God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult. Selah There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns. The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah Come, behold the works of the Lord; see what desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. “Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.” The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah Psalm 46 (NRSV) I am taking today for some needed rest and time away from the internet. As I prepared for this time I was reminded of a sermon I heard back in February by the pastor of Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia called “Selah.” I had just been to a conference of pastors and many of the African American pastors talked about this particular sermon from the Rev. Dr. Howard-John Wesley and the impact it was having in the black church. Alfred Street Baptist is a historic and prominent church whose history goes back 200 years and is the place the Obama family attended Easter services. Since this is a time to listen to black voices I thought it would be good to encourage you to take time to listen to this important message by a prominent African American pastor on the importance of a pause: https://www.alfredstreet.org/selah/ Prayer for Today This Collect is taken from the Book of Common Prayer. It is especially appropriate for Saturdays or another time of Sabbath rest. Almighty God, who after the creation of the world rested from all your works and sanctified a day of rest for all your creatures: Grant that we, putting away all earthly anxieties, may be duly prepared for the service of your sanctuary, and that our rest here upon earth may be a preparation for the eternal rest promised to your people in heaven; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Spiritual Practice for Today Many of us have been forced into a selah time through the COVID19 crisis. Looking back over the past few months, spend some time reflecting on where you have paused and what it has had on your life. Write down where you have experienced selah and where you need to continue the work of caring for your self with the gift of God’s rest. Hear this, you who trample on the needy and destroy
the poor of the land, saying, “When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath so that we may offer wheat for sale, make the ephah smaller, enlarge the shekel, and deceive with false balances, in order to buy the needy for silver and the helpless for sandals, and sell garbage as grain?” Amos 2:4-6 Amos is a prophet who uses the classic bait and switch. In the beginning of the book bearing his name, he shows up in Jerusalem and begins a tirade about how awful all of Israel’s enemies are. People love to hear such outrage. It’s always good to hear that “those people” are doing it all wrong. It’s sort of like Republicans raging against liberals or Democrats railing against right wingers. It can be good entertainment but it fails to touch the source of injustice and the wrong we can really begin to work on--ourselves, our families, our friends. What’s wrong with “those people” is always more appealing news than what is wrong with us. But Amos, like I said, is using a bait and switch. After listing all the terrible things about the neighboring nations of Israel he says that Israel is worse than all of them. They’ve broken their covenant with God and all of the Laws that were meant to help them live with justice and mercy. Key among those abuses is their use of the Sabbath. It appears that the community of Jerusalem elites that Amos is addressing were still keeping the Sabbath, but they did so more from rote religion than as a formative aspect of their lives. Sabbath was not a means of transformation, but was instead an annoyance to endure before getting back to the “real world” of business as usual. The real world for them was cut throat economics, collateral damage, and survival of the fittest; a place where idealists like Amos should learn to just shut up and go with the flow. But Amos, immersed in the reality of God, the God who created heaven and earth and all that is in it, knows that the world of greed is just a selfish illusion. The world made by a God who rests, a God who has mercy, a God who seeks justice--that is reality. COVID19 has created space for so many of us to re-engage with reality. In the confusion and isolation, we’ve had no excuses other than to face who we are and what our community is. Now that is manifesting in the surprising and tremendous move toward racial justice. I hope that those pushes for justice will only be the beginning of our return to the world of reality, the reality that lives from the God of Sabbath whose nature is always to have mercy. Prayer for Today God of justice and mercy help us to live your Sabbath life, not so that we can return to the “real world” that is only an idolatrous illusion born of greed, but so that the reality of your Sabbath rest can lead us to join your way of love and peace. Amen. Spiritual Practice for Today I once had a spiritual director who told me that if I didn’t take daily time for Sabbath rest, then I couldn’t take time for weekly Sabbath rest, and that if I didn’t take time for weekly Sabbath rest then I couldn’t take time for longer periods of spiritual retreat. I’ve found his advice to be true over my life and so like many things the practice of Sabbath begins with what you do today. Designate one hour today to Sabbath. For that one hour cease from work and striving. Go for a walk, enjoy the beauty of creation, sit in silence before God, read a good book--there are myriad ways to enjoy the time, just avoid screens and their distractions as well as any stressful work. The believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the community, to their shared meals, and to their prayers. A sense of awe came over everyone. God performed many wonders and signs through the apostles. All the believers were united and shared everything. They would sell pieces of property and possessions and distribute the proceeds to everyone who needed them. Every day, they met together in the temple and ate in their homes. They shared food with gladness and simplicity. They praised God and demonstrated God’s goodness to everyone. The Lord added daily to the community those who were being saved.
