, so it is with all who are made in God’s image—rest is in the rhythm of God’s design for creation.
So, back to the world of imagination. God looks out on everything made, and is delighted by
The joy and the generosity of being creative.But now it is time to put down the tools and take a
break. If creation isn’t already gift enough, God says, “I will give them one more gift —a day to enjoy, recline, celebrate. This is a piece of cake—no one will have to be told to rest, because being made in my image, they will simply do this. This is the easiest thing I will ever say to my creation—take a load off, put your feet up, sit on the porch, sip lemonade, enjoy!”
So what happened, that this gift of rest and revelry ended up necessitating a command to be followed? We remember rest is one of the Ten Commandments. It is number 4 after the first 3 commandments focused on God—Sabbath is that important. Is it odd that it has to be commanded? Back to the imaginative conversation going on in the halls of heaven, when we overhear God saying, “You mean I have to command them to delight…give them permission to rest and relax? What are they thinking? Who’s in their ear? What do they value more than delighting in My gifts to them, taking time to remember Me as the Giver, and being thankful?” Sometimes in our imaginations—as is true in the Biblical stories of God and the prophets, and later of Jesus—
there are really challenging questions that are important to consider. What is going on that Sabbath rest needs to be commanded?
It is interesting when it comes to the Commandments, that most people would be reluctant to admit breaking one of the other nine commandments. “We don’t covet, we don’t make idols, we don’t lie, lust, steal or slay. But work, busyness, activity, generativity—who has time to stop and rest?You mean, it is one of the commandments? Maybe I’ll rest later; maybe I’ll rest when I get a new job, stop working. I’ll certainly rest when I die, but for now squeeze every moment out of and into life. I’d rather flame out than burn out.”
God gifts creation and those created in God’s image with rest, and then codifies the gift as number 4. Sabbath is on the first page of the leader board, and even though breaking this Commandment probably has the biggest upside and the highest payoff, the chronic, repeated failure to observe Sabbath—to rest with and in God and God’s creation, makes it so much easier to forget the other 9 commandments. With Sabbath, we remember Who has made us and who we are and that nothing can take the place of that; with Sabbath we remember that nothing is to be idolized including God but especially all the cheaper and easier substitutes that clamor to dominate our lives—you can name them because they are legion; with Sabbath we remember to put down the tools and be content in what is, remembering that we are part of a larger community of neighbors to whom we are related and with whom we cooperate and for whom we care.It can be easy to forget that, to lose that perspective—Sabbath helps us remember who and whose we are.
Abraham Joshua Heschel reminds us that when Sabbath begins, it is the practice of our Jewish relatives to light two candles. The first candle recalls God’s rest on day 7—made in God’s image, we rest also. The second candle remembers not the first week of creation but that too soon Israel became captive to the Egyptians who kept raising the production quota for more bricks, more bricks. God liberated Israel from that captivity, so the second Sabbath candle is a reminder that God liberates people from being captive to whatever might enslave. Heschel goes further, reminding us that the first holy thing in all creation was not a people or a place but a day. God made everything in creation and called it good, but when God rested on the seventh day, God called it holy. That makes the seventh day a ‘palace in time’ into which human beings are invited every single week of our lives. (The Sabbath, p.3)
When we recall the 4th commandment, it is more than a mandate for personal Sabbath. All of creation is to be resting. Barbara Brown Taylor observes, “Sabbath practice suspends our subtle and not so subtle ways of dominating one another on a regular basis. Because our work is so often how we both rank and rule over one another, resting from it gives us a rest from our own pecking orders as well.When the Wal-Mart cashier and the bank president are both lying on picnic blankets at the park, it is hard to tell them apart. When two sets of grandparents are at the lake with their grandchildren feeding ducks, it is hard to tell the rich ones from the poor ones… Sabbath is the great equalizer, the great reminder that we do not live on this earth but in it, and that everything we do under the warming tent of this planet’s atmosphere affects all who are woven into this web with us.” (An Altar in the World, p. 131 & 132) Forget Commandment #4, and it is easier to forget everything else.
When Moses brought those tablets down the mountain, Israel had long been practicing Sabbath. Why did they need Sabbath commanded? Remember they had been captive for a long time with a people who cared nothing about Sabbath and only wanted more productivity. If you forget long enough, then the brick quota becomes the status quo.Remember also where Israel was headed—yes, a land loaded with milk and honey but among a people not so familiar with giving that milk and honey a day off. So, God wanted Israel to remember that status quo per Egypt and Canaan is not the same as God’s quotient for abundant life, and it is essential to remember that difference.
So, what happened? As is true with most things, it is never one thing. A long time ago, back in the South, Sabbath was easier for those who observed it on Sundays. Most stores were closed, and if you needed a can of mushroom soup for the casserole you hoped that the local 7/11 might have it, back when 7/11 really meant 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. and not 24/7. But, black ink in the ledger became more important than blue laws in the books, and now Sunday is almost entirely another day for spending or sporting. There is no point in howling at the moon over this—it just is. The value of rest commanded was replaced by the value of rising consumption.Religion in some ways has baptized this orientation. We value the Protestant work ethic, and work is good; but it is not god. Life is about balance, so who has the Protestant rest ethic?Perhaps it is no surprise that the hardest hymns to find to sing in worship are ones about Sabbath rest. To be sure faith is about doing and serving and transforming and healing; we partner with God in this good work; but even God took a day to revel in what is. It is as if the world might stop spinning if we get off the treadmill. It didn’t when God stepped off, Genesis reminds us.
There are so many lures to ignore Sabbath. MaryAnn McKibben Dana commented on the achievement bug. “Parents want their children to play and be kids, but they also want them to be enriched, to have every opportunity to succeed…One of the neighborhood parents has talked to me about the importance of kids building their resumes. Their children are in elementary school. I don’t want my daughter to build her resume. I want her to build a sense of adventure …I want her to build memories.” (Sabbath in the Suburbs, p. 133) Add to all of this a 24 hour news cycle and any of various technology devices that command our attention, and we are almost never off, almost never left with a quiet, unstimulated moment. It gets exhausting, and too soon we forget who we are and whose we are. Anne Lamott, who often says things you might not be comfortable directly quoting in church, offers these two jewels—“Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.” (quoted in Sabbath in the Suburbs, p. 134), and “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” (Almost Everything, p. 67)
Sabbath comes as another of God’s gifts to the world and then as a command to tell us it is okay to open the gift. Perhaps nobody does Sabbath perfectly, anymore than we live any other part of our faith perfectly. I don’t think we can work at getting better with Sabbath; instead, we let Sabbath be with us in a variety of wonderful ways—listening to nature or hearing a symphony; eyeing a sunset or looking for the first stars; turning off everything and listening attentively to another—eye to eye and knee to knee; meditating for five minutes or turning off the cell phone for 15 minutes. Sabbath is not meant as one more task we do; instead, it is a perspective, a way of being in rhythm with God’s design for all of life.Meister Eckhardt once said, “God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by subtracting.” And there is this story told in The Christian Century—“A Buddhist monk visiting New York was told by his Western host that they could save ten minutes by making a transfer in the subway at Grand Central Station. When they emerged from the underground in Central Park, the monk sat down on a bench.His host wanted to know what he was doing, to which the monk replied, ‘I thought we should enjoy the 10 minutes.’ (5/2/2006) Now that is Sabbath as essential.