The Art of the Sabbath SHAWNEE MISSION UU CHURCH. Lane Campbell, Intern Minister. November 27, 2011

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1 The Art of the Sabbath SHAWNEE MISSION UU CHURCH Lane Campbell, Intern Minister November 27, 2011 My original intention for this morning was to invite all of you into a conversation about taking time to rest through engaging with a Sabbath practice. I thought it would be a good topic at the beginning of this busy Holiday season, on the first Sunday of Advent. For some of us, the busy-ness of this time of year is just beginning and for some of us it is well under way. Perhaps this week, you hosted or took part in a Thanksgiving dinner. Due to our country s calendar, our liturgical year, and our ever-growing consumerist society, preparation for the winter holidays seems to get earlier and earlier every year. And, so, I wanted to come here this morning to talk about rest. It is an exciting and busy time for our church community, what with planning to move into a new building in the Spring and considering the possibility of changing our name. Seems about time for an invitation to rest, but the definition of the Sabbath changed shape and took a different form right smack dab in the middle of my research for my talk with you today. 1

2 See, I had been going off of a surface definition of the Sabbath. In Genesis 2:2-3 it reads, And on the seventh day God finished the work he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation. Seems simple enough. In the creation stories of the Hebrew Bible, we learn that God made the world in 6 days. After all that hard work, God decided it was time for break, time to kick back God s feet and have a tall glass of lemonade. But the story doesn t end there. As Sabbath scholar, Norman Wirzba wrote, But Sabbath rest does not mean that God tries to flee from creation Rather, God can t refrain from delighting completely in the goodness of all he has made. 1 It doesn t seem right to me that God would have rested and disconnected with the world. That the divine would take out a large checklist, mark a check in the box next to Make the Earth, and go off for an afternoon nap. No, my attention was drawn to the fact that God took this time to marvel in Earth s creation. The divine sat back and admired the beauty of the world, in this creation story. The divine took pause to enjoy what they had created, to reflect on the work that had been done and the work to come, and to celebrate a job well-done. 1 Norman Wirzba, A Sabbath Way to Lead, 2

3 This is a different definition of rest than the one I had in my mind. I know it s quite different from what I do with my days off, though holding oneself up to God s standards is a pretty high aspiration. Though many if any of us do not regard this creation story as absolute truth, I raise it as foundational to our understanding of what it means to take a Sabbath day. This ancient story is not about the word of God given directly to us, but it is about the many generations of men who wrote about God modeling ritual practices of devoting 1 day a week to rest and renewal. This practice of holding one day a week as sacred time has been passed down through history. Observing the Sabbath has looked different for each of the three Abrahamic faiths- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. As some of us know, there is a distinction in which day of the week each tradition sets aside- Jews start Friday at sundown and go til Saturday at Sundown, Muslims take Friday afternoon and evening, and Christians observe Sabbath on Sundays. What each tradition chooses to do with this sacred time varies and it differs within different sects of the Abrahamic faiths. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote a beautiful book on this topic called The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man. Reading this book in and of itself was restful. He calls attention to the covenant between God and people contained in the 3

4 Sabbath practice. By devoting time to resting, to renewing our connections with the natural world, to renewing our ties with the Spirit and each other, we are answering an ancient promise made to God that we will sustain ourselves and sustain the divine. Now, Heschel s book is fabulous, (like I said, it was a restful practice just to read the book) however, it is written in somewhat lofty theological language. He often talks abstractly about relationships between time and space, which I enjoyed, but wouldn t recommend unless you have a particular interest. What really caught my attention in this book were the stories in the introduction written by his daughter, Susannah Heschel. She decided to introduce her father s book by actually talking about what their family did on the Sabbath. She writes these rich stories about the hecticness of the day on Friday, with her mother and father trying to finish meal preparation and house preparation before Shabbat. Susannah describes the transformation she felt when her father lit the candles and sanctified the wine and uncovered the Challah bread made by a local bakery. Their family enjoyed rich meals and rich conversations that evening, to wake up the next morning and attend services at the local rabbinical school. Then it was onto an afternoon walk, some reading and possibly a nap. This is what the 4

5 Sabbath looked like to her growing up in the house of a well-known Jewish scholar. It was about food, connections with loved ones, as well as spiritual and physical transformation. From the Christian tradition, I stumbled upon an article from a minister out of the United Church of God. Their denomination is focused on keeping true to early Christianity and continuing the practices of that worshipping community, which has left them with a devotion to keeping the weekly Sabbath. In an article by Rev. Richard Pinelli, he outlines 4 key principles to keeping the Sabbath: 1. Not to work. Rev, Krista Taves writes, Even if your work is something you absolutely love. It will wear away at you if you don t stop and set it to the side for a while. In fact, not taking a break from it will transform it from something that nourishes you to something that bleeds away at you. So stop working. Sometimes easier said than done. Our society measures our worth by our productivity. And often we measure our own self-worth by our accomplishments To rest. This means that we can take the day at a slower pace. Rest looks different for everyone. We don t have to lay in bed all day, but a nap 2 Krista Taves, Taking the Sabbath, 5

