The Path of Discipleship - Sabbath Practices

What is Sabbath? 

                The Sabbath tradition connects people who observe it to God’s gift of rest, as illustrated at the end of the seven-day creation cycle in Genesis 1.  It also serves as a reminder of God’s liberation.  Israel had the opportunity to rest because God had set them free from slavery in Egypt.  We rest because human beings need to rest.  We rest because it honors God who created time and space.  We rest because it is a gift to be able to rest.

How can I observe the Sabbath?

                Traditionally, the Sabbath was a day set apart each week.  For Israel, the Sabbath lasts from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday.  This was a day for worship, study and rest.  Emergencies should be handled.  Livestock should be fed.  No one else should be made to work so you can rest.  As Christians transitioned to worship on Sunday, the Sabbath day for most Christians became Sunday.

                If you have never observed a full-day Sabbath, recognize that it takes work and preparation.  Household chores that might have been done over the course of a weekend are done on a single day.  Work-related emails and texts should be handled ahead of time.  These days, for a real Sabbath, you probably need to turn off your phone and shutdown your computer.  You might also consider simply taking a Sabbath from particular activities.  Perhaps you need to spend a day without screens, or a day without commerce, or a day without chores.  This is not supposed to be the kind of fasting that some people do in Lent, giving up something as a discipline.  Sabbath is giving up work to create space for something else, something new; the God who dwells in peace and silence.      

   

                Although it has a different feel, you might explore the Sabbath idea by creating Sabbath spaces in your day.  Can you create a hour of Sabbath, a time that might be marked by the lighting of a candle in acknowledgement of the presence of God?  A deliberate time of prayer and study or, if the body needs it, a simple rest.  Can you get outside for a 10-minute Sabbath walk, just taking all creation in?

                My favorite personal Sabbath practice is three, deep and prayerful breaths.  Sometimes when too many ideas are flying around or too many priorities are calling, it is helpful to stop where I am and take three deep breaths to remind me that I am alive, that I am in God’s love, that peace is already near. 

                Remember that Sabbath is a gift.  It is not intended as a punishment but as a celebration of the God in whom we find peace, rest and life itself.

The Path of Discipleship - Sabbath, Loyalty and Faithfulness

One of the places where Jesus runs into conflict with the religious experts of his time is the observance of the Sabbath.  For one thing, he heals on the Sabbath.  It was acceptable to heal someone on the Sabbath if it would save a life.  In our day, it would be acceptable to perform CPR on someone even though it is a great deal of work, because the work is saving someone from death.  But Jesus was healing people who were not at death’s door, who suffered from chronic conditions that would still be there the next day.  He also allowed his disciples to gather grain on the Sabbath when they were hungry.  Facing criticism over these actions he declares himself “the Lord of the Sabbath” but also makes another important declaration, “The Sabbath was made for humanity and not humanity for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)

                In thinking about Sabbath observance it is important to think about the origins of the Sabbath.  We can look at the beginning of Genesis, where a day of rest is built into the order of creation.  “And on the seventh day God finished the work that God had done, and God rested on the seventh day from all the work that God had done.  So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that God had done in creation.”(Genesis 2:2-3).  We can look at the 10 Commandments where the third commandment on the Sabbath is given as a reminder of Israel’s life of slavery in Egypt.  Everyone rests (including animals, slaves, and foreigners) in honor of the freedom that God had given Israel in the Passover story.

                And yet a common theme in most religions is that a practice that is given as a gift is turned into a law.  Over time, the freedom which the Sabbath was supposed to celebrate was replaced with a sense of obligation.  The rest that the Sabbath was supposed to offer was turned into duty.

                To be fair, the Sabbath was a practice that was also a sign of Jewish loyalty.  Not every culture in the ancient world took a weekly day of rest, especially a day of rest for servants and slaves and a day free from commercial activity.  The wealthy might rest but only because they had people below them to do the work.  In Israel, everything and everyone, as much as possible, was supposed to stop.  Doing so was a sign of loyalty toward God, honoring God’s work of creation and salvation for Israel.

                Jesus does not renounce the Sabbath.  Observing the Sabbath is still a sign of loyalty and devotion.  Instead, Jesus reestablishes the Sabbath as a gift, a practice that is not only faithful but is also wise.  Human beings need to rest for health and well-being.  Human beings need a pause from all the noise and commotion of life, the buying and selling, the constant call to do more and to obtain more.  From the beginning, God proclaims the value of simply being, resting in divine love.

                For me, the idea of Sabbath is a great comfort.  It implies that beneath all the noise, the confusion and the stress of life, there is peace and rest inherent in the universe.  God offers it, free for the taking.  Jesus points to it.  “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)   We are invited to step into it.  We honor God by stepping into Sabbath.

