Why Sabbath Matters

We’ve all heard the studies and statistics. Rest and relaxation are crucial to a healthy and productive life. Sleep can impact memory, metabolism, immune systems, and can even inspire creativity! Moreover, rest is necessary for a healthy life. A vacation produces the same benefits as sleep, and also increases productivity. Taking time off reduces likelihood of burnout and brings new perspectives on work and daily life.

Rest is also a spiritual discipline. Sabbath is a day of rest, observed every week, for intentional relaxation, renewal, and growing in relationship with God. The concept of Sabbath is grounded in two solid Biblical concepts. The first is creation: God made the universe in six days, and on the seventh day, God rested. If rest was important for God, then it is also important for us. The second Biblical reason for Sabbath is gratitude for God’s work in our lives and respect for God’s authority.

We rest because God rested. And we rest because God freed us from slavery and gave us the luxury of time off of work.

Christians sometimes lament the secularization of our day of rest and worship. You may remember a time when stores were not open on Sundays, when there were no sports tournaments or liquor sales on the first day of the week, when no one had to work.

Though, let me clue you in on something. As I pastor, I can assure you, there have always been people working on Sundays.

And it’s not just church professionals who work on Sunday. Police officers and firefighters have always worked on Sundays. Praise God! I would hate for my house to burn down because it caught fire on a Sunday instead of a Monday. Health care professionals have always worked on Sundays. Even when clinics aren’t open, emergency rooms are. Nursing homes are.

And forget rest from professional endeavors – if your Sunday routine growing up was going to church and coming home to a wonderful meal that the whole family shared together – who made that meal? Who did the dishes? It is not restful for most of us to prepare a meal for a dozen of our closest loved ones! Someone in the family had to work very hard in order for the rest of the family to have a day off.

Sundays have traditionally been a day of rest for Christians. But there have always been people who work on Sundays. So, we have a paradox: commandment to keep the Sabbath, but the reality of daily life that requires some of us to work on what should be our day off.

How to resolve the paradox? Here’s what I think.

First, the day on which you observe the Sabbath is less important than the fact of observing it. If you work every Sunday, turn Fridays or Mondays into your Sabbath. Pick a day of the week, and set that day aside for no work to be done.

Second, observe the Sabbath in ways that draw you closer to God. Yes, join a community for worship every week. And also, get some fresh air. Find God in nature. Spend time with family or friends who show you God’s unconditional love. Read or meditate or do whatever draws you into meaningful relationship with your creator.

First – take a day of rest.

Second – fill that day only with things that help you know God more deeply.

It’s tempting to work on our day off – catch up on email, run just a few errands, schedule an appointment. Don’t do it. The way to emulate God, to show gratitude to God, and to follow God’s commands, is to take a day of rest. Every week.

The rewards are monumental.

If you stop trampling the Sabbath,

    stop doing whatever you want on my holy day,

    and consider the Sabbath a delight,

    sacred to the Lord, honored…

then you will take delight in the Lord.

    I will let you ride on the heights of the earth;

    I will sustain you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob.

    The mouth of the Lord has spoken.

(Isaiah 58:13-14 NRSV)

Take a day of rest. Use it to grow closer to God. And God promises to be there in your busy days and in your restful days, for all eternity.

For a wonderful message on Sabbath, rest, and self-care, see this message by the Rev. Kanyere Eaton: God is not glorified by your chronic exhaustion 

What is Genuine Worship?

The first chapter of the book of Isaiah echoes a familiar tune, sung by the prophets of Israel and Judah throughout history. We hear the same theme from Amos and Micah. It echoes in the ministry of Jesus. The same tune is sung by modern-day prophets like Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King, Jr. The message is this:

God considers your worship to be meaningless, unless it is followed up by acts of justice. Don’t bother praying to God unless you’re also willing to put those prayers into action.

Hear, O heavens, and listen, O earth;

for the Lord has spoken:

Trample my courts no more;

bringing offerings is futile;

incense is an abomination to me.

New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation—

I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.

Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates;

they have become a burden to me,

I am weary of bearing them.

Cease to do evil,

learn to do good;

seek justice,

rescue the oppressed,

defend the orphan,

plead for the widow.

            (Isaiah 1:2a, 12c-14, 16c-17 NRSV)

God hears plenty of praying from people who have a half-hearted faith. Those prayers are vanity, worthless, a chasing after the wind. When you come to weekly worship, but consider your duty to God complete once worship is over, God sees through your façade and knows that you could do so much more to help make the world a better place. And that so much more is what God really wants you to spend your time doing.

Worship is good. But worship cannot feed the hungry, care for the orphan, or liberate the oppressed. God wants – even expects – that faithful people will do whatever it takes to make sure that all people are cared for.

Cease to do evil and learn to do good. Seek justice. 

Really, go do it.

That’s the encouragement of Isaiah today. Don’t just pray for justice in the world, but seek it out, help to create it.

It is easy for us to hear these words, to become inspired, and to have the best of intentions, but then get stuck because we have no idea how to follow up.

Right?

