Luke 10: 38-42 and Mark 12: 28-34
Good Shabbos, everyone! How are things going with your Sabbath intention? Are you relaxing, a bit? I’d like to begin with a bit of a recap, and with a talk-back. Before us are the symbols of the past three Sundays:
- The backpack and weights, symbolizing the physical and emotional weights we are invited to let go of for Sabbath. What is it that you need to say “no” to in order to really rest. Have you learned anything about that these past weeks? Have you figured out what you need to say “no” to, and what difference it makes?
- Second, there’s the half-empty/half-full glass. Sabbath is an invitation to deep joy, and to gratitude – what, for you, makes for deep joy? What’s on that full side of the glass? Have you experienced deep joy lately?
- Third, last Sunday we looked at “blessing,” for which the symbol is the healing oil. Blessing is not, I said, in what happens to us. Blessing is not in our circumstances, in whether we are lucky or not. Blessing is something in us, something that recognizes the deep inner wholeness that can be present even in the worst of situations. Blessing is something God does in our souls, in the part of us that is eternal. Have you touched the depths in that way, during this experiment – either in a positive or a challenging way?
This morning our topic is “holiness.” The question we asked was “what most feeds your soul?” Because a Sabbath day is not simply a day “off.” A Sabbath day, as the commandments remind us, is a day to be kept “holy.” What does that mean?
Photos from the Hubble space telescope always bring holiness and wonder to mind – but our symbol here is not that. It’s not even a thing. It’s a sound – the sound of the Japanese bell, used in Zen monasteries to draw one’s attention to the present moment. An experience in time – that’s our symbol. (ring bell)
What most feeds your soul?
Our story this morning is the story of Mary and Martha – two sisters (Lazarus is their brother) who were friends of Jesus’.
It’s a cool story. It happens, in the gospel of Luke, right after the story of the good Samaritan – and I think that’s significant. In that story, Jesus is asked the same question that is the subject of our second reading – what’s the greatest commandment? And the same two commandments are listed. And then the lawyer asks “well, who IS my neighbor?” And Jesus answers with the story of the good Samaritan – which asks us to go and do likewise, to BE a good neighbor, to disregard any social dividing lines which might let us say that someone, somewhere, is NOT our neighbor. So far so good?
It’s a great United Church story. It takes the whole law, boils it down to two commandments, and then further focuses our attention to the way we care for our neighbors. All of religion boiled down basically to good ethics, inclusivity, and compassion. And that’s who we are! Right? Yay!
And then Luke mucks it up for us by telling this story.
There was a woman named Martha, who had a sister named Mary. Martha welcomes Jesus into her home; Mary sits at Jesus’ feet, with the rest of the disciples, to listen to him. Martha is being the hostess. She is run off her feet. “Distracted by her many tasks,” Luke says. Actually, the Greek is significant. She is distracted by “much diakonia,” or much ministry or service. Who knew? Martha is United church! She is taking the story of the Good Samaritan to heart. She has taken Jesus and his whole gang into her home, and she’s being a good hostess, a good neighbor. And her blasted sister is just sitting there! Doesn’t she get it? So out she comes – and I like this picture, it looks like Martha is about to crown her sister with a frying pan – and tells Jesus to tell her sister to get to work! It’s perfect, isn’t it? She doesn’t even talk directly to her sister! She tells Jesus to do it. But Jesus refuses – says in fact that Mary has made the better choice.
If the story of the Good Samaritan is about the second commandment – love your neighbor as yourself – then perhaps this story of Martha’s is about the first commandment, the one that the United Church often puts on the back burner – love God with all your heart. Sometimes I think we United church people, with our strong intellects and our sense of social responsibility, think that all we have to do is love our neighbor, and somehow our relationship with God will take care of itself.
Luke says Martha is distracted by all her service, all her ministry. Distracted from what? Isn’t ministry the point? What is more important, that ministry might distract us from it? And Jesus replies that Martha is worried, stressed, as well as distracted, by many things. Do any of you feel like you’re trying to keep a few too many juggling balls in the air? But Jesus says only one thing is necessary. What is the one thing necessary, do you think?
What most feeds your soul? Or let me put it another way. If we call “soul” that part of you that is eternal, if that’s where the blessing of God comes, then what strengthens the part of you that is eternal? What connects you to the living God?
Abraham Joshua Heschel, in his book called Sabbath, does a lot of mind-bending, for me. Here is an example: “Even religions are frequently dominated by the notion that the deity resides in space, within particular localities like mountains, forests, trees or stones, which are, therefore, singled out as holy places; the deity is bound to a particular land; holiness a quality associated with the things of space, and the primary question is: where is … god? There is much enthusiasm for the idea that God is present in the universe, but that idea is taken to mean His presence in space rather than in time, in nature rather than in history; as if He were a thing, not a spirit… Reality to us is thinghood, consisting of substances that occupy space; even God is conceived by most of us as a thing. The result of our thinginess is our blindness to all reality that fails to identify itself as a thing, as a matter of fact.”
Heschel, The Sabbath, 4-5.
There is a lively discussion right now between the outspoken atheists and religious people, about whether or not God exists. But I must admit, the discussion does seem to center around the assumption that God is somehow a thing that can be separated out from all other things and said to exist, as a fact. It’s an old argument, I suppose. The atheists tell us this: God is nothing. A delusion. A fabrication of our imaginations. But from the 11th and 12th centuries, a mystic named Meister Eckhart changed this subtly and said this: God is no thing.
God is not so much a thing in space, said Heschel, but a presence in time. The goal of the spiritual life is not so much to amass information as it is to face sacred moments.
So… how do we love God? How do we strengthen our souls? It has to happen in time – and that is what the Sabbath is all about. Like any relationship I suppose, our relationship with God requires time spent together.
It’s something I tell pretty much every couple for whom I do a wedding. When we make marriage vows, we do not promise to feel love for our partner, our whole life long. No one can promise that! Our feelings come and go, and depend at least in part on the circumstances of the moment – whether we are sharing a candlelit meal on vacation or juggling demands at work and care for a sick child. We can’t promise feelings. We can, and do, promise choices – that we will choose to act in loving ways regardless of the feelings of the moment. In a marriage, we promise (and it’s a promise that takes a lifetime to grow into) that we will always choose love for our partner, that we will choose love even when we don’t feel love.
That’s also what we do in baptism – we receive God’s promise to love us always and without condition, and we promise in return to choose love for God. We promise to act in loving ways towards God, we promise to act in ways that nurture our relationship with God, whatever our passing feelings or the ups and downs of our personal faith.
And what can we do to nurture that relationship? Well, we’re doing one of those things right now – public worship. In public worship, we orient our lives towards God; this is a place we can be reminded of the importance of our relationship with God, and we can spend a brief hour or so to reconnect.
Sabbath is another practice that can help us to reconnect. One of the things that I think is quite important is the ritual that begins and ends our Sabbath time, that sets this time apart from “ordinary time,” that marks it as time spent with God. In a Jewish household, that is usually the Sabbath meal, and the lighting of the two Sabbath candles at the beginning of the Sabbath, and the candle lighting and smelling of the sweet spices at the end. Our rituals could be a meal, candle lighting, sharing a glass of wine, a particular prayer or blessing… Something to set this time apart, as belonging to God.
And one more practice I’d like to mention. Silence. I have taken several silent retreats in my life, the best ones lasting at least five days. These have been profound experiences for me. I find that our lives are busy and noisy, by and large. So when I go on a silent retreat – one in which I do not speak, except in worship – I find that it takes some time to quiet the noise around me, and get used to the silence. Then I discover that there is also a good deal of noise within me, and it takes some time to quiet the gerbil-wheel of stress and activity in my own mind. But when it becomes quiet outside of me, and quiet inside of me, then it really does seem that my soul comes out of hiding, and I can hear the still small voice of God.
Silence, Sabbath, worship – practices to nurture our relationship with God, and ways to choose love for God. Ways to build what Abraham Joshua Heschel describes as a “cathedral built in time.”
What most feeds your soul? What strengthens the part of you that is eternal? And how important is that, to you?
Tags: Luke 10, Mark 12, nature of God, Sabbath
July 11, 2011 at 11:37 am |
It is really all very simple – a Christian follows Jesus Christ – we can seek all the change we want but Jesus does not change – and the church belongs to Jesus, tis HIS will that should be done but we seem to lose sight of that – as certain people think it is their will which should be done.
BIG MISTAKE!!!