Scripture: Exodus 20:8-11 and a portion from “The Sabbath” by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Breathe on us Breath of God, fill us with life anew, teach us to love as Thou wouldst love and do as Thou wouldst do.
Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to God; you shall not do any work—you, your children, your slaves of any gender, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days God made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore God blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
Have you seen the meme of Vice President Kamala Harris in which she quotes her mom saying, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”
I love this because it resonates deeply with my sense of the world. Context and history matter. None of us just fell out of a coconut tree. Or, as my Grammie would say, “you didn’t emerge from the head of Zeus!”
So, what is the context and history that shapes how you hear our scripture from this morning? How do you relate to keeping the Sabbath?
[pause]
Let me share a bit about my context and history that impacts how I receive our readings for today.
As many of you know, I was raised in a multi-generational household which included a lot of time with my Scottish immigrant grammie. I was greatly influenced by her: in my faith, my patterns of living, my values, and my politics. And in 2016, when I was at Standing Rock, I was asked by several Indigenous leaders “where I was coming from?” By that, they were asking who my people were and whether I’d learned to “walk in a good way.”
That experience at Standing Rock sent me to learning more about Grammie and the people and context that shaped her, and therefore me. Every time I’m in Scotland, I go to the Highland archives and learn more about the Highland Clearances which forced my family off of the Isle of Skye and other parts of the Highlands and into the city of Inverness and into deep poverty. And I learn more about the story of how my grammie, valedictorian of her sixth grade class, could not afford to pay for any more schooling and became a domestic worker at age twelve.
When I knew her, she would sleep from 2 am to 6 am. She worked outside the home five and a half days a week as an accountant for the Nickelplate and later, Norfolk & Western Railroad. She volunteered with the Scottish Lodge and for Bethany Presbyterian Church. She did activist work with the Gray Panthers and Keenagers. In short, she was a living poster for Max Weber’s book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
In addition, she was raised in a household in which keeping the Sabbath was “dour” (pronounced do-er). It was humorless, furrowed brow, controlled silence, and deeply fear-based. In other words, an obligation that felt a lot like a kind of work.
Given this context and history, I have to say that I think Calvinists and capitalism have deeply damaged Sabbath for me. But as I struggle with my own exhaustion and work-a-holism, I have looked to our Jewish kindred for wisdom on the subject. And there is no one better than the rabbi of blessed memory, Abraham Joshua Heschel.
“Shabbat comes with its own holiness; we enter not simply a day, but an atmosphere. My father cites the Zohar: the Sabbath is the name of God. We are within the Sabbath rather than the Sabbath being within us. For my father, the question is how to perceive that holiness: not how much to observe, but how to observe. Strict adherence to the laws regulating Sabbath observance doesn’t suffice; the goal is creating the Sabbath as a foretaste of paradise. The Sabbath is a metaphor for paradise and a testimony to God’s presence; in our prayers, we anticipate a messianic era that will be a Sabbath, and each Shabbat prepares us for that experience: “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 the seventh day.” The task, he writes, becomes how to convert time into eternity, how to fill our time with spirit …”
Our Jewish colleagues also understand the Sabbath to be the merging of a time and space in which good food, deep community, deep connection with creation, joyous worship, good sex, and deep dreaming are all celebrated.
I don’t know about you, but this both deeply draws me in and completely upends so much of the worldview that has embedded itself deep in my mind and spirit.
How about you? What is your context and history as you hear about Sabbath? How do you respond to this?
But even as it upends everything I’ve been taught and modeled, I know this understanding of Sabbath to not only be necessary for my thriving but it also is necessary for the survival of the planet.
The picture on the front of the bulletin is of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Selma. Rabbi Heschel’s life was a powerful example of his (and his father’s) understanding that: “the Sabbath is the name of God. We are within the Sabbath rather than the Sabbath being within us” and “’[the world’s] survival depends upon the holiness of the seventh day.’ The task, [Heschel’s father] writes, becomes how to convert time into eternity, how to fill our time with spirit.”
For me, the question becomes, how do we relate to God, not as a Calvinist task-master who requires of us hard work in order to be worthy of love; but rather what would it mean if we lived within God whose name is Sabbath? If we lived within God whose name is Sabbath and whose desire for each of us, and all of us, and the entirety of creation is a time and place of delicious food, and shared community, and abundance, and joy, and good sex if we are led to it, and laughter, and love upon love.
Rabbi Heschel escaped the Holocaust and lost many family members to it. His was not a naïve understanding of living within God whose name is Sabbath. He knew in his very bones the danger of theologies of domination, extractive capitalism, and supremacy. It was precisely because he sought to live within God whose name is Sabbath that he responded to Dr. King’s call. There is, throughout Heschel’s life the connection between practicing Sabbath and moving in the world with love and justice.
As we gather week after week together, I wonder might we do so, not out of obligation or some dour requirement, but as a way of living within God whose name is Sabbath? Might we rejoice in laughter, in a shared, sacred meal, in music and prayer, in accompanying each other? Might we practice a foretaste of eternity and act together so that God’s love and justice is more palpably visible in the world?
The other person in the photo on the cover of the bulletin is my partner, Maggie’s uncle Jim. He was a newly consecrated bishop when he got a call from Dr. King’s lieutenants asking him to come to Selma. Apparently, Jim said that they should ask so and so Cardinal, and they responded, we’ve already asked them and they said no. Well, then you should talk with so and so bishop. Yea, we already asked them and they said no. This went on for a while until Jim said, well, of course I’ll be there.
After being at Selma, apparently Jim spoke of the power of the experience of being with Dr. King as transformative in his life. But he also talked about being with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and the palpable power of his spirit.
Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy… the Sabbath is the name of God. We are within the Sabbath rather than the Sabbath being within us.
May it be so for us, too. Amen.
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