A Reflection on Time: Sabbath & the Stopping of Time
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
July 23, 2006
Mark 6: 30-34
As many of you know, last week I was up on Washington Island in Wisconsin for a seminar with Barbara Brown Taylor, author, theologian and preacher whom I admire greatly. I thought I’d start today with a Barbara Brown Taylor story – I told you there were going to be Taylor stories! “Last year I walked a labyrinth for the first time in my life. I had flirted with labyrinths for years, but my expectations were so high that I kept finding reasons not to walk one. I did not want to be disappointed. I looked forward to walking a labyrinth so much that looking forward to it kept me from doing it. Then one day I met a woman who had a labyrinth on her land. Set in a small grove of pines, it was made of found stones, with one as large as a pillow near the entrance. When the wind blew, invisible chimes tinkled in the branches overhead. Beyond the trees there was a small pond sparkling in the sun. I could walk the labyrinth whenever I wanted to, my host said. I did not even have to call first.
“With all my excuses gone, I returned one late summer afternoon, said a short prayer, and entered the labyrinth. The first thing I noticed was that I resented following a set path. Where was the creativity in that? The second thing I noticed was how much I wanted to step over the stones when they did not take me directly to the center. Who had time for all those switchbacks? The third thing I noticed was that reaching the center was no big deal. The view from there was essentially the same as the view from the start.
“I thought about calling it a day, but since I predictably follow the rules even while grousing about them, I turned around to find my way out of the labyrinth again. Since I had already been to the center, I was not focused on getting there anymore. Instead I breathed in as much of the pine smell as I could, sucking in the smell of sun and warm stones along with it. When I breathed out again, I noticed how soft the pine needles were beneath my feet. I saw the small mementos left by those who had preceded me on the path. I noticed how much more I notice when I am not preoccupied with the journey. When the path delivered me back to where I had begun, I lay down with my head on the stone pillow and dreamed Jacob’s dream: ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it!’”
“And the apostles gathered around Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. And Jesus said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’”
“Come away to a deserted place.” Over the years, you have heard me preach many sermons about Jesus’ call for his disciples to be engaged with the world, with the needs of the world. Jesus is engaged and he calls us to join him in that engagement. “The greatest among you is the one who serves…as you did it to the least of these, so you did it to me…go and do likewise.” Jesus is all about involvement.
But today, we hear this very same Jesus inviting his disciples – and us – away from this engagement with the world and into a time of rest. “Come away, come away…” He is inviting them – and us - into Sabbath – a time of inactivity, reflection, and the good grace of doing nothing.
Sabbath…the great Rabbi Abraham Heschel once said that the Sabbath is the only one of God’s creations called holy. Everything else is called “good.” But Sabbath is called “holy.” According to Heschel, the Sabbath is the first and truest medium of God’s presence in creation. Observing Sabbath has always kept God’s people from being absorbed by the alien cultures where they resided. Even as slaves in Egypt, God’s people observed Sabbath. For six days of the week they belonged to Pharaoh, but on the Sabbath they were free men and women who belonged only to God. The Sabbath was not a day simply for recovering their strength. It was freedom time. It was a time to recover their identity, time to remember who and whose they were.
Anyone remember the Andy Griffith Show? I still watch it sometimes. Remember Sundays in Mayberry? Everyone would go to church, come home for Sunday dinner, then Andy, Aunt Bee, Opie, and Barney would just sit on the front porch. Andy might strum on the guitar, they might sing, they might make some ice cream, sometimes Helen or Thelma Lou would come and join them, or other people would come over. They would all just sit on the porch Sunday afternoon and talk or nap… just sit there. Can you imagine that? Where’s the e-mail? Where’s that cell phone? Has anyone seen my calendar? How can they just sit there and do nothing?
Reflecting on Sabbath and Sabbath observance, UCC minister, Donna Schaper writes, “Sabbath used to mean a specific day: Sunday for Christians, Saturday for Jews. It was a day taken off from work for religion and rest. It was not a day for watching television, with its dramatic replacement of our story with someone else’s story. It was not a day for hiking. Nor was it a day to do errands or catch up on desk work or pay bills or run errands…Work stopped. Rest started…But our culture has not taken Sabbath like that for a long time. Blue laws that kept stores closed on Sunday are long gone. Many people now work on weekends. Kids play soccer. Errands and household chores and social obligations fill up the calendar. If the desk is going to get cleaned off, Sunday may be the only day to do it. Because of the enormous changes in the way our work and play are structured, the meaning of Sabbath has all but disappeared. Time for spiritual rest is a luxury. Indeed, all time now seems the same. It is as homogenized as our milk. Time is the river in which we rush from place to place. Time is money, or so we say in a world without Sabbath.”
