Scripture here
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Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy
For a very brief period of
time, I lived in a Hassidic Jewish neighborhood in Cleveland. Sunday until
sunset on Friday it was a neighborhood like any other. But, then, come sunset
on the Sabbath, things would change.
There was no mowing of the
lawn. Cars were parked and no one drove from sunset to sunset. No shopping. No
washing. No gardening. No work.
You couldn’t get the best
bagels in town on Saturday morning—the bagel shop was closed. The closest
grocery, it was closed too.
No pushing buttons, no
flipping switches...it was an absolute pause dictated by the Torah and
maintained by the Hassidic community who offered each other mutual support in
the observance.
It was the Sabbath. It was a
day of rest when an entire community would step back and step away from the
workaday lives of the rest of us and insist upon rest.
Can you imagine?
Can you imagine in this world
of ours? This world, in which people have to fight for sick days. This world in
which women who’ve given birth are not given paid leave to recover. This world
in which 24/7 access to whatever we want is taken for granted. The city that
never sleeps has become the world that never rests…and while some are materially
wealthier for it, I would argue that we are all the poorer.
Renowned
theologian, Walter Bruggerman writes, “Sabbath…is about work stoppage. It is
about withdrawal from the anxiety system of Pharaoh, the refusal to let one’s
life be defined by production and consumption and the endless pursuit of
private well-being.”
Wow.
He doesn’t hold back here. And, convicted, I find myself struck by how much of
my own time is spent in production and consumption and the pursuit of private
well-being…
24/7 Production, consumption
and pursuit of private well-being…these cannot be understood to be anything but
counter to the Sabbath mandate.
“Observe the sabbath day
and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. 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.”
God has commanded that
we rest. And, not only are we to rest, we are not to do anything that causes
another creature to work on our behalf! This is a radical notion because lived
out, it means radically adjusting how we live. It would mean giving up a number
of activities and pursuits that we take for granted--shopping, getting take
out, cleaning, doing yard work, getting the paper or mail delivered, or even
turning on electronics! Can you imagine?
It would be so much work to
not work! To rearrange our entire lives so that we could set aside a period of
time for rest. True 24-hour Sabbath observance seems impossible outside of the
strict confines of an entire community that observes the Sabbath. And, yet,
that doesn’t get around the fact that we are mandated by our religious
tradition to do so.
So, what do we do with this?
How do we move from a place of shame, and should, when we talk about Sabbath
rest to a place of actual devotion?
Because, while I don’t expect
that we take on the strict observance of the Hassidic community, I do expect
that we, as Christians, consider that our God has commanded us to set aside
time for rest.
Which brings me to today’s
Gospel…
“One sabbath Jesus and his
disciples were going through the grainfields; and as they made their way his
disciples began to pluck heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why
are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” And he said to them, “Have
you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in
need of food? He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and
ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests
to eat, and he gave some to his companions.” Then he said to them, “The sabbath
was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath”
The Sabbath was made for us…for
the hungry and the hurting, for healing and repairing.
I once had the privilege of
serving alongside an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish physician. I met Danny when I worked
as a hospital chaplain and, after sharing in some particularly awful death bed
moments, we became comfortable asking each other questions about how we
understood our work through the lens of our religious traditions. One late Friday
afternoon I encountered him in the hallway—after wishing him “Shabbat shalom”,
Sabbath peace, I asked him, “so you’re on call in house tonight, what about the
Shabbat?”
He paused and said that it
would be better if he did not have to work on the Shabbat but that it wasn’t
fair to the other interns if he never had to work weekends. He added that even
tho’ it was work, and it was Shabbat, saving lives and providing care were more
important than the mandate not to work—Jewish law is clear on this, “we violate
Shabbat to save any human life; that's the Halacha, that's the practice, that's
what we do.”
This is what it means to have
a Sabbath that was made for us. The true Sabbath is an affirmation of life—it
is a time set aside so that the broken might be made whole, that the tired
might rest, that the hungry might be satisfied. The true Sabbath offers us a
re-set—the opportunity to make choices that give, rather than take, life. In
this, Sabbath rest can entail any activity that allows for the healing and
restoration of God’s creation.
And, when this is our
Sabbath, we are making it clear that production and consumption don’t define
our lives, God does. A true Sabbath allows for healing, a true Sabbath is one
that feeds the hungry.
A true Sabbath, defies the
powers of this world who see us only as commodities to be expended, and affirm
our true value as beloved children of God. A value that is not confined to us
alone, but to all of God’s children who are valued not for what they can
produce but, for who they are as God’s creation.
In this, the Sabbath that is
made for us, is one of restoration. It is one of rest, of healing, of repair,
and of reconciliation.
So, what does that look like
for each of us? That I cannot say—for the answer is an individual as each and
every one of you. But, as we sit here on the edge of summer, I want to
encourage each and every one of us to find moments of Sabbath—moments in which
we remember who we are as beloved children of God and then to take that
knowledge out into the world and living a life in which we prioritize those
things which are life giving for the world.
Amen.
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