SERMONS

Mark 2:23-3:6
Bethany United Church of Christ
March 22, 2009
Angela L. Ying

Have you ever felt as if there is always one more thing to do?

We have been trained this way.

And as we see systems collapse and crumble, we realize there has always been an alternative. Perhaps, another way.

God created for six days and on the seventh day, rested.

Which means—every week, God offers us a taste of the world to come. In Hebrew it is Shabbat.

A Rabbi shares that the rhythm of “rest from our work so we can enter into a time of shalom – of wholeness, completeness, of Godfulness” is something the Hebrew people learned as they came out of their own bondage and opened themselves to being a liberated people of God.

Keeping the Sabbath was so sacred to the community of faith and congregation gathered that it is in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible and Hebrew Scriptures) twice.

Sometimes, even God needs to repeat Godself.

Keeping the Sabbath is one of the commandments given to the people to be remembered—both in the book of Exodus and in the book of Deuteronomy.

Though the words in Exodus say that the people are called to keep the Sabbath because God created and then rested as we too are to rest, the words in Deuteronomy take it one step further. “Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, and God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath—not solely for yourself in isolation of community—as in “this is my day”—but a Sabbath to God!

To move towards wholeness, you and I need community?

Yes!

You, as individuals and as a community together are called not do any work on God’s day – “so ALL may have a day of rest.”

You are not only to rest. You are to rest so that your impact on others opens them to rest as well.

Why?

So that the community remembers it is God, who brings us out of your old patterns of death as God brought out the slaves in Egypt, to liberate you and me to live life, not just go through the motions.

And yet, there always seems to be one more thing to do. One more thing to worry about. One more thing to hold onto to. One more thing that I could have done to have made things even better.

Keeping the Sabbath cuts through all that nervous and neurotic energy and kindly and gently says, “Would you please take not just a moment or two to breathe—receive a whole day from God for your own shalom and wholeness.”

In other words, the practice of Sabbath keeping is a call to cut yourself some slack, give yourself a break and open yourself to the grace that does not come to you because you have worked so hard at something – rather it comes because it is already there—waiting to be received.

Keeping the Sabbath does not come easy to me and yet it is a vital and important spiritual practice if not lesson of life. So let me attempt to share with you in my own faith journey why it is an important one.

Keeping the Sabbath is an ACT OF HUMILITY

To be humble is to see yourself as a human being.

Our society is good at teaching “false humility” and how to hide God’s gifts in us – “Oh I am not really good at anything …”

And yet, to be humble is to come to the wisdom and understanding that you can not do it all on your own. That life and life’s burdens is not all up to you—that we are dependent on a God and a community of faith as well as our own God given gifts.

Remember Moses. One who pretty much could do it all, but really never thought he could. Moses, a leader of the people worked hard to keep the community together and faithful to God.

And at one point, as Moses forgets, as we all do that it is not all up to us, his father-in-law, Jethro reminds him he will burn out people do not step up as leaders in the congregation to work and walk along side him.

“Leadership is a concept we often resist. It seems immodest. But if it is true that we are made for community, then leadership is everyone’s vocation” in the congregation. As teacher and author, Parker Palmer, shares, “I lead by word and deed simply because I am doing what I do. If you are also here, doing what you do, then you also exercise leadership.

Keeping the Sabbath, God’s day, reminds us it is not all up to us.

Keeping the Sabbath also gives us permission to let other people rest!!

If we can befriend ourselves and receive the grace to rest in God for ourselves, we are much more likely to provide rest to one another.

Keeping the Sabbath is an act of humility and it is an ACT OF JUSTICE

Rest one day a week – to give to God

Every seven years – land goes back to original people so that there would never be a debtor or impoverished class within the community.

Every seventh year, all debt was to be forgiven.

Imagine if your mortgage, student loans, bills and credit card accumulations and financial charges would all be forgiven! That would be community.

Observe the Sabbath – remember who you are and whose you. For you were once slaves in the land of Egypt and God brought you out from there—therefore keep the Sabbath.

With protests around this country on the sixth anniversary of the Iraq War, in which we need to end this war, Rabbi Stephen Wise teaches us that “war is the supreme repudiation and negation of religion forasmuch as war commands men and women to kill, to hate, to lie, to covet, to steal.”

One of the ways to translate the Hebrew word for shalom is not only wholeness and Godfulness, but also “freedom from war.”

Did you hear that?

Freedom from war so that we can experience God and shalom as a community, as a country, as a world.

If Keeping the Sabbath is an act of humility and an act of justice, it is also an ACT OF COMPASSION!

In the gospel of Mark, we listen as a man with a withered hand enters the synagogue—Could have been anyone of us. Anyone one of us.

And the crowd, led by the scribes of the Pharisee’s response is silence.

Dead silence.

Instead of acting in compassion—they chose to watch, to distance themselves—not looking out for the man with compassion, but to see if Jesus will break the law and cure the man on the Sabbath.

Have you ever gotten so caught up in your work and the rules required that you completely forgot the spirit of why you were doing it in the first place?

In Asian culture, one speaks of an emptiness that enables us to learn enough—to get filled—as it were, only to empty our once again in the learn-teach-learn cycle of mentoring one another.

As one teacher shares “when we need to learn, we become open to receiving; once we have learned we immediately become open to giving.

But Chungliang Huang warns: It is a process full of surprises.

Surprise indeed.

I recall recently attending the required teacher-parent conference at our daughter’s school.

I was looking forward to hearing how to keep our child growing in her gifts and abilities.

But when my husband and I met with the teacher, she surprised us by saying, “You have a great child!”

We looked at each other puzzled. Was the teacher talking about our child or mistakenly talking about someone else’s child.

“I can tell you are quite intentional and serious about teaching her discipline, love and justice,” the teacher went on, “it shows, but so that she doesn’t grow up believing she has to get it right every time—here is what I want you two to do.”

Us two?

I should have known by the name. We had signed up for a teacher-parent conference—not a teacher-child conference.

Change in me was involved. I was the one called to do the learning in order to continue teaching.

“When you are together at dinner, I want you to spill a glass of milk and let it run all over the table.”

Again, we looked at each other puzzled.

The teacher continued, “Then in a calm and compassionate way—share that we all make mistakes and that in making mistakes, we learn and grow.”

We left feeling less sure than when we had come.

After much silence, my husband turned to me and said he thought it was a good idea—a good way to show our children in community that we as people and as parents are human.

Then he asked that important question, “What do you think?”

At first, I wanted to tell him that he and the teacher were nuts.

But when I dared to empty myself—to allow space for God to teach me a new thing—what came out was—“Guess we need to make a stop at the grocery store for a pint of milk on sale!”

We laughed.

The beginning of learning as adults and as parents on a faithful journey, that we are human.

The beginning of coming to peace, shalom, wholeness in our humanness, our ability to be strong and weak, gifts and liabilities, teachers and learners, mentors and mentees as people of God.

Keeping the Sabbath—doesn’t sound as impossible as before—given that in the gospel and good news of Jesus Christ, even Scripture itself admits exceptions to the stated rules—so that we can look within together as a congregation in order to look outward together in acts of humility, justice and compassion.

With a God who makes the Sabbath—will we receive it?

What do you think?

Copyright © 2009, Angela Ying. All rights reserved.