Sermon: Sabbath as resistance

Sermon: Sabbath as resistance

Text: Luke 13: 31-35

* Many direct quotes from the Walter Brueggemann's Sabbath as Resistance are included in this sermon.

Two summers ago, Lynda Unfried, Erica Young, John Badertscher and I made our first visit to the Woodydell Housing community on St. Annes Road. This visit was planned after John shared some of his concerns at the Council meeting, asking "What would have to happen so that folks in any one of the pockets of poverty around us would know that we see them, care about them, and are ready to share food with them and listen to their voices?"

During our first visit I didn’t realize that not only were we cautious first-time visitors; we were pilgrims in learning the art of neighbouring. We passed by an abandoned square of community garden that showed, by then, only small traces that it was once tended by “Green Thumb Community Participants.” They called the garden “Woodydell Super Garden.” (As you see the words in the screenshot of the newsletter, on the screens for you.) The community garden had been “alive and thriving” until 2013 when Manitoba Housing decided to pave over the garden as part of their plan to renovate the Housing complexes. Instead of growing things, the plan was to set up tables with sun umbrellas and chairs on the newly paved concrete yard. Why? Our group didn’t get a satisfactory answer, just as the concerned staff didn’t successfully get the answers from the Housing corporation.

The community garden had been and could have continued to be a place where the residents would not only grow food for their daily needs but also feed their sense of belonging to the earth; the sense that the earth is self-sustaining and also serves as our connection to this planet, to all that has made and sustains us. Recollecting the moment when our group walked past the garden, I now realize that I was a pilgrim, a truth reconfirmed when John recommended that I read Sabbath as Resistance, written by Walter Brueggemann, for further reflection. And here is the book: Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now. In this second week of Lent, I would like to invite us to take a time of retreat to feed our awareness of the importance of keeping the Sabbath in our lives; how it becomes an act of resistance and alternative. I believe that it also sheds the light of meaning upon how we take up residence in the Kingdom of God.

Here, we need a definition of Sabbath. The Sabbath sanctifies time through prescribed forms of rest and inaction. "On this day, certain workaday activities and ordinary busyness are suspended and brought to a halt. In their stead, a whole host of ways of resting the body and mind are cultivated." Those words are from Michael Fishbane, who continues on, explaining, "One enters the sphere of inaction through divestment, and this release affects all the elements of the workaday* sphere. Business activity and exchange of money are forbidden, and one is urged not just to desist from commerce but to develop more interior spheres of settling the mind from this type of agitation...

Slowly, under these multiple conditions, a sense of inaction takes over, and the day does not merely mark the stoppage of work or celebrate the completion of creation, but enforces the value that the earth has a gift of divine creativity, given to humankind in sacred trust. On the Sabbath, the practical benefits of technology are laid aside, and one tries to stand in the cycle of natural time."

The choice of an economic image by Fishbane, "Divestment" suggests that we should consider the Sabbath as an alternative to the endless demands of economic reality, more specifically the demands of market-driven ideology. A great example we can see of the image of divestment or ‘escape’, comes from the story of Exodus: the exodus from Pharaoh's insatiable thirst for production. In the story, Israel is delivered from Pharaoh's anxiety system and comes to the wilderness; there, Israel is given bread that it is not permitted to store up. But even more remarkable than the daily gift of Manna - provision is made for the Sabbath. Israel cannot store up bread for more than a day; except on the sixth day Israel may store up enough for the seventh day so that everyone can rest on that day. This unexpected provision is surely a sign that this bread of life is not under the demanding governance of Pharaoh; it is under the sustaining rule of the creator God. Even in the wilderness with scarce resources, God mandates that Israel pause for the Sabbath.

We are very familiar with the dramatic, triumphant story of Exodus, where even the sea splits in two, allowing the Israelites to escape from slavery. I wonder what  the story might inspire in us if we ask how this biblical story can be translated into what Pharaoh’s oppression would represent today. Have we escaped it? Where are we in the story - still in slavery? At the edge of the sea? Are we in the wilderness? The experience of oppression can be subjective; any situation that prevents us from fully enjoying freedom can be our oppression. I would like to focus today on Pharaoh’s “anxiety system” that demands and is designed to produce more and more surplus. (picture) More bricks. (Picture) More storage rooms. Let's hear some of the Pharaoh's words in Exodus to learn what his anxiety-driven, production-demanding program sounds like. (Before the service, ask some church members to read the following, shouting them from the pews)

"Why are you taking the people away from their work? Get to your labours!” (Exodus 5:4)

"...Yet you want them to stop working!" (v. 5)

"You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks as before; let them go and gather straw for themselves. But you shall require of them the same quantity of bricks as they have made previously; do not diminish it, for they are lazy." (vv. 7-8)

"You are lazy, lazy; that is why you say, 'Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord.' Go now, and work; for no straw will be given you but you shall still deliver the same number of bricks. You shall not lessen your daily number of bricks." (vv. 17-19)

What do these statements and commands sound like to you? What emotions do they evoke as you hear them? How would you compare these demands with the messages we hear from our contemporary system and pursuit of commodity and productiveness?

Brueggemann suggests some of his translation of Pharaoh’s "bricks" to the contemporary terms that follow. 'The advertising game": one more product to purchase, one more car, one more cell phone, etc. An educational advantage, (increased government funding to private schools, education as a privilege, not a right), supplementary extracurricular activity that keeps families on the move and in their cars every day, an expansive and aggressive military. Over-production and abuse of the land. Violence. In this anxiety-driven Pharaonic system, in the interest of commodity and increased power and wealth for a few at the cost of all, we not only are denied our right to live and recover a full sense of self but we also live with a sense of danger that redefines our neighbours - global and local - as slaves, threats, rivals and competition.

The idea of Sabbath cannot be reduced to Sunday morning services. Yet, gathering to explore the true meaning of worshipping God - anxiety-free creator, our Maker - on Sundays, I believe, can be our way to participate in the creation liturgy that expresses our resistance to the contemporary Pharaonic system which keeps urging to us to "work, work, work, improve, improve, improve, increase, increase, increase, have more, want more, do more."

Sabbath is not Sunday. It can be symbolically and realistically any date of the week, any portion of the day, that we can find within our prescribed limits (schedules), in which we can recreate the creation liturgy or creation relationship with God to produce, simply, rest. The Sabbath is relationship (covenant) resisting commodity (bricks.) The benefit of having retreat, a deliberate, regular, turning away from the workaday* world cannot be exaggerated.

Faith produces a trust-based lifestyle and altruistic behaviour. Just imagine what can happen when we believe that the Creator is anxiety-free and we are invited to just imitate God's way of being. This world of ours would be anxiety-free! When we think of it, it is amazing - God exhibits no anxiety about the life-giving capacity of creation. God knows the world will hold, the plants will perform, and the birds and the fish and the beasts of the field will prosper. Instead of covering the earth with cement, we could cover the earth with tenderness and care. That’s the way of being envisioned by Jesus; it’s how we become a resident of the Kingdom of God, it’s how the Kingdom of God resides in our thoughts, emotions, spirituality, in our body, and in our relationships. Instead of looking at a plot of earth and thinking, “More bricks!’, we could be thinking of the potential of that soil for daily sustenance of the body and soul, or even of the simple pleasure of digging our hands into the dirt and holding on to the roots of the earth, our existence and our home. May we be blessed in our pilgrimage of exploring the meaning and the importance of keeping the Sabbath - by recreating the liturgical time of creation; holding up the sacred in relationship with our Maker and in the art of neighbouring.

* Many direct quotes from the Walter Brueggemann's Sabbath as Resistance are included in this sermon.