Sabbath FAQs

Text: Genesis 1:1-5, 2:1-4

On Thursday, the city was deserted. On Thanksgiving day in Cambridge you could have walked down the middle of the street without danger. There were no cars, few people, no commerce. It was great!

It was like the good old days. In those times in Massachusetts there were things called Blue Laws. They required most businesses and retail stores to be closed on Sunday. No shopping allowed. No shopping meant no shoppers, which meant no cars. You could drive by a mall and the parking lot would be completely empty. No shopping meant no shops, so people who worked in retail did not have to go to work. It was very quiet. It was peaceful. It was nice.

The bad thing about Blue Laws, and the reason they were repealed, is that they forced a religious ethic—no work on Sunday sabbath—on people whose religion, or no religion, did not honor Sunday. But the good thing about Blue Laws is that they forced everyone to take a sabbath rest. It sounded like a deprivation, but it was a gift. It put the force of law as a balance against the forces of commerce and busyness. It made rest a requirement for the health of the culture, the city, and the health of its citizens.

In the end, as often, commerce and busyness won the battle. The Blue Laws went away, and no law of rest replaced them. We all let this happen, because we all forgot how much we need to rest. We lost the sabbath. We have forgotten the sabbath. And now we are starving for rest. We need a sabbath rest to live satisfactorily. To have forgotten that we need a sabbath is like forgetting that we need to eat. This is not good.

Since we have forgotten the sabbath, I’ve put together a short list of frequently asked questions (and answers) about the sabbath. They have to do with rest and with worship.

Question: Do we need a sabbath?

Answer: Yes.

Sabbath is downtime. Downtime is part of creation. The creator took a good chunk of time off after creating the universe. The story of the creation in Genesis is not a story of six days effort plus a footnote. The time that God rested is included in the story. The story starts, “at the beginning” and ends “these are the beginnings.” And between these two verse markers are God’s work and God’s rest. Downtime was important to our creator, and it is to us as creatures.

We know this to be true through experience and through research, which increasingly shows that not doing something—stopping work—is essential to performance, learning, and civil behavior. You cannot do, think, or be polite without prolonged rest.

And, even if that were not so, we are commanded to rest. Downtime is one of the Ten Commandments. Near the top. The third or fourth, depending on how you count them. I think you know that the Ten Commandments appear in two books of the Bible, one set in Exodus and the other in Deuteronomy. One of these versions says keep the sabbath because God did after creating the world. And the other one says keep the sabbath because once the Israelites were slaves in Egypt and had to work all the time, but now God has freed them. So God commanded us to rest because we need to and to rest because we can. We need to and we can.

Question: Can’t I take little breaks and spread the rest over all the days of the week?

Answer: No.

In Genesis it says that “God had finished, on the seventh day, the work God made and then God ceased, on the seventh day, all the work that God had made.” Little breaks are great and necessary, and maybe God took a few during the creation of the universe. God does, after all, sit back at the end of each day and admire the day’s work. But little breaks are not downtime. They are not sabbath. They don’t work that way, and we all know it. You cannot work seven days a week and ten hours every day and claim that you cease work because you take coffee breaks and naps. We need to take a day off like God does.

Question: Can there be too much downtime?

Answer: Yes.

The sabbath is created in the context of the work of creation. Work and rest are intertwined. Martin Luther wrote that work is a calling by God. This has been interpreted to mean that you should work as hard as possible. Bosses like that when dealing with workers. But that is not what Luther meant. First, Luther wanted to make sure that people, and especially the church, valued all work, not just church work. The clergy had an inflated view of their own work as especially godly, and Luther wanted to deflate that view. But second, and as important, Luther said that God loves a great pair of shoes made by a shoemaker and God loves a clean floor cleaned by a cleaning service. The doing of things with our hands and minds pleases God. But just not doing it all the time.

Final question: Then is this all just about me?

Answer: No.

