Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 22, 2018, "Come away and rest . . . or . . . wear booty shorts"

B Proper 11 16 Ord 2018

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

July 22, 2018

          When I was a pastor on the campus of the University of Illinois, our two sons, Jacob and Abraham, were with their mom in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, during the school year.  The first time the boys came to be with us, probably over Thanksgiving break, our neighbor said to Tracy, “Mike just seems lighter, happier, more at ease.”  Yes.  True.  There is no question but that when family is near me, and is going to be with me, I relax back into my life.  I can be totally alone at work, knowing my kids or other family members are at home, and just . . . be at ease. 

          The best vacations I have had were when we moved to just outside of Rockford, Illinois.  The Illinois Conference had a church camp just on the other side of Lake Michigan in Sawyer, Michigan.  I would figure out what I wanted to do for a preaching series in the fall, load myself up with the necessary books, and we would travel the three to four hours around Chicago, through Gary, Indiana, north through the Indiana dunes and into Sawyer.  The first week would be a time when I would set my routine, read and take notes, before anyone else got up and then onto the beach.  I would begin to unwind in the second week, the solitude allowing my soul, stretched and beaten up a little bit, to get brave enough to surface once again. 

          In Billings, that solitude was found the last couple years by playing on a softball team.  Weird, right?  But it corresponds with my love for team process, laughter, and physical exertion.  When I am part of a team, my jazz starts to emerge.  I know my right rhythms but I also know how to creatively play with those rhythms.  That then needs to be something I pay attention to in my marriage.  Do Tracy and I decide things together?  Is there a lightness in our relationship that provides grace for our hard work?  Is there a regular rhythm to our sexuality that is dependable in physical exertion and makes me feel connected to her?  If not, our souls tend to not show up for one another.  We don’t have the necessary solitude together. 

          And where I at one time thought myself to be a total extrovert, I am recognizing that it is not about being an introvert or an extrovert but about finding the necessary balance that is healthy for me, that allows my soul to come forward at the appropriate time to be vulnerable, take risks, extend myself out into the world.  That does not happen by accident.  Solitude is an intentional practice of hiddenness, simplicity, and protection that says to our depths, “I want you to be courageous.  I want you to be loving.  So I will find places and moments of shelter for you.”

          My meditation practice, poorly done, teaches my soul in solitude that it is safe to come out and play.  Spiritual teachers in this age talk about it again and again.  There is a difference between loneliness, or even being alone, and solitude.  Solitude is about a defined intentionality and presence.  Being alone is not necessarily by choice and our definition.  We have all had that experience of being alone in a crowd.  Solitude is about intentionally making necessary space for our souls to feel safe and then emerge.  Solitude allows our souls to show up.  I think solitude even allows our souls to show up when we know we are alone, having to row against the tide of popular opinion or criticism. 

          In our Scripture passage, the disciples have been out and about, doing God’s work, Jesus calls them away to rest, away from the crowds.  In Judeo-Christian tradition, the wilderness or desert was that bare or stark place where shade and shadow were prevalent.  It is a place where the soul can fully present itself without fear.  If we do not find that desert or wilderness on a regular basis, our soul recedes too deeply within us and is not available for ourselves or for others.  In the same way, Mohammed would retreat to the mountain.  It was there he found his shade and shadow, his fierce landscape. 

Director of Duke University’s Islamic Center, Omid Safi, talks about finding the cave.  As he has aged, his experience is similar to mine.  He used to find his bliss with a brunch of a dozen friends or more, music playing in the background, and weighty conversations about heart and soul.  Now he finds it in smaller gatherings with guests of his own heart.  Solitude, Safi believes, must be found at times when we are intentionally alone and intentionally out in the world—cycles and rhythms we are listening for.  We find serenity and tranquility in the presence of God alone or in community.[1]  This solitude becomes more fully rich when we are intentional about showing up in each place.   

