I want to begin by expression my gratitude to this community for affording me the opportunity to take time off over the coming weeks as Sabbatical time. I know it is a great privilege and I truly appreciate it. Some ministers have elaborate plans about how they will spend their times, but for me, that just seemed like more work. Yes, we have some plans to travel, but mostly, I just want to let the time unfold and see how the spirit moves me. Our tradition of Sabbatical comes to us from the Jewish tradition of Sabbath found in Scripture. For our Jewish brothers and sisters, especially those who are Orthodox, keeping the Sabbath is essential to their weekly observance.
For Orthodox Jews, this means that they do not drive or do any work from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday evening. In Jewish homes, preparations are made before Shabbat. The house is cleaned, food is prepared, and two candles are placed on the dining table. These represent the two commandments received by Moses on Mount Sinai related to Shabbat, which were to“remember” and “observe” the Sabbath. The observance of the Sabbath has come down to us from this tradition. The idea of Sabbath time, of a time for rest and renewal, a time to remember and observe, a time to be mindful of the presence of the Holy in our lives is perhaps more important than ever for all of us. Let us pray,
I wonder if any of you remember the Jetsons, an animated kids show that aired quite a long time ago. It was set in some future age when people lived in space, rode about in their own individual little rockets and so much of life was automated. There’s one scene I often recall of one of the characters walking on a treadmill to get exercise and the dog is walking beside her on a mini treadmill. The treadmill speeds up to the point that it gets out of control and the woman falls off of course. Sometimes, maybe too often, we may feel that life has become like that. Life just keeps speeding up and we find ourselves nearly falling off. Except, it’s not entirely a physical thing. It’s taking a psychological toll with the pace of the days and all that needs to be accomplished. And instead of getting any easier, it’s harder just to get something done whether it’s reaching our doctor or talking to the phone company.
I remember a time when life was slower, when we had less to occupy our weekends, when many people actually stopped working at a respectable hour and ate dinner as a family. And that wasn’t all that long ago. Importantly, the Sabbath, whether it was on Saturday or Sunday was a time for almost everyone to give themselves a break from the busyness of the week, to relax, to be with family or friends, and to be renewed. The Sabbath is meant to be a time to remember God’s presence in our lives and to observe the importance of the sacred in our lives. How many of us find it difficult to us set aside time to nurture our faith, and to just rest in God?
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, in The Sabbath, writes,
“On the Sabbath, we empty our lives of worldly ‘spatial’ affairs – efforts to gain, build, occupy material things – to join in God’s rhythm of creation and rest. Sabbath honors the time which God made sacred in Genesis, time set apart from work. The Sabbath is a way of drawing closer to God and honoring the part of us which is eternal – our souls – yet it is also a way of remembering our humanity. It is God, not us, who makes the Sabbath sacred, who makes time sacred. (7) We join God in this divine rhythm of rest.”
We would be wise to take stock of how we spend our time at work and how we spend our time at rest. We live in a society that values busyness, that values work and accomplishment; and yet, I think we recognize that we are sorely in need of balance, of taking time off from all that we take in on a daily basis, of taking time to pause and reset. There’s just too much going on, whether the mundane stuff of life or the looming concerns of the world, and we need to get off the treadmill, at least for a time. We need to slow our minds and bodies down so that our souls can catch up. We need to take a break from the cares of the world, if even for a short while.
You might reflect upon moments when you felt at peace in your lives. What is it that draws you here on a Sunday morning? What bring us rest? What fills our souls? How might we find balance?
One of the wonderful things about the Jewish practice of Shabbat is that it is already scheduled every week. They know it’s coming; they know how they’ll spend the time in some sense. It’s in the calendar and part of what they have chosen for their lives. We too may observe the Sabbath by coming to church, but is that enough? We know that the only way to slow down is to be intentional, to set as a priority a time for nurturing our very souls and our relationship with the Holy. Rabbi Maxine Silverman shares a prayer for the Sabbath from the prayer book, the Siddur, …
In our Gospel today, we find Jesus sharing his message of compassion for those who feel overwhelmed by life. He says, come to me all who are heavy burdened and I will give you rest. I often think about life’s burdens as a backpack which we keep filling up with rocks which represent our worries, our busyness, our health concerns…whatever it is you might imagine for your own life. And Jesus is offering the invitation to lay down those burdens, to rest near him. In Genesis in the creation story, it’s important to note that after all the work of 6 days of creation, we hear that God rested on the 7th day. That is not a small detail. That feels really important and yet, we just go and go and go and let our schedules dictate our lives instead of the other way around.
In her book, Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time, Dorothy Bass writes, “As God worked, so shall we; as God rested, so shall we. Working and resting, we who are human are in the image of God.” …Without rest, how can we remember who we truly are, held within grace, held within God’s love?
Bass reflects, “The fact that society no longer protects a sabbath should alert all of us, whatever our faith, to become more mindful about opening the gift of time. If we are not mindful, the culture will not be mindful for us.” Ironically, when we need rest the most, it feels impossible to rest. Or those of us who do need it the most cannot rest. We leave mindfulness for another day, another week, another season.
Sabbath is not an obligation, but rather a guidepost, a North Star, a loving invitation. Through Sabbath, Abraham Heschel writes, “the world becomes a place of rest.” (10) The earth rests, society rests, our families rest, we rest. When we can, even if just for a moment, we join God in God’s rest. We dwell, briefly, in God’s time. May I gently invite each of you to rest this summer? To savor what is good and what is of God? (Sarah James)
As you have offered this wonderful gift to me, I invite you to join me in some intentional Sabbath time in the weeks ahead. Might you carve out a day or an afternoon each week in which you have nothing scheduled? Might you sit in the quiet and take life as it unfolds? Perhaps you could turn off any electronic devices and just be and savor, slow, rest and delight in the moments. How might you hear in new ways the voice of the Holy? And when I return, perhaps we might share a little of what we heard with one another? And now, a blessing from our friend John O’Donohue…
A Blessing of Solitude, by John O’Donohue
May you recognize in your life the presence, power and light of your soul. May you realise that you are never alone, that your soul in its brightness and belonging connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe. May you have respect for your own individuality and difference. May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique, that you have a special destiny here, that behind the façade of your life there is something beautiful, good, and eternal happening.
May you learn to see yourself with the same delight, pride and expectation with which God sees you in every moment.
https://earthandaltarmag.com/posts/fn3ouvc0zppe7391jahopkjcmvpyu3
Sarah James
John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space
Robert Fulghum
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude
When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude…
There is really nothing you must be.
And there is nothing you must do.
There is really nothing you must have.
And there is nothing you must know.
There is really nothing you must become.
However. It helps to understand that the fire burns,
and when it rains, the earth gets wet…
passage in Thomas Merton’s journal, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, that speaks to me as clearly today as it did back then, maybe more so:
There is a pervasive form of modern violence to which the idealist…most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his [or her] work… It destroys the fruitfulness of his [or her]…work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful. —Thomas Merton
How To Be a Poet Wendell Berry
How to Be a Poet
by Wendell Berry
Original Language English
(To remind myself)
i
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill — more of each
than you have — inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.
ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.