Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon
August 6, 2017
Opening Words
“In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.” — Albert Camus
Here in this sanctuary this morning we DO find the world,
because we are OF and IN and FROM the world: …
some of us weary with exhaustion,
some bitter from too much testing,
some with a yearning for more than the surface life,
some aching to give and receive,
some eager to cross new thresholds –
ALL of us wounded in some ways,
ALL of us triumphant in some ways.
The WORLD is all here, among us, within us…
and yet we also consecrate here and now a DIFFERENT time,
a different space –
in which we can practice settling into the deeper waters of life…in which we can feel the ripples of currents that beckon us into the heart of our lives… into the heart of the world.
Come into this space, where this morning we consider the practice of the Sabbath as a discipline of wholeheartedness. Come and be welcome.
SERMON
A man – a poet at heart – slumps into a chair in the twilight of the evening, a corked bottle of wine waiting on the small table beside him for the guest who will arrive. The guest is an old friend, a monk, in fact – Brother David. The monk arrives and they begin their weekly tradition of reading aloud some poetry and talking.
At the first sip of the Cabernet, the man feels his exhaustion really set in. He feels as if he is at the bottom of a deep dark well. His friend the monk sits beside him, leafing through the pages of a book of poetry by Rilke until he lands on one, his eyes sparkle, and he begins to read aloud:
This clumsy living that moves lumbering
as if in ropes through what is not done,
reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.
And to die, which is the letting go
of the ground we stand on and cling to every day,
is like the swan, when he nervously lets himself down
into the water, which receives him gaily
and which flows joyfully under
and after him, wave after wave,
while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried, each moment more fully grown,
more like a king, further and further on.
The man is drawn with longing and sorrow to the image of the swan, borne on the waters so effortlessly. He thinks of his own days, so full of tiresome effort. He looks up at his friend, the nearest thing he has to a truly wise person in his life, and he almost blurts out:
“Tell me about exhaustion.”
The monk looks at him with an acute, compassionate ferocity for a brief moment, taking it all in, and then says:
“You know that the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest?
…The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness.”
The man’s eyes just barely glimmer, a longing beneath the surface. And the monk continues:
“You are so tired through and through because a good half of what you do in your work, in this organization, has nothing to do with your true powers, or the place you have reached in your life. You are only half here, and half here will kill you after a while. You need something to which you can give your full powers. You know what that is; I don’t have to tell you.”
He doesn’t have to tell him. They both know: like I said, the man is a poet at heart.
“Go on,” the man says.
“You are like Rilke’s Swan in his awkward waddling across the ground; the swan doesn’t cure his awkwardness by beating himself on the back, by moving faster, or by trying to organize himself better. He does it by moving toward the elemental water where he belongs. It is the simple contact with the water that gives him grace and presence.”
He continues:
You only have to touch the elemental waters in your own life, and it will transform everything. But you have to let yourself down into those waters from the ground on which you stand, and that can be hard. Particularly if you think you might drown.
The monk looks down and reads again from the poem in his lap:
“And to die, which is the letting go of the ground we stand on and cling to every day”
The monk looks up again, and continues, now really giving the man a talking-to:
“Your exhaustion is a form of inner fermentation. You are beginning, ever so slowly…” he hesitated, “to rot on the vine.”
The man gives an involuntary shiver at that last image, and recoils from the prospect. It is a prospect of dying while still alive and it jolts him out of his exhausted torpor, as if some imaginative adrenaline now begins to flow through his system.
The man looks back at his friend, and realizes that simply in the act of coming awake for a moment, his tiredness is falling away. He feels a new buoyancy, a possibility. Something has changed. And yet, what comes to his mind are the faces of all his colleagues in the organization, with whom he would have to have those difficult, courageous conversations in order to change his work – more toward poetry and teaching. It is a daunting prospect, but his friend’s words, this moment of recognizing himself, have given him a challenge and a discipline he will not let go. He cannot let go.
RECONSIDERING THE PRACTICE OF SABBATH
This is an autobiographical story told by one of my favorite poets, David Whyte – whose deep wisdom and beauty would be lost in the world, had he not had this moment of recognizing for himself how to move more wholeheartedly into the world.
I begin my sermon on the Sabbath with this story – this story about exhaustion not necessarily being about the need for rest – because I think too often we think of Sabbath in a two-dimensional way: We see Sabbath as about resting and recharging – like one of those rechargeable batteries that we keep popping back into the Energizer Bunny that is our life. So we can keep going and going and going.
Yes, Sabbath is about resting… But it can be about so much more.
Let’s take a look at the Jewish traditions of the Sabbath: Shabbat.
I remember in college when I learned more in-depth about the Jewish practice of Shabbat, observed from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Our professor told us about orthodox Jews, who continue to strictly observe the laws of Shabbat even as applied to modern circumstances. For example, kindling a fire was forbidden on Shabbat, so all the cooking had to be done the day before. Orthodox Jews apply that same thinking even to the idea of flipping on a light switch on Shabbat, because a small spark is made – thus a fire lit, which is a prohibited act. We students responded to this idea with some scorn, saying: “Come on – that’s just silly: surely that’s not the real point of this religious ritual, to not be able to turn on your lights in your house?”