What are the people, the places, the experiences, that put us at ease in the world?  How do we put ourselves with those people, in those places, and rhythmically through those experiences so that we regularly put ourselves in the presence of God?

Author and activist, Adrienne Maree Brown, encourages people into practices of solitude that also bend toward Sabbath rhythms—rhythms of rest, play, and celebration.  Understand, Brown is an author who just released a book titled, Emergent Strategy:  Shaping Change, Changing Worlds.  She is offering this advice to activists who want to help bend the arc of history to transformative justice.  In the current age, she believes practices of solitude are absolutely necessary, so she encourages people to:   

  

– rest whenever you can, deeply and well. act as if you can store up sleep and you need as much stored up as you can get.

– reflect on what the longest-term commitments of your life are, and see if you need to make any adaptations in order to actually center those commitments in your daily life. don’t put it off, don’t wait on answering your calling.

– have a summer that feels like a pleasure and a celebration as an act of resistance against an administration that seems to want to break us with misery. tap into childhood fun self, get a kids swimming pool even if you’re an adult, count lightning bugs, watch sunsets, make out in summer rainstorms, go someplace you have never been, even if it’s in your same town, eat ice cream, wear booty shorts, cultivate your joy.[2]

I want to make it clear.  This was not your pastor encouraging you to wear booty shorts.  It was included in a long quote.  But, if that’s what helps you to get your solitude groove on, well then, I guess, wear booty shorts. 

          It is to remember, after Jesus calls the disciples in for intentional rest and solitude, they then go out and feed the 5,000 and heal the mass of people who are being laid at their feet.  The gospels let you know the kind of hunger and poverty that was ever-present at the time of Jesus.  This poverty was so pervasive that disease, deformity, and death were rampant.  Just by healing people, Jesus is saying that this was not the life God intended for the people.  I think that is what continues to plunge me into my faith.  That no matter how difficult these days may be, the time of Christ was a time of immense suffering, persecution, and death.  The gospel accounts may have been written as a way of saying, “This is not what God had in mind.  God is active and moving and wants you to not only to be fed but also to be healed, have the health care you need, when the wider world seems to encourage your demise.”

          To do that work, to extend ourselves for that work in vulnerability and risk, we need to find that balance of solitude which guards our hearts, gives them rest and shade.  In fact, it is the very nature of our souls that they love the shadows, a warm glow of candlelight, the path that is not so well lit, more stark and barren than blazing with neon light.[3]  But what puts us at ease so we might then be available to the wider world?  When we find these people, places, and experiences, we are called to make that solitude regular, rhythmic, and persistent.  It is the curse of our age in which we say, “Yeah, I need to do more of that,” rather than ask ourselves, “How do I make that a part of what I do every year, every week, every day?”  Come away and rest.  Regularly.  Amen. 

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[1] Omid Safi, “Solitude is about more than just being alone,” OnBeing columnist, August 2, 2017, https://onbeing.org/blog/omid-safi-solitude-is-about-more-than-just-being-alone/. 

[2] Adrienne Maree Brown, “Star Wars and summer,” July 4, 2018, www.adriennemareebrown.net.  I am hoping we might have a study of her book, Emergent Strategy:  Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. 

[3][3] John O’ Donohue, Anam Cara:  A Book of Celtic Wisdom (New York:  Cliff Street Books, 1977), pp. 80-81.

Sermon for the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 19, 2015

B Proper 11 BFC 2015

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

July 19, 2015

            So I come back from vacation a little bit more energized and ready to go.  But there was a time . . . I was home for lunch and had been thinking all morning about what I was going to eat.  I had made some spaghetti the night before with red and yellow bell peppers and lots of onion, and there was leftover garlic bread, which I think is a little better a day old, heated up.  We had many vegetables so I chopped up some cucumber, some celery, some carrots, sliced up a nice tomato from Lucky’s, tore off some red cabbage, and mixed in some spring greens.  I had some sparkling water poured over ice.  The spaghetti, salad, and garlic bread were ready.  Tracy had bought some really good Caesar’s-salad salad dressing.  So, for the finishing touch, I reached into the fridge and pulled out that salad dressing and poured it over my . . . spaghetti. 

