The Impossibility of Disconnected Sabbath

Kristi left for Atlanta, Sunday. As of Wednesday morning the kids are still alive, but the dog is gone. We had to eat him.

I've hit a routine that works in her absence. Being a morning lark (that is, one of those annoying people who can have meaningful conversations and exercise at 5:00am but can't spell his own name by dinner), I am able to get lunches packed and the crap out of the kids' eyes with time to spare. We've been early to school everyday this week. Much of that is due to Kristi writing out a list of what to pack in their lunches, her going to the grocery before she left to set us up for the week and laying out folded piles of everybody's clothes (not mine, I'm a grown man) ahead of time. This morning as I looked in the fridge and pantry, I thought about the conversation I had on the phone with Kristi last night. She might stay one more day than planned. I fully support it. But I realized I won't have enough lunch stuff to pack for the kids tomorrow. The scales have tipped on laundry too. By this evening, I will have to knock those and other items off the list somewhere between my other responsibilities. Kristi and I share all this stuff for the most part. But when she's gone, I of course have to take up the slack.

Joking aside, it's not a big deal at all. Really. But only because it's a stint. Any inconvenience or pain is bearable when it's known to be finite. This is how people endure highway detours and tattoos and childbirth. The negative part is temporary.

Often I have people express to me their seeming inability for their family to find any rest, to relax. Despite wanting to and clearly seeing the need, it's "unrealistic" or "impossible". Theologically they ask about sabbath. Casually, they say they can't stop. The spirit is willing, but there's only so much week. As I looked into the paltry pantry this morning, I emotionally connected, if only a glimpse, to other people's existence:

There are people who aren't enduring a short stint, waiting for someone of high competence to return and reshoulder much of the load of family living. This is their life.

An isolating pressure cooker of trying to keep the kids not just going through their lists, but engaged as loved sons and daughters. To keep the house clean (or even "clean"), the cupboards filled, meals prepared, bills paid, dog uneaten. And then somewhere in there they have to go to work and meet all their vocational requirements. Somewhere in there they have to leave that job to pick up kids from school. Or schools. Earlier on some days on those hyper-convenient teacher workdays, or when their kids'  young bodies succumb to flu season. And when they or their kids must stay home and be sick, or the car breaks down, or the penalty for late payments disappears automatically from checking, the whole teetering system topples for days. Or longer. Somewhere in all this a social life must limp along, or be postponed till God knows when. Somewhere in there a novel longs to be read. Or written. Maybe after the grass is cut. Leaves raked. Taxes filed. After all that, maybe something fun. Maybe a nap. Maybe after answering that email about being available to volunteer at church Sunday. (Unless kids are still sick.) Over the years, to people who live this life I'm only barely mimicking for a few days, I have preached and counseled You gotta have rhythm. You must rest. Find margin in your days and weeks and claim it. You must know when to stop. And then I've gone home with my wife.

• Sixty-four percent of children ages 0–17 lived with two married parents in 2012, down from 77 percent in 1980.
• In 2012, 24 percent of children lived with only their mothers, 4 percent lived with only their fathers, and 4 percent lived with neither of their parents.
• Seventy-four percent of White, non-Hispanic, 59 percent of Hispanic, and 33 percent of Black children lived with two married parents in 2012.
• The proportion of Hispanic children living with two married parents decreased from 75 percent in 1980 to 59 percent in 2012. 

SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplements.

The fourth commandment reads, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." Exodus 20:8-11

Many centuries later, Jesus said, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." Mark 2:27

Christians over the centuries have tried to understand this ancient command of God (the breaking of which was often an immediately punishable capital crime for ancient Israel, an interesting scenario when one considers the work required to kill a person caught in the act of breaking the Sabbath by picking up and throwing large stones at him) and Jesus' words. I'm asked fairly regularly about the sabbath. "Is it Saturday or Sunday?" "Did Constantine sin by changing it?" "Are we out from under that commandment if we're not Jewish?" These are important questions for which I recommend Google. There's a greater point than the day and letter of the law I'm interested in. 

Note that the commandment mostly deals with others. It starts with me, but then it references to a far greater degree every other person in my life. Even my animals. There are other laws that even command giving your fields a rest, a fair text to reference when you want Biblical support for not mowing the lawn. The fourth commandment isn't really about me as it's about the whole community. When Jesus teaches on the spirit of Sabbath, he speaks of it as not a law demanding to be served and honored, but instead is designed to serve and honor the human beings it was given to. He's always talking about what serves people. To follow him is to serve people. The sabbath, primarily, is a system for others to get the rest they need by my help.

