Rest for the Wordy—A Sermon on Spelling and Sabbath

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

Here we are, the last Wednesday of classes, the last worship together for this school year. You are, presumably, busy with writing and reading, as usual, and with planning for moving and with logistics for your summer. Let’s take our semi-annual last-week-of-classes deep breaths, shall we? All together now, breathe in….and out. And another one, breathe in….and out. And once more, breathe in….and out. Excellent. Keep breathing.

You may be aware that last week contained an extremely important sporting event, shown live on ESPN in primetime. No, not the NBA Finals, the Scripps National Spelling Bee. You are probably not surprised to know that I watched several hours of the Bee, including those prime time final rounds. I love spelling and I love learning and I love the drama of kid geniuses. I watched these kids—aged 7 to 14—spell words like haecceitas (heck-see-uh-tas), chaudfroid (shoh-frwah), bewusstseinslage (buh-voos-tines-lahga), and paucispiral (poss-iss-piral).

In the end, 14-year-old Karthik Nemmani correctly spelled “koinonia” and won $40,000 and a humongous trophy. It was awesome. Dozens of spellers stood up there one at a time, pretty awkwardly, and—after hearing their word—asked the pronouncer a series of approved questions: the language of origin, to use it in a sentence, any alternate pronunciations, the definition. They hope that one of these answers will clue them in as to how it’s spelled. One kid, Jashun Paluru, showed off his skills by turning the questions around. He asked, more than once, something like “does the word contain the Greek root philo meaning love?” before asking for the language of origin or definition. The commentators—oh yes, there are commentators in the spelling bee—were very impressed.

I’m telling you about this in part because I just wanted to say all those fancy words, and because our reading today came from Deuteronomy, which is a hard word to spell, and is actually a kind of erroneous translation. Deuteronomy is book five of our Bible, the last book of the Pentateuch—from the Greek words penta meaning “five” and teuchos meaning “scrolls”—also known as the Torah. The word Deuteronomy contains the greek word nomos, meaning “law”. It also contains the Greek word deuteros which means “second”. It has been assumed that this is because it is the second book of laws, but it may actually have been because the manuscript that got translated was a copy of the original law scroll, hence, second law. Aren’t you glad you know that? I sure am.

The texts this week from Deuteronomy and from the Gospel According to Mark are both pretty straightforwardly about the Sabbath. In Deuteronomy, we’re on commandment four of ten: “Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you” (Deut 5:12). The author goes on to explain just how that is done and why. Six days of the week shall be devoted to work, and the seventh shall be a day of rest.

I am reading a book called Mudhouse Sabbath, by Lauren Winner, a former Orthodox Jewish woman who converted to Christianity, but maintains many of the rituals that ordered her life. She wrote that, “There are, in Judaism, two types of commandments (mitzvot): the mitzvot asei, or the ‘thou shalts,’ and the mitzvot lo ta’aseh, or the ‘thou shalt nots.’ Sabbath observance comprises both. You are commanded, principally, to be joyful and restful on Shabbat, to hold great feasts, sing happy hymns, dress your finest….The cornerstone of Jewish Sabbath observance is the prohibition of work in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5….Over time, the rabbis teased out of the text just what the prohibition on work meant, first identifying thirty-nine categories of activities to be avoided on Shabbat, then fleshing out the implications of those thirty-nine.” [1]

We are not going to go over the thirty-nine categories, but the point of this is that the prohibition of work is not messing around. Anything that seems like it might be work is work. Rest is mandatory.

We squirm a little when we read the rest of this commandment, because it includes mention of enslaved people among those who should not work on the sabbath. But! Think about that! Even enslaved people should cease work one day out of the week. God’s intention is not that one day out of the week people with power will do no work and everyone who works for them will do double work. The day of rest is for everyone. “The fourth commandment is counter culturally egalitarian...and the sabbath comes as a weekly reminder that all are equally valued in God’s economy.” [2] You deserve to do meaningful work, and you deserve to rest, and so does everyone else.

Which brings us to the story from the Gospel According to Mark. There are two different stories in here, one where Jesus maybe breaks the rules by quote-unquote harvesting grain on the sabbath, and the other where he heals a man with a withered hand. The religious authorities who are present are very concerned about this man who dares not to break the rules of the sabbath, per se, but to claim that he understands the sabbath more clearly than they do, as he shares in the authority of God. “Jesus is making a bold claim, aligning himself with the creator of the Sabbath.” [2]

When God created the universe, the story goes that God spent six days working and then, on the seventh day, rested. God designed life to include rest. God made our bodies and minds to do all sorts of incredible things; chief among those things is sabbath. “The sabbath represents a time for healing and wholeness of humanity.” [3]

Theologian Diane Chen wrote about these stories from Mark’s Gospel, reminding us that “God’s original day of rest precedes the law that regulates its observance. The sabbath is God’s gift to serve people; people are not to serve the Sabbath. The issue is therefore one of priority, not whether Jesus is playing fast and loose with God’s commandments….if assuaging his disciples’ hunger brings restoration, then the prohibition against reaping is overridden. To do otherwise actually undercuts the true purpose of the Sabbath.” [2] Since the sabbath is for restoration to wholeness, feeding your body is a reasonable thing to do. Jesus’ disciples are hungry, and he feeds them. Since the sabbath is for restoration to wholeness, healing a physical ailment is a reasonable thing to do. This man has a withered hand, and Jesus heals him.

