Taking Time for the Holy
SERMON GIVEN BY REV LINDA HART AT RICHMOND & PUTNEY UNITARIAN CHURCH
It was probably 12 years ago that I was doing a wedding for a member of the congregation I served in Spokane, Washington. Cathy and Dave were getting married, and Dave had recently reconnected with a collection of cousins from his mother’s side, that is to say, the Jewish side of his family. His family had been divided and estranged for many years, and this was a happy reunion. One cousin was coming to the wedding. In fact, the wedding was being arranged, in large measure around this one family member. An orthodox Jew, he wasn’t allowed to travel during the Sabbath, from Friday evening until sunset on Saturday. The wedding service would begin at 7:00 on Saturday to accommodate his beliefs, but there was the matter of how he could be there to have the wedding start on time.
Cathy asked if it might be possible for their cousin to stay at the church from Friday afternoon until the service on Saturday. We couldn’t think of any reason to say no – we’d already had people sleep overnight there during the aftermath of a terrible ice storm a few years earlier – so we agreed that he could stay there. Dave dropped off a camp bed early in the week.
The rehearsal for the wedding was Friday night, and this honoured guest was there. Before we got started, he had a chance to settle into the religious education classroom where he would sleep, and had gone around turning on the lights he would require through the evening.
You see, as an orthodox Jew, and a very observant one at that, he was not only restricted from travel and what we generally think of as work, but he was also restricted from turning lights on or off, tearing toilet paper, talking on the phone, and specifically could not do the thirty nine types of work that were needed to complete the original temple that was built in the desert. Had he wanted to go out and buy something, he would have been unable, too, because he couldn’t carry money with him. Additionally, certain sorts of cooking were also not allowed, and he would not be able even to microwave a supper for himself. However odd we all found it – and perhaps like you now, we did find it odd – he was quite content and knew what he needed to do. He had brought along the sorts of food – kosher, of course – that he required during the interval he would be there and he was prepared with his prayer book. He was ready for the Sabbath to come. And when it ended, he would be ready to celebrate with Cathy and Dave as their wedding began just as the Sabbath ended.
Every now and then, I think back to that guest at the wedding so many years ago, and I think of him in the church, with the lights left burning in the toilets overnight. I think of his prayers through the next day, as he was far removed from all of what I think of as usual comforts: no television, no internet, no radio. He was alone with God, taken out of the what is for most of us the daily round of buying and spending, of work and busy-ness, of tasks and chores that take up the days. He wasn’t, I don’t think, even awaiting the wedding that would take him from the Sabbath, but simply being present to the day that was given to him, setting aside all but his study and prayers, setting aside the rest of life for the sweetness of being only attentive to spiritual matters.
What an odd sort of activity to engage! How rarely do any of us step into just that sort of day? When do most of us simply stop? Simply stop and allow the time to pass?
This past Wednesday, as we began the class on worship that we’re holding, I commented to the participants that this thing that we do on Sunday mornings at times strikes me as anachronistic. This old ritual of gathering together, the readings and the hymns, the address. It’s all a bit old fashioned, a ritual that was part of another seemingly anachronistic tradition of keeping the Sabbath. For all my liberality, there is a part of me that is conservative in the truest sense of the word. I find myself wishing that we could do a better job of keeping the Sabbath, finding that one time during the week when we set down all the doing of our lives, set down the busyness and simply take time for ourselves, for each other, for the quiet to enter and stay with us.
And why might we need this? You can probably make the list yourself as you look into your own life or the life of those around you. One author puts it this way:
There is an epidemic in cities everywhere and the epidemic is stress. We see the signs/effects of stress everywhere. Communities, support systems, self-care, parenting, spirituality, and physical health are being negatively affected by our responses to being overwhelmed, stressed, and unfulfilled. We thought the Palm Pilot, Internet, and ATM made our lives easier. Instead, we are feeling deprived of human contact and community. People rarely wave at complete strangers let alone call dear friends and family. We feel more obligated and depleted than ever.
She comments further:
The biochemical damage that occurs with constant stress cannot be underestimated. Heart, mind, and body diseases are running rampant despite our sophisticated medical technology.
And it is everywhere – the sense of stress and too much and too busy in our lives. A recently published study tells us that even our children, as young as 7, feel deep anxiety over the pressures of modern life.
A columnist in the Guardian muses:
What if progress isn’t making our species happier? What if general contentment doesn’t come hand in hand with general affluence? It’s in the most affluent societies that one finds the longest queues outside the psychiatrist’s door. And affluent people in a rush are at the head of the queue.
As living standards improve, people don’t necessarily feel the benefits. Although many of us now work later in life, retire earlier and have oodles more time than our ancestors, we persist in feeling time poor. Obesity is as large a health risk for the affluent as going hungry is for the poor and, like poverty in the developing world, it growing in our society.
I can’t help but wonder sometimes, as this columnist seems to suggest, that the growing problem of obesity has to do not only with the sedentary lifestyle that we are all prone to, and the easy availability of high fat content foods, but also with feeding a sense of loneliness or loss or anxiety that so many people feel at their core as we make our mad dash around our lives.