Sabbath is hard. It's hard to stop working, to kick up your feet and say with deep peace, "All that work can wait till tomorrow. I've been a human doing all week. Today, we're human beings." It was hard for the Israelites (thus the command to do it), and it's hard now. But I think it's important for single moms, single dads, and even households with both parents present but all their familial support a city or a state or country away to hear; Sabbath for our culture is nearly impossible. Sabbath was given to people who lived their whole lives together, not folks who prize moving out by age twenty, having their own home and their own career and their own life apart from, ideally, the best support system there is. When the men went out in ancient times, the grandmother, the sisters and aunts were still there to take a turn with a mother's children. Men worked and farmed and hunted, but communally shared their talents and resources so nobody imploded under the weight of isolation. Only an idiot would go it alone apart from the community. I'm told this is the original meaning of "village idiot", one who tried to make it without support. 

I don't mean to romanticize things like ancient gender roles or pre-industrialized family life. I mean to say that the participation in Sabbath was intended for and marked by a community working together, legitimately affording each other their resting, together. Sabbath is only really possible communally. Friends and family living in something the modern eye would recognize (and unfairly judge for the most part) as a commune. As our lives are distanced by degrees from this sort of arrangement, the idea of really resting becomes, by degrees, harder and harder. Living apart from others is living apart from that which allows you to off-shoulder some of your life from time to time.

In Roman times, the wealthiest began living in single family residences called a domus. Your ability to live part from the lower and middle class, on your own, was a sign of power. Plebes, the common folk, lived together in apartments. Often very crudely constructed, the insulae were multi-storey buildings peppered throughout the city and full of people not making it like the minority rich were. These days the thinking is the same- the rich get their precious, private isolation while the poor get packed together like a box of free mutt puppies. But there's another dimension to it now. You don't have to have much money to be rich. Now the wealth of making it on your own trumps the financial aspect. Failure is having to come back home from independence to be interdependent. You can be behind on bills, so long as you have your own car in your own garage. The front room might not have furniture, but we'll pat you on the back and say welcome to the Dream as long as you live your life free of the help of others. Tell a woman you live downtown in a loft you can't afford and that you've filed bankruptcy, and she'll admire you for your tenacity. And you may have some. But tell her you live with your elderly mother and take the bus, and you may be blogged about derisively to her online friends. Never mind we have solid empirical and anecdotal evidence about who it is carrying the most anxiety in our world and who seems to enjoy the easiest peace and joy. The strongest in our society are those the ancients called idiots.

Sabbath is not simple. I have not, and probably never will, fully appreciate the unique exhaustion that comes from being a single parent, or even a married one with no support. I am both married and well connected to others whose backs we mutually have. For all of us who want to step into the spirit of what God is after in sabbath, before we can really enjoy stopping, we must begin something else. We have to be really connected to others for each others' sake, or we are truly poor and without rest. A life no one wants. Sabbath doesn't command I work and rest in proper rhythm as much as it reminds me I'm to stay deeply connected to others so we all can. 

So I'm thinking....

A church with small groups should recognize that having their people get together to study a book every week is good until it begins to ignore the fact that single moms and dads never nap and their kids' homework gets harder to help with every year. 

A church with small groups looking for ways to bless locally will recognize the growing number of people, very likely within in their church, stuck in secret cycles of fragile overwhelm. Behold, the objects of your strategized love in your midst!

A church that wants to be relevant will recognize Sunday morning is sacred to many men and women more often for the social aspect than anything else. This is a holy thing. They needn't hear a sermon every Sunday, unless they so desire, to be part of a church. Some are utterly alone with no margin, and sitting silent in a room while one stranger speaks about life to a sea of faces isn't necessarily what their tired, lonely soul needs. 

