Reverend Thomas Disrud

First Unitarian Church
Portland, Oregon

January 12, 1997

"I thought I heard the voice of the spirit cry: Come and find me. You won't have to look hard. Come to where the ocean touches the shore; find me in the bright-light promise of morning on the waves; look carefully at the bubbles breaking on the wet sand-there I am. Turn over the glistening rock, slippery with its cushion of seaweed-here I am. Hear the gulls crying news of the endless ocean-that is my news, my voice. Lie with me in the tall, green marsh grass; see my footprints in the sand you have walked upon. Do not say I am lost, for you have found me. I am here.

The story of the creation of the world at the beginning of the Bible in the book of Genesis is a familiar one. "In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said: "Let there be light," and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness Night. And there was evening and morning, the first day."

The creation continues for five more days as the sky, the seas, the land, plants, the sun, the moon, living creatures, including human kind come into being." In each cycle of night into day, a new dimension of the universe is created and unfolds.

And in the end, when this work is finished, God blesses the creation declares that it is good. And finally, God creates a day of rest, the Sabbath day. It is a sign of how good the creation is, that God would take the time to celebrate with the people who have been created and who now have a covenant with God.

This seven-day cycle of time has been the order of things for Jews, Christians and Muslims, all the religions descended from Abraham. This pattern is something we are used to, something we intuitively grow to expect. Because of it we think in seven day cycles, in months, in years.

The pace of the Sabbath, like most of the things in our culture, seems to keep speeding up and in the process the time for Sabbath gets lost. It is taken up by other things. Growing up in a small town in Wisconsin, I remember what a big deal when it was decided that taverns would be open on Sundays. It was a big step in my little town, but it happened because other towns did the same. As far as I know, that is still all that is open on Sundays. Of course, the only other business there is Gilbertson's Grocery, and as far as I know that is still closed on Sundays.

But in our culture, that is certainly the exception to the rule. Sundays are now just another day of business. If you need to go to the Fred Meyer on Sunday, you know it will be open, along with most other businesses. We can now do things most anytime we want. We can bank at any time of the day. We have grocery stores that are open night and day. We can check our e-mail at any time. The options make it all more convenient. And the technology is at our fingertips. Ten years ago I did not have a computer of my own, I did not own an answering machine, have voice mail or own a VCR. If I didn't have most of those things now, I would probably miss them, but my recollection of life before them was that it was pretty good. I don't recall a longing that I really needed them. But now that I have them, I would miss them.

As technology advances and we have more options, life speeds up, it gets fuller and fuller with things to do. Technology is supposed to decrease the time it takes to do things, and it can, but what happens is we just get more and more things on our plate, more things to do, less time for ourselves. Instead of getting simpler, life simply gets busier. The amount of information we process increases dramatically.

And it is easy to start to see ourselves by how many things we have at our fingertips. They more I have, the more I am. We can, in this process lose sight of who we are. And conversely, the less we have, the less we are. If we're not caught up on the technology, then we can see ourselves as somehow below everyone else.

And all the activity and business can be masks for the very human feelings of loneliness and isolation and sadness. When we have so much in our schedules and so much in our lives, we can distance ourselves from all those things. With all that is going on around us, we can feel even more isolated and alone.

It is easy to seek satisfaction in the marketplace. At times in my life I've found it in clothes. At other times it has been books. Currently it is probably work with my house. I bought my first house over the summer and there's lots of space in the house. I'm loving the time I'm spending creating a home for myself, it is a peaceful place to be after a busy day or evening at the church.

But it is also easy to be tempted to go on a retail rampage of sorts. Not taking the time I need furnish the house over time but to buy to fill it up. God made the world in six days, so I certainly should be able to furnish a house.

The other day I came upon a cartoon by P.S. Mueller that shows the Grim Reaper leading away a man carrying a cell phone in his hand. The man is saying "I'll have call forwarding, right?"

Juliet Schor, author of "The Overworked American" says we live in an economy and society that are demanding too much from people. And lots of messages tell us to just go faster, usually by buying more stuff. You buy the right piece of exercise equipment that requires only 20 minutes, three times per week. This will help you have dinner on the table in 10 minutes instead of 20.