          That’s right, my much anticipated lunch, ruined by pouring the salad dressing on my spaghetti instead of the salad.  Now, when this happened, Mike (a) threw the plate against the wall, in a fit of rage, his lunch ruined; (b) glumly ate the spaghetti, trying to convince himself that it would add flavor or (c) emptied out the spaghetti infested with salad-dressing, calmly retrieved more spaghetti, heated up the pristine spaghetti, and then, this time, adroitly, added the salad dressing to the salad. 

          Maybe you are not as much of a nitwit as I am, but we all have those daily little frustrations or interruptions brought on by unforeseen circumstances, the guy down the hall, the classmate we always try to avoid, those we love, or even ourselves.  When we are our best selves, these frustrations or interruptions appear as nothing but bumps in the road, sometimes even drawing attention to something in life that rightly asks about our priorities or directions.  We receive them and walk undeterred or stop and say, “Ah, but of course, I realize I should have been paying more attention.”  But when we are not our best selves, these frustrations and interruptions can appear as boulders in the road, seemingly placed in our lives to suck all the life and joy and goodness and mercy and love and compassion.  Why, it is as if that boulder has God’s name on it, placed right there to create chaos and confuse us. (in a more and more anxious and desperate voice)  It is as if God should have known that if the darn salad bowl had been placed on the other side of my plate, which I always do, I would have poured the salad dressing on the salad.  Which, I didn’t.  And now my perfect lunch is ruined!  Ruined, I tell you!  Why, God, why?

          When life does press in on us, what makes the difference between acting with the balance and freedom we would like and the overreaction and silliness we later regret? 

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, spiritual practices are not only something that are intended for personal, day to day life, but also intended to be a thread through systems and structures and the way they are to hum and buzz and whirr in the world.  The personal makes possible the work of systems and structures.  Systems and structures make possible the personal.  With no spiritual practice is that interplay more true than the spiritual practice of Sabbath-keeping. 

God has given Sabbath and rest as a cathedral in time such that we know when Sabbath and rest are not taken seriously or given priority, we challenge the very will of God.  Sabbath is intended to bring or restore balance, give rhythm to our best selves.  Judaism has understood Sabbath or Shabbat as so central to its faith such that the common phrase for its practice is “more than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.”[1]

          More than any other commandment, the injunction to keep the Sabbath received the most Scriptural attention.  Sabbath formed the basis for the Jewish focus on social justice.  Knowing that the Jewish story begins with the exodus from slavery in Egypt, Sabbath reminds the Jewish people that they are not slaves, that God does not will slavery, and that even their beasts of burden are to rest on the Sabbath day.  It is a limit to work and activity and busyness.  It is a “no” to working 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.  Sabbath is a limit to production, consumption, money earned, interest accrued, and debt accumulated.  Sabbath keeping is about our necessary personal rest.  And Sabbath keeping, in Scripture, is also about forgiving the debt of our neighbor so that they may continue to flourish on the land, that they do not become enslaved.

          In one of the creation stories from Genesis, God, as Creator of the Universe, practices Sabbath keeping.  After creating the earth and all things in it, God rests.  God is not anxious about it.  God does not show up at the office. God lets it be.  Having spoken enough words of wisdom, God . . . lets . . . it . . . be. 

          In ancient Jewish understanding, the day began at dusk.  That first creation story has evening and then morning to delimit a day.   So it is also significant that not only the Sabbath, but every day began with a reminder that the world turns and the crops grow and life moves on as the ancients would have begun to cease all activity and enter into rest and sleep.  God encourages us to let it be.