Churches who want to bless people will put on very, very few events and will incentivize unprogrammed, quiet dinners among its people. The student ministry will look at providing free childcare for events like these as "mission work".*

If disconnected people serve, they should do so in a system that encourages them the other six days like supported family. When they leave, they are too often plunging back into great difficulty. Find ways to follow them without being creepy.**

A person with extra time who wants to live the life of Christ might really consider putting their Bible down more often and seeing if they can create margin for the out-of-towners they live on the same street with. In fact, that person may wish they could start a Bible study on their street, but perhaps the more sacred act would be providing childcare, grocery runs, or just having dinner together. This isn't a Bible study per se, but it is biblical.***

A person who wants to enjoy the life of Christ will wave a flag. They will admit they have perhaps been duped by western, industrialized idiocy and want to move back into support of the insulae. They will realize to lose at society's game is probably a W at reality's. They will embrace something of a feared poverty, in some degree, for a new type of riches. This person will ask for help, guidance and advice, which in my experience results in scenarios like he/she moving back home, moving to a cheaper area, consolidating extra-curriculars, allowing others to help out, the cessation of pretending, and other flavors of humble pie.****

There are a ton more dimensions to this, and my brain is racing a mile a minute on different ramifications to lives and churches. But, I have no more time. Got stuff to do.

* I know many, many people in our church have benefitted from exactly this sort of effort from our students.
** I love how good our church is at this. Volunteers are very connected, checked on, visited, supported, heard and befriended. Key people stay tuned into them, making sure they know how important they are outside of the volunteer work they provide our big church.

*** I like to encourage folks to study the Bible as illiterate people must.

**** This typically happens after some collapse. I suggest it should happen before, but an experienced crisis has always been a more compelling catalyst for change than the anticipation of one.

Dying to see.

A good friend of mine sent me an archive of last words spoken by executed criminals today. There were hundreds of them in the file, and after about five I began to feel strange for reading them. But I couldn’t stop.
I was struck by the fact each of them felt so similar in tone.
They spoke of God.
They spoke of lasting love and unity for their friends and family.
They spoke of forgiveness.
It’s easy to recognize fear motivating these words seconds before your execution. I’m sure they were scared. But it reminded me I'm a terminal being myself. I have seconds too. Just a lot more of them. Hopefully. As I’ve thought about this I’ve wondered if the relatively short span of our lives, criminals and saints alike, doesn’t serve as a great humbling. An indelible reminder that there’s ultimately nothing to compete for, to divide over or any real reason for which to give in to selfishness. We will die. It’s just a “when?" So we might as well live focused on the goodness of God, enjoying opportunities for unity and closeness with others and forgiving ourselves and others for the ways we thought we could cheat death with selfishness. the things death row inmates speak of in their final minutes.

Perhaps we need death clearly in view to be able to clearly see everything that matters. And maybe this seeing is the beginning of resurrection. That is, the beginning of living forever once death has done its humbling.

May God grant you many, many seconds, and eyes that see forever.

Free way

Last week I bought a new CRV. And since then, so apparently did every third person in Wake County. I now see them everywhere. If I lined up all the CRV's I now see on the roads, I could walk across the top of them all the way to East Liberty Ohio.

Have you noticed this phenomenon? Cars, shoes, coats, haircuts, favorite bands...once you partake, you awaken to the fact that you are part of a mass partaking. Something you didn't notice before becomes all you see.

There is power in confession. Not confession as in going and telling a trained stranger your secrets, but in having a community of people with whom you can share life and be honest. The power isn't that God suddenly loves you again for enduring the pain of humiliating disclosure. The power is in letting your inner world be known and having others not run in fear and judgment like you've be certain would happen since childhood. When we're honest with each other, we not only find there is love available for ourselves, but we also find that the assumed hierarchy of goodness and purity is an illusion. Everyone is struggling. Everyone is broken. Everyone is doing their best to grope through the dark. It's all just a matter of brand and scale.

Confession, or shall we just say, being honest with a trustworthy few, isn't just about revealing the skeletons in your closet. It's reminding ourselves that you're not the only wretch. And once you begin to realize that these things you carry for so long, having assumed you're uniquely terrible or unworthy, are only a slight variation on what everyone else is carrying, you will have peace. You'll no longer judge. You'll no longer condemn. You'll no longer compete because that contest can only be won by lying. You will simply be free to live, free to love every other person because you realize you and every other person were always driving different colors of the same car.

Tale of two houses.

The first woman saw an old house, deteriorated and neglected, and began to dream of fully restoring it to its intended condition. 

The second woman looked at an old house, curled her nose, and took to sketching out her dream home.

The first sought to understand the original architecture, the period's wood and stone, the history of the property and those who had used the house before.

The second comparison-priced general contractors, then went shopping for paint colors, sofas and interior design magazines. 

The first worked tirelessly, patiently restoring the interior and exterior of the house in perfect accord with its former self.

The second changed and updated every interior and exterior surface, painting and modernizing in perfect accord with her tastes and the latest trends.

The first was thrilled to see the house returning to itself after so many years.

The second was thrilled to see her plans becoming a reality.

The first woman, after a great many months, made the house everything it was meant to be.

The second woman soon made the house everything she'd always wanted.

Both women's hearts were good.

But only the first house felt loved.

God if you love me keep saying no.

This past Sunday I spoke on a swath of Mark 11. There were many thoughts I didn't get to, but this one in particular felt important enough to circle back on.

After seeing the fig tree withered from no more than Words, the disciples were understandably impressed. Jesus went on to explain they had the same capacity for great things, despite their not being the faith heroes who occupied Temple ranks. Then he says in v24, 

". . . I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."

All historic misapplication and manipulation aside, it's a strange verse.  I've never known anyone who believes Jesus can be taken literally about our ability to, on a faithful whim, toss geography with our will. Especially since he never himself demonstrated these abilities. Yoda force lifted the X-Wing from a swamp to demonstrate the impotence of Luke's faith and that size matters not. Jesus, being non-puppet, wasn't as much into tricks.

Peter Rollins talks about desire and our understanding of "Heaven" being a place where we are changed. As he points out, there is one peculiar exception to the transformation we seem to anticipate for ourselves, and that is the way we desire. As we are transformed into resurrected beings, free from all that shackles us in our current state, our desire as many of us seem to understand, will remain intact.

I've given this much thought and have noticed how prevalent it is within uncriticized thought about the rewards of faith.

Many of us hope to be someday blessedly free of disease, living in something like a mansion in the sky.
We will experience rest from our toils, enjoying endless luxury.
We will have our health and sanity, and every good and sumptuous thing.*

But it's worth considering that, perhaps alongside the end of suffering there might also, or even more so, be a transformation of our desires. That perhaps part of what a heavenly end to suffering might mean is a fundamental change in how we want. With this perspective we could ask: what would our existence be like no longer believing there's more joy to be found in what's represented by "mansions", opulence and endless supply? What if our bodies, minds and even the way we want all transform to such a glorious extent that we would, in that instant of total transformation, find ourselves as having been, all along, in the midst of the very Heaven we thought we had to escape to before? In other words, what if desire resurrects, and on "the other side" the last thing we would ever want is what our current, unressurected desire thinks it wants now? (!)

The alternative, I fear, may be that heaven is a place where our materialism, excessiveness and immaturity are forever rewarded. I wouldn't be the first to, after a moment's thought, recognize that might be Hell after a few weeks there.

". . . I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."

To what "you" is Christ referring? To which "you" is Christ making this promise? The one that becomes anxious when he doesn't get what he wants, even though he doesn't know why he wants it? The one that can't see the whole picture and still has the urge to defend what he knows to be his own broken perspectives on "how things ought to be"? The child who thinks the things it desires are its source of life?

Or does Christ speak to a version of me still not realized. A yet-to-be-born version of me, one that will someday know peace fully, one whose inner wars will have been resolved and therefore no one will be blamed or be given a shred of power over my own joy. One that desires little, for contentment has taken over.

It pains me to say it, but I hope Christ doesn't say yes much to my prayers. Even when I really mean it. Not for a long, long time to come, anyway.





*You may recall a decade back the Islamic Jihadists reportedly believing martyrdom would get them 72 virgins in paradise. This is only slightly different than some Christian conceptions about "what happens to us after we die." 

Kids Saying the Damned-est Things

A friend told me of an event he attended this past weekend where he saw an eight or nine-year-old armed with a megaphone and preaching fire and judgment to passersby. An adult, ostensibly his father, filmed him proudly as the little boy yelled Bible quotes into all manner of nuanced adulthood. A decade old, likely not yet acquainted with the confusion of a first crush or financial disappointment, calling his world into account.

I've seen documentaries and news stories where children are thought especially blessed by God for preaching (and screeching) with bold, knowing charisma beyond their years. Tearful adults remark with disbelieving shakes of their heads. "He's got that Holy Fire!" Sometimes it's cute. Except when it's not. Those other times it's rather sad.