Sabbath is good for us, and downtime is important for our well-being. But that is not the only reason why it is necessary. Sabbath is worship. Sabbath gives us quiet time and space to pray. It gives us sufficient spans of time in which our thoughts can settle and our hopes and fears become clearer. And it allows us to listen for God and to God. Sabbath is more than downtime in that it purposely pushes away those things that make us most fearful and anxious. Things like performing well and being well-off and having enough. For many people, days of sabbath are the days in which they feel most close to other people, to their families, and to the wonders of the world.

Sabbath is worship because it is connected with God. It is a gift of God and a command of God. So the pleasures we get from rest we can see as coming from God’s love for us and the discipline that sabbath requires we can see as coming from our trust in God.

One of the works of the church is to provide times and spaces for worship, quiet, and sanctuary. And to teach us how to take sabbath time. It is not the only work of the church, and churches do not always do it well. But unlike for the rest of the world, it is an essential part of the job description.

Advent marks the beginning of the church year. Although it inevitably it is seen as a prequel to Christmas, it is really a time of reflection and meditation. Advent Sundays can be sabbath times, downtime, times of rest in an otherwise anxious time. Especially in these days, when there seems to be a lot to be anxious about.

There is no movement on the horizon to bring back sabbath laws. But sabbath time has been given to us nonetheless. Accept the gift. Embrace the gift. Slow down. Stop. Rest.

That's What You Say

Text: John 18:33-37

Today is called Christ the King Sunday. But it would be more Biblical to call it Christ Not-the-king Sunday. Or maybe Who-says-Christ-is-King Sunday. For it is others, not Jesus, who call him king. In all four Gospels, Pilate asks in one way or another if Jesus is king. And in all four Gospels Jesus answers in one way or another “That’s what you say.”

Neither God the Father nor Jesus the Son are enthusiastic about kings. In the book of Samuel, the people of Israel ask God for a king to lead them, but God cautions that

[A king] will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, … and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his friends. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. You yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day."

But the people say to God, “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations.”

In the Gospel of John, after the crowd of 5000 whom he has just fed try to make Jesus king, he runs away and hides out in the mountains. And in all the Gospels, Jesus seems to prefer titles like Son of God or Son of Humanity or Rabbi, meaning teacher. And yet people hoped that Jesus would be more like a king. And people still do.

The feast of Christ the King is not an ancient holiday of the church. It was invented by Pope Pius XI in 1925 and was not given its permanent spot as the last Sunday in the church year until 1970. Pius saw that there is in our world a deep and sometimes desperate call for someone to lead us as a king might and take care of us.

These are confused and anxious times, not times of contentment and peace. Wars rage constantly. We know that people suffer and we feel helpless to do anything about it. Social and political issues have divided the country and the world down the middle. Too many voices compete for our attention and for our affection. Too many people are trying to convince us of one thing or another. And too many of them are lying to us.

Things are scary because they seem not only out of our control but out of anyone’s control. We are like children in a household where there are no adults. Or where the adults act like children, and are childish and unreliable.

Isn’t there someone we can follow? Isn’t there someone who will tell the truth?

The two questions are related. Jesus relates them. Pilate asks about kings, and Jesus answers about truth. You say that I am a king, says Jesus, but I came to testify to the truth.

Ah, says Pilate—in a line left out of the lectionary, but in the Gospel—Ah, Pilate says, but what is truth? Not true facts. Not statements about doctrine or belief. Only in the Gospel of John does Jesus speak so much about the truth. And the word he uses means reliability, steadfastness, trustworthiness. More like true blue. Or true friends. True grit. Something both immeasurable and yet undeniable.

To be true is to be in alignment with the world as God created it to be. Like a wheel being true. To be smooth and effortless. To travel an effortless path, where, as Isaiah has it, every mountain and hill is made low; the uneven ground level, and the rough places smooth.

The enemy of truth is not falsehood, not error or mistake, but fantasy. Most of us live in a world that is at least a little fantastic. We think more of ourselves than we ought to—or we think less that we deserve. We imagine motives in others than do not exist. We have groundless fears and unhelpful hopes. We deny our own habits and obsessions, and we deny our own sorrow. If truth is a smooth path, fantasy is a rocky one. Acts that spring from fantasy destroy us and our world. It is too tiring and in the end too discouraging to have fantasy occupy us. You will be freed, as Jesus testifies earlier in John, if you know the truth.