          Our Scripture passage begins today with the apostles telling Jesus all that they had done on behalf of their movement.  Jesus sent them out to do the things that he had been doing.  And when they rendezvous to reflect, Jesus says to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves so that we might eat and rest a while.”  Though the work of the gospel requires much demon-exorcising, people feeding, body healing, and good news teaching, Jesus removes the disciples from the crowds and reminds them of the rhythm of rest.  So if there is a stop, a “no”, a limit to gospel activity so clearly defined by the author of Mark, rest and Sabbath rhythm most certainly are to be a part of those who also read the gospel. 

          But not unlike many other gospel practices, Sabbath keeping is deeply counter-cultural.  If we needed any proof, we might remember the story of the English runner, Eric Liddell, popularized in the movie, Chariots of Fire.   Liddell loved to run, so much so, that his sister upbraided him for his passion to run over and against his care for God.  Liddell responds to his sister by saying, “I believe that God made me for a purpose. But God also made me fast, and when I run, I feel God’s pleasure."  After qualifying to represent Great Britain in the 100 meter run at the Paris Olympics in 1924, Liddell learns that the race will be held on the Sabbath day for his Christian faith, Sunday.[2]  He refuses to run.  All turns out well in the end, but Liddell risked being the goat of Great Britain for his convictions.  Keeping the Sabbath was deeply counter-cultural for Eric Lidell.

          Eric Liddell’s story is one that honors his Christian faith at a time when faith was talked about more about sticking to moral code and maxims for our personal journeys.  What I want to invite us to in Sabbath keeping are community practices and rhythms that create an opening for our balance and freedom in everyday life.  That, as I understand it, is the process of being church. 

We recognize that it is foolish to practice Sabbath keeping alone.  We need others who are keeping and practicing these alternative rhythms so that we have hope, so that we know we are not alone.  The systems and structures of this world tell us we are “incompetent underachievers”[3], told that we are “worthless” to keep us working harder[4] so that we are kept forever at work, forever looking for work, or forever chiding ourselves because the system has spit us out with hints that “if we had worked harder. . . .”  But if we ever looked at the system and structures to ask if something is wrong with them, we might demand transformation and justice.  And that is the last thing the systems and structures want—for us to have the time to rest and reflect.  They want to maintain the status quo with us never believing we deserve Sabbath and rest, believing that people who get or demand Sabbath and rest are “incompetent underachievers” themselves—like those lazy Greeks, or, more recently, those dirty Puerto Ricans.  We get labeled a derisive adjective if we seek Sabbath or rest.

So if we are to find space or wiggle room for Sabbath and rest, we must covenant that we will work on this together, learn from each other, and learn from the examples of others.  Life is hard.  It can be agony just to get through the day.  Spiritual teacher Ram Dass has said that, “ultimately we’re all just walking each other home.”[5]  So part of walking each other home is looking out for those close to us, or in our community who might need Sabbath:  the child who needs to play hooky just to deal with the hormones, practice the instrument more, run harder in the athletic practice, spend more time with family, keep up with the friends, all of these expectations that threaten to rip them apart; or the family going through the constant tear of divorce; the single parent who always has to be “on” with job and kids and romance, what’s that?; the spouse or family member who needs a break as aging or illness changes the very nature of someone they love; any person or family who must sit in the midst of tragedy or death.   How can we not only be people who receive the grace of Sabbath ourselves but also extend it others we must know are tattered and worn by their daily lives?  How can we do that so we all know that God intends our freedom and joy?