Acts 2:42-47 (CEB) We are in the season after Pentecost, which means that we are living as church, remembering that we are a community enlivened by God’s breath, led forth into the world by God’s spirit. When that Spirit came upon the early church, the disciples were ready and willing to welcome whatever that Holy Breath brought among them. And so they became a community that lived into the fullness of what the Sabbath life of God’s kingdom is all about--a community of common life, where everyone had plenty and no one was in need, where food and fellowship, praise and gladness marked their everyday life. I do not believe that the reality that was unleashed among the church in Jerusalem in the book of Acts was a special reality for that time, something that was limited to that point in the Church’s history. In this vision of the Church I think we see the reality of what the Spirit calls the Church to be, always and everywhere. The difference in that time was that the disciples, having gone through the terrible crucible of witnessing Jesus death ,and then being met with the joy of his resurrection, were fully ready to welcome the Spirit and yield to her leading. Now, however, the Church is often not entirely sure about the Spirit, not always ready to follow her whispers of a more joyful life of simplicity and community. We think that we might be better off with our stuff, safely in our possession, our praise and gladness, reserved for one day a week rather than throughout our everyday. There are, however, times even now when people welcome the Spirit in all her fullness and embrace the new life and community that she brings. I have friends in communities in San Francisco, Oregon, Indianapolis, and Brazil who are living out the life of the church in Acts. They are not perfect, neither was the church in Jerusalem, but they do bear witness to something hopeful in the midst of a world marked by greed and selfishness and an insatiable avarice for more. COVID19, the unrest in our streets, this time of waking once more to our sins of racism--they offer us a moment where we are called to live into the reality of the cross, the downward journey toward death. But in the Christian story death is followed by resurrection and with resurrection the Holy Breath that calls us to a new community and new life. Our work is to breathe in that breath, to let it pour into our lungs, oxygenate our blood, and bring forth in us new life. That is our choice now. It is my hope that we will welcome the Spirit, no longer afraid of the life and adventure she will bring us into. Prayer for Today Holy Breath come into our lives disrupt our wants, unsettle our hopes, and show us another way where all have enough, and gladness and praise are part of our common life. Amen. Practice for Today Sit still and become conscious of your breath. Breathe in with the phrase “Come Holy Spirit,” and exhale with the phrase “give life to the world.” Do this for ten minutes or more. The Lord will guide you continually
and provide for you, even in parched places. He will rescue your bones. You will be like a watered garden, like a spring of water that won’t run dry. They will rebuild ancient ruins on your account; the foundations of generations past you will restore. You will be called Mender of Broken Walls, Restorer of Livable Streets. 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, and honor it instead of doing things your way, seeking what you want and doing business as usual, 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 58:11-14 (Common English Bible) I once heard a preacher who said that rationalization is the root of all sin. His words have come to mind repeatedly as I’ve reflected on my own sins and those I’ve witnessed in the lives of others. The more I think about it, the more I am certain he’s right. Human beings have a particular gift for story telling, and that gift can often be twisted in telling the stories we want to hear, the ones that will justify our actions, no matter how wrong. The way out of rationalization is obedience--to a truth, a tradition, a practice. For the Jews in Babylon, Isaiah promises that it is by practicing the ancient ways of Sabbath that will liberate them. But first they must submit to the practice, following its rules, rather than trying to twist them to meet their own ends. Many Christians in times past worked out this way through the life of the monasteries where everyone followed a particular rule of life and were accountable to one another in its practice. This is an option for many still today, but for those of us who are not strictly bound by Torah observance or answerable to an Abbot, the burden of obedience can be difficult. It takes constant self-examination to ensure that our practices are what we are called to in our discipleship and not our discipleship being twisted to be subject to our whims. The importance of obedience for our life of Sabbath and discipleship is rooted in our call toward freedom. If we do not learn to be obedient to a practice or call we know is good for us then we will instead be obedient to our ever changing whims or the authoritarian voices that promise to solve our problems if only we submit. As Thomas Merton put it, “The highest freedom is found in obedience to God. The loss of freedom lies in subjection to the tyranny of automatism, whether in the capriciousness of our own self-will or in the blind dictates of despotism, convention, routine or mere collective inertia.” Ours world is a world that refuses obedience and yet is subjected to self-will and inertia. We need a practice that is obedient to a reality that lies beyond us; a reality that will lead us into freedom. Sabbath, when engaged as a submission to God’s way of love, is such a practice. Prayer for Today God of freedom, your life of love is formed in the caring community of the Trinity. Help us follow your own path of freedom in obedience so that we might be liberated from our selfish desires and the twisted conventions of our culture and country. Amen. Practice for Today What are the things that you do because they are inertia and routine, but leave you feeling drained? It could be something like frequently checking the news or eating mindlessly. Reflect on what you are being subject to and ask that God will move you into the obedience that will lead you toward freedom. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