For Christians, the truth has something to do with Jesus. Not about Jesus so much as through Jesus or from Jesus. To see the truth is to see as Jesus sees. To see through the lens of Jesus. Or to put it in a different way, to interpret the world as Jesus interprets it for us. We agree when we follow Jesus to let him explain things to us and to believe him when he does. When he talks about ethics or prayer or money or hypocrisy or corruption or compassion, we believe him. We say that Jesus sees the truth, or see things truly, or describes the world truthfully. We give Jesus the authority to tell us what to do because Jesus is the truth, in the way I’m talking about.

I’m convinced that of all the gifts Jesus had, it his ability to see and tell the truth that drew the band of disciples and the crowds of people to him. They could tell. People who convert to Christianity in an instant see the truth of Jesus immediately. Other people come to think so over time, through reading, conversation, prayer, and through confirming experience. We give Jesus sovereignty over us and are obedient to him, which is one way in which he is king. Follow me, he says. The kingdom of God is better called the reign of truth.

But we are obedient not because he is a tyrant, or because he is a better manager, or because he hangs around with people in high places, or because he is a great general for whom we would fight. All the kingly things. We do not give Jesus the kind of obedience we would give a boss (or king), but the kind of obedience that we would give a guide or mentor. Jesus has our focus. What does Jesus say? What does Jesus see? To where does Jesus lead us?

Everybody, from Pilate to Pius, wants Jesus to be king. Everybody but Jesus. People make out Jesus to be what they want him to be.

But Jesus does not command our attention like a king. He draws our attention like a lover. Present in our minds, as we walk, or shop, or eat, or work, or take a break. The one for whom we change our plans. The recipient of our vows. The one of whom we are mindful.

Jesus retells God’s lesson in Samuel as he talks to Pilate. Kings have armies and fight holy wars. If you want that, he says, if you want a king like everybody else, go find a king. But if you want to live a true life, follow me.

Unimagination

Text: Mark 13:1-8
Other texts: Daniel 12:1-3

Forty years ago it seemed like the world was on a roll. It was the beginning, everyone thought, of a new age. The dawning of the age of Aquarius. The Berlin wall, a symbol of the old, national, hateful way of international politics, had fallen. And not long after, our scary enemy, the Soviet Union, would collapse. Possibilities were expanding. Humans were walking on the moon. Ancient limitations were yielding to human cleverness. The old generations, stuck in century-long patterns and traditions, were being replaced by a new, younger, smarter, more adventurous generation.

And here we are. War, starvation, oppression, and greed are still among us. The stability of the world’s climate is threatened. There seem to be no good and simple solutions to anything. Everything seems much too complicated to even think about. Is the world falling apart? Can anything hold?

In times like this, things are beyond our powers. Things cannot go on like this, people say. The more powerless people feel, the more they begin to hope for a quick and radical solution. And some begin to hope for a kind of divine restart. Seeing no human fix, some hope that God will wipe the desk clean and start over. A clean install.

This kind of thinking is called apocalyptic, a word that comes from the title of the Book of Revelation. Revelation is the most extensive example of apocalyptic writing in the Christian tradition, but there are others in the Bible, starting with Daniel, about whom we heard in the first lesson. And in the Gospels, including Mark, there are little apocalypses, as they are called. In all these writings there is a slightly sweet and rotten combination of fear, antsiness, and hope.

These end-of-the world stories come from people and times of oppression and occupation. So they ask God to share with them their urgency. They are not about faraway redemption, but rescue now, this moment. Soon.

But predictions made two thousand, twenty-five hundred, years ago, have not come to pass. We are still here. The world continues to exist. It turns out that God is not us. That God is not like us.

God’s patience is greater than ours. God seems to be in it for the long haul. God is evidently more willing to see how things work out, and to let them work out. God is less likely to panic than we are.

God’s forgiveness is greater than ours. Maybe the worst things that can happen are not quite as bad in God’s eyes as they are in ours. Maybe we are like little children for whom every slight and sin is a major event. Maybe God is more even tempered.