Does this make any sense? Does it ring true in your own life? It does in mine. With Jesus as a model, I want to argue that we need Sabbath; we need to re-establish Sabbath in our life, to insist on Sabbath… but why?
A couple of things come to mind. First of all, Sabbath changes time, at least how we experience time. You might say, Sabbath gives us back our time, time that we so willingly give away. I think of Barbara Brown Taylor finally taking the time to go into that labyrinth. She entered into a different kind of time, a time for breathing, feeling pine needles, smelling sun and air, laying down on that stone pillow. It was a time when she did not do or produce a darn thing. And that is Sabbath.
A story is told of Rabbi Zusya of Hanipol. One day he started to study a volume of the Talmud, which is Jewish writing and reflections on scripture and traditions. A day later his disciples noticed that he was still dwelling on the first page. They assumed he must have encountered a difficult passage and was trying to solve it. But a number of days later he was still immersed in that first page, but none of them had the courage to question him. Finally, one of them gathered courage and asked him why he did not proceed on to the next page. Rabbi Zusya answered, “I feel so good here, why should I go elsewhere?”
I never say that. I’m always thinking of the next page, the next place to go, the next task to do. By the time we sing the closing hymn today, my mind will be racing ahead to next week’s sermon. This year, for the first time, my cell phone worked on Washington Island, which is off the tip of the Door County peninsula in Wisconsin. After a couple of days I cracked under the pressure of rest and relaxation and checked in with the church office. But Sabbath says, (here’s a radical idea) “Stop!” – for a moment, for a day, stop trying to make things happen, let go of your obsessive doing. Don’t check your messages. Sabbath restores our ownership of our own time. It restores our sense of the sacredness of time.
Taking Sabbath time, which is really a time out of time, can lead us deeper into the life we have right now and out of our slavery to the next thing. It puts margins on the pages of our lives. And it reminds us that we are more than harried and hassled beasts of burden. After all, in the words of that noted theologian, Lily Tomlin, “The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you are still a rat.”
And one other thing about Sabbath, and it is a humbling thing. It reminds us that we are not God, that we are creatures and not the creator. If I had been one of the apostles, I would have been shocked at Jesus’ invitation to go away. Sure I would have been tired and thirsty after roaming around the dusty roads of Palestine, but I would also have been excited, pumped up, ready to go! The people were responding and huge crowds were now following Jesus. Let’s baptize them, let’s turn them into church members, heavens, let’s give them a pledge card! But just at that moment when Jesus’ ministry really seems to be taking off, he decides to take a rest. Jesus, you can’t be serious! What’s he doing?
What is Jesus doing? I think he is showing us that Sabbath really is an act of trust, an act of faith. He takes the disciples away and for a while turns the world over to God. It is as if he is saying, “We can do God’s work as it is entrusted to us. We can work and pray and do our best to be light and salt to the world. And then we can take a Sabbath, resting secure in the faith that we can leave things in God’s hands.”
How does that sound? It’s hard for me. Yes, I talk about humility, but deep inside I know, I know, that the universe, the church, will surely fall apart if I don’t keep a firm grip on everything. But Sabbath has this revolutionary message that says perhaps we can just let it go for a while, we need to let it go, for believe it or not, God is not dead, inactive or ineffective. And the last time I checked, God really hadn’t turned the destiny of the world over to me or to anyone else.
Yes, we do justice, and in these days and time, yes, we work for peace, we care for the needy, care for our families, work responsibly, we bear one another’s burdens and bind up one another’s wounds. But when we have done all we can, dare we allow ourselves to loosen the reigns of control, trusting in a grace, a love, greater than us? Tilden Edwards both nails me and helps me when he writes, “Stopping work tests our trust. Will the world fall apart, will I fall apart, if I stop making things happen for a while? Is life really a gift with the caring Spirit moving through it? Can I trust that this caring will be the bottom line when I rest, when I relax my controlling reins? Or does everything really depend on my producing, asserting, and protecting a conscious, managing ego?”
Clearly I have been preaching to myself today and I thank you for listening in, but Sabbath truly is an invitation, an opportunity, to pull out of the temptation to collapse myself and all meaning into a world of production and accomplishment. It is an opportunity to experience a way of being in which I allow, indeed trust, God – the Holy One – to live within, before and through me.
Again, I think of Barbara Brown Taylor in the labyrinth, finally allowing herself simply to be, to let go and in the moment of letting go, discovering, “Surely the Lord is in this place.”