Genesis 1:26-2:30
Stewardship is about how to be good stewards, good managers, of all that God has given us. How do we be good stewards of creation?
How do we care for each other?
How do we live lives honoring God? For answers we turn to the first creation story. Moving from five days, or moments in time, (when God formed the heavens and earth, the sea and dry land, plants and animals) and declared each good, to the sixth day creating humanity and declaring it very good! I must admit I always thought the creation of humanity as the crowning jewel. Until recently.
Scripture declares, Remember the Sabbath Day…. And Keep it Holy! What does Sabbath mean to you? For the pastors at my conference on Sabbath it often means a day set apart, without responsibility, a time to do what you need to recharge. Some hiked, ran errands, others binge watched Netflix. Simply put a day of rest. Of course, keeping sabbath is the fourth commandment. Which means it is essential, but there is also an element of keeping sabbath as a must, a requirement of faith. A requirement until the true meaning is discovered. We spent a week looking at Sabbath and learning from writing of The Sabbath by Rabbi Abraham Heschel.
There are four Sabbath thoughts I want to share with you.
First, Sabbath is the apex of Creation- As I shared, I have thought of the creation of humanity as the climax of the story and sabbath when God rested, as the epilogue. Nothing happened, God stopped, so how in the world could this be the focal point? Until I heard the framework theory of creation with a twist. In the framework theory there is a pattern of days one, two and three correlating with days four, five and six. On day one God created light and on day four the lights of the sun and moon were created. Day two is water and day five is the creatures swarming the water and so on. Then a new thought was added. If you consider the three sections of the Jewish temple over laid with the three pairs, of lights and water and earth, then it changes everything! Each courtyard in the temple had a purpose and only certain people could be in them. The closer you get the front of the temple, the closer you get to God’s inner sanctum, the holy of holies. With that understanding, Sabbath is within the Holy of holies, it is the apex of all that was created. Sabbath is the apex of the creation story, not the epilogue. God created the world, material things, during those six days to punctuate the seventh day when we are to be with, rest with, God.
Remember the Sabbath Day…. And Keep it Holy!
Secondly, Sabbath is sacred time. Sabbath and eternity are one, of the same essence, according to Heschel (The Sabbath, pg. 137). Sabbath was before creation and the completion of creation. Sabbath is the creation of rest, sacred time, so that we can encounter the holiness of God. I like this idea of sabbath as sacred time. That God makes time sacred even while we try to make the material sacred. We meet God in time, not in the material world. Not in our houses, clothes, or jobs, not even in our material bodies. We try to make the material holy, but it can never be holy. The only way to meet God is in time, the present moment, the gift of now. Sabbath is that precious time. So then it is not my actions during sabbath but my time celebrating God during sabbath that matters. Sabbath is about meeting God in eternity. Heschel warns, “Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time.” (pg. 32)
Another way of saying this is to think of the rhythms of life. The six days are time of this earth, of labor and work, and then the seventh day is for time with God. Sabbath keeping is pausing the daily rhythms, the earthy rhythms to be with God in the holy and heavenly rhythms.
Remember the Sabbath Day…. And Keep it Holy!
Third, Sabbath is dwelling with God. First thing God did after creating the world is spend time with us, dwell with us!!! Adam and Eve were to abide with God, no work, no toils, just be with God. God provided for their needs. But once the fall happened, it changed. Then work, creating, consumed all their time. For 400 years it was solid work, no rest. Until God liberated them from Egypt, fed them with manna and gave them the Ten Commandments. Then God asked them to rest once again with God, to stop all the business of the day, all their labors, and be at peace. Through sabbath, God invites us to dwell with God. God asks for one day out of the week to spend time with God. To meet God in the sacredness of time. Christ has opened time, mediated our time with God so that we can more fully dwell in God’s perfect rest. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, (lived among us) and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
Remember the Sabbath Day…. And Keep it Holy!
Finally, Worship is Remembering. The act of remembering is vital to sabbath keeping.
Our presenter at the conference had studied the Taize community in France and what made this such a powerful pilgrimage for so many people. Their week consists of prayer, scripture reading, silence and communal work. 100,000 young people every year visit the Taize community and consider it their spiritual home. So he asked them why? One answer was remembering their spiritual time. Remembering. We remember the Sabbath, we remember through communion, we remember our baptism. Rabbi Heschel asked, “What is the Sabbath?” and answered, “Spirit in the form of time. With our bodies we belong to space; our spirit, our souls, soar to eternity, aspire to the holy. The Sabbath is an ascent to the summit. It gives us the opportunity to sanctify time, to raise the good to the level of the holy, to behold the holy…” (pg. 142). That is what we do when we remember. We go back to the meaningful experiences of our faith, our touchstones, our connections with God.
This happened at the conference. They asked us to keep silent over lunch one day. My small group ran late, so I was only going to have 15 of the 30 mins set for silence. I walk into the dining hall centering in silence. I quickly was transported to a silent retreat where I had kept silent for 12 hours, including a meal. I remembered the experience of being still with God, taking my time with each bite, setting down my fork and savoring. I communed with God in nature, I meditated in silence with 30 other people. The fullness of that time came back to me. Then I was transported to another time of eating in silence, while visiting the Benedictine sisters during my sabbatical. I could see in my mind’s eye the tapestry depicting Mary and Martha serving Jesus that I had contemplated during my silent meals. Thru silence and remembering the power of spiritual moments, touchstones of faith, filled my soul again. We will be bringing more touchstones into worship to help us to remember. Sabbath keeping is a communal time. Worship is when we join to remember together and keep sabbath holy.
A closing thought from Rabbi Heschel,
“We usually think that the earth is our mother, that time is money and profit is our mate.
The seventh day (the Sabbath day) is a reminder that God is our father, that time is life and the spirit is our mate” (p. 143).
Remember the Sabbath Day…. And Keep it Holy!
