A Sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost

I have two older brothers, and one of them has lived in Brooklyn since 2010. He has lived in various parts of Brooklyn but spent several years in a neighborhood nestled right up against a large Hasidic community. Hasidism is a movement within Jewish Orthodoxy that came of the 18th century, and I am no Jewish scholar so cannot speak about it intelligibly, but I have observed that this community is marked by piety to God through its practices and customs, from its religious garb to its family-centric lifestyle, and its commitment to the sabbath.

My brother would call home with stories about how he was helping out his neighbors on Saturday, the Jewish day of sabbath. The Hasidic community, and really the orthodox at large, observe the sabbath with such dedication. It is truly a day of rest and worship and prayer; there is no working, no getting projects done, no catching up on emails, no cooking, no cleaning. It is also a part of their belief, from what I understand, that they cannot do anything by their hand that uses power or produces electricity. So, no turning on the lights, or turning on the oven, or using the elevator in their apartment buildings.
They have organized their common lives and their homes, even their appliances, in such a way so that this can be possible. It takes a lot of planning and preparations. They assemble food ahead of time, and their ovens have a sabbath setting so they can preset it to turn on at a certain point on Saturday. Their lights might be on autotimers, and I’ve heard that their elevators also have a sabbath function where, on Saturday only, they automatically stop and open their doors at every floor so no buttons have to be pushed.

Now, it doesn’t always work out perfectly, so this is where my brother comes in. The gentile that he is, and the incredibly generous soul that he is, he was often asked for help by his neighbors on Saturdays. They might have forgotten to preset the oven or their fridge broke and they needed him to make a phone call, and he was always more than happy to step in so that they could honor their commitment to God and God’s command to keep the sabbath holy.

I mourn the fact that this historically persecuted community is often judged for their strict observance. Yes, they interpret God’s commandment to an extreme, but we, on the other hand, are so extreme in our non-observance of God’s holy day of rest. I am certain that, when I meet my maker face to face, I’ll be held accountable for my blatant disregard of the fourth commandment. I heard it said once that the fourth commandment is the only one that we routinely break and then boast about breaking. Sure, I have a million things I can blame this on- Oh, but I have a baby so there is literally no time to rest. Oh, well, work is just so busy so down-time is unrealistic. If I am honest with myself, I could easily have a sabbath each week, if I only preplanned a little and deleted my social apps on my phone or rather just chucked it out of the window on I-95. And if I am even more honest with myself, my neglect to take some time and set it apart isn’t as much about being busy as it is about not trusting God.

Trusting God is at the very core of sabbath. Trusting God is the very foundation of the sabbath. The word sabbath at its root means to stop, to cease, to desist. And it is not in our nature to stop doing. It is not in our nature to cease checking our email, or rest from the never ending to do list in our brain. It seems nonsensical to give up a whole day or even a whole afternoon to the activity of doing nothing. Not because we don’t want to, but because in our heart of hearts, in my heart, I don’t trust God to take care of it all. If I’m not keeping my life, and my family’s lives, and this community’s life in motion, then who is?

We have let ourselves believe that it is all up to us, and if we desist from our labors, it’ll all fall apart. But the promise of the sabbath, which is more than just a promise of rejuvenation or refreshment, is the promise that God has got it. As scholar and theologian Walter Brueggemann says, “Sabbath is not simply the pause that refreshes. It is the pause that transforms.” When we stop, we notice God’s power, God’s hand. We are transformed by the knowledge that God got this whole creation up and running, and God can surely keep it going if we take the day off. Our stopping has this way of right-sizing ourselves, of reminding ourselves that we are not the Lord of our lives, of making us face the reality that we are “situated on the receiving end of the Gifts of God,” in our working but especially in our resting.

I am aware, though, that this is still easier said than done. Not just because our own will to keep moving and doing is so strong, but also because our culture demands it of us. If my realtor observed the sabbath, I never would have gotten a house last year. If Amazon workers took a day of rest, I wouldn’t get the diapers I ordered on Friday and my child would be wearing a dishrag today. If I took Saturdays off with no expectations, y’all wouldn’t be hearing a sermon today.

We have created a world in which we literally do not, cannot, let each other rest. This is something that societies in the past were much better at, which we see reflected in the Old Testament reading today. It says, “you shall not do any work, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you.” We are to rest, not only for ourselves, but for each other. Because as long as we keep doing, our servers among us have to keep providing as well. Have you ever thought about the fact that if our way of resting on the sabbath is not cooking, so we go out and eat, that is keeping that many more people from having a sabbath and resting.

This begins to make the Hasidic practices make a little more sense. By preparing their meals ahead of time and presetting their ovens to warm the food, they aren’t needing to burden a single other person. They aren’t requiring anyone else to serve them, so that all those among them can rest, too.

This is radical really, this notion that we might sort of go back to the days when we protected a day. It isn’t popular because of the market economy we live in, which keeps things moving forward and provides jobs, or because of the social calendars our children keep, which keep them connected and content. I know that sabbath can seem unrealistic, farfetched, and maybe even naïve. And I also know that God commanded it. And that Jesus upheld it, except when it came to the real needs of the world, like feeding the mouths of the starving and restoring the lives of the broken.

Although I can’t quite imagine a life in which I regularly ceased for an afternoon, or a world in which we just stopped, I do know that we need rest. We need rejuvenation. More than that, we need transformation, to be reminded of God’s ability to take care of us.

God is strong enough to keep all of this in motion and God is trustworthy enough to care for our burdens if we let them go for a moment or two. This life we are given is His gift to us, and since the first week of creation, God has made clear that there is both a time to work and a time to rest. So, God, help us to trust you today, in our doing and our stopping, our playing and our resting. Amen.

The Rev. Kilpy Singer