And the man’s withered hand is not only a physical ailment, “it also has social and economic dimensions. His ability to earn a living is hampered by his physical limitations, and his standing in the community is diminished. Jesus wastes no time in healing the man, because even a few hours to the end of Sabbath is too long a wait to restore a person to wholeness.” [2]

I want to be careful here, because physical disability should not be looked at as a problem to be solved. Bodies of all kinds are created in the image of God. Jesus cannot, with the snap of his fingers, reorder the society to not ostracize people with disabilities, nor can he reorder the economy to support this man even though his labor is minimal. People with all types of bodies are beloved of God, and it is us as a society that need restoration in this case, need to be made to understand the wholeness and goodness of people who do not contribute to capitalism. What he does in this story is heal the man’s hand, so he can be embraced by his community. What we can do is embrace every body in the Body of Christ. If everyone is equally valued on the sabbath day, we can move toward equally valuing everyone the other six days of the week.

You may be thinking that this whole understanding of the sabbath as a time for us to restore ourselves and one another to wholeness sound a bit like...work. Providing adequate time and space for all of God’s beloved creatures to rest, relax, and recharge does not require work on the sabbath, but it requires preparation for the sabbath. If the work that we are doing the other six days of the week is good, and just, and righteous, we can spend our sabbath knowing that all is well.

Sometime in the next several days, you will turn in some pretty important work, and then you will be done with school for the quarter. I hope that you are able to spend and least part of this summer resting. If you are going to be working, I hope you are taking care to have some days off and some sabbath, for your body and for your mind. For LEVNeers, I hope you are making good use of your days off, and not cramming too much into your minds and hearts. It’s important that we honor the God who created us by following God’s example of balancing work and rest.

Lauren Winner’s chapter about sabbath contains this great quotation: “‘What happens when we stop working and controlling nature?...When we don’t operate machines or pick flowers or pluck fish from the sea? When we cease interfering in the world, we are acknowledging that it is God’s world.” [1]

That’s the work of sabbath—giving over our own labor, power, and privilege as a reminder that the world and all its creatures are beloved of God. Breathe deeply, rest well. Amen.

_____

[1] Lauren F. Winner, Mudhouse Sabbath: An Invitation to Spiritual Discipline, 4-7.

[2] Diane G. Chen, “Proper 4 [9]” in Preaching God’s Transforming Justice: Year B, 269-274.

[3] Emerson B. Powery, “The Gospel of Mark” in True to Our Native Land, 127.

Verb My Nouns—A Sermon for Episcopal Service Corps Program Directors

I preached this sermon to my dearest colleagues, the Episcopal Service Corps Program Directors, at our spring meeting.

Acts 9:1-20

Revelation 5:11-14

John 21:1-19

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

At the Belfry, where I routinely preach on Wednesday nights, we use the lectionary from the Sunday prior. Since there are no assigned texts for today in the daily lectionary, I was told I could choose. As an enneagram type six, my deep commitment to the authority of the lectionary—and anxiety about the near-infinite options—led me to just stick with what I know. My, uh, fairly insincere apologies to all y’all who have heard this scripture and a sermon on it already this weekend. At least once. You’re about to hear about it from me, now. You’re welcome.

Okay. So. I self-identify as a word nerd. It’s just too perfect that it rhymes. So, I noticed, as I was reading the texts for the first time, that they all have something in common, grammatically. Each pericope begins with a conjunctive adverb! Pause for enthusiastic response…

In the Acts of the Apostles, it is written, Meanwhile

In the Revelation of John, it is written, Then

In the Gospel According to John, it is written, After

So, in all three of these stories, we’re jumping into the middle of something. Something has happened before we’re involved, or something is happening simultaneously somewhere else, and now we’re just in the thick of it.

How true is it that we are, here and now, in the thick of the story of God? There are thousands of years of human history behind us, and untold myriads ahead. Any time we open the Bible, we’re being invited to participate in a story that already exists, and helping to write the story of the kingdom which is not yet.

Those of you who are my friends on various social media platforms may be tired of hearing about all of the podcasts that I listen to. Again, fairly insincere apologies. I was recently listening to some old episodes of On Being with Krista Tippet. She has the most classic public radio voice, right? Anyway, a couple of years ago, she was interviewing a man named Gordon Hempton, whose profession is as an “auditory ecologist.” He, admittedly, made up that title. But what Gordon does is travel the world, listening. He records the sounds of natural and human-made ecosystems, preserving the most pristine places through their landscapes of sound.

He talked about the importance of hearing for life. He said that there is no animal, that we know of, that has evolved a way to “turn off” the sense of hearing. No creature with ears has evolved a way to shut them, like we have our eyes. You may think that you can shut your ears off, like when you’re asleep. But there’s a biological reason that alarm clocks work. And that strange noises in your dark house creep you out. Your ears are always on the job.