Exodus 20:8-11 Not long ago, I bought a camera--a DSLR with myriad settings and two lenses. Photography had been an important part of my college years. There was an excellent professor at my school who introduced me to the films of Andre Tarkovsky, the photography of Ralph Meatyard, the criticism of Lewis Hyde, and so many other artists and writers that have remained important to me. But after I graduated, with no darkroom to use and not ready to make the move to digital, I let my practice fade. What I have been reminded of, picking up a camera again, is the way it helps to frame and focus. My subjects are mostly elements of the natural world and there is something helpful about using the camera to single out a particular wonder. The other day, for instance, I was in the woods looking at a wild thistle when an iridescent green fly landed on its purple crown. As I tried to capture its color and light through the camera I noticed so much I would have missed just passing by. I saw the intricate network of hairs on its limbs, the multitude of lenses that made up its eyes. Framing is important, focus is necessary, so it is that God created a frame through which we could cut through the noise of life and give it context. In the language of scripture this framing is called the “holy.” It’s a laden word, carrying a lot of baggage that obscures its real meaning. In its original sense it meant separated, set a part. This is not because holiness is exclusionary in the negative sense, but because exclusion is the necessary reality of any frame or focus. We live in a barrage of image and noise and words and thoughts. To have any insight, to experience any beauty, we must frame it and see it in a particular context through which we can notice its beauty. The Sabbath is a holy day. To set apart time we give it a frame and focus, a way of stepping out of the normal flows. This is necessary work for each frame and focus opens us to experience the reality of our everyday in a different way. In this particular moment, when protests are happening in our streets and there are renewed calls for racial justice, there has been much commentary about whether and how this time is different. I do not hope to judge whether this time is really different, but it does feel like that and I believe it is because the experience of COVID19 has refocused us. Through our isolation we have learned how much we need each other, stepping back from our everyday lives we’ve had a chance to reframe our world and country and society and see it from another angle. It took a virus to do that for us, but Sabbath provides an ongoing practice that can help us live into this different way. It provides a disruption that helps us experience the beauty of love, God, and community and then carry that experience with us back into the world of the everyday. With each Sabbath, however, we are less captive to the unfocused blur. With each Sabbath we learn, a bit more, to see the world aright. May we see it and join God in bringing it into being. Prayer for Today Holy God help us to experience the frame of Sabbath time so that we can be free of the anxiety of our everyday lives and learn to see the world with your holy focus. Amen. Practice for Today The philosopher Albert Borgmann talks about the importance of focal practices. These are activities that help us to frame the world so that we can see it in its fullness. Do something today that helps you to pay attention to the really existing world around you. It could be digging in your garden, photography, woodworking, sewing, cooking, or any number of things. Whatever it is, do it carefully and with your full attention. By doing so with framing and focus you will be inhabiting a holy practice. Then God spoke all these words:
I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You must have no other gods before me. Do not make an idol for yourself—no form whatsoever—of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth. Do not bow down to them or worship them, because I, the Lord your God, am a passionate God. I punish children for their parents’ sins even to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me. But I am loyal and gracious to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. Do not use the Lord your God’s name as if it were of no significance; the Lord won’t forgive anyone who uses his name that way. Exodus 20:1-7 (CEB) Idolatry has long been among our central problems. Though there is much I disagree with in the theology of John Calvin, his statement that the human heart is an idol making machine is perceptive. We make an effort to have anything other than God fill the space properly belonging to God--ourselves, our national identities, our work, or some figure on whom we