Reading for Feb 4-10, 2008

An excerpt from “Way to Live: Christian Practices for Teens”, edited by Dorothy C. Bass and Don C. Richter

Observing the Sabbath is a commandment. But in Jewish tradition the Sabbath is regarded even more as a gift, because each Sabbath is a reminder of how much God cherishes earth and the human beings made in God's own image. After creating the heavens and the earth, plants and animals, and finally, people, God sees that it is all very good. So God rests for a whole day, spending time with these creatures-being rather than doing, enjoying rather than working. God blesses this day (see Genesis 2:1-3). It's a wonderful day of grace.

Later, however, humanity turns away from God, and God's chosen people end up in slavery. Slavery is the opposite of Sabbath. In the book of Exodus, we read about how the Hebrew people were trapped in Egypt- making bricks for Pharaoh all day every day, unable to have any time off work at all. They cried out, and God heard their cry and led them out of bondage. Once they were free, God commanded them to keep the Sabbath. You are not slaves anymore, God told them. One way to remember that you are free is to take a whole day off, every single week, even when you think you don't have time to rest. And make sure that your animals and the people who work for you get to have a day off too!

In the very busy world of the 21st century, many adults work as if they were slaves-some because of severe financial need, some because their employers do not treat them fairly, and some because they are obsessed with work itself. Teens need to be aware of how a slave-labor mentality might develop in them during and after high school as well. And then- whether Jewish or Christian or practicing another faith-teens need to listen to this ancient word about freedom and accept the gift of Sabbath time-time to be rather than do; time to enjoy other people and creation; time for genuine, deep freedom.

Sabbath is not just empty time. Sabbath time is restful and renewing because it reorients us to God. It is time full of God, and for that reason, a time of true freedom. Therefore, the Sabbath has been and continues to be a day of worship as well as a day of rest for the Jewish people.

reading for Jan. 20-26

My apologies for dropping the ball on the Sabbath focus reading this week.

Once again to Nehemiah, who has been on my mind lately, chapter 13, verses 15-22:

¹⁶¹⁷¹⁸In those days I saw in Judah people treading wine presses on the sabbath, and bringing in heaps of grain and loading them on donkeys; and also wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of burdens, which they brought into Jerusalem on the sabbath day; and I warned them at that time against selling food. Tyrians also, who lived in the city, brought in fish and all kinds of merchandise and sold them on the sabbath to the people of Judah, and in Jerusalem.

Then I remonstrated with the nobles of Judah and said to them, ‘What is this evil thing that you are doing, profaning the sabbath day? Did not your ancestors act in this way, and did not our God bring all this disaster on us and on this city? Yet you bring more wrath on Israel by profaning the sabbath.’

19 When it began to be dark at the gates of Jerusalem before the sabbath, I commanded that the doors should be shut and gave orders that they should not be opened until after the sabbath. And I set some of my servants over the gates, to prevent any burden from being brought in on the sabbath day. ²⁰

Then the merchants and sellers of all kinds of merchandise spent the night outside Jerusalem once or twice. ²¹But I warned them and said to them, ‘Why do you spend the night in front of the wall? If you do so again, I will lay hands on you.’ From that time on they did not come on the sabbath. ²²

And I commanded the Levites that they should purify themselves and come and guard the gates, to keep the sabbath day holy. Remember this also in my favour, O my God, and spare me according to the greatness of your steadfast love.

Finding My Way

Hi, team and anyone else who is following this Year of Sabbath,

Just wanted to share some words on how my Sabbath practice is going. I have no problem setting aside my Sabbath time on Wednesday mornings. Though my commitment to the ritual itself has been changing. I used to really enjoy getting all my worship items laid out like my Bible, my little slips of paper with team members' names on them, more slips of paper with people in my community I am concerned about, my candle and readings. I would fuss a bit over the "liturgy". Does it feel better to do breathing meditation BEFORE I read or AFTER? Should I sing the song I chose for the whole team or one that just comes to mind?