Often I think it may be easier to rewrite what we think is healthy or bliss than to make the changes needed to have something that looks like peace, something that looks like joy, something that looks just like sanity. Listen to this blogger:
Sometimes I wonder how on earth do I manage to keep my life so busy at all times. I'm starting to believe it is impossible for me to cut down on the activities and just have time to do nothing. I don't want to do nothing. Every time I try to save some time by cancelling few obligations, I somehow find myself getting involved in new ones. So this week will busy as hell with lots of running around, handling bureaucracy, meetings, plans, rehearsals and social life (if I'll be lucky enough to have any at all), starting today big time.
Nevertheless , I wouldn't have it any other way so it must be a bliss. Even though it's just another hectic week, I want to start it big.
I think that she suspects what is wrong, but really cannot manage to sort out how she might get out of it.
Some years ago, I read that researchers were close to identifying all the various hormones and chemicals that our bodies release when they are under stress. It was the hope of this particular study that they could develop some sort of medicine that would help to relieve the symptoms of stress. How easy it would be, right, to simply pop a pill when the world felt a little too much. We could continue the mad dash of life without those pesky side effects of heart disease, anxiety, and a range of illnesses too wide to mention. Of course, it is wrong headed to try to address the issue this way. We need to be more in tune with ourselves and our lives, learn to let go, learn to come back to our lives in a healthy and positive way.
A start would be simply to let go – at least for a brief time every day or every week – of all the modern conveniences, all the busy-ness, all the work and chores and distractions.
It’s like the man who went to his rabbi because his home was too noisy. They had just a small hut, and what with the children and his wife banging around, he could hardly hear himself think. “Bring the dogs into the house,” the rabbi suggested, “and come back to see me next week.” The man did as he was told and came back. “It’s even worse now!” the man reported unhappily. “The dogs bark all the time, chase each other around! I cannot think!” The rabbi had another idea: bring in the chickens, and bid the man to come back again in a week. “The noise is beyond living with!” the man reported at the end of the week. “The dogs chase the chickens, we hardly know what to do! There is chaos, and we no longer get eggs because the chickens can hardly roost without being nipped at! Rabbi, please help me!” the man pleaded. The rabbi had more ideas: Bring in the cow and the horse. The man thought to question the sanity of the rabbi, but he knew that the rabbi was a wise man. He agreed, and went home. At the week’s end, the man was visibly distraught, with deep circles under his eyes, his hair wild, and his hands trembling. “I haven’t slept for the week,” he said, with a weariness that was beyond exhaustion. “The smell and the noise of the chickens and the horse and the cow and the dogs have kept me up all the night for this long week. Rabbi, I implore you, help me! I cannot endure much longer.”
“Go home,” the rabbi counselled, “take the chickens and the dogs and the cow and the horse out of your home. Clean it well with your wife and children, and then come back to me in a week.”
As you would expect, the man came back well rested, calm and at peace. The quiet of his home was exquisite, he told the rabbi. It was calm and restful to be at home and he was thankful beyond words that the rabbi had been able to create such a place for him.
Clearing the clutter and the noise and the chaos from our lives, letting go of all the tasks and duties and chores and distractions might well make a big difference, even if we are only able to do it for a short while, even if we are only able to do it for a day.
And in some sense, that is the purpose of a Sabbath: to reorder one’s life, to provide, as Rabbi Greenburg suggests, a time for true refreshment and renewal. The benefits of creating such a time and space in our lives are well documented: reduced stress and the health improvements that brings such as lowered blood pressure, and a reduced danger of heart attack, not to mention the psychological benefits of a sense of well being, freedom from anxiety. It can lead to better sleep and improved productivity. So many benefits to be enjoyed.
Fundamentally, however, it isn’t about reduced stress and about an increased sense of well being. It isn’t about health benefits and escape from modern conveniences. It’s about coming back to ourselves, coming back to the truest meanings and deepest purposes of our lives. It’s about setting aside time to be quiet, and whole, and in touch with heart in its fullness and brokenness, and to – if only in moments – feel embraced and in relation with the powers that be in the universe, however we might name them.
Rabbi Heschel suggests that the routine of setting aside this time has more spiritual power than most anything else you can come up with. Pausing from the things of space – the work of our hands, what we do, what we produce, what we can make – in order to be within the present moment only to taste the eternity that is only available when we truly inhabit the present moment, that’s what the Sabbath is about. To experience, as Rabbi Heschel suggests, that ongoing creation, to be in that stream of time wholly. We can only achieve it by setting aside the usual clutter of our days, by listening, by waiting, by simply being. Simple, but not easy.
Sabbath is not merely stopping. It is not merely silence. It is creation of ourselves, it is creating and recreating relationship – with those who grace our lives, with the powers of the world, with ourselves.
Our world is busier and more chaotic, there more ways to lose ourselves than there ever have been before. I, for one, and perhaps you’ll join me, hope to reclaim some of the lost treasure of Sabbath, of the time each week to be renewed and restored, to set aside all that occupies me, all that tears me away from what I love most.
Few, if any of us will create a Sabbath like that honoured guest at the wedding so many years ago, now. The ways of that community are not our ways, and not for our time. Yet, in small ways – by making a meal together, by spending time walking in nature with a beloved, by lighting a candle and sitting quietly with your thoughts, by opening your heart in prayer if it is only to speak the words “thank you” – in small ways we can begin to reclaim sacred time for the self and the holy.
So may it be for us all.