Scripture: Psalm 42 and Luke 17:20-21
A number of you have had the experience of asking me, for one reason or another, what I’m going to preach on this coming Sunday. Like Jeanine did when she and Karen agreed to sing this morning. She wanted to know what the theme was going to be so that she and Karen could choose something that might be appropriate. A reasonable enough request. But that was Monday, and on Mondays any answer I give to the question of what the sermon is going to be about is going to be vague and tentative. I don’t want to pretend that my head is usually empty on Monday; I usually have something I’m thinking about, but experience has shown that that could easily change. That’s one reason I have trouble committing to anything definite early in the week. More often though it’s not so much that I completely change my mind as that the topic evolves so that although each thought is somehow related to the previous thought, at least in my own mind, what I end up with is actually something quite different from where I started. I feel like that is what happened this week, and I also feel like it might be helpful—to me if no one else—not just to share where I ended up but to include the process that got me there. Anyway, for better or worse that’s what I want to do this morning.
When Jeanine asked me what I was going to preach about, on Monday, what came out of my mouth after some hemming and hawing, some clearing of the throat and several disclaimers, was the word “Sabbath”. In the notes I made to myself several months ago about the fall season, there was a reminder that this Sunday was being celebrated by some people as Children’s Sabbath, a concept that came out of the Children’s Defense Fund and that some churches have hooked into. By the time I noticed that reminder it was a little too late to do anything very meaningful in the way of observing a Children’s Sabbath here at Sojourners. But the word “Sabbath” stuck. We’ll deal with the idea of a children’s Sabbath another time. What place or importance might that concept have for us grown-ups? That was where I was starting from this week.
The fact that my attention was drawn to the word “Sabbath” was not an accident. I have been hearing pleas for various kinds of Sabbath keeping coming at me from all directions for some time now. The word Sabbath is not always used, but sometimes it is. In the kinds of things ministers read, or at least the kinds of things this minister reads, you will fairly often encounter the idea in one form or another. Self-care has emerged in recent years as a much talked about issue in professional ministry. Ministers are being encouraged these days, maybe because there have been so many casualties in the past, encouraged to find ways to get away from ministry, not to take their ministerial selves so seriously and their human selves maybe a little more seriously, not to bring their personal needs to their work, and so forth. That would be good for them, for their families, and for the people in the congregation.
Ministers are also being encouraged to encourage others to do the same thing. Writers point out that the combination of a society that doesn’t rest, where there is clearly no concept of Sabbath on a society-wide basis, Sunday closings for instance…
That, coupled with the demands of many jobs to work long hours or take work home, and whatever demands we may feel or imagine that cause people not to take all of their vacation or bring a lap top and a cell phone on vacation so you can check in at the office…and the demands we place upon ourselves maybe to see that our children have as many enriching experiences as possible (which usually means that the parents add that enrichment into their own schedule)…or the demands that we ourselves have as many enriching experiences as possible, and the demands we place on ourselves to attend to our self-care, exercise for instance, so that self care paradoxically becomes one more thing we think we ought to do but have trouble wedging in to a busy schedule, and so that even reading a book, rather than being food for the mind or balm for the soul can become something you have to get done for the book club meeting Thursday night…All of this points to a need for people in general to create some kind of Sabbath equivalent for themselves, since society no longer does it for them. That’s what the books and articles are saying.
It’s also what I’m hearing from Sojourners. Not the word Sabbath, I don’t hear that very often. But I do hear comments. “People at Sojourners are just so busy,” we say. And it’s true. I know it is. It’s also true that in situations like this the church, if it isn’t careful, can become the oppressor. Or at least part of the problem. Adding more demands to already busy schedules. Adding possible sources of conflict or guilt to lives that already are not doing justice to everything they would like or have committed themselves to. Contributing maybe to a kind of distorted world-view where human beings think they have to be in control and where the approach to everything is to form a committee, develop a program, organize an activity, and don’t forget to tell God how you think she can contribute to the success of the whole thing.
I don’t really mean to be facetious. What I hear in comments like, “People at Sojourners (or wherever) are just so busy,” what I hear in such comments is in its own way a plea for Sabbath. Let there be some time that is unhurried, unscheduled, unprogrammed, unplanned and unplanned for, unstressful, undemanding, and un-guilt inducing. As I say, I’ve heard this plea from things I’ve read, from people around me, and sometimes from voices inside myself. The need for some kind of Sabbath, not the old-fashioned kind to be sure, but something to take its place, some kind of Sabbath-like time, somewhere in our lives.