6 would be nice if you feel so-called. Or perhaps it means sitting down with a good book or soaking in the tub. However you rest, however your mind and body can take a break. Take it, you deserve to rest. 3. To worship. We can take the time to connect with that which is holy and makes us feel whole. We can honor our own sacred worth as well as the worth of those around us. Worship can look like what we are engaged in here and now or it can be taking part in a personal spiritual practice in the comfort of one s own home. 4. To fellowship. Sabbath is about engaging with one s community and family. Not just about visiting with one another, but about having conversation and deepening your relationship to another human being. It is a time to reconnect with our friends and loved ones in the midst of a busy week. 3 And so, we can set aside time to rest, to refrain from work, to worship, and to fellowship with one another. In both Jewish and Christian teachings, I found three themes of the Sabbath. It is a time for rest, for reconnection with the natural world, and for reconnection with our sacred source, whether that be God, Goddess, a 3 Richard Pinelli, How to Keep the Sabbath Day Holy, 6

7 community, or something else entirely. We set aside this time to be with those we hold most dear, to delight in our own lives and the lives of others. It is a time for reflection, reading, engaging in meditation or prayer. It is a time for taking a walk, taking a nap, or just taking time to be alone in stillness and quiet. I grew up in a time when I didn t really see the Sabbath being observed. Sure, many of my Jewish friends couldn t hang out on a Friday night. But for many of the folks in my generation we worked on the weekends once we were old enough and many of our parents had jobs with hours on the weekends. Setting aside time to observe the Sabbath doesn t fit neatly into this schedule. But I believe that observing the Sabbath becomes all that more important when we don t think we have time for it. To put it another way, we need to have some time set aside for sacred restoration in the midst of our fast-paced lives. Marcia Falk makes an important point in her Book of Blessings: New Jewish Prayers for Daily Life, the Sabbath, and the New Moon Festival. She talks about setting aside Sabbath time as sacred time and the other six days of the week as secular time. But she also brings up the point that even though these times are distinct from one another, they are also interrelated. We need to work in order to rest. The sacred can be found in those days which are not Sabbath days. We need a 7

8 reminder to reconnect with that which is holy in the midst of our daily living and the Sabbath can serve this purpose. Both sacred and secular time are equally important in our lives. Sabbath practices look different for various communities and individuals. I was fortunate enough to have a friend while attending seminary who was just reconnecting with his Jewish faith during the time we became friends. He used to invite me over to his house for Shabbat dinner, where we would light candles as we recited a traditional Jewish litany. Then, we would break bread together and hold a science-fiction book club. We talked about all kinds of philosophical, social and religious ideas that these texts brought to the forefront of our minds. It may not have been traditional, but he was claiming this practice as his own and I was honored and delighted to take part in it. So, what would it look like for us as Unitarian Universalists to claim a Sabbath practice? I am sure that many of you here take time to rest throughout your week, but do you take an entire day? In my mind, I imagine spending the day reading the paper or some book you have been putting off reading. I imagine a time of quiet or stillness in there somewhere. Perhaps it could involve a large family meal or a dinner with close friends. What can we do to hold this time as separate, as 8

9 sacred? Perhaps you have a spiritual practice, which you could start and end the day with. Or maybe you could light candles or a chalice to mark this day as sacred time. We need both sacred and secular time in our lives. Time to go to work and time to rest and reconnect with those ideas and people who make us come alive inside. Perhaps your Sabbath is a full day, perhaps it is two afternoons. However you can make time to claim a practice of rest and reconnection, to set aside some time to reflect upon the week and rejuvenate your spirit. This time is sacred and necessary. May you find what brings your mind and heart to waken and revisit it every week. For that is the main message of Sabbath-taking, each of us has something which makes us come alive inside. A passion, a calling, a spiritual source, which brings us into the fullness of our being. This is time we set aside to reconnect with those forces in our lives which sustain us and awaken us. Our reading this morning from Henry David Thoreau talks about living deliberately. He says, I want to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. (Repeat) This part of the reading in particular, while bringing a very strange visual into my mind, also speaks directly to what the Sabbath is all about. It is about living 9

10 our lives with intention and deeper connection to those around us. It is about awakening our senses to the richness of what it means to walk through this world as living, breathing human beings. 10