SABBATH: What didn't make it into yesterday's sermon

Yesterday was a good day at church. Once again I had more material that didn't make it into the actual presentation of the sermon. I'm still getting into the preaching groove here in St. Joseph. I normally don't preach with many notes, just the basic outline, even though I actually write out the sermon ahead of time. The sanctuary at First Christian, however, seems to just pull me away from the pulpit more towards the center of the room, so what notes I have brought with me remain behind on the pulpit. (It's not as if I can really read them that well anyway these days.) It's not a bad discipline to preach without notes and I haven't left out anything truly essential--usually I have more material than time allows anyway.

So, here's some tidbits about sabbath that did not make it in.

CONTEXT: I was trying to make the point that in Mark 2:23-28 where Jesus and his disciples are criticized for picking grain on the sabbath, the actual idea of sabbath was no petty concern but a central idea in Israel's religious life and Jewish life today. As I stated, even good religious practice can be twisted to oppress and condemn others. I also made the point that before we are too hard on the Phraisees of Mark's Gospel we should remember the religious conflict between Christians and Jews in the first century and that this is hardly a fair portrait of Judaism then or now. People who use religion to condemn others are present in every religion everywhere--especially among Protestants in America.

MORE CONTEXT: I was also trying to make the side point that all of us need sabbath as a part of our weekly schedule--to rest, to reflect upon our lives, to reconnect with our Creator. We as Christians have much to learn from observant Jews about making time in our crazy schedules to center ourselves and literally get a fresh start each week.

So, here are some thoughts on Sabbath:

Abraham Heschel writes, “The Sabbath is not for the sake of the workdays; for workdays are for the sake of the Sabbath. It is not an interlude but the climax of living.”

(Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man, (New York: Harper and Row, 1961): 14.)

Heschel also notes that sabbath is "A realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but be in accord. Life goes wrong when the…acquisition of things…becomes our sole concern."

(Heschel, The Sabbath, 1)

Regarding the Sabbath and our need for it, poet Molly Wolf writes, “if we give God the slightest opening, some corner of the Spirit gets lodged in us like a splinter in the skin…[and] the spirit calls to our own inner selves…”

(From Angels and Dragons (Doubleday, 2001) as quoted in Willow Hambrick, “Sabbath Blessings,” Christian Reflection, 2002: 89.)