Hearing is in all three of our texts today. The revelator heard every creature in heaven and on earth, singing; Saul and Ananais heard the voice of the Lord; Simon Peter heard the voice of his fellow disciple. And the Lord called Saul, Ananais, and Simon Peter by name. God is always speaking, so it’s a good thing that we are, technically, always hearing.

But this is where we get to dive into the semantic difference between hearing and listening. In this gospel story, Jesus and a handful of disciples have breakfast on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, also known as the Sea of Galilee. I bet there’s a reason why this author calls it by this less familiar name, but, it beats me. This was a place the disciples had been, before. When Peter said, “hey, guys, I’m going fishing,” and they joined him, I doubt there was a discussion of where to go. Probably an autopilot journey to where their boat was already docked. Since nothing about the last few weeks of their lives together had been very routine, a trip to their regular fishing spot would feel normalizing, comforting. As usual, it ends up being anything but.

We, readers of the Gospels are accustomed to Jesus waxing poetic, launching into parables with complex storylines or hard-to-decipher allegories. This time, Jesus enters the story with a simple yes-or-no question. He helps the disciples with an abundant catch--153 fish, as the story goes--and feeds them breakfast. He exchanges several lines of dialogue with Simon Peter, again, with the yes-or-no questions, and simple, declarative sentences. “Do you love me?” He asks, three times. Hearing “yes”, he says “feed my lambs”, “tend my sheep”, “feed my sheep”, “follow me”.  Simple instructions.

And so here ends the story, here ends the sermon, right? Just listen to those instructions, and then do ‘em. You wish you could be so lucky.

When Amity asked me if I’d preach today, I was like, “Oh, man, preaching to priests! I have to dig out all my best theological textbooks and explicate some really complex points where Lutherans and Episcopalians diverge!” And then I started reading, and writing, and hearing, and listening. And I remembered who you are. When you read these texts, and you hear these words of Jesus, you probably get out your to-do list and add “feed sheep” and “follow Jesus” to the very bottom, and then hope no one has noticed you just transfer them to next week’s to-do list…

And then in your sermon, you listed all of the sheep in our world that need tending and feeding. You listed all the ways in which we are not following Jesus. You challenged your congregation to do more feeding, more tending, more following. And you vowed to feed and tend them better, to follow Jesus better. Then you looked at that to-do list again.

Since you are an Episcopal Service Corps Program Director and/or Board Member and/or Executive Director, you have already done a good job of listening to these simple instructions. Helping to shepherd young adults through their journeys of faith and their searches for justice and their personal development is no small feat. I am routinely surprised by how many trips to Costco it takes to tend my particular flock.

Day in and day out you are tending. You are feeding. You are following. During recruitment, you’re even fishing. In doing all of this, you are inspiring and encouraging the young adults you serve to do the same. They’ll move through this year with varying degrees of success, having heard you--and maybe even listened--when you spoke. They’ll remember the ways in which you tended and fed. They’ll remember the ways in which you led by following.

As we sit in this particular time and place, we are in the thick of the story of God and we are in the thick of the story of Episcopal Service Corps. As we transition into a new era of Executive Directorship, we are grateful for the ways in which we have been tended and fed by Amity. As we celebrate the blessings in our programs, and lament the maybe less-than-stellar recruitment numbers, we are grateful to be part of a larger story.

As we go forward, together, keep up the good work. Feed, tend. But remember to also be fed, and be tended. Inasmuch as you are a shepherd, you are a sheep. And for that, thanks be to God.

Amen.

Sacrifice/Abundance

[Jesus] came so that you may have life, and have it abundantly (John 10:10).

Y'all, I live an abundant life.

I'm writing this in my notebook on a turbulent Southwest flight from Phoenix to Salt Lake City. This morning, I woke up in Chicago, the final day of our Episcopal Service Corps Program Director meeting. I woke up exhausted, given that I'd slept less than 6 hours three nights in a row...and had been talked into a tequila shot for the first time in who knows how long. It's impossible to resists following a full day of work conferencing with dinner and drinking and endless laughter with my ESC colleagues--especially when we get to visit incredible cities like Chicago!

It was so much more abundant this time, too. My first ESC PD meeting was ~3 months into my new job--a little overwhelming. I met many wonderful folks and so this time got to say "good to see you" instead of just "nice to meet you"--one of the best transitions we make as humans.

There were a few new faces this time (including my roommate, Broderick, who I already knew from the internet hahaha) and folks absent from the Philly meeting regarded me as "new" again.

Our work, too, reflects this idea of abundance. We spend our days with excellent young adults, exploring and absorbing the world around them.

They live simply, in close quarters, with a lot on their plates. We could focus on the sacrifice (autonomy, money, privacy) but choose rather to see abundance (relationships, spiritual and vocational discernment, group fun times).

I could focus on my lack of sleep, inconsistent hours, cross-country responsibilities, middle-distance relationship, and vocational exhaustion. But choose rather to see my plethora of new experiences, never-a-dull-moment opportunities, support from my partner, and continuing reformation.