project our hopes and fears--idols are everywhere. Because it is so fundamental, the prohibition against idolatry is at the beginning of the Ten Commandments. As Walter Brueggemann argues, all of the commandments that follow are in some way related to this first and fundamental call to live under God and God alone. Times of stress and crisis are often instances in which our temptation toward idolatry come forward all the more. As an individual, I know that when I am tired and stressed I am pushed toward my worst tendencies. I eat too much, especially of the foods I know harm my body, I want to binge watch television shows that are entertaining but empty, I am often grouchy, arrogant, and short tempered. As cultures, nations, and societies we play out similar tendencies. When we feel out of control we try to latch on to a divine reality that will make sense of it all and too often, this divine reality is not the real thing but a self-serving mirror of it, an idol. COVID19, the murder of George Floyd, the unrest in our cities, the responses of our nation’s leaders--all of it comes together to make for a time of stress like no other. Each day I check the headlines fearing what I will find. I want something or someone to just make it all go away, to feel better, and so I am tempted to turn to idols in their various forms. And varied they are--there are idols for every person and political persuasion, ready to take your fears and form your hopes for a little while. Idols will always disappoint. They will take everything we have to feed their energy and then they will leave us empty. This is why included in the ten commandments, this call to life in right relationship with the living God, is a call to cease from our activities, a call to live into the rest and delight that crown all creation. To answer the call of Sabbath is to resist the idol making impulses of our heart that calls on us always to do more. It is a time when we can step back and see the deep action of God who is true and living, working to reconcile the world. It is in Sabbath that we are reminded who we are, what the world is, and who our neighbors are in God’s eyes. It is only in Sabbath that we join in the prayerful renewal of ourselves and the world, the only stance through which we have anything to offer to the work of healing. Prayer for Today God who hurts with us, whose own Son took on our pain, help us to stop, to step back, to rest and listen. The world needs healing and you have invited us to join in the work of bringing your kingdom here, but we know that we will have nothing to offer if we do not work from the reservoirs of your love. Help us enter into Sabbath time so that your living waters may fill us and overflow through our lives into the world. Amen. Spiritual Practice for Today Today, in traditional Jewish practice, is a day of “preparation.” In order to Sabbath well, we must prepare for it. Take time to prepare for a Sabbath time this weekend. Whether you plan to practice the Sabbath on Saturday, Sunday, or some other day, make a plan for how that day can be restful and renewing. Do you need groceries? How are you going to mark the end and beginning of the day? Plan all of it out so that you will be able to receive the renewal of Sabbath in all its fullness. Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
Revelation 21:1-4 I remember reading the Book of Revelation as a teenager, fascinated by its science fiction like vision of the end of the world. It’s a book that reads with the visuals of a movie, and perhaps that’s our best way into understanding its genre. But Revelation, or the Apocalypse of John, is not about some doomsday vision of the end of all things. It was a book written more to help the churches under John of Patmos’s prophetic care to understand their situation than it was a prediction of things still to come. What Revelation, was and is, is a book meant to help put our current situation into heavenly perspective. We see the chaos of the pandemic, the unrest in our streets, and the divisiveness of politics, but God sees all of this from a quite different view. While we see crisis, God sees a moment in a long running conspiracy to overcome the powers of the world with healing love. This doesn’t mean that God isn’t concerned with our suffering or the injustices of our moment. John emphasizes again and again that faithful endurance is the key activity of the church and that their faithfulness will put them in conflict with the prevailing powers, but at the same time we should know that God is working and God will win. So what does winning look like? It looks a lot like Sabbath. The end of the world that is out of joint and out of harmony with God will be a time when the whole creation will be renewed and chaos will be put to an end (that’s the symbolic meaning of the sea disappearing, it does NOT mean that there are no dolphins or starfish in the new creation). The whole earth will once again be God’s temple and all things will move into the flourishing life of worship. St. Irenaeus famously said that “the glory of God is the human being fully alive.” When we hear that the final fulfillment of the world will find its place in God’s eternal worship this is what we should think about. This worship will not be a self-diminishing practice, but a way in which we and all creation live into our fullness. It is this fullness that the practice of Sabbath is meant to mark. In his study, Sacred Sense, the biblical scholar William Brown points out that Genesis 1 paints a picture of the creation modeled after God’s temple