Shabbat Shalom 6-2-24
Shabbat Shalom
Ps 119:1-6, 13-18; Mark 2:23-3:6
Ps 119:1-6, 13-18
O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it. For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! I try to count them—they are more than the sand; I come to the end—I am still with you.
Mark 2:23-3:6
One sabbath he was going through the grainfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.” Then he said to them, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.” Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.” Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
Prayer – To God who rested from all action on the seventh day and ascended upon His throne of glory. He vested the day of rest and beauty; He called the Sabbath a delight. This is the song and praise of the seventh day, on which God rested from his work. The seventh day is uttering praise. A song of the Sabbath Day – ‘It is good to give thanks to the Lord!’ Therefore, all the creatures of God bless Him – amen.
Probably my favorite class in all of seminary was Hebrew I and II under Prof Carson Brisson. I was fortunate enough to have this wonderful, deeply spiritual guide who taught us more than the language of Hebrew but also the depth and breadth, the beauty and theology of this ancient language. Carson was truly a great teacher and even more he was a great representative of what higher education could be for me. We had class MWF at 8 am and he always welcomed us with Shalom and I always smiled when he closed class on Friday morning with Shabbat Shalom.
Carson and his family had lived in Israel before he came to Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, VA. He taught at American University there – Old Testament – which was quite interesting when you think about it for an American Baptist to teach OT in the land where the OT was written. Carson had a way of teaching us more than grammar and definitions – he give us a sense of the beauty of the language and how the language reflected the depth of God’s presence and essence.
One of the other things that I took away from his class was the importance of Shabbat in Judaism. Shabbat – the Sabbath was created by God to give us rest, to allow us to set down the tyranny of Mon-Sat and live in God’s peace and joy and rest. As Christians we have done a very poor job of translating Sabbath, Shabbat, to our spiritual practice, much less to our way of following God.
In the relentless busyness of modern life, we have lost the rhythm between work and rest. All life requires a rhythm of rest. There is a rhythm in our waking activity and the body’s need for sleep, rest and restoration. There is a rhythm in the way the day dissolves into night, and night into morning. There is a rhythm as the active growth of spring and summer is quieted by necessary dormancy of fall and winter. There is a tidal rhythm, a deep, eternal conversation between the land and the great sea. In our bodies, the heart perceptibly rests after each life-giving beat, the lungs rest between exhale and inhale.
We have lost this essential rhythm. Our culture invariably supposes that action and accomplishment are better than rest, that doing something – anything – is better than doing nothing. Because of our desire to succeed, to meet these ever-growing expectations, we don’t rest. Because we don’t rest, we can easily lose our way. We miss the compass points that would show us where to go, we bypass the nourishment that would sustain our souls. We miss the quiet that would give us wisdom. We miss the joy and love born of effortless delight. And for want of rest, our lives are in danger.
A faithful, successful life has become a violent enterprise. We make war on our own bodies, pushing them beyond their limits; war on our children, because we can’t find enough time to be with them when they are hurt or afraid, and need our company; war on our spirit, because we are too preoccupied to listen to the quiet voices that seek to nourish and refresh us; war on our communities, because we are fearfully protecting what we have, and don’t feel safe enough to be kind and generous; war on our earth, because we cannot take the time to place our feet on the ground and allow it to feed us, to taste its blessings and give thanks.
Abraham Heschel was a Jewish writer and theologian and one of his preeminent works was “The Sabbath”. Heschel suggested that Judaism is a religion centrally concerned with holiness of time. Many religions, Christianity included, built great cathedrals and temples, but Judaism constructs the Sabbath as an architecture of time. Creating holiness in time requires a different sensibility than building a cathedral in space. Heschel believed that sanctifying the Sabbath is part of our imitation of God, but it also becomes a way to find God’s presence. It is not in space but in time that we find God’s likeness. In the Bible, no thing or place is holy by itself, not even the Promised Land is called holy. The holiness of the Sabbath preceded the holiness of Israel – even if people fail to observe the Sabbath, it remains holy because God declared the seventh day as holy.
So how do we bring about the elusive atmosphere that is the Sabbath? Sanctity is a quality that we create, in our lives, in our faith, in our souls. Six days a week we live with a fury of acquisitiveness, Shabbat renews he soul and we rediscover who we are. “The Sabbath is the presence of God in the world, open to the soul of man.” God is not in things of space, but in moments of time. Observing the Sabbath was not only about refraining from work, but about creating menuha, a restfulness that is also a celebration. Shabbat is a day for the body as well as soul.
