Remember the Sabbath
September 10, 2006

Today I’ll be lifting up the spiritual value of Sabbath–not merely as a weekly practice by attending our Sunday worship but also as a daily spiritual discipline in your life. For honoring the Sabbath is a commandment that’s utterly central to being a balanced human being.

I used to run upwards of 20 miles a week. I was a modest jogger, never an avid racer, although I would periodically engage in 10k events. Year by year, my runs have diminished in length and intensity, until now, I mainly walk with Carolyn every morning, play tennis regularly, and daily average 10,000 steps on my pedometer which is equivalent to 5 miles…but I rarely run anymore. My body and soul have clearly adjusted to a different pace of motoring in the world.

That recurrent admonition in our childhood years, “walk, don’t run,” has acquired fresh meaning during my homestretch. I’ve actually grown a passion for walking; I sweat less, but I see more. My joints are kept well-oiled, my cardiovascular system rejoices, and a sense of calm sets in while moseying around town, which we do a lot of, since we live right in the thicket of Hillcrest.

Furthermore, while sauntering, I can talk about the state of the world in a leisurely manner. Or chant if I’m alone, one of my favorites being this piece composed by Schlomo Carlebach, “the singing rabbi”: “Return again, return again, return to the home of your soul. Return again, return again, return to the home of your soul. Return to who you are, return to what you are, return to where you are…born and reborn again…”

That chant really gets to the core of the spiritual life doesn’t it? Our mission, on a daily basis, is to keep returning to who we are, what we are, where we are…being born and reborn again in the process.

Yes, the robust spiritual life truly starts by paying heed to the 4th commandment in