But these past few weeks I have simplified. I light a candle but the little slips of paper are gone. I don't always sing anymore but I ALWAYS try to meditate, which is usually so frsutratingly difficult that my brain starts to try to convince me that it isn't going to happen. But eventually I slip suddenly and gently into a heart space where I only know peace and joy in God's presence. I rejoice when that happens which of course breaks the meditation because I have begun thinking about it.

I was thrilled in December to make my Sabbath practice two hours. Then in January I wondered how on earth I would spend three hours. I resolved to make Wednesday mornings ritual and reading time. I would do my little solitary worship service then read whatever churchy book I was into. I like this pattern very much. I should always dedicate such time to reading otherwise it takes me months to read a book. As the months go by and hours get added on to Sabbathing, I think I will add them to Friday (a day I always try to stay away from work). And I will follow what sounds so scripturally true in Heschel's book: I will relax, I will celebrate, I will sleep, I will revel in God's glorious wooded or ocean-side places. I will say NO wherever possible to work commitments on Fridays. It will be a holy day for me as a child of God on earth.

My biggest struggle with this whole "project" is that we are supposed to be discerning the will of God for youth ministry and the church but that is work and work is not Sabbath. So I try to do what I think is Sabbath and I also dedicate discerning and journaling time to the ministry.

My final thought for this entry...I wish we could be Sabbathing and discerning together. Last month I had my first official Sabbath meeting with my mentor. Of all the weeks I spent trying to connect to God's spirit alone in my apartment, I never felt God's presence so strongly as when my mentor and I, in the same room, both shut or eyes and just listened.

Be well.

Rick G(unn)

A Future Not Our Own

 

It helps now and then to step back and take a long view. 

The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision.

 

We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. 

Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession

brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the Church's mission.

No set of goals and objectives include everything.

 

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water the seeds already planted knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.

 

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing this. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

 

We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

 

-- Archbishop Oscar Romero

Jan 13-19 Sabbath Reflection

Greetings fellow Sabbathers,

The reading I chose for this week is attributed to Archbishop Oscar Romero called A Future Not Our Own.  I hadn't seen this until a few months ago and when I read it for the first time it really hit me...this is what I do, I get so caught up in the 'details' of life and pastoral ministry that I forget that I can't do it all, that everything doesn't depend on me.  If I truly take that to heart then I can honestly and with integrity 'own' my sabbath time.  To quote the the reading 'We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.  This enables us to do something, and do it very well.'  If we each take a step back from running the world, take our sabbath time and rest then we can do all the somethings that allow God to be present in our lives and in our world.  It also helps if we surround ourselves with family and friends who can remind us that we aren't running the world, just planting seeds.  I think this applies especially to ministry with youth, sometimes we can get overwhelmed with the enormity of our task and feel like we have to be all things to all people to succeed...the wisdom offered by Archbishop Romero helps us to see that even if we don't see the end results God's grace is at work through us and in the lives of young people...

Happy Sabbathing!!

Shannon

A Sabbath Poem

My Soul Longs For the Sabbath

I want to rest from being who everyone else knows me to be.

I want to rest from being put together and up to speed
– I want to fall apart and to fall behind.
I want to stop making the same mistakes
– the ones I make when I never stop.
I want to stop hurting people for a time
– and to mourn and to cry.
I want to be suspended between the strong tall towers of obligation
– in a hammock dreaming.

I want to float where I have stumbled,
dance where I am chained,
lose where I have found.

I want to say NO where my dutiful YES has chimed forth!
I want to have six devoted days worthy of a holy seventh!
I want to lay down the burden of my ego in the soft warm cradle of tenderness!
I want to know the truth, and to speak the truth and to let it destroy me!

I want to stop measuring my worthiness and “love-ability”
– and be weak and powerful and naked.
I want to release my strength and kneel down
– still and silent as it crumbles into deep dark soil.
I want to dangle on the branches of my life’s deepest purpose
– and to ripen into richest colour and flavour.

I want to need someone again,
I want to need someone again.

I want to give away what I have kept,
fall down from where I have climbed,
receive the deepest blessing of inheritance
which is mine to share with another
in the wide restful heart of the Sabbath.

And I want to stop wanting.


Christopher Giffen
January 08

Scripture for Dec 30th - Jan 5th: Leviticus 25:1-12

Alison's thoughts...