and the holy of holies, the place where God is in his fullness, is the Sabbath day. To practice the Sabbath, then, is to both live into the reality for which creation was always made and to live in hope for what creation can become again when God’s reign has arrived in fullness. We are in a time when we need that fullness more than ever. It is critical, then, to move our lives ever more into it. We can begin that work by practicing the Sabbath as a time of renewal, a time of resting in the trust that God is already at work and is inviting us to join in the healing of all things if only we will get still enough to listen. Prayer for the Day God of all creation we know that you are working even now to heal what is broken to mend what is wounded. Give us the stillness we need in order to hear you and follow your lead into the Sabbath work to which you are calling us in this time that the world calls a crisis and you call an opportunity for the return of your reign. Amen. Practice for the Day Think about your neighborhood. What needs healing? Make a list of the things in your direct vicinity that are broken and in need of God’s love. It could be relationships. It could be suspicions of neighbors. It could simply be a street that’s unsafe because cars speed through. After coming up with you list, pray that God will show you how to gather with neighbors to bring healing to that reality. Such an action is a way of creating a crack for God’s kingdom to come pouring through. Jesus returned to the synagogue. A man with a withered hand was there. Wanting to bring charges against Jesus, they were watching Jesus closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. He said to the man with the withered hand, “Step up where people can see you.” Then he said to them, “Is it legal on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they said nothing. Looking around at them with anger, deeply grieved at their unyielding hearts, he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he did, and his hand was made healthy. At that, the Pharisees got together with the supporters of Herod to plan how to destroy Jesus.
Mark 3:1-6 Can’t it wait another day? That was the question the Pharisees were asking. The man, after all, had lived with the deformity for years, perhaps even from birth. They could understand addressing urgent needs, but this was a chronic condition, it was not worth interrupting the sanctity of Sabbath. To do so was, after all, against the Law, order had to be maintained. But Jesus isn’t interested in waiting, he knew laws were only as good as the justice and freedom they provide. He’d come on the scene announcing that now was the year of the Lord’s favor. This was a reference to the year of Jubilee--the ultimate Sabbath when every forty years the prisoners would be set free and all debts would be forgiven. The Sabbath was now a reality that was to permeate the whole of life and it meant renewal and reconciliation for those who had been damaged, those who had been excluded. Jesus had come to heal and there was no need to wait for that. The damage didn’t rest and so the only way Jesus could honor the way of Sabbath would be to destroy the relentless damage done to this human creature of God, to unshackle this man from his pain so that he could join in the peace of Sabbath life. Ours is a tired world, a world filled with anguish that is relentless. We’ve lost more than 100,000 people in this country to the COVID19 virus, and likely many more to the isolation and burdens it has caused. And now we are reminded again of the deep, unexorcised sin of white supremacy and racism that never take a rest. Sabbath is necessary and all creation groans for its arrival. Our call is to honor it and keep it, but in order to do so there are times when we must work so that we can rest, when we must act so that the wholeness and peace of God’s shalom is possible. “Sabbath for some must be sabbath for all” is the message of Jesus’ action in the temple, his many actions of healing that violated the law of his day. We too must learn to live our own lives of Sabbath as means of welcome rather than exclusion, as modes of justice rather than maintenance of the status quo. In order to do that we must know what Sabbath is, how it feels, how to practice it in our world. This makes our Sabbath rest all the more important because it is far from an abdication of responsibility for a day, but rather an empowering of our souls and bodies to respond to the world in need from the energies of God rather than our own limited powers. Our world needs Sabbath, so let us follow the way of Jesus and enter his rest, all the while making sure that our neighbors can enter it with us. Prayer for Today God whose breath came upon the church at Pentecost Let us breathe with your Spirit so that we can become your witnesses in the world. In an age that has no time for justice, no patience for a pause, help us to live in your time calling forth your holy breath so that all may share in its life and fullness. Amen. Practice for Today Jubilee can be practiced now, in new and creative ways. Today create the possibility of rest for someone else in some small way. If you need a suggestion, consider medical debt forgiveness. Buy donating to buy medical debts of someone in Arkansas you can help provide the Sabbath reality of Jubilee for that person. What if you gave up something on your Sabbath and used that money to help provide debt relief for someone in need. For information about medical debt forgiveness go to RIP Medical Debt. Stop bringing worthless offerings.