With the Sabbath comes a miracle; the soul is resurrected, an additional soul arrives, and the radiance of Sabbath holiness fills every corner of the household. Anger is lifted, tensions are gone, and there is an aura, a glow, about one who takes the time to breathe, rest, celebrate, enjoy the Sabbath.
Heschel suggested that creating Shabbat begins with a sense of longing. He said, ‘It is not we who long for the day of rest, but the Sabbath spirit that is lonely and longs for us. I wonder if in Heschel’s eyes, we are the mate of the Sabbath. I wonder if that marriage between us and Shabbat is predicated on what the Shabbat means to us. The Sabbath does not simply come into being on Saturdays, the depth of the experience is created by how we behave on the other six days of the week for they are a pilgrimage to the Sabbath.
Shabbat comes with its own holiness; we enter not simply a day, but an atmosphere, an attitude. We are within the Sabbath rather than the Sabbath being within us. So how do we, as people of faith today, observe holiness – not how much to observe, but how to observe. The goal is creating the Sabbath could very well be intended as a foretaste of paradise. The Sabbath may very well be a metaphor for paradise and a testimony to God’s presence. “Unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath . . . one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come.” It was on the seventh day that God gave the world a soul, and the world’s survival depends upon the holiness of this seventh day.
I remember years ago I saw a saying that perhaps best captures this notion of Shabbat. Life is not about the moments we have to take a breath, rather the moments that take our breaths away. So I wonder if Shabbat as higher goal of spiritual living invites us to face sacred moments – moments that take our breath away. One’s spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time.
One of the most distinguished words in Hebrew scripture is the word qadosh, which means holy. A word which more than any other word is representative of the mystery and majesty of the divine. Now what was the first holy object in the history of the world? Was it the mountain of God? Was it an altar? It is indeed a unique occasion when the word qadoshwas used for the first time. It was in the book of Genesis at the end of the story of creation. How extremely significant is the fact that the word for holy is applied to time – ‘And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.’ There is no reference in the record of creation to any object in space that would be endowed with the quality of holiness.
Normal religious thought would assume that after heaven and earth have been established, God would create a holy place – a holy mountain or a holy spring – whereupon a sanctuary could be built. Yet, in scripture, though not frequently in our spiritual practice, is holiness about time, the Shabbat, which comes first.
The meaning of Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space or things. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned with the holiness of time. It is a day, perhaps the day, on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.
The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of the Sabbath. It is not an interlude but the climax of living. When God called attention to the Sabbath; God rested; God blessed; and God said the day is to be holy, The Sabbath is and was intended to be a day of blessing with the accent of sanctity thrown in for good measure. To truly rest – it a quieting of the body, the mind, the imagination so that the soul may be restored, that joy may well up and fill our spirits.
I would suggest that the Sabbath may be the most precious present humankind has received from the treasure house of God. All week we think – I’ve got to do this, where am I going to find time for that – the spirit is far away, and we all, each of us tend to succumb to spiritual absenteeism, or at best we pray – Lord send us a little of your Spirit. On the Sabbath, the spirit stands and pleads with us – accept all excellence from me . . .
In our passage this morning, the religious leaders were strict in their observance of the Sabbath – no work, no healing, no comfort to those who are suffering. And they called out Jesus for breaking the Sabbath, of not upholding the holiness of the day. Jesus responded to them by saying the Sabbath is for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath. In other words, holiness is reflected in how we live and love each day, how we honor time with holiness, including the Sabbath and not about applying holiness to space.
For Jesus, and hopefully for us if we can rekindle the spirit of Sabbath into our lives, Shabbat is more than an armistice, more than an interlude to the rest of the week; it is a profound conscious harmony of humankind and the world, a sympathy for all things and a participation in the spirit that unites what is below and what is above. All that is divine in the world is brought into union with God. This is Shabbat, Shabbat Shalom, and the true happiness of the universe. A return to the Garden where all was right with the world and our souls. My hope and my prayer is that Shabbat can truly return to its rightful and holy place and space in time of our lives – the world, and we, will be a better place – thanks be to the God of the Sabbath – amen.