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Isaiah doesn’t tell us today that we have to stop all of the world’s injustice. Such a command would be impractical and overwhelming. Isaiah simply tells us that, as far as it lies within our ability to do so, we are to seek justice. Rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow. In other words, do everything that we can to help those who have less power in society than we do. That’s what justice means to Isaiah… and to Amos, to Micah, to Jesus, and to modern-day prophets.

           

Caring for the widow and the orphan is a kind of Old Testament shorthand for helping the underprivileged people in society. A widow in the ancient world could only make a living by begging or becoming a prostitute. Widows were a class of people who really needed extra support. Orphans didn’t have anyone to feed or house them when they were growing up, or to set them up with a spouse or an apprenticeship for a career. Orphans started life with all the cards stacked against them.

So caring for the widows and the orphans was the way that the prophets humanized the problems of society – everyone knew at least one widow or one orphan. So care for that person. And then work out from there to care for all oppressed people in the world!

We can do the same. Find someone who has less power in society that you do, and care for that person. If every person in the world did this, eventually we would be caring for all the oppressed people in the world!  

Silence

God of love, teach us to be like you. Amen. 

Sisters and brothers in Christ…

This is a difficult time to be a woman.

When rapists can be sentenced to incarceration for less time than the raped woman would have to endure pregnancy, should it result from the assault – there is something seriously wrong with our ideas of justice and retribution and rehabilitation.

This is a difficult time to be of Hispanic origin.

When people show up to Latinx night at a club – Latinx is meant to be a gender-inclusive term for people with Latin American heritage – when attendees at a Latinx event are attacked by a gunman and over a hundred of them end up either dead or seriously wounded, there is something seriously wrong with our definitions of culture and violence and tolerance.

This is a difficult time to be queer, to be transgender, bisexual, lesbian, or gay.

When the place that your community has developed as a sanctuary from prejudice is violated, so that an entire demographic of our population now feels that there is nowhere safe for them to be themselves, there is something wrong with our ideas of relationship, romance, and socially appropriate behavior.

This is a difficult time to be Muslim.

When the faith of your forefathers has been distorted in the public eye by extremists, beyond all recognition… when none of the goodness and humility you were raised with is ever part of the public discourse about your religion… when every adherent is suspected to be a terrorist, so that even when you are mourning the murdered members of your community, you also have to defend yourself and your actual faith at the same time – there is something wrong with the way that we listen to one another and learn from one another.

This is a difficult time to be a person of color in America.

When you have to have “the talk” with your children to train them to hide from the police rather than turning to them for help, because too many people you know have been wrongfully accused and incarcerated for no reason other than the color of their skin – there is something wrong.

When we have reached the anniversary of a shooting of nine innocents in a black church, who were doing nothing more sinister than praying and studying their Bibles, and we realize that nothing has changed since that tragedy – there is something wrong.

There is something wrong with the way that we are treating each other in this society. According to all the news headlines, in general, we are living in dark times, guided not by love, but by hate.

Hello darkness, my old friend

I’ve come to talk with you again

Because a vision softly creeping

Left its seeds while I was sleeping

And the vision that was planted in my brain

Still remains

Within the sound of silence*

Elijah encountered dark times in his ministry.

He was the only prophet of God left in the land. He was marginalized and oppressed, and he felt overwhelmed by the burden to turn the people back to faithful worship of the one true God.

Then, he performed an amazing miracle, defeating the prophets of the false God in a contest on a mountain.

We heard the story a few weeks ago. Elijah was triumphant.

But the people in power didn’t appreciate his miraculous feat. He was a threat to their establishment. So Elijah suddenly found himself persecuted and pursued by the powers that be, and he fled in fear.

This is where we meet Elijah today.

He was so frustrated with his ministry, he was ready to give up entirely. He couldn’t see any point in moving forward. He laments to God, “I have been working my tail off for you! But no matter how faithful I am and how much you are with me, God, the people are against me. They’re trying to kill me. They don’t want to hear your Word. And I just don’t have the energy to go on anymore, God. I may as well be dead.”

It’s easy to relate to Elijah’s frustration – especially for those of us who are women or Hispanic or queer or Muslim or black, or a member of any other group that has experienced senseless violence in the recent past.

We’ve been working our tails off! And nothing we do seems to make any difference. No one else seems to care.

We may as well give up.

In restless dreams I walked alone

Narrow streets of cobblestone

'Neath the halo of a street lamp

I turned my collar to the cold and damp

When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light

That split the night

And touched the sound of silence*

But God doesn’t let Elijah off the hook that easily.

And God doesn’t let us off the hook that easy either.

Elijah is met by a messenger from God who gives him food for the journey to come, and then he is met with the very presence of God.

Elijah remains in hiding throughout this story – he does not go back to re-engage his enemies right away. Instead, he retreats to a cave, where he is told that the Lord will pass by.

There is a windstorm, strong enough to split stone. But God is not in the windstorm.

There is an earthquake, but God is not there either.

There is a fire – remember, just a few weeks ago we celebrated the presence of God in the fire of Pentecost – but this time around, God is not in the fire.

Elijah experiences these powerful, world-changing events – but cannot find God in any of them.

And then, there is the sound of sheer silence.

And God is in the silence.

