One
of my favorite books is The Sabbath,
by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Rabbi Heschel was known as a scholar, writer,
theologian, and activist. In his book, The
Sabbath, he writes with loving precision about the Sabbath and its purpose
in the life of human beings. In the busy world we inhabit today, he writes
things that make us pause for thought and perhaps encounter a “small Sabbath”
for a moment or two, as our brains slow down to absorb what he writes.
In
the introduction to Rabbi Heschel’s books his daughter Susannah Heschel writes
movingly of how her family observed with the joy the weekly Shabbat, or
Sabbath. She quotes him as saying, “We are within the Sabbath rather than the
Sabbath being within us.”
So
it must have been for the disciples in the grain fields and in the temple with
Jesus. And, it must have been a bit of a shock to the disciples and the
Pharisees to hear, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for
the Sabbath; so the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
Previously,
with the forbiddens and the shall nots, people tried to win God’s favor with
their Sabbath keeping. In addition, Rabbi Jesus says the same thing Rabbi
Heschel says. They both tell us our experience of Sabbath does not come into
being on Saturday or Sunday, or whatever day is our Sabbath. Instead, our
Sabbath experience only becomes profound, whole, and holy, by how we behave the
other six days of the week.
Jesus’
demonstration of Sabbath underlines what we can do the other six days by his
defiance of the written and unwritten rules of Sabbath.
Focus,
compassion, healing, truth speaking, and most of all love demonstrated by our
compassionate acts, are what creates a Sabbath in which we can rest.
When we
recklessly spend the six days and then the Sabbath itself, we have no room for
anything but ourselves and perhaps a little time for those closest to us.
This is a narrow
and circumscribed life. It is a life in which we have no focus because we are
too busy.
It is a life in
which we have no time for compassion because we are too occupied with our own
passions.
It is a life in
which we miss opportunities for healing because though we live in a broken and
hurting world, having no Sabbath relief leaves little space for God to direct
us toward our own healing and the healing of others. It allows us to so respond
even if it that need comes begging on our Sabbath.
We are liars
when we try to tell ourselves we are speaking the truth and we know we are only
speaking what is popular or what we have been told. Our Sabbath is empty because
we have not taken Sabbath moments to reflect on the repercussions of what we
say before we open our mouths.
The
compassionate acts of love we are called to do are lost when we take no time to
pause and really listen to how God is calling us. Our own Sabbath may need to
be broken open so we can hear what is going on inside us and in others whose
lives we touch.
Our own Sabbath
may need to be broken open so we can hear and see how God is expanding us to
let in more God into those empty spaces Sabbath creates.
A friend of mine
has a favorite bumper strip that has become mine as well. It reads, “Jesus is
Coming: Look Busy.” The longer I have reflected on that and laughed about it,
the more I see how “looking busy” or sometimes even “being busy” may not be
what God is calling us to do every day.
Perhaps instead,
God wants us to open ourselves to the divine purposes of focus, compassion,
healing, truth telling and love. Jesus was able to offer these things on the
Sabbath because he kept the Sabbath holy and unstained. As Rabbi Heschel would
say it, “Strict adherence to the laws regulating Sabbath observance don’t
suffice; the goal is creating the Sabbath as a foretaste of paradise. The
Sabbath is a metaphor for paradise and a testimony to God’s presence; in our
prayers, we anticipate a messianic era that will be a Sabbath, and each Shabbat
prepares us for that experience: ‘Unless one learns how to relish the taste of
Sabbath…one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to
come.” AMEN.
The Rev. Nicolette Papanek
©2018
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