          Dorothy Bass, in her book, Receiving the Day, writes of a Jewish professional couple, one of them an attorney and the other a hospital administrator, who practice Shabbat each week with their children—a day set aside.  They warn each of their employers of this firm commitment within their family.  They do not allow this day to be invaded.    Bass also knows of another couple from New York who practices the same, claiming that their family would never have survived but for their Shabbat practice.  Within that Jewish tradition of Shabbat on a particular day, sexual intercourse is encouraged among married couples, individuals or families are encouraged to take walks, rest, talk with loved ones, or read together.[6] 

At the different Shabbat services offered by a Jewish synagogue in Los Angeles[7], one of the services is followed, I kid you not, by learning, schmoozing, and drinking scotch.  After another service, there is a dinner where the congregation is encouraged to start a conversation, a romance, to relax, and to not have to worry about the dishes.  A summer Shabbat in this congregation meets in a nearby park, starting with a picnic, followed up by the service on Friday evening.  There is a sweet tot Shabbat where children under 5 are particularly invited and it is followed by a family meal.  Food, romance, scotch, picnics, learning, food, and family.  All of this is to remember, to repeat again and again, that it is incumbent on every Jew to leave the slavery of Egypt, to find freedom in rest.[8]  Shabbat is a cathedral in time in all of its relationship, beauty, and rest.

I’m a little verklemmt by all of this Shabbat practice, and, I’ll admit, I kind of want to be Jewish.  

          These are spiritual practices lodged in a particular day during the week.  Some of us may very well be able to make a particular day part of our regular Sabbath and rest rhythm.  But I know that there are others whose multiple schedules do not allow for one whole day, particularly a Sunday.  Part of being intentional about Sabbath practice is to begin working within our peculiar schedule and then expand out.   To help, I have made available outside the sanctuary a handout from the Center for A New American Dream for helping our children and families to establish Sabbath keeping and how we can raise humans and not consumers.[9]   If you believe you need help or know of someone who does need help with Sabbath keeping, this might be a good start.

Again, start small.  Do small things persistently and consistently.  Stop, say “no”, let the limits be a form of God’s care to uphold and encircle you.

          Here is where we may begin.  First and foremost for those rhythms are our sleep patterns.  Regular sleep at regular times helps establish our Sabbath rhythms.  Right now my daughter is laughing, doubled-over, because she knows I rarely get regular sleep with any regular patterns.  I am terrible at this practice and it robs me of so much life with my family and during my waking time.  Naps with a regular rhythm could be a part of good Sabbath and rest.  Meanwhile, I’m just all over the board.  And it is something I need to improve on to be faithful.  Because sleep and sleep patterns are important for Sabbath keeping.

          Next, find a day and maybe a time when all of the electronics are off so that you can engage yourself, engage others, and engage God in Sabbath keeping.  Don’t check e-mail.  Turn off the phones.  Don’t update Facebook.  Keep the TV off.  Leave the text.  Return the phone call for a later time.  Gaze harder and more longingly and more intensely in the eyes of another at the beauty of God’s creation.

          Maybe you have to start even smaller.  If you can do it for five minutes in one day, intentionally, see how it can begin to transform you.  As you see the intention move you and bring good to you, extend the time to an intentional half an hour.  Leave it at that place for several weeks.  If you begin to bristle at a half an hour, know that it is your boredom seeking your creativity and life within that half hour.  One person, in recognizing that God did not want them enslaved by time in their Sabbath practice, kept all time pieces out of their sight.  If you get really adventurous, sit down and read the gospel of Mark for your Sabbath time every week.  It takes about an hour to read from beginning to end. 

          Pick a day during the week and do not shop during that day.  We are told that all we are is consumers and that is how the numbers are run.  Refused to be enslaved by that title.  Choose your freedom as a Child of God to be something larger, grander, and incredibly more powerful.  The world still spins, the crops still grow, and life goes on without you making a purchase on a given day.   We have the freedom to do that.

          Those are a few possibilities you may want to begin.  You may already have those practices, far better outlined than what I have suggested.  Talk about them with others.  Learn, create, and share how we might keep the Sabbath as a church community.  What Sabbath practice, if you knew everybody in your church community was attempting to do or doing on a given day of the week, would you agree to do?  You know how folks who do regular work outs have weightlifting buddies?  Why would we not be the working partners in Sabbath keeping for each other? 