But our professor challenged us not to think so little of these people. He invited our humility and curiosity: In what ways does observing these laws so strictly in fact bring about just the kind of thing the religious ritual is trying to get at: If you can’t turn on a light, how does that force you to pause in your typical daily routines…? …Either you remain in the dark, which can be nice, or you arrange in advance to set a timer – you think ahead and plan for your Shabbat – you give special privilege, planning and priority to this time, instead of privileging our culture of work and consumption.
SABBATH AS RESISTANCE
In his book Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now, the Christian Walter Brueggemann invites us to resist our culture of busy-ness and anxiety. To him, resisting that striving needs to become one of everyone’s core spiritual practices.
So, for many orthodox Jews, strictly observing Shabbat rules is not about silly superstition but about resisting one thing in order to re-orient ourselves to a deeper, more vital thing.
When the practice of the Sabbath invites us to resist our daily compulsions and conveniences, what often happens is that we are thrust into solitude, or into true community, or into the present moment, or into reflection…into reconnection with what is most vital – the deeper currents that can power our lives.
And Sabbath time is not only about a list of “don’ts” – the Jewish Shabbat and the Christian Sabbath are also about gathering with family, saying prayers, celebrating, singing, feasting. It is about the presence of something that arises when we consecrate (“make sacred”) a time to connect to that wholeheartedness Brother David spoke of. Consecrating that time for wondering, celebrating, contemplating, loving, laughing – becomes a life-giving way of saying “no” to our world of working, earning, producing, consuming – and we say no to it not only for ourselves but for our land we let lay fallow, our employees to whom we give leave time, our children we allow to explore and be free.
According to the rabbis, those who observe Sabbath observe all the other commandments. The writer Barbara Brown Taylor says,
Practicing [Sabbath] over and over again, [the rabbis] become accomplished at saying no, which is how they gradually begin to resist the culture’s killing rhythms of drivenness and depletion, compulsion and collapse. Worshiping a different kind of God, they are shaped in that God’s image, stopping every seven days to celebrate their divine creation and liberation.
WHY DO WE FLEE FROM IT?
So, why do we often resist the practice of Sabbath? And I don’t mean vegging out to TV shows, or spacing out on Facebook, or doing some mind-numbing busy work – although it’s okay to do any of that sometimes.
I mean: why do we resist doing the things that we know really give us life? It’s not only the pressure of our culture that leads us to resist dropping into that different place, but it’s often the fear of what we might feel, or be asked to accept, or recognize as an unshakeable need to change. Barbara Brown Taylor((An Altar in the World, by Barbara Brown Taylor)) says most people tell her why it’s impossible for them to practice the Sabbath – whether they mean a whole day or even just an hour or half-hour. To them – to us – she recommends this simple exercise:
Make two lists on one piece of paper. On one side of the paper, list all of the things you know give you life that you never take time to do. Then, on the other side, make a list of all the reasons why you think it is impossible for you to do those things. That is all there is to it. Just make the two lists, and keep the piece of paper where you can see it.
Also promise not to shush your heart when it howls for the list it wants.
A MULTIDIMENSIONAL PRACTICE OF SABBATH
So Sabbath time – whether it be a whole day, or an hour, or a half-hour – is not a two dimensional experience of just unplugging, just resting, although that’s part of it. The practice of Sabbath – and it is a practice – is a multidimensional experience of connecting with our wholeheartedness: with that which is life-giving. Let us hear again Brother David’s words to our friend the poet. He says:
You are like Rilke’s Swan in his awkward waddling across the ground; the swan doesn’t cure his awkwardness by beating himself on the back, by moving faster, or by trying to organize himself better. He does it by moving toward the elemental water where he belongs. It is the simple contact with the water that gives him grace and presence.
For some, that water is stillness or solitude. For others it is community, laughter, play, creativity, contemplation…
What is that life-giving water for you?
Brother David continues:
You only have to touch the elemental waters in your own life, and it will transform everything. But you have to let yourself down into those waters from the ground on which you stand, and that can be hard. Particularly if you think you might drown.
He’s speaking there of that resistance most of us have.
SABBATH TOGETHER
That resistance is why it can be good not to do this alone.
Find a friend with whom to have a life-giving conversation, or a walk at Sibley – or both. Or read poetry with your partner before bed instead of watching another show.
Or come to church, where we do this crazy thing of sitting with one another for an hour in a sanctuary. My sermon may be the least important part of our shared Sabbath experience when it compares to being together in moments of silence, recalling together our deepest values, singing and celebrating and lamenting and just being.
So, may our prayer be that we accompany and encourage one another in the practice of saying no to half-hearted, Energizer Bunny living.
May we choose instead – over and over again – to wade into that water of whole-hearted, life-giving energy that will lift us into the lives we are called to create.
May it be so.
– Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon