The Rev. Joanne Sanders
Stanford Memorial Church
Summer Sermon Series
July 22, 2007
REMEMBER THE SABBATH: THE JOY OF REST
“Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things.”
Luke 10:41
He emerged from the Metro at the L’Enfant Plaza station and positioned himself against a wall beside a trash basket. By most measures, he was non-descript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved t-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin and began to play. It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on their way to work. Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation? Do you throw in a buck just to be polite? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn’t you? What’s the moral mathematics of the moment?
On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities – as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?
“Martha, Martha you are worried and distracted by many things,” says Jesus in today’s gospel reading. This is a well-known parable of Mary and Martha, with what appears to be Mary on the upside, Martha on the downside. One preacher has suggested that “anyone who has ever been the last one out of the kitchen after a potluck dinner – where everyone else was sitting and chatting – feels the sting of Jesus words as he lauds Mary’s choice over Martha’s. Anyone who has ever savored the luxury of time for spiritual development feels Mary’s relief when Jesus affirms her choice to sit at his feet.”
This parable today follows closely in Luke on the heels of the Good Samaritan story, when Jesus challenges a lawyer to recall the law: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” The parable of the Good Samaritan becomes the illustration of how one loves one’s neighbor. The parable of Martha and Mary today becomes the illustration of how one loves God. The gospel of Luke is working to define discipleship for the early church and these stories begin to pave the way. The crucial point of this parable is not at the expense of Martha, but rather to illustrate that the dinner party is not about the attendees, their roles and responsibilities. It is about the guest of honor, who is demanding full attention. For one to truly live Jesus insists that love of God and neighbor is front and center.
Living here in the heart of Silicon Valley, working and studying at a highly esteemed academic institution, or simply trying to keep up with mortgage or rent payments – we might understand better Martha’s predicament. As one writer noted: she could be working at a computer, checking her Blackberry or talking on her cell phone (or I-Phone) while driving, eating lunch (or on this campus, riding her bike). She could be on a treadmill while making appointments for the next day. She could be grading papers, her phone held between cheek and shoulder, checking in with family about coming home late. She could have a baby on one hip and a textbook for class on the other. She could be receiving chemotherapy on her lunch hour and trying like crazy to save her job. She could be overscheduled, overbooked, and overwhelmed. The pace could make her snap, where the urgent demands of life collide with the urgent demands of the gospel. Martha, we know you well.
To a greater extent, what may be illuminated for us in this parable is the fact that in the relentless busyness of modern life, we have lost the rhythm between work and rest. Our culture invariably supposes that action and accomplishment are better than rest, that doing something, anything, is better than doing nothing. And because of our desire to succeed, to meet these growing expectations, we do not rest. Author Wayne Muller, in his marvelous book, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal and Delight in our Busy Lives, contends that a “successful” life has become a violent enterprise. Muller writes: “We make war on our own bodies, pushing them beyond their limits; war on our children, because we cannot find enough time to be with them when they are hurt or afraid and need our company; war on our spirit, because we are too
preoccupied to listen to the quiet voices that seek to nourish and refresh us; war on our communities, because we are fearfully protecting what we have and do not feel safe enough to be kind and generous; war on the earth, because we cannot take the time to place our feet on the ground and allow it to feed us, to taste its blessings and give thanks.”
Muller, who has worked for 25 years in the fields of community development, public health, mental health and criminal justice, believes that our lack of rest and reflection is not just a personal affliction. It colors the way we build and sustain community. It dictates the way we respond to suffering and it shapes the ways in which we seek peace and healing in the world. He sees that despite community and corporate leaders well-meaning and generous souls, there exists a fearful desperation that is corrosive to genuine helpfulness, justice or healing.
I’m quite certain that most of us here this morning has either heard or used the phrase at one time or another: ‘I am so busy.’ It has become almost a standard greeting. We say it to one another with no small degree of pride, as if our weariness were a trophy of sorts, our ability to withstand stress a mark of real character.
It’s almost as though the busier we are, the more important we seem to ourselves and, we imagine, to others. To be unavailable to friends, family, or God forbid e-mail – to whip through our obligations at a relentless pace without time for a single, mindful breath has essentially become the model of a successful life. Thomas Jefferson suggested that human life and liberty were entwined with the pursuit of happiness. Instead, life has become a maelstrom in which speed and accomplishment, consumption and productivity have become our most valued human commodities. Can this be the happiness of which Jefferson spoke?
What can we do? How has this happened? Surely this was not our intention. How did we get so lost in a world saturated with striving and grasping, yet somehow bereft of joy, happiness and delight? asks Muller and others.