          Not all of us drink Scotch and some of us are in recovery, so let’s move on and find another.  Seriously, talk about it.  How are we going to show ourselves as a Christian community by keeping Sabbath practice together?

          Back to my infamous lunch story.  If you chose option B in the church office pool, you were correct.  Mike glumly ate his spaghetti trying to convince himself that the Caesar salad-dressing added something to the taste.  Probably in my lack of sleep, I thought that I “had” to eat the tainted spaghetti when, if I had had the energy I could have taken the two minutes to get more spaghetti out of the fridge.  But I was a slave to my own sleeping stupor. 

          We do not need to be enslaved.  Hold the thought of Sabbath and rest and making that an intentional practice for you and our community.   Look out into the world and in your mind’s eye, think of those people who need that rest and Sabbath.  Who are those people struggling for their freedom in rest, to leave Egypt?  Remember them.  For when we leave our Sabbath and rest time, God will ask us to work by picking up our hammer and plow to create that cathedral in time for your neighbor, for the community, and for the world.  As Rabbi Sharon Brous writes of Sabbath keeping,

Shabbat is so much more than a day of rest.  It is a day of reconnecting with our deepest dreams for our world and our own lives.  Shabbat becomes the holy time that saves us from falling into despair when everything seems to be crumbling beneath us, when the light in our lives seems to be eclipsed in darkness.  It comes to remind us that love will ultimately triumph over loneliness, understanding over violence, dignity over degradation.  Through praying, singing, talking, walking, dreaming, and sleeping we fortify the part of ourselves that knows that things can be better; we reawaken the part of ourselves that may have forgotten that we are more than our work, our conflicts, our fears, or our inbox.[10] 

          Our personal practice of seeking our release from enslavement then, becomes a microcosm for the release of our neighbors, the release of our community, and the release of the whole world.  And as we continue to practice, we get in a rhythm that is God’s rhythm and dream for the whole world.  I think author and theologian Anne Lamott had a handle on what it might mean for the world to experience Sabbath when she wrote, “The world is always going to be dangerous, and people get badly banged up, but how can there be more meaning than helping one another stand up in a wind and stay warm?[11]  Love bats last.”[12]   Do not take the bat out of its hand by forgetting God’s will for your rest and re-creation.  That’s the rhythm and the dream for us.  That’s God’s rhythm and dream for the world.  Then, thanks be to God for the rhythm and dream.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

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[1] Dorothy C. Bass, Receiving the Day:  Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time (San Francisco, CA:  Josey-Bass, 2000), p. 52.

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariots_of_Fire

[3] Bass, “Receiving the Day,” p. 58. 

[4] Recent references made by Presidential candidate Jeb Bush to increase the work week show an incredible display of ignorance about how hard poor and middle-class Americans are working.  This video from Agnes Török, https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=180&v=kiaxHUFAWew, explains poetically, mythically, and factually what is going on with Greece.

[5] Anne Lamott, Stitches:  A Handbook on Meaning, Hope, and Repair (New York:  Riverhead Books, 2013), p. 6

[6] Bass, Receiving the Day.

[7] The IKAR community with Rabbi Sharon Brous, one of my spiritual mentors, as their founder.

[8] Rabbi Sharon Brous and Aaron Alexander, “Shabbat and the Possibility of Transformation,” Walking with the Jewish Calendar, (Bel Air, CA:  The Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, 2010), p 16, quoting Slonimer Rebbe.

[9]You can either submit your email address to the Center for a New American Dream here:  http://act.newdream.org/page/s/kids-unbranded-action-kit or go to my Google Drive account to download it here:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-mqpxU5ShnQVVZScDBqaVlXVU0/view?usp=sharing.  The Center for a New American Dream is wonderful at working to build a new cooperative, community-building world. 

[10] Brous, “Shabbat,” p. 15.

[11] Lamott, Stitches, p. 72

[12] https://www.facebook.com/AnneLamott/posts/363257290470587.