God’s flexibility is greater than ours. God seems less doctrinaire than we can be. God allows a little slack in the affairs of the world. God is opinionated but not unmovable. God changes God’s mind and reverses judgments. God is influenced by argument, as God is by Abraham and Moses, and by repentance, prayer, and extenuating circumstances. And by intercession.

And mostly, God’s compassion is greater than ours. The apocalyptic writings predict anguish and violence and death to the oppressors and enemies and sinners. People left behind suffer horribly. It is vengeful and retributive. But it seems that God loves us too much to zap us all in a divine cataclysm. Forgive those who harm you, says God in Jesus. And in older scripture God seems to be less wrathful and instead disappointed and saddened by the sins of the people of God.

It is not right that we should usurp the calendar of the end of time and to lobby God to destroy all of creation, which after all was made in God’s hope. It is arrogance and hubris to think that because we are freaked out God would be too, or should be too. How can we think that our own particular sorrows—even though they be great—and our anger, and our hysteria could justify the end of the world? How can we believe that the spirit of God in creation would let life fade so easily? How can we hope for “anguish that has never before occurred,” as it says in Daniel? Or famines and war? It is almost pornographic.

Scary times seem to demand extreme measures. That’s because it is hard to think about solutions when the problems seem so enormous and immediate. Apocalyptic hopes reflect lack of imagination. They are sort of: I don’t know what to do, so tomorrow is cancelled. All of us feel this way from time to time, but it doesn’t mean we hope for the end of the world. At least not usually. Apocalyptic thinking is kind of an extreme form of the geographic cure. When in trouble and in doubt, leave. Go somewhere else.

In scary times, cosmically or personally, we first of all are convinced that the future will be the same as today. We see the future as just one long and tiresome stretched-out present. We cannot imagine a different future. And second, even if we could, the steps we’d have to take to get there seem impossible. We cannot imagine how we could get realistically from today to tomorrow. And third, it seems to be all or nothing. We cannot imagine how any intermediate actions would make a difference. In good times you know that things change, that small steps make a difference, that intermediate actions are effective. In scary times, you forget.

But Jesus reminds us. It is basic and fundamental to Christianity that something new is possible. Not only possible but inevitable. The good news that Jesus brings is that tomorrow need not be the same as today. That to hope to be healed, and to be restored, and to be refreshed is realistic, not fantastic.

Both to nourish this hope, and as result of the teachings of Jesus, we do three things. First thing, we forgive the past and know that we will be able forgive the present. Second thing, we can count on the constant and intimate presence of God. There is nothing, as the apostle Paul says, that can separate us from the love of God. And third thing, we gather into communities of people who look out for one another and remind one another of the first two things.

So here we are. In whatever circumstances. In hope or worry. In concern or celebration. But we will not be here for long. Not because things will end, but because they continue. The walls of no temple are permanent, no matter how big and unmovable they seem. God draws us forward into life. We may resist or we may welcome this divine pull. But God, patient, forgiving, open-minded, and compassionate, makes things new.

No More Tears

Text: Isaiah 25:6-9
Other texts: Wisdom of Solomon 3.1-9, Revelation 21.1-6a

How greedy life is. How greedy we are for life.

Life is good. We take pleasure in things. We are pleasure creatures, enjoying a good view as much as a good dinner. A good conversation, a good hug, and good handshake. A good friend. We are made to enjoy life, to enjoy living, to enjoy the company of others, to enjoy the beauties of the earth. It is our blessing that we love and are loved, that we create things and admire them, that we have aspirations and accomplishments, and also that we can overcome adversity and solve problems. We are clever and fun and complicated.

Life is sturdy. We live in a sea of organisms, not all of them friendly, yet we mostly persist. We live among hard and dangerous objects, yet we mostly survive. We are complex and fragile mechanisms, yet we and all of God’s creatures are resilient.

We value our lives. And we value the life in others. We form attachments that are rich and soulful. The wiring of our brains and the flow of hormones and enzymes in us mysteriously but actually connect us with the people around us. We are not alone.