While this is by no means an original thought, I believe the trance of overwork and frantic pace, even the cry for happiness in our culture today suggests we have forgotten the Sabbath and would do well to recover its full meaning and
purpose in our lives. While it can refer to a single day of the week, it is also a revolutionary challenge to our concept of time. When we consecrate time to listen, perhaps it helps us remember the root of inner wisdom that in fact makes our work even more fruitful. We might remember from where we are most deeply nourished, and see more clearly the shape and texture of all that is before us. Even centuries prior, this understanding prevailed in the words that Jesus spoke in today’s parable: “Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
Does this mean that we simply stop working and sit on our hands, ensconced in an eternal meditative posture? Hardly. Sabbath is more than the absence of work, and neither is it spiritually superior to our work. But it is a time consecrated with our attention – a proverbial guest of honor in our lives, analogous to our gospel today. The practice of Sabbath, it has been said, is like the practice of taking refuge. Maybe that refuge is a meal with friends, a nap, gardening, turning off the computer for an entire day. Sabbath in this instance has a broader meaning. It is a balance point at which, having found some rest, we are enabled to do our work with greater clarity, ease and joy. Writes Muller: “Even if we left our work behind and sought the comfort of a monastery, we would be given a broom and told to sweep. Even in monasteries we must cook and clean, repair, garden and sweep. But there is a time to sweep, and a time to put down the broom and rest.”
Needless to say, there is some proven wisdom of the Sabbath through the ages as well. Wayne Muller, Abraham Joshua Heschel and others have helped me recall how holy days and holy rituals illuminate this understanding of consecrated time. When the liturgy begins here or in any cathedral, the space is transformed the moment the first prayer is offered. The space is not different, but the time has been transformed. When monks enter an ashram or monastery and sit in silence, only when the bell is rung does the meditation begin. The space may be the same, but the time is consecrated by the mindfulness that arises in the striking of the bell. When Muslims are called to prayer 5 times each day, all work ceases, and all the ancient words, spoken aloud for centuries, rise like fragrance to the skies. Just so, during Sabbath the Jews, by keeping sacred rest, could maintain their spiritual ground wherever they were, even in protracted exile from their own country. It was not Israel that kept the Sabbath, it is said, but the Sabbath kept Israel.
On that Friday in January at the Metro station in Washington DC, the musician against the wall was internationally acclaimed virtuoso Joshua Bell, who 3 days before filled the house at Boston’s Symphony Hall. But on this particular day he was just another mendicant, competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work. “It was the most astonishing thing I’ve ever seen,” said one observer. “Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush hour, and people were not stopping, not even looking and some were flipping quarters at him.” The final haul for his 43 minutes of playing at the metro station was $32.17. The Washington Post wrote, “We couldn’t look at what happened on January 12 and make any judgments about people’s sophistication or their ability to appreciate beauty. But what about our ability to appreciate life? We’re busy. Americans have been busy as a people since 1831, when a young French sociologist named Alexis de Tocqueville visited the States and found himself impressed, bemused and slightly dismayed at the degree to which people were driven, to the exclusion of everything else, by hard work and the accumulation of wealth.”
Not so much has changed. We fight against the drowning current of our own history. I have yet to see it, but a 1982 film called Koyaanisqatsi addresses the frenetic speed of modern life backed by the minimalist music of Philip Glass. In it are film clips of Americans going about their daily business, sped up until they resemble assembly line machines, robots marching lockstep to nowhere. According to the Washington Post, if you looked at the video from L’Enfant Plaza that day in January in fast-forward, the Glass music fits it perfectly.
Koyaanisqatsi is a Hopi word. It means ‘life out of balance.’
In the months preceding this sermon series, I thought long and hard about what I would preach this summer in the pulpit. I kept coming back to and was continually compelled by this idea to address what I perceive as a deep, if not urgent need to return to some real essentials about how to live with some sense of balance and sanity. No matter how smart we may be, no one is immune to distractions, exhaustion, failure, stress, chronic illness and yes, even death.
That being said, full credit is due to my dear colleague and publicist Debbie McDevitt for coming up with the overarching title 12 Steps to a Healthy Spiritual Life for this series. It’s my intention and prayer that in these few Sundays together we might find our way toward a life lived with not only hope,
but also deepened by spiritual practices that keep our lives not only balanced, but meaningful. I absolutely believe this is possible for us, and not a naïve or unrealistic expectation. This morning we begin with the commandment: Remember the Sabbath. Sabbath not as perfunctory restriction but as refuge. To realize that rest is an essential enzyme of life, as necessary as the air we breathe. That with rest we can sustain the energy to have life. When we act from a place of deep rest, we are more capable of cultivating what the Buddhists call right understanding, right action, and right effort.
And at the conclusion of this series, I will have 12 Steps to offer, I promise. Consider them permission slips.
With no time like the present, we’ll start with one right now. Before we sing our next hymn, I’ll ask our resident virtuoso to wait briefly before we do. So we can sit in quiet for a moment together, take some deep breaths – and REST.
NOTES:
Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in our Busy Lives; Wayne Muller, 2000.
The Christian Century, July 10, 2007; The Rev. Joy Douglas Strome
Pearls Before Breakfast; The Washington Post, April 8, 2007; Gene Weingarten
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