Your incense repulses me. New moon, sabbath, and the calling of an assembly-- I can’t stand wickedness with celebration! I hate your new moons and your festivals. They’ve become a burden that I’m tired of bearing. When you extend your hands, I’ll hide my eyes from you. Even when you pray for a long time, I won’t listen. Your hands are stained with blood. Wash! Be clean! Remove your ugly deeds from my sight. Put an end to such evil; learn to do good. Seek justice: help the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow. Isaiah 1:13-17 Offerings are meant to be a sign of gratitude for our givenness, incense an incarnation of our prayers, Sabbath a witness to the loving freedom for which we were made. But as is often the case, religious actions can become ugly when they are divorced from the the life of God, when they are removed from a sharing in God’s work of love, justice, and mercy. That’s how you get protestors tear gassed so politicians can pose in front of churches; that's how movements calling out state oppression are just met by more of the same. Sabbath, if we are to practice it in the way of God’s liberating love, must be accompanied by justice. And for many of us, it must also be joined with lament for the wrongs we’ve committed and those committed on our behalf--”Your hands are stained with blood. Wash! Be clean!” Last night, my wife and I saw our neighbors, three young women, getting into their cars with signs heading to the protests against police violence sparked by the death of George Floyd. We talked with them, thanking them for showing up and wishing them safety. One of our neighbors said, “I just feel like I have to go. My heart has been so heavy all day long.” It reminded me of what a friend had recently told me about being “soul weary.” There is a tiredness that can come from all of the injustice of our world, the long history of oppression, the ways we continue to exploit each other and the creation for the selfish purposes of the few. Isaiah, knew that reality as well as we know it now. He was no stranger to oppressive violence covered over with the sick veneer of “good people” and talk of “order.” Isaiah knew that in the world of God’s reign the only law and order was justice and mercy. But for all the sharpness of Isaiah’s prophetic protest, we should not miss that he speaks in defense of the Sabbath. It is the Sabbath rightly practiced and understood that is at the heart of what Isaiah is calling for. The Sabbath as Isaiah saw it was not some religious rite to show that you are a member of the right voting block, identified with the right kind of people. Sabbath is instead a realty that is meant to answer those whose souls are weary because of the endless oppression of the world as it is. Sabbath is meant to be a time to remind us that we are not, after all, what the state or market tell us we are, but are rather people bearing the divine image, made for the liberty of love. Sabbath is the moment when we can live into the eternal Sabbath that will arrive only when God’s justice also arrives. The killing of George Floyd came at just the same moment that so many churches have been wrestling with the questions of reopening their doors. It’s made me wonder, what would Isaiah say to all of this? I think he would ask us, what’s the point? If churches reopen and just go about worship and prayer without seeking justice, without helping the oppressed, without defending the excluded and discriminated against--what’s the point? God will have none of it, God will go with those who are seeking love and justice, God will go with those who are living the Sabbath reality of unburdening weary souls with liberating love. So reopen churches? The church of Jesus was never closed--it lives on now in communities of care and justice, causes of solidarity and mercy, it lives on in the streets where people bear witness with peace and in homes where children are taught to love their neighbors. The church and its Sabbath reality show up in every place where souls weary from the tired pain of the world find some hope of justice, some glimmer of the grace that will overcome all. This is the church we are called to be, this is the Sabbath we are called to practice. Prayer for Today God of justice, God of mercy, we are weary. We are weary of the injustice of our world, we are weary of our confusion at what to do, we are weary of the sense that we are often part of the problem. Give us the justice and mercy we need to live into the liberty of your Sabbath life. Help us to give up our need to fix the world and instead bravely join in your mission of mercy that will heal it all. Enable us especially with courage and humility, so that we might answer your call and remain open to your lead. Amen. Spiritual Practice for Today With the wearing realities of the world, it can be overwhelming. Too often, in response, we simply find ourselves surfing the news, checking up on the latest updates. Instead, deliberately take 20 minutes to simply sit in Sabbath silence before God. Ask God to give you relief for your weariness and wisdom for how to live in this time. After your sit, write down anything that came to you as an answer and share it with a trusted friend. Note: Over the next several weeks these devotions will often include reflections on the Sabbath as part of Christ Church’s "Summer of Sabbath" series.
