Come Sunday
This same weekend a year ago I presided over my last service of 2006 and chose as a homily title, “Into the Wilderness.” We had only been in this Meetinghouse for four months; now it is sixteen. We were still figuratively unpacking some boxes from our move.
We faced a number of immediate issues, which we have addressed. We began the work on our massive long-term issue: how shall we grow as a community, in both spirit and numbers so we can eventually call a minister? This was and still is our journey into the wilderness – developing our maturation as a community; preparing for the day we can cross our Jordan.
Today, we are fully in our space, or as fully as we shall ever be. Oh sure, we’ll look around a year from now and see plenty of changes, but certainly you would agree we have met the challenge I laid down on September 17, 2006 to make this house a home.
gg gordon just finished her series on the seven Unitarian Universalist principles? So – who thinks they remember them all (show of hands)? Just shout them out [list 7 principles here.]
The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
Good job. As individuals most of us didn’t immediately remember them all, but as a community we’ve got it nailed. I’m going to give you a break today and not test you on the Ten Commandments – so paraphrased, here they are:
Thou shall have no other god before me;
Thou shalt not make any graven images;
Thou shalt not take the lord’s name in vain;
Remember the sabbath-day, to keep it holy;
Honor thy father and thy mother;
Thou shalt not kill;
Thou shalt not adulterer;
Thou shalt not steal;
Thou shalt not bear false witness;
Thou shalt not covet.
See the problem Moses and Jehovah had. We can’t remember seven positively written principles that we covenant to affirm and promote and Moses had to try to beat into people’s head 10 rules laid down from on high, eight of which were pretty much “Thou shall not do this that or the other thing.” Ho Hum.
But notice, two of the commandments were written in positive language: the fifth: Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother (well, we already sang the kids to class, so you are on your own with that one) and the fourth. I am not an ancient Hebrew scholar. But this has been variously translated as “Remember the sabbath-day to keep it holy” (King James Version); “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy” (New Revised Standard Version) and “Observe the Sabbath and keep it holy” (Today’s English Version also known as the Good News Translation.)
Frankly, anything calling itself the Good News Translation (i.e. a translation as seen through the Good News of Jesus Christ’s life and death) of an ancient Hebrew text is, for me, suspect, so I am sticking with “Remember,” not “Observe.” I gravitate to “to keep it holy” – an explanation of why one should remember the sabbath-day. Unlike some of the commandments which need no explanation, the fourth comes with four verses of commentary:
(9) Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
(10) But the seventh day is the sabbath-day of the Lord thy God: in it thou shall not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
(11) For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath-day and hallowed it.
Some points here:
First, you can not see it, but sabbath-day is hyphenated, but not capitalized in my version of the bible printed in 1839. Microsoft thinks it should be capitalized and not hyphenated.
Second, it does not imply God finished his work in six days. It does not imply that in Genesis either. Genesis, Chapter I tells of God’s labor in the six days. Chapter II begins with God resting on the seventh day and then continues by noting that while God had created the plants, he had not created rain, nor yet Eden – those came later.
Third, everyone and everything was to be given rest from its work.
Fourth, the Lord hallowed the sabbath-day by his blessed rest.
It matters not to me whether you take the creation story and the story of the revelation of the ten commandments as myth or fact or a twice-told tale. There is a lesson in these stories we need to hear.
For me, the Bible’s creation story is a myth; and much of the Bible is fact based, colored by the religions of the people of the stories, and of those who transcribed the stories, and of those who changed the translations to fit their current needs.
These stories suggest a pattern to life we have forgotten. Work/rest/work/rest. Without work, there can be no rest. Without rest, work loses meaning. When God rested on the seventh day in Genesis the rest hallowed the work before it. Apparently, the ancient Hebrews didn’t all get the message, hence the fourth commandment.
According to the Midrash Rabbah (a collection of interpretations of the Torah) while the Israelites were in slavery in Egypt, Moses convinced the Pharaoh to give the slaves every seventh day as a day of rest because otherwise they would die. There is no mention of the religious aspect of this; its purpose was to revive the body – but is there any doubt that this same rest might revive spirit as well?
Hence it made sense when the fourth commandment was written that it should apply to everyone, master and servant, and to beasts of burden for they need the restorative nature of sabbath as well as man.
This same edict from on high was echoed in 4th century when Emperor Constantine required cessation of work on Sunday (except for farming), and in 538 CE the Council of Orleans prohibited servile work on Sunday.
When should sabbath be celebrated? Jews mark shabbat as starting sundown on Friday and ending at sundown on Saturday. It is the seventh day of their week. Very strict observers of shabbat will do no work, turn on no light, cook no food, engage no engine. Great squabbles can be incited between those who consider and those who do not consider that setting an oven on a timer ahead of shabbat in order to eat a warm meal is doing work on shabbat.
Christians moved away from the Jewish shabbat to Sunday – as the gospel or “good news” of the new testament was presumed to replace the history of the old.
To me Jesus had the answer for these fine details. In Mark 2: 27-28 he employs a couplet of the style scholars consider likely to be his words or close to them. In answering the Pharisees he said, “…the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.”
The god of these stories recognized the need for restorative rest; the details he left to us.