I believe children hold a very special place in the world and are far more valuable than most of them are ever treated. We often overlook them in deference to our grown-up rat race. In doing this, everyone -kids and adults- misses out on life. Christ, as we've heard, went so far as to say to a child-ignoring first century palestine that the Reign of God belongs to children, despite (and perhaps because of) their very inability to earn it. Yet I don't fully understand how yelling at strangers before you know how the world works, let alone how it should work, is considered inspired. Children always yell about the world not being according to their preferences. We call it whining. Why when tucked into a miniature suit and accompanied by a Bible and amplification is it something from the great beyond?

When Jesus was twelve, his parents left him in Jerusalem on accident. They'd assumed he was in their friends' minivan or something. Going back and retracing their steps, they found him hanging out in the temple with religious leaders and scholars. And their minds were blown. Why? Because Jesus asked great questions. The second chapter of Luke records amazement not in what Jesus preached, but in his ability to interact with the ideas, to listen and ask follow up and clarification, to involve himself in the exchange rather than distance himself in order to conquer.

Jesus made his mark by being an inquisitive presence, not a declarative one.

Kids with megaphones judging things they don't understand typically only become taller with time. There's not much maturing available for those who see faith as the declaring of how things ought to be irrespective of their own ignorance. Making statements instead of conversation is probably not a phenomenon powered by Christ, but by a desire to control and complain one's own kingdom into view. I'm saying this isn't really age-specifc.

I'd like to see kids celebrated for listening and wondering and remaining humble. While we're at it, let's celebrate those things in every stage of life in which we find them. Let's call that charisma.

Shhh.

Three weeks ago my wife Kristi and I took a hike around Jordan Pond. It's a beautiful freshwater lake in Acadia National Park, flanked with pines and mountain ridges along the coast of Maine. Two full hours of nearly four miles negotiating trails and boulders- that's some pond.

As we walked we agreed our chances of seeing wildlife would increase if we were silent. A dense white fog had descended on the lake, adding to the eerie beauty. Silence seemed right. Reverent even. So we moved along the water's edge in silence.

Only minutes later the silence was broken by a sudden explosion. Less than a yard from my feet there erupted movement and screeching and color. As it was coming from the water's edge, my mind immediately classified it as a duck. But my mouth disagreed. 

"PILEATED!" I was suddenly whisper-yelling. "That's a Pileated Woodpecker!" 

It flew in an arc and landed on the side of a nearby tree, its large monochromatic body instantly secured to the bark, its head red enough to shame Julianne Moore into a hat. Kristi was obviously impressed with the bird, but I now suspect she may have also been struggling to respect me as I squealed. 

"Oh my gosh honey. I've never been this close!" I continued, eyes bulging.

The bird flew further up into the tree out of view. We moved closer, camera on. And that's when we heard the most terrible sound one can hear in a time like this. Other humans.

Out of the sacred, foggy trail ahead came a couple, talking about someone named Patty and product initiatives and percentages over last quarter and laughing about it all. They weren't as evil as I make them sound, but I did momentarily pray them out of existence. On impulse, as they came fully into view, I put my finger to my lips to hush them. How strange that must have been for them, a grown man and woman, hushed like children by a sylvan stranger. But it worked. They froze, staring at us while I gestured up into the tree over their heads. I whispered to them with the intensity of one informing another his foot was on a land mine. 

"Sorry to be the noise police, but there's a Pileated Woodpecker over your head." He looked at me with confusion. His hand gripped his wallet. I edited myself. "It's a big bird. Woody Woodpecker without the laugh."

"Oh," said the woman on his behalf, now squinting into the branches. The man ducked his head as though we were under a helicopter. The woodpecker called out, the sound echoing into the green and white. And there we were, four people. Silent. Anticipating. 

We stood this way for a full minute, until it was clear Woody had gone. With nods we finally acknowledged to each other the moment was over. Each of us walked away in solemn whispers.

I hope I never meet you on a wooded trail. But I do hope, as was reinforced for me on my July sabbatical, you understand the reverence of silence. Not just in the outdoors, but in every waking, noisy hour. All of reality is incased in silence. All of reality is brimming with the sacred, the profound, the beautiful. I confess I don't recognize but a sliver of it. I'm typically most guilty of perpetuating the distraction of noise. You and I will come to life to the degree our lives are lived in more awareness of the great holy silence inviting us in.

May our God of few words inspire you today in the quieting of your mouth and mind. May you be newly entertained by the spaces between. May you experience what can only be found in silence.

Peace.

Steve