Sabbath
embedded photo courtesy of Graham Braddock and pixels.com
The Rev. Dr. John C. Hembruch, Sermon Series “Through the Bible,” № 33.
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God. —Psalm 43:5
“O my soul,” asked the Psalmist, “Why are you disquieted within me?” You heard it twice, part of a chorus that ends Psalm 42 and 43. To our ears, the language is archaic. The Good News translation makes it simple: “Why am I so sad? Why am I so troubled?” Eugene Peterson’s The Message translation gives it an informal, folksy flavor: “Why are you down in the dumps, dear soul? Why are you crying the blues?”
It’s a wonder that we don’t ask questions like that more often.
It’s a wonder because there are plenty of stressors contributing to disquiet. This past week, Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren wrote an op-ed for the New York Times.”[1] She talked about the way electronic connectivity has changed our lives. She recalled news reports about digital monitoring meant to keep workers productive in hyper-controlled environments, where employees couldn’t hold a friendly conversation or even go to the bathroom without fear. Editor Eleanor Barkhorn, commenting on this piece, recalled a forum in Los Angeles, where the C.E.O. of Netflix proudly declared his company actually competes with sleep, and is winning. How depressing, Barkhorn wrote, “a reminder of how the digital economy can profit when we deny deep human needs like sleep.”[2] In my home, there is an Amazon “Echo Show” device, with which we conveniently ask for the latest news from NPR or call up some music while cooking. But Amazon has other ideas about how this device will be used. By default, the screen saver is constantly active, and flashes reminders like, “You can ask, ‘How many worlds are there in the Pokemon universe?’” Or “You can ask, ‘When is Drake’s birthday party?’” There I am in my living room, without enough time to focus on what is important for health and wholeness, and Amazon is trying to re-channel my focus into a new interest so that I’ll buy Pokemon cards or Drake’s latest album. Whether you are working or retired, young or old, ultra-connectivity is a growing factor contributing to feelings of stress, disquiet, and even despair.
I’ve noticed how medical practitioners have adjusted to our society’s growing levels of stress and disquiet. At each year’s preventive-care physical exam, the single longest piece of paperwork I fill out is a mental-health evaluation. There are questions aimed at determining my level of stress, and possible need for further mental health evaluation. I’m told that many of the physical problems a man of a certain age may begin to experience can be linked to unhealthy levels of stress: problems like heart disease, high blood pressure, alcohol abuse, and digestive problems. Just working through the form raises my anxiety as I remember and check off the life events I’ve experienced, and circle my degree of feelings about each one. Most of the time, I’m too busy to know that I’m supposed to have feelings about some of these things, and there I am being asked to remember them and re-experience them all on a clipboard filled with 8-1/2 x 11 sheets of paper. “O my soul, why are you disquieted within me?” It’s a wonder my soul ever feels oriented or quieted.
If you went through confirmation with me, then you may remember how we spent an entire class talking about the disorienting pace of change in the typical teenager’s life, and in our world. We pondered thoughts from the old classic “Futureshock,” in which Alvin Toffler pointed out that of the approximately 800 life spans in recorded history, 650 were lived in caves. Only in the last six life spans have we had mass printing, and only in the last three have we had electric motors.
It took less than one lifetime for humans to move from the Wright brothers’ brief flight at Kitty Hawk to the Apollo program’s flights to the moon.[3] I’ve been pastor to people who can remember the first time an airplane flew over their town, who remember the time before televisions, air conditioners, interstate highways, and even indoor plumbing. I’ve pastored people who remember when the “Big Ten” athletic conference actually had ten teams. Now there are 14, with maybe as many as six more joining in the future. Instead of playing at noon with a relaxing meal to follow, they play under lights on Saturday nights, disrupting a pastor’s sleep patterns. In our rapidly changing time, it’s a wonder that we don’t ask the question more often: “O my soul, why are you disquieted within me?”
It’s the question that was posed by the author of today’s scripture reading. While the 42nd and 43rd psalms are divided in today’s Bible, scholars believe that they were originally one psalm. The psalm opened a small collection of seven psalms from the “Korahite,” one of the temple songbooks woven into the much larger Book of Psalms. The precise circumstances of its writing have long been lost to memory. But it seems that the author was familiar with the northern area of Israel near Mount Hermon, where the melting snow forms the trickles and creeks that ultimately come together to form the Jordan River.[4] The psalmist’s love for God is described in tender language: “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for you, O God.”