When all the drama and terror and hatred and power and fears of the world have been spent, all that is left is silence.

And God.

When the world has raked us across the coals, when we have been mistreated and mistrusted, when we don’t feel like we can make a difference, when we are ready to give up, sometimes all that is left is silence.

And God.

Silence can be powerful. It can be refreshing, comforting, peaceful and invigorating. Silence can bring us strength and renewal, and even the very presence of God.

Since the times of Elijah, people of faith have been seeking God in silence all over the world. Jesus went alone to pray in the wilderness.

Monks have set up monasteries in remote locations, where silence is the rule of the order.

Mystics like Augustine of Hippo, Hildegard of Bingen, Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Saint Ignatius, John Donne, Dag Hammarskjöld, Thomas Merton, even Mother Teresa – all of them understood the power of silence for restoring the soul and growing closer to God.

Silence is powerful.

But silence becomes impotent if you stop there.

The silence of meditation is different than the silence of inaction.

Even Elijah wasn’t allowed to stay in his silent mountaintop retreat. God gave him a message and sent him back to society.

He had a chance to refresh himself, yes. But he didn’t get to stay self-centered. If he was going to do God’s work, like a prophet is called to do, he needed to get down off that mountain and get to work among the people.

And in the naked light I saw

Ten thousand people, maybe more

People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening

People writing songs that voices never share

And no one dared

Disturb the sound of silence*

Our call, as followers of Jesus, is to disturb the sound of silence.

This week we had a powerful example of someone disturbing the sound of silence – speaking truth to the indifference in the world.

When congress was in session, the assembly was asked to observe a moment of silence in honor of the people who died in last week’s shooting in Orlando.

But some of the senators weren’t happy with that. They knew that the time had come to break the silence.

And one of the senators from the state of Connecticut, while congress was in session, took the floor and didn’t yield it for 15 hours, until leaders on both sides of the aisle agreed to finally, actually, and hopefully honestly, discuss and consider bills to control the sale of firearms in this country.

When a change needs to be made in the world, and yet no one is willing to put themselves on the line for the cause, sometimes it seems like nothing is happening.

The silence can be deafening.

When change is required and people need to speak, but they dare not, then we are living in dark times.

Like Elijah.

But, like Elijah, we are also given the tools we need to more forward from our place of shock and indifference and inaction.

In our worship together, we share food for the journey to come, food that we believe holds the very presence of God, in the meal of Holy Communion.

When we pause to listen for God, like Elijah and Jesus and Origen and Merton and Mother Teresa did... we are inspired, and we can emerge from our silent reflection with more vigor and enthusiasm than ever.

As you know, Jesus had to endure silence and trials in the desert over the course of his ministry. He was tempted by Satan after spending time in the wilderness. But he emerged stronger than ever.

Elijah was ready to give up on ministry. But he took time out to experience the silence. And then God sent him back into the fray, because there was work yet to be done.

         And that is where we find ourselves, also.

If we need to pause and observe a moment of silence in the face of the world’s horrors, we can do so. But we can’t stay there. God needs us to head back into the fray, to go in the strength of the food we have shared, to speak truth into the silent and scary places in the world.

Now is not the time to remain silent. Now is the time to speak out and act out against injustice!

It is time to combat homophobia and racism and fear of our neighbor. It is time to cast out the legion of demons that have been possessing our society.

Now is the time to expel the demons of self-hatred, of sexism, and of gun violence. Now is the time to follow the example of Jesus – when we see suffering, to do something about it.

We can use a break in the silence to refresh ourselves. But then we need to emerge from that silence as a prophet, with a message for the world, like Elijah did. The silence is only useful for as long as it takes us to find our voice. And then, God calls us to speak truth into the silence.

Elijah gives us the inspiration today to feed on God’s Word in silence, and then to speak God’s Word to society.

Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia gives us the words to speak.

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

There is no longer Latinx and Muslim, victim and perpetrator, white and person of color. Yes, these characteristics make us who we are. But in Christ Jesus, all of us are equal. There are no second-class citizens. There is no place for hatred and violence.

There is only room for love.

Let us love one another, for God is love.

Let us make it a better time to be a woman, a person of Hispanic origin, queer, Muslim, or a person of color. Let us follow Elijah’s example as a prophet, and Jesus’ example of casting out demons, and share God’s love with the world.

My prayer for us today is that God would feed us as Elijah was fed, and then send us into the world to break the silence, to bring light to the darkness, to speak God’s truth to the world, and to cast out the demons of hatred and fear, like Jesus did.

My prayer is that all people would find a way to learn the truth, that God loves them and cares for them, and created them perfectly in God’s image, and they do not need to change, and they do not need to fear assault by others of God’s children.

That is the society that I hope for.

And may God help to make it so, using us as instruments of change.

Amen.

 Pentecost 5C 6/19/16

1 Kings 19:1-15a; Luke 8:26-39; Galatians 3:23-29

*Lyrics for “The Sound of Silence” from http://www.metrolyrics.com/the-sound-of-silence-lyrics-simon-and-garfunkel.html, © UNIVERSAL MUSIC PUBLISHING GROUP