I've been reading a great book, "The Year of Living Biblically" by A.J. Jacobs. This is a non-fiction year long account of Jacobs attempting to live out every law in the entire bible (both old and new testements). Each chapter is based on a month of the year and for various days he records a particular law that he attempts to follow literally that day and discusses how well he was able to integrate it into his life. Once a law is incorporated one day, he is to continue with it for the rest of the year. His thoughts on sabbath have really stood out for me.

In discussing the Jubilee aspect of Sabbath, letting the land rest and forgiving debts or IOUs and on a personal part not working during the sabbath, he reminded me of how this applies to our year of Sabbath. Our attempt of not having many face to face meetings where we would need to travel across the country to gather, which would add polutants to the air and such, our use of online resources like the blog and this facebook group (not to mention email) to lessen the excessive use of paper to communicate. No doubt we've had some challenges with these forms of communication and we've learned how to make the best of them, and communication is happening.

One of the things that I've learned so far in my Sabbath journey this year is how difficult it is for me to remember to take my Sabbath time. I get so busy and wrapped up in all the work that I'm doing, that I forget or I procrastinate, "I'll just take my time tomorow"...it's been tough most weeks. Then I came across this passage by Jacobs.

"Day 97. It's a Tuesday afternoon in December, but I feel like I've just experienced my first real Sabbath.

Let me explain: The doorknobs in our apartment fall off on an alarminly regular basis. They're mercurial little suckers. We don't even need to be touching them -it's more of a natural-life-cycle type of situation, like icebergs calving or my hairline retreating. I'll be in bed, reading my Bible, and I'll hear a thud and know that another doorknob succumbed to gravity.

Usually, I screw the knob back on. Problem solved -for a week or two anyway. No bid geal. But this morning, it became a big deal. At 9:30am I stop typing my emails and shuffle over to the bathroom -and close the door behind me. I don't realise what I've done until I reach for the nonexistent inside doorknob. It had molted sometime during the night.

For the first ten minutes, I try to escape. I bang on the door, shourt for help. Now answer. Julie is away at a meeitng, and Jasper is out fwith his babysitter. I've seen Ocean's Eleven, so I know to look for the grill in the ceiling that I can unscrew, climb into, slither through an air chute, drop into my neighbor's bedroom, make a clever comment like 'just thought I'd drop in,' and then return home. No grill. I'm trapped.

The next half-hour I spend going through a checklist of worst-case scenarios...

Even more stressful to me is that the outside world is speeing along without me. Emails are being answered. Venti lattes are being sipped. George Bush's childhood friends are being appointed to high-level positions...

But I'm ok with it. It doesn't cause my shoulders to tighten. Nothing I can do about it. I've reached an unexpected level of aceeptance. For once I'm savoring the present. I'm admiring what I have, even if it's 32 square feet of face marble and an angled electrical outlet. I start to pray. And perhaps for the first time, I pray in true peace and silence with out glancing at the clock, without my brain hopscotching from topic to topic.

This is what Sabbath should feel like. A pause. Not just a minor pause, but a major pause. Not just a lowerin gof the volume, but a muting. As rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel put it, the Sabbath is a sanctuary in time."(The Year of Living Biblically, pg 123)

So based on that, I'm not going to look myself in my bathroom. But I have a renewed sense of encouragement that the practice of Sabbath is hard work for some of us, and in the most unexpected experience Sabbath may be found. Over Christmas I was very ill with what the doctor said was early pneumonia or broncitis, I've had this over a dozen times in my life and every time I get really sick and run down and tired. I try to keep doing all that I can and then I hit a wall and all I can manage to do is rest at home (not really sleep because the constant coughing keeps me up for at least 20 hours a day). On Christmas morning, I woke up at 4:00am. As I drank water and read, I sat and I prayed. No one else was up yet, they wouldn't start to get up for about an hour (my Dad and my sister's in-laws get up before the sun rises). I realized that was my sabbath time during the Christmas business.

Have you ever entered into a non-planned Sabbath time? (such as being locked in a bathroom or awaking way too early, etc)