God saw everything he had made: it was supremely good. There was evening and there was morning: the sixth day. The heavens and the earth and all who live in them were completed. On the sixth day God completed all the work that he had done, and on the seventh day God rested from all the work that he had done. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all the work of creation. This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created. Genesis 1:31-2:4 What does the Sabbath have to say to us now, caught in a pandemic, the streets erupting in protests at yet another instance of police violence, the earth’s life systems in crisis, our common life at its breaking point? Isn’t the Sabbath a luxury, an abdication of care that the cause of justice must put aside? Don’t we have too much to do in a world that needs love and goodness to set aside a day to rest in delight? Shouldn’t we tell the Sabbath keepers to just get real? God is a realist. God created reality--all matter, all time, every thing that exists. God knows the fullness of it all. Ours is a God of justice, of mercy, who does not let murders pass by with a cold eye. Ours is a God whose own Son was put to death by the unjust actions of a corrupt state. And yet, God Sabbathed and called on his people to Sabbath. You may not think of Sabbath as a verb, but rest is really the wrong word because rest implies a limit to power, a need to re-energize, but God has no such need. Instead, in Sabbathing God created a way of being in the world, a way of delight in which God enjoyed the beauty of the creation in all its freedom. Like an artist who has made a work that she knows is good, who has labored to make it just as she wants it, God stands back and delights the creation. God invites us into Sabbath, commands us into Sabbath, because God knows that our most important work is delight. We are human beings, glorious human lives, and that is the most important thing about us. We are subjects who can look at the world around us and wonder at it all. To Sabbath, then, is to reassert our reality--we are persons created in God’s image, we are persons who are made for freedom and subjectivity. The Sabbath then becomes a mode of resistance to all those forces that would make us objects--the market, the state, the forces of violence--all of these are ephemera that will not survive the coming of God’s kingdom. They do not belong to the creation but are only the temporary arrangement of things before God puts it all to right. To Sabbath is a political statement of the ultimate kind. It is a way to say no to the passing “realities” that want to hold our bodies and minds captive to the now. We are human beings, created in God’s image--that is the truth of who we are, the reality we are called to live into whether it is a time of uneasy peace or outraged protest. Prayer for Today God of peace you made the world to live into your harmonies. May we strive against discord, not by simply getting along, but by moving our lives ever more into the common song of your kingdom, a song we learn in Sabbath rest. Amen. Spiritual Practice for Today The Sabbath is connected to God’s creation of humankind in God’s own image. It is a Sabbath act, then, to treat each person we encounter as a person who bares God’s own reality. Go throughout your day and consciously seek to see the image of God in each person you meet. Think of a greeting you might say (even if in your head) that will help remind you of that. |
About this series
COVID19 created an unprecedented situation for all of us. These reflections, originally written for the people of Christ Episcopal Church, were meant to help people of faith learn how to navigate this time and find the threads of God's goodness in the midst of the pandemic. The series has ended but the Pandemic has not. I hope they continue to offer help and hope to all that read them. |