When I grew up, blue laws forbade most stores from opening on Sundays. No liquor was sold that day. I seem to remember drugs stores were open for an hour or two, but only the pharmacy was available; most of the store was blacked out. Much easier to recognize Sunday as our chosen day of sabbath back then, but it is still our communal day. We have our services every Sunday at 11:00, often with adult forum before and extended coffee hour and discussion afterwards.
Well that’s settled: Sunday it is. But Come Sunday, what do we do about it?
Rev. Amanda Aikman in the September/October 2003 UU World said, “It is extraordinarily difficult to take a real sabbath, to shut out the myriad voices that berate us for lazily sitting still when we should be earning money, improving ourselves or society.” Yet who more than 21st century denizens of these United States are in need of true sabbath?
A recent American Psychological Association survey of 1,800 people found 50% reported stress at “unmanageable levels.” Seventy percent blamed work and trying to keep financially afloat for adding to a higher level of stress. So to solve the problem we multitask; we over-schedule ourselves and our children; we take out more debt and we worry about all of it.
“The faster I go the behinder I get,” we hear each other say – over our shoulder – as we rush away to the next thing.
I once had a guy who reported to me at work who would not take vacations. In the early 70s we had a policy that allowed us to accumulate vacation and be paid for unused days when we terminated or retired. Accountants finally forced companies to reflect this liability on their books and most companies introduced “use it or lose it” vacation policies. He lost it. Finally I wrote on his calendar a two-week period and told him he would not be allowed into his office during that period. We would not allow him to talk to staff or to clients. He was to sever his contact for a full two-weeks. If he wanted, he could leave a number where his staff could contact him if they had questions.
He contemplated quitting in protest. I pointed out that unless he found another job quickly he would end up with more than two weeks of vacation. With glowering brow he left – very late – on the Friday night before his two week “expulsion.” I had to stay to make sure he didn’t bring any files with him. Thank goodness this was before laptops.
He was afraid of facing himself. Eighteenth century Rabbi Elijah of Vilna phrased it better than I could when he said God stopped working to show us that what we create becomes meaningful to us only when we stop creating it and start to think about why we did so.
This guy’s first sabbath was two-weeks long, but as it turned out not two weeks too long. He came back refreshed. People asked if he had a new hairstyle or had shaved off his beard or mustache (he had never had either one.) It wasn’t that – he had a spring in his step; he stood a little straighter; he smiled more. And a few days later when he discovered that no disasters had occurred during his absence and that he was still needed and wanted, he thanked me and began to schedule future vacations.
If only every management decision I made worked as well as that one.
It is much harder in the all-wired-all-the-time world to find sabbath, but we need to do it. And we need to do it recognizing we are Unitarian Universalists. How many of you have heard the old saw that goes something like this “There are lots of UUs out there, they just don’t know it?”
There are exactly none. Don’t get me wrong, there are probably lots of people out there who would share our affirmation of our seven principles if they knew of them. But to be a Unitarian Universalist one must be involved in a community that identifies itself as Unitarian Universalist.
For some, the only such community is online or through the mail: the UUA’s Church of the Larger Fellowship. I am certainly glad of its existence for those who do not have a community nearby, but it is thin gruel compared to the gumbo of a physical congregation such as MUUC.
I would like to link two comments I have recently overheard in our Meetinghouse. The first was something like “I am so busy I don’t have time to come to Sunday service.” The second is “I’m very spiritual, but I find my spirituality in nature.” Probably the reason I overheard them is they both echoed voices of my past selves.
Ask yourself the following question: why did I come to the Meetinghouse today? I’m going to give you a few moments to think about that.
[Wait]
Okay, I’m coming around with the portable microphone to get some answers.
I wrote this before I heard your responses, but virtually none of your answer could be duplicated by spending your time doing something busy or doing something by yourself. The fact is we each joined this congregation for our own individual reasons and for the collective reason of our community. Unless there were others here to greet you when you arrived the first time, you would not be here today. Unless there are others here today, you would not stay.
I do not want to get carried away and suggest that Sunday attendance should be mandatory. I was not here last week and if it snows too much I won’t be here next week. But Jan and I choose to drive up to two hours each way in order to be with each and everyone one of you. And I do recognize that work schedules sometimes prohibit utilizing Sunday as your sabbath. For those weeks, you must find another day for your rest.
Jan and I live in a spectacular natural environment. I could and often do gain great spiritual pleasure from walks in the woods; from gazing out the window and watching the Pine Grosbeaks; from doing absolutely nothing and letting nature sink into me.
That wasn’t what the biblical stories had in mind for sabbath. That’s all grist for the 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness. The sabbath is about community. Jews go to temple; we come to the Meetinghouse. The place name is not important; what happens is important.
To answer the question of how to make work meaningful we must engage with others to test our ideas in the crucible of debate. Rev. Judith Walker-Riggs suggests that “real relationship in community… accepts not only the possibility of changing others in our interactions with them, but equally the possibility of being changed by others.” The French Writer known by his penname “Stendhal” said, “One can acquire everything in solitude, except character.”
So Come Sunday, make your default decision coming to our gatherings. Bring your partner; bring your kids; bring company should they be staying with you. Share in this wonderful place. Remember the sabbath-day to keep it holy.