                Importantly, we show loyalty to God’s vision by stepping into Sabbath.  Turning toward the Sabbath means turning away from other visions, visions that define our worth by productivity or accumulation.  The Sabbath is the good news that we do not have to do more, be more or get more to be loved by God.  The peace of God is already here and we are already worthy of it.

                In my next article, I will suggest that how one observes the Sabbath can have a measure of freedom.  Certainly the tradition is a Sabbath day, but I believe that the way that Jesus frames the Sabbath opens the possibility for other ways of observance: Sabbath hours and Sabbath moments sprinkled throughout our days.  In our modern context, we might consider taking a Sabbath from screens (for the sake of our sanity) or a Sabbath from constant availability (for the sake of our humility).  The Sabbath is God’s gift to humanity.  May we use that gift to honor and rest in the One who is peace itself.

The Path of Discipleship - Faithfulness and Loyalty

At the beginning of this series I described the path of discipleship as one that seeks to develop a number of virtues and ideals.  For the past few weeks I have been writing about compassion and the works of justice and mercy that flow from compassion.  This week I want to start by talking about the virtue of loyalty and faithfulness.

                Earlier in this series, I wrote several posts about the virtue of love; how the love of God, especially for Christians the love of God as seen in Jesus, can inspire love within us, a love that extends from us back to God and to the world around us.  The important realization is that this love begins with God.  A common image is the Christian life as akin to the moon, shining with a light that is not of our origin, but a reflection of the love of God. “We love God because God first loved us.” (1 John 4:19).

                For many decades we have used the language of love as the primary description of our relationship with God and God’s relationship with us.  However, for much of the Hebrew Scriptures, the primary description of our relationship with God is not about love but about loyalty and faithfulness. 

                There is a phrase that is used several times in the Hebrew Scriptures as a formulaic description of God.  For instance, in my congregation, during Lent, we prepare to hear the gospel text with a quotation from the prophet Joel:

                “Return to the Lord your God, for God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”  (Joel 2:13)

                When I was in seminary I had a Hebrew professor who strongly disagreed with the translation, “steadfast love.”  He told us that the Hebrew word (chesed) is related to loyalty and faithfulness.  He translated it with the fancy phrase, “covenant fidelity”.  Chesed is more about the nature of God keeping God’s promises than it is the warm, fuzzy feeling that sometimes gets associated with love.  Joel presents a God who will be faithful to Israel, not because Israel is great or perfect or loving, but because God is a God who makes and keeps promises.  This is a significant idea because the covenants that God makes with Israel are often one-sided and unconditional.  God does not say to Abram, “If you are good, I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you.”  God simply says, “I will make of you a great nation.”(Genesis 12:2)  God is and remains loyal and faithful.

                In his letter to the Galatians, Paul lists faithfulness as one of the fruits of the spirit.  It is more than simply holding a set of beliefs.  Faithfulness is an attitude of being invested in those beliefs.  This is not an argument for blind faith, accepting things without question.  My understanding of faithfulness is the ability to stand in faith despite questions and struggles.  For me, the image of faithfulness is the image of Jacob wrestling with the divine and refusing to let go. (Genesis 32:22-32)

                Faithfulness in practice is also well-described by many of the Christian mystics.  The 16^th century Spanish nun, Teresa of Avila speaks of periods of dryness in prayer.  At the beginning of the new practice, the disciple is thrilled and comforted by the action of contemplative prayer, but one day she sits in prayer and discovers nothing: no feeling of warmth, no sense of nearness to God.  Faithfulness is what continues the practice through such dry spells.  For John of the Cross, a dear friend of Teresa, faithfulness is what allows Christians to endure the “dark night of the soul,” a period when all the trappings of faith lose their meaning.  It is the virtue of faithfulness that turns the dark night into a transition period to a deeper relationship with God.

                Unfortunately, the church moved from a message of faithfulness to a message of guilt.  Rather than saying that we take part in the practices of discipleship out of a sense of loyalty to God, the church taught that we observe these practices out of a sense of guilt or fear, avoiding an angry God.  In some ways I think we overcorrected when we then put all of our focus on love, often arriving at a place of saying, “Take part or don’t; God loves you anyway.”

                I hope that we can find a way to hold loyalty and love in balance.  Growing in loyalty and faithfulness can be a powerful way to deepen our relationship, helping us grow in disciplines which in turn help us spend more time paying attention to God.  I believe that an emphasis on faithfulness can also help create a realistic faith practice, one that does not assume that we should always feel great or we should never have doubts or things will just get better and better.  Faithfulness and loyalty are what can carry us through the troubling times.

                But love is also constantly present when we do slip up or slip away.  God’s love is always there to sustain us, comfort us and welcome us.  Like love, our faithfulness is not our own, but a reflection of the faithfulness of God, who stands waiting to receive us when we turn away and to welcome us when we rediscover the beautiful relationship that is faith.