2nd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 4B

2nd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 4B June 3, 2018 Then [Jesus] said to them, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.” When is the last time you thought about Sabbath and its relationship to your life and your faith? Now, I’m not talking about a day off, or the weekend, or leisure time, I’m talking about Sabbath which in Hebrew literally means “stop.” If you haven’t really thought about it lately, don’t feel bad. You are not alone. Our culture is one that, I believe, has come to value progress over rest, productivity over stopping. So it is no surprise if you have not thought about Sabbath in a while. In our gospel reading for today, we see Jesus and the Pharisees get into a squabble over Jesus’ treatment of the Sabbath. But what’s the big deal? Just a few weeks ago at our spring clergy conference, our Bishop invite a husband and wife team, Dr. Matthew and Nancy Sleeth to come and speak to the clergy of the diocese about the importance of Sabbath. In that time listening to them, I remembered some things and learned some more things that I’d like to share with you as we think about Sabbath together this morning. Sabbath keeping is one of the 10 commandments given by God to Moses to help order the lives of the children of Israel after God brought them out of bondage in Egypt. The first three commandments are all about God. (You can see this for yourself. They are printed in our BCP—Rite 1 p 317; Rite 2 p 350) So, commandments 1-3 are about God: I am the Lord your God. Don’t make idols for yourselves. Don’t take the name of the Lord in vain. Commandments 5-10 are all about our relationships with others: honor your parents; don’t commit murder or adultery; don’t steal; don’t bear false witness, and don’t covet anything that belongs to your neighbor. But the fourth commandment is wedged in-between the two sets of commandments, making it the fulcrum or the bridge between the two sections: “remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” And what you don’t see in the BCP is that in scripture, the 4th commandment is the longest; it takes up the most space. In fact, the 4th commandment is longer than commandments 5-10 put together. For the children of Israel, Sabbath keeping is a luxury that they could only indulge when they were no longer slaves. It is a holy time that was made to protect the vulnerable; it is a time of integration or re-integration and a time of healing our fractured parts. This is what Jesus is getting at when he says to his disciples and the Pharisees who are challenging his keeping of the Sabbath: “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.” Sabbath is the gift of rest for us; a reminder that God is God and we are not. My husband David’s Uncle Joe would always have a saying for us when we would join them for Sabbath time at their lake house. He would say, “it feels so good when you finally stop.” That is the gift of Sabbath. I think we find ourselves at odds with the gospel reading for today. Instead of being bound up too much by the law to keep the Sabbath like those who questioned Jesus, we have lost the Sabbath. We hardly ever stop. So, how do we reclaim Sabbath in our busy lives, in our busy times and seasons? What would it look like for us to keep Sabbath once a week, to receive this gift from God of healing, reintegration, and rest? What would it take for us to carve out a single 24 hour period when we remembered that God is God and we are not, so the world will go on around us even if we stop and rest for a bit? The definition of work and rest has changed so much since the 10 commandments were written down, and the definition of work and rest varies from person to person. (Some of y’all like to garden or do yard work, and for me, that is not restful at all. In fact, I usually manage to acquire poison ivy when I try to do yard work, so it is the very opposite of restful for me.) So in some sense, what is Sabbath is going to vary from person to person, from family to family. The pastor Eugene Peterson says there are two components to Sabbath keeping that can help us think about how we keep sabbath: pray and play. He says that true Sabbath must have some components of both prayer (reconnecting with God) and play (finding joy in each other and the gifts God has give us). When talking to us clergy, Dr. Matthew Sleeth gave us a simple prescription for figuring out how to keep Sabbath: “figure out what ‘work’ is for you, and then don’t do it.”i My invitation for you this week is to think about how you keep Sabbath. Can you begin working toward consecrating a whole day of your week every week to play and pray? If that seems overwhelming, then maybe start with half a day? What would that look like for you, for your family? What would be the “work” that you would need to set aside for that period of time? Talk to the people in your life who might be affected by this. If you have a family that lives all together, then get everyone’s input on what Sabbath time would look like and try to make space for all of it. And then try it. This week. In closing, I’ll share with you this short poem by the poet Wendell Berry: Whatever is foreseen in joy Must be lived out from day to day. Vision held open in the dark By our ten thousand days of work. Harvest will fill the barn; for that The hand must ache, the face must sweat. And yet no leaf or grain is filled By work of ours; the field is tilled And left to grace. That we may reap, Great work is done while we’re asleep. When we work well, a Sabbath mood Rests on our day, and finds it good.ii i. Notes from Diocese of Georgia’s Spring Clergy Conference 2018 at Honey Creek. Speakers Matthew and Nancy Sleeth ii.Berry, Wendall. “Whatever is foreseen in joy” from Sabbaths by Wendall Berry. 1987.