Something prevented the psalmist from going to worship in the Jerusalem temple. Was it a literal enemy who kept him pinned down in the defense of his home and village, whose insults discouraged him? Was the psalmist enslaved to some debt or obligation? Or were the tears and taunts the result of an illness that caused others to doubt the strength of the psalmist’s God or faith? Whatever the precise difficulty, for the psalmist it was a source of unhealthy stress, so that his soul was “disquieted” within him. He couldn’t possibly imagine all the causes of stress we face today, but he would sympathize with their unhealthy effects.
Scripture offers a concept that is helpful in combating the effects of stress, but often ignored: the Sabbath, a day of rest and re-creation that refreshes and brings joys. You see this remedy in the psalmist’s wish, “let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy; and I will praise you with the harp, O God ….” Years ago, I attended a seminar taught by Craig Dykstra at Princeton Seminary, during which he said that Presbyterians who never would contemplate murder or adultery routinely violate one of the Ten Commandments without guilt. Sometimes, it is even a badge of honor in our busy, noisy society. That commandment is: “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy.”[5]
Tish Harrison Warren, in the editorial I mentioned earlier, takes a look backward at old sabbath laws, often called blue laws, which are viewed as relics of a more religiously repressive past. In particular, she focuses attention on Philip Schaff, a 19th-century Swiss-born, German-educated theologian, who spent most of his adult life in the United States. In the midst of a growing industrial economy, Schaff looked to Sabbath laws as a way to preserve time for worship, rest, and family life. To Schaff, she says, “keeping the Sabbath wasn’t merely a religious observance but served a civic function. It was a practical way … to treat valuable workers with whole lives to be lived.”[6]
Summarizing Schaff, Harrison Warren writes this paragraph:
In an 1863 address, Schaff argued that “Sabbath rest” is necessary for both body and soul; that it preserves “health, wealth and the temporal happiness and prosperity of individuals and communities.” He went on to say that “our energy and restless activity as a nation, our teeming wealth and prosperity and our very liberty makes the Sabbath a special necessity for us.” He called Sabbath laws a check and limit to the “degrading worship of the almighty dollar.” “Take away the Sabbath,” Schaff said, “and you destroy the most humane and democratic institution,” which is made particularly for “the man of labor and toil …..”[7]
Put another way, celebrating Sabbath can be a countercultural activity. Instead of being defeated by stress, we have an opportunity to witness against it. This is a powerful reason why, for example, I try not to check my e-mail on my day off, and why I never saw work correspondence during the ten weeks of sabbatical. It surprises some, and shocks others, because not everyone has a work environment supportive enough to unplug. But I believe the Church needs to practice what it preaches. If we are creative, it is possible to take a sabbath break, while at the same time having a plan for critical needs to be addressed.
There’s something I’ve said before that I believe is worth repeating again and again. If each Christian in every church in this community would simply take a “time out” most Sundays of year, our unified witness of rest and worship would have an impact greater than we can imagine on shaping our culture’s values, and building each Christian’s personal resilience. When your community is fragmented and exhausted, when your soul feels disquiet or despair, Sabbath rest may not be a total cure, but it sure can help.
With the psalmist we pray, “O send out your light and truth … let them bring me … to your dwelling. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy; and I will praise you … my help and my God.”
NOTES
[1] Tish Harrison Warren, “How to Fight Back Against the Inhumanity of Modern Work,” The New York Times, 16 Oct. 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/16/opinion/work-rest-sabbath.html accessed 18 Oct. 2022.
[2] Eleanor Barkhorn, “Opinion Today: A cure for. The inhumanity of modern work,” The New York Times, Opinion Today Newsletter, 18 Oct. 2022.
[3] “Where in the World are You?” Chapter one in Confirming our Faith, United Church of Christ curriculum resource, circa 1980.
[4] Commentary Psalms 42 and 43, Homiletics, June 2010, p. 65.
[5] Personal notes, Craig Dykstra, ”Sleep, Surrender, and the Sabbath,” a one-day seminar at Princeton Theological Seminary, 19 Oct. 2001.
[6] Tish Harrison Warren, “How to Fight Back Against the Inhumanity of Modern Work,” The New York Times, 16 Oct. 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/16/opinion/work-rest-sabbath.html accessed 18 Oct. 2022.
[7] Ibid.
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