Last weekend I was reminded of the importance of finding time for Sabbath. When the rain stopped after what seemed to be many many days, I was out in my yard clearing away branches that had been taken by the storm and needed to be cleaned up. I was moving at the pace I'm often in, right straight ahead. I think I may have been overdosing on breathing in outside air after several days of rain.

I started with some plants along the side of my house. They have stalks that are like bamboo, hollowing the middle. Most of them were destroyed in the storm. They were laying all over. I took my shears and went right after them. I was going to clear them out, and it was not going to take too long. Right straight ahead.

I polished them off in short time and headed for a hydrangea bush in the front. All I could see as I rounded the corner were a bunch of dead flowers. I decided I would thoroughly prune this bush back as well. I was really liking the work I was doing. Gotta get this bush too. As I was plunging in, I was suddenly stopped by the sight of tiny buds peeping out all over the branches.

They were lovely and I barely noticed them.

The sight of the buds slowed me down. I stood there, looking at the buds, seeing that they were all over the bush. Being aware of the buds, I found myself all of a sudden moving a lot slower. Suddenly this bush was something to care for, not something to quickly prune into shape. I slowly cut off the dead blossoms and made sure I didn't cut any of the buds. I now have a new appreciation for my hydrangea bush.

Taking time to see the buds bursting, is a metaphor for what the Sabbath is about. When I slowed down and took to the time to be in my world, I was able to appreciate it, to take the time to see myself as part of the creation, to know my place in the family of things.

Too often, the Sabbath isn't a time to quit what we're doing and appreciate our world. It is easy for the Sabbath to become trivialized as "a day off," a time when we catch up with chores and to do whatever we want. But keeping the Sabbath is more than that.

Gene Patterson writing in Christian Century says "Sabbath means quit. Stop. Take a break. Cool it. The word itself has nothing devout or holy in it. It is a word about time, denoting our nonuse of it-what we usually call wasting time."

It is a time to "open up space for God."

The Sabbath day, particularly in Jewish culture, has been a hallowed time. For Orthodox Jews, it is a day of communion with God, a day you don't do any work, you don't even turn on lights because it is considered work. Work is defined as anything that requires changing the natural, material, world. All week long we wrestle with this, and on the Sabbath, we don't, we simply stay with what has been given, to remember and to celebrate.

The rules associated with Sabbath for Jews can sound very restrictive. It makes it sound like a day when you are giving things up, a day when your options are curtailed. But for the people who observe the Sabbath and its rules, they will say the rules can be liberating. One Jewish author says "it is for the law to clear the path; it is for the soul to sense the spirit." It has been said that "more than the Jews have kept Sabbath, Sabbath has kept the Jews."

When the rules are not there, Sabbath can be the first thing to go.

I recently had an experience of Sabbath that was most welcome, despite what it took to get there.

When I woke up the morning after Christmas to see everything outside covered with ice, I probably should have listened to that little voice inside that said "Don't go Seattle like you planned, you should just stay home." I had an appointment in Seattle and was then planning on visiting friends in Bremerton and didn't want to miss it. "I'm from the Midwest, I can drive in snow," I tell myself.

So off I go, and the going isn't so bad until about halfway to Seattle, then the snow starts to make driving worse and worse, but at this point turning around doesn't seem like much of an option.

So I make it to Seattle to my appointment late, and manage to get on the ferry to Bremerton, where some friends live.

The usual pattern when I visit my friends would be to spend the next day in Seattle, going to shops and finding wonderful food. We have a full day in the city. When we woke up the next morning it was clear we weren't going anywhere. We were snowed in for at least a day, maybe more.

And, thanks to the snow, we had a wonderful day. We cooked food together, we read, we played games, we took naps. It was a very restful, spontaneous, worshipful day. I think it was probably much better than going into the city. The universe seemed to need to conspire to make that Sabbath day for me. It would have taken a whole lot of intentionality for me to do it otherwise.

And perhaps that is the lesson. Sabbath usually isn't something that just happens. It is something we need to make space for, something we have to do intentionally.

And as we follow the rules we set, over time it gets easier. The rules, over time, give us more freedom.

Because there are so many things that can infringe on the Sabbath, keeping it means drawing some pretty clear boundaries and deciding to follow them.

Rebecca Parker suggests that keeping the Sabbath is a radical act of resistance against consumerism. It is an act of saying no to the message that tells us to fill the emptiness in our lives by consuming more. It is a model of consumerism that says when we are empty, we go to the marketplace to be filled. This is not food that sustains, but leaves us hungering for something more. At some point, the marketplace does not satisfy.

