I know this is going to be
really hard for some of you to believe, but I can be a difficult person
to live with. I am messy, and distracted,
and often impatient or irritable. And my people get
frustrated with me, and hurt when I am short or edgy with them. And then I have to do the work of seeing them,
and my impact on them, and apologizing and forgiving and restoring our
connection. Because we belong to each
other.
They are mine and I am
theirs. And we know that is not up for grabs. That means we have to work things
out, we can’t just cut off and walk away every time things get hard. We can’t
just close off in our own little world and not have to deal with one
another.
We live with one another –
our space, our time, our sadness, our celebrations – these things are bravely shared. We can’t throw our garbage in each other’s
rooms, or claim the bathroom as our own sovereign territory and refuse to let
others use it. Learning to belong to
other people is a big part of being human, and learning that other people
belong to you is a lifelong project as well.
The way of God
for all creation and the cosmos, from the very first moment of creation and
never ceasing is this: we belong to God and we belong to each other.
Last week we talked about how the Israelites, through the drills of Sabbath rest, repeated
practice, over and over, developing the muscle memory of trust – began learning
that we belong to God. This week we are
going to talk about how they learned that we belong to each other.
Our text today comes 40
years after the first text. Two generations later, when the Israelites were
poised to finally enter the Promised Land, Moses, ancient of days, tired and
gave-it-all-he-had Moses, stood before them and gave three long, final
sermons. We call them Deuteronomy.
The first one recounts their
journey together, from Egypt until this moment, reminding them of all that
happened in the wilderness and all that God taught them there. The second is a
reminder of God’s laws and teachings, and their calling to live as the children
of God, and the third is a promise that even if they screw it up, God will
never let them go.
Imagine this is like the
parents about to send their kid off to college- and they sit him down for the
epic talk, Before you move into
adulthood, son, here’s what we want to be sure you know: remember your story and
where you came from, it’s taught you a lot so don’t forget it. And here are the life rules to follow along
the way, we’ve tried to raise you with these but we’re telling you all of them
again now to take with you. And finally, please know, that even if you mess up,
which you certainly will, you will always be our child and our love for you will
never end.
Moses wont be joining them
in the Promised Land, so his final words to the people from God are - in his mind and their’s – very important.
We like to say that the
Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years, but that’s not completely
accurate. For the first two years it was
a pretty direct, if gradual, route.
Cross the red sea, that was 3-4 weeks, give or take, hang out at the
bottom of Mt. Sinai in ten commandments territory for 10 months or so, journey
another 11 or so months to the place overlooking the Jordan River and the Promised
Land, Canaan, beyond it, and you’re almost to your new home.
Now, once they had reached
the Jordon, Moses sent 12 spies to scout the land that God said God would give
to them.
But instead of just
checking out the digs, assessing the possibilities for agriculture, and so on,
the spies saw the enormous, strong and plentiful inhabitants of the land, in
their impressive and heavily fortified cities, and got freaked out.
When they came back to
report what they found, ten of them said, “The people are huge and fierce!
We’re like grasshoppers compared to them! No WAY can we take this land; if we
try, we will be completely crushed!” And
the people listened to them, absorbed their fear, and refused to go into the
land.
In his talk with them, Moses
recounts this part of their story this way:
They brought back a report to us, and
said, ‘It is a good land that the Lord our God is giving us.’
26 But you were
unwilling to go up. You rebelled against the command of the Lord your God; 27you grumbled in your tents and said,
‘It is because the Lord hates us that he has brought us out of the land of
Egypt, to hand us over to the Amorites to destroy us. 28Where are we heading? Our kindred have
made our hearts fail by reporting, “The people are stronger and taller than we
are; the cities are large and fortified up to heaven! … 29
I said to you, ‘Have no dread or fear
of them. 30The Lord your God, who
goes before you, is the one who will fight for you, just as he did for you in
Egypt before your very eyes, 31and in the wilderness,
where you saw how the Lord your God carried you, just as one carries a child,
all the way that you travelled until you reached this place.
32But in spite of this, you
have no trust in the Lord your God, 33who
goes before you on the way to seek out a place for you to camp, in fire by
night, and in the cloud by day, to show you the route you should take.’ (Dt. 1:25-33)
So because of this, they
were “cursed” to wander in the desert, until that untrusting generation died
off. They found themselves in a self-inflicted
holding pattern, because they didn’t believe God would help them with the very
thing God was calling them to do.
So the wandering – which
literally means, “traveling aimlessly,” must have been all the more frustrating
because they had an aim, God had
already shown them where they were supposed to be! They spent the next 38 years basically meandering
around near where God was bringing
them, but not yet ready to go there.
38 years of drills. 38
years of trust training school.
And so, when the whole
generation who had come out of Egypt was dead and gone, and now their children,
who had grown up in the wilderness, stand before the promised land and receive
the important last words of Moses – here we have again the Sabbath command. It’s almost the same as last week, when they
received the Sabbath command for the first time. But it is not the same. The other 9 commandments are identical; this one is
different.
The first time around,
they were to remember the Sabbath day and rest because God rests.
We rest because our lives are centered on a
non-anxious creator and lover of the whole universe who made us, and loves us,
and calls us, and who gives us everything we need to join God in caring for the
world and each other.
Resting teaches us to
trust. It trains us to orient our being toward the one who loves us. You are a child of God. Sabbath says. Orient your being toward the one who loves you.
And for people shaped bythe empire, this drill is meant to become muscle memory, to deprogram them from
a life of slavery where their lives were largely about producing things for the
empire, striving to stay young and strong enough to keep producing things for
the empire, and protecting me and mine over and against those who could take
from them whatever they want whenever they want.
Sabbath drills move them
into trusting that they belong to God who loves them no matter what and will
always take care of them, so that they are finally free, and able to take up
the role God has called them to – to be stewards of creation, and bearers of
blessing for the world. To know God and be God’s people – caring for each other
and the stranger among them, tending the world around them.
Resting is a way to remember
whom they belong to.
But this time, when Moses
reiterates the ten commandments, the Sabbath command changes to a command to “observe”
the Sabbath, pay close attention to this day of rest, and then just as it said
before, everyone rests, only it adds these words: so
that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land
of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand
and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the
sabbath day.
Here they stand, about to
enter into a new land, to form a new society. They are no longer slaves; they
have been set free. And they have spent four decades learning what it means to
belong to a God of freedom and love. And
now, they head into a new enterprise, ready to take up, for the first time in
hundreds of years, a place of power and authority. You are going to look like an empire, God says, Don’t
fall into the trap of thinking you are one. Stop and remember. Stop and see
each other. Even amidst the broken systems of this
earth, take this day to stop and rest so you don’t forget who you really are,
and make sure that everyone else – regardless of their station in life, joins
in that rest, so you don’t forget who they are as well.
There are new temptations to
being on top that they didn’t have to face when they were making bricks for
Pharoah, or aimlessly wandering, off the grid.
They are entering into a world of commerce and international politics, land
ownership and striving for wealth or position. For a people living basically
with nothing, competition and accumulation must have been particularly
dangerous enticements. God is making
sure they hear this command to do this thing that deeply connects them to God
and truth and reality, DO IT so you don’t forget where you came from – and DO
IT because it’s not just for you, it’s for everyone.
When everybody rests, you
all look the same - poor and rich, ruler
and slave, weak and strong, healthy and sick, old and young disappear. Nobody is ahead or behind, nobody is better
or worse. We are equal in our identity as God’s beloved children. Sabbath
resting means everyone across the board stopping all together, stepping out of
your roles and responsibilities, and setting down society’s labels and
rankings, to see each other as human beings, side by side in life.
Walter Brueggeman says, “The odd insistence of the God of Sinai is
that anxious productivity is to be countered by committed neighborliness. The latter practice does not produce so much,
but it creates an environment of security and respect and dignity that
redefines the human project.”[1]
So, in the second telling of
the Ten Commandments, the Sabbath command
says essentially this: You rest, because nobody can or should be defined by
what they do, not you, and not those who work for you, alongside you or against
you.
This isn’t the cashier of
the big box store, the head of the cardiac ward, or the gas station attendant,
she is a daughter, mother, sister and friend, an observer of the world who
loves to paint and draw, a creative soul, with dreams and longings for her
children, someone who is tired and hopeful, and who wonders in the quiet of the
night whether she is missing out.
She’s a person who belongs
to others, and so belongs also to you.
This isn’t a kindergarten teacher,
or a multi-million dollar business owner, or an unemployed welfare recipient,
he’s a human being, who has stories of being bullied as a child, and of growing
up and finding his voice. He’s the one the neighbors come to when they’re
stumped on a project, or to hang out in the yard and talk under the stars.
He’s a person who belongs to
others, and so belongs also to you.
When we say we are a
congregation that practices Sabbath, we do not just mean that we worship
sometimes on Saturdays instead of Sundays.
We mean that we seek to live in the real reality, the Kingdom of God,
where we all belong to God and we all belong to each other.
We rest because God sets us
free to be human beings alongside one another, and calls us to see each other
that way too. We rest because the maker and lover of the whole universe claims
us all, and gives us everything we need to join God in caring for the world and
each other. Resting teaches us to
trust. It trains us to recognize that
every single person is precious to God and a gift to the world. We need each
other. We belong to each other.
The Church is the people who see and hold to that truth on behalf of all humanity. We all are
inextricably connected. What we do affects each other. This is a communal
enterprise –being human, and not an individual affair.
If you believe
you’re in it alone, you will see other people as a threat to your own safety or
well-being, a hindrance to your own advancement. If you forget
that we belong to each other you will believe that love is a limited commodity,
that loving one person means hating another. You’ll think that one person
succeeding means another failing, and act as though there is limited amount of
good to go around, so you’d better go after it and grab it for you and yours,
and if you manage to secure it for a time, you can feel relieved, if not
slightly guilty, that you aren’t like “them.”
But we are
like them. We are them. We are all the same: Beloved children of God. And we can’t belong to God without belonging
to each other. There is no such thing.
Learning to belong to other
people is a big part of being human, and learning that other people belong to
you is a lifelong project as well.
When we say we are a
congregation that practices Sabbath, that means that we practice belonging to
each other. We risk saying about each other, and encourage each other to say
about the world around us: They are mine and I am theirs. I have to do the work of seeing them, and my
impact on them, and apologizing and forgiving, and restoring our
connection. And we practice remembering
that no matter what the world says, this belonging is not up for grabs. As a congregation that practices Sabbath – our
space, our time, our sadness, our celebrations – these things are bravely
shared.
And being
human alongside others can’t be done if we’re drowning in distraction and
racing along without stopping. We have
to stop, and set it down, and lift our heads, and link our arms, and see the world
around us, really see the people that inhabit it, and really let ourselves feel
the frustration and joy of being connected to others, so that we can sense the
love of God, the eternal connection underneath it all that holds us together.
Jesus summed up all the commandments
and the whole law of Moses with the words, “Love the Lord your God with all
your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” In other words, practice
belonging to God and belonging to each other.
Sabbath rest returns us to
reality, by giving us space to remember that we belong to God, and chances to
observe, over and over again, that we belong to each other, until trusting God and
living in God’s love alongside each other, becomes muscle memory.
Amen.