Then I began to ask myself: If I were to say something like that, which I have now just done, if I were to just sort of lay on the table our lack of Sabbath time and our need for Sabbath time, what would I really be talking about? What would I mean by that?
Speaking just for myself, I think rest is not one of the things I would mean in thinking about my own need for Sabbath time. I know that’s what the idea of Sabbath is often associated with. On the seventh day God rested; that’s why there used to be a day set aside for our rest. If it’s good enough for God it should be good enough for us. But if rest is a vegging out sort of rest, then that’s not what I’m interested in. Not that there’s anything wrong with rest, or with vegging out, or with the main thing I associate with vegging out which is television. This is not a sermon against television, against vegging out, against sitting in a rocking chair thinking no great thoughts or no thoughts at all, or against any form of mindlessness. It’s just that when I think about my own needs for Sabbath, the need I feel is not just for rest, not that kind of rest. I don’t feel a need to make sure that there is more room in my life for television. I don’t feel a need to make sure that I don’t squeeze all the mindlessness out of my life. Those things are o.k., they have their place. They are not what’s concerning me in relation to Sabbath.
So what is? Concerning me that is. What do I need to make sure there is time in my life for, that is endangered by being too scheduled, too busy, too eager to be useful, too anxious to be on top of things, or just plain too anxious. And one thing that came to mind, the first thing that came to mind in answer to the question I was asking myself, was “wonder”. Or mystery, maybe. The commandment says, “Honor the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” It doesn’t say honor the Sabbath day by resting and doing something mindless, but keep it holy. Well, o.k., we don’t have whole days to keep holy any more, but how about a few moments, some gathered minutes, some pieces of time set aside to get lost in wonder, to ponder the mystery that lies at the beginning and end and heart of everything that is and of me, to ponder the mystery that some call God and to give oneself over to that mystery, to God, and yes maybe to rest, not mindlessly but mindfully, in the arms of God. Yes, I think I do need that.
And I think I need to keep some holy time that is holy because it is shared with people I care about and where we don’t talk about the weather or the world series or what movies are worth seeing but find a dozen or so ways to say I’m thankful for you, or maybe find a way to talk about the world series or the movies that somehow says I’m thankful for you. I think those times, in a way, may be Sabbath times too. I know I need them.
But not just that either. When I think of Sabbath, I think of a kind of letting go, relinquishing of control. In contrast to all the going, getting, doing, performing, useful, dutiful, self-improving, world-improving ways that my time is used, there need to be times, I need to have times, where it is not my job to solve problems but simply to feel them, or better to abide with them and in them. Like learning to live our questions rather than rushing to find answers for them, there is a time for trying to make the world better, but there is also a time simply to grieve and to confess that we don’t have sufficient wisdom or sufficient ability to try to remake the world, before we go back to trying to do something anyway. I don’t have a really good example for this at the moment, but I have the feeling that the world would on the whole be better off, and our efforts to change the world would be more effective, if we took more time off from thinking that we’ve got the whole world in our hands and spent more time trying to take the world into our hearts. That too might be a kind of Sabbath time. It is time I’m thinking I need to set aside. Some might call it intercessory prayer.
I also know that whatever I want the world to be has to take shape inside me. Which is to say that I know I have soul work to do. When I was going to seminary—which I admit was quite a while ago now—it was part of my teaching that the statement Jesus made that has often been translated “the kingdom of God is within you” was not the most accurate translation of what the passage said, that it might better read “the kingdom of God is among you”, meaning that the realm that God imagines on our behalf, the realm that Jesus pointed to so often was not some internal state of mind, some feeling, some private relationship we each have with God, but was also a way of our living together. It is not that God wants to fill just our hearts but to fill all creation with the ways of justice, love, and peace.
That all sounded right to me. It still sounds right to me. The reign of God has to do with a whole new creation, with God’s will being done on earth and throughout the earth, the whole earth. It has to do with our bloodstained earth being given a new birth. The kingdom of God if it is to be at all will be among us, not just some place we set apart for God within us. But it is within us too, that reign of God we pray and work for. Because we each have soul work to do. And I need Sabbath times because there are some conversations God and I need to have about me. What God and I talk about will be different of course from what you and God may talk about. But we each have some conversations that need to happen, within. May we set aside some Sabbath time to let those conversations take place. May the time that is ours not simply pass, but in some way that will be unique to each one of us, may that time be holy. May it be filled with God. Amen.
Jim Bundy
October 19, 2003