So it is on All Saints day that we remember the dead. Or better to say we mark our memories of them, we bring those memories up and forward, and we refresh our affections for those who have died. And we ponder their missing.

Each of us has a strong and unshakeable sense of identity, of the “I” that I am. We seem to be continuous and coherent persons. And those we love seem so, too. So, no matter what the circumstances, no matter how well we are prepared, no matter how sensible and understandable, even no matter how desirable, the death of another is inexplicable. How could it make sense?

So death must be a corruption. All the ways we die—disease, suicide, accident, system failure—seem an interruption in the order of things. How is it that we who are so marvelously made could be unmade? How it that any creature could be? How can it be that someone who was so present can be lost to us? It is not right for life to end.

Life is good, yet life is also sorrow and suffering. I don’t have to tell you. Bad things happen to us in body, mind, and spirit. Discouragement, pain, and despair always attack and sometimes are overwhelming. It is tiring. Injustices are perpetrated on us. Burdens that are given to us, that are taken up by us, that are forced on us, burdens that accrete over time, or shock us in surprise—the burdens get heavy and heavier.

And then. Then death is more welcome. “Since I lay my burden down, my troubles will be over,” says the song. “For all the saints,” we just sang, “who from their labors rest … we feebly struggle, then in glory shine … soon to faithful servants cometh rest.” We quote the verses for evening prayer—“until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes and the busy world is hushed, the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then, Lord, in your mercy, grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.”—And we say these same words at a funeral, at the end of life. Peace at the last.

Even as greedy we are for life, we seem not to want to live forever. My grandfather, who at the time was nearing 90, once said, “I always wanted to live to a ripe old age. But I think I’m a little overripe.” The burden we let go is the “I” itself, our identity, our self, which at some point seems to take too much effort to maintain. And then we see that the words on Ash Wednesday, “remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” could be a promise, not a threat. A relief. Release. Letting go.

Death is as much a part of us as anything in life. It is in our nature as created beings. It is not that we are wicked or imperfect or flawed, and therefore mortal. It is only the way we are made. It is how things work. And I guess we could look at it with the same amazement as we look at all the common and yet unbelievable things our bodies do: like see or love or dance or think.

But we don’t. Such a view is not sufficient. First, death causes too much sorrow for us on this side. And we don’t know for sure how they are feeling on the other side. Second, it is always too sudden, even when it is not. And third, most of all, we cannot believe that force of our lives, the momentum of existence, does not carry us into an active future where either loose ends are tied up or wounds healed or rewards realized. How can it be that evil deeds done—injustices—go unpunished or good deeds go unrewarded (as they certainly do in our lifetimes). How can it be that we cannot know and enjoy our eternal rest. How can it be that the promise and vitality of our youth is not restored. And how can it be that we are not reunited actively with God our lover and our maker?

The alternate first reading—the lectionary sometimes lists two choices—the alternate reading today is from the Wisdom of Solomon. It starts like this:

“The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace.”

In other words, the good will out. In the end justice prevails. The righteous are rewarded. Evil does not succeed, no matter how things seem. This is God’s working to set things right. God, as always, extracts the good from the evil. It is a kind of story of Lazarus in a cosmic realm. Death is not the period at the end of the sentence.

This is good news. Death is only a moment in life beyond which the living cannot see. It is good news, but it is not good enough. What Isaiah writes is better news. What God promises in Isaiah is not a revival or a renewal or a resuscitation. What Isaiah promises is an end to death altogether.

“God will destroy the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations;

God will swallow up death forever. And then God will wipe away the tears from all faces.”

The story of the Bible reinforces our instinct that death has no permanent part in the order of things. The intention of God in the first chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, is realized finally in the last chapters of Revelation, the last book.

In the end, it says in Isaiah, and also in Revelation, which quotes Isaiah, we are given more than comfort for the way things inevitably are. Instead, these prophecies and fantastic accounts predict an end to mourning, an end to tears, an end to crying and pain. The new creation is the one that God hoped for in the old creation. Our intuition about life will be realized and our greed for life fulfilled. We will no more light candles for the dead. We will no longer weep.