When we decide to keep the Sabbath and not consume for one day in seven, we take a degree of control back in our lives. We let ourselves know that we are not helpless in our culture, but do have the ability to be independent from it, to make a decision about it, and not simply be swept up in the process.

The decision not to consume is also a decision to be in community with those who have been marginalized from the culture because they are poor or unemployed or because they are otherwise put out. The consumer culture makes it very clear that some have and others don't have. When you are one of the folks without the technology, you start to see yourself as someone who is lacking, someone who is second class. The act of Sabbath is a day to be together when we don't see ourselves by the work we have or don't have. The act of Sabbath is a time to be together in community, to celebrate all the creation has to offer, no matter what your circumstances. It is a time to be together at a welcome table, even if on the other days that is not possible.

And it does take some courage. When we don't work for a day, it means that the world can get along OK without that work. We value ourselves by the work we do in this culture, and we may be acknowledging that the world goes on without that work. When we mark the Sabbath, we risk finding out that we are more than what we produce. That can be a scary thing.

Keeping the Sabbath is also an act that takes courage because it is a time to open ourselves to the fullness of life-all the beauty, but also all the suffering, the loneliness, the loss, the grief we hold inside of us. Sitting with this is not an easy thing. The same forces that can cut us off from the pain of the world can keep us from the joy. In the process of cutting off the pain, we also cut ourselves off from much of the joy.

As Unitarian Universalists, we don't have a set of guidelines to follow for the Sabbath. Our individual sabbaths may look different, depending on who we are and the lives we lead.

I try to have a Sabbath on Friday, which is my day off. Sometimes I succeed more than others. One of the difficult things I've found in being a minister is that the usual Sabbath on Sunday is not a Sabbath.

The most creative and renewing time I spend is puttering around the house. It is time when I have a cup of coffee in my hand, I'm probably in my bathrobe, and I don't have anything in particular on my agenda. I just have time to read or sit or water plants or clean. It is unstructured time. It is time for me to think about where I'm at and where I'm going. It is holy time for me.

Shaping the Sabbath is a process of blocking out time to do the things that feed us. It is finding to time to be open to the spirit in our lives.

For our church community, we come together here, in this place on Sundays. It is part of our Sabbath. This service is the heart of that Sabbath. It is a time when we are nourished with music and words, a time to be quiet together.

It is not always easy. Our church is not necessarily an easy place for Sabbath. You come in and may be asked to sit closer to someone than you would prefer, you may be asked to stand. The hallways are crowded, coffee hour is crowded. We have challenge. We're crowded, we're noisy. It is not the most worshipful space.

But we are also blessed to be a community where lots of people want to be. The spirit is most evident here. We are working on our challenges to have more space, and the strength of our community will give us courage as we make the decisions we must make.

One of the most important parts of our liturgy is the doxology we sing most Sundays. The words convey what it means to open ourselves to the Sabbath. Spirit of life, come unto me, sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion."

Those words invoke an opening up, a releasing, a communing with the good. This is the day for us to be most intentionally with the spirit, to open ourselves to it.

That is what the Sabbath is for. A time to help us slow down a little, a time to appreciate all the buds bursting in our midst, a time to appreciate the creation that we are a part of.

Words of Anne Hillman:

We are all on a journey together…

To the center of the universe…

Look deep

Into yourself, into another.

It is to a center which is everywhere

That is the holy journey…

First you need only look:

Notice and honor the radiance of

Everything about you…

Play in this universe. Tend

All these shining things around you:

The smallest plant, the creatures and

objects in your care.

Be gentle and nurture. Listen…

As we experience and accept

All that we really are…

We grow in care.

We begin to embrace others

As ourselves, and learn to live

As one among many…

On this Sabbath day, may it be so. Amen.

Let us pray

Great spirit of life, we give thanks for this day. For the people in our midst, for the creation we live in, for all that is our life. Help us to know and to love the quiet. Help us find the playful times, the soulful times. Help us to savor life in a new way. Help us to make time. Help us to find courage. Amen.

Benediction

May your Sabbath day be blessed. Leave this service renewed, filled with love and joy. Go in peace. Amen.

Copyright © 2000, Reverend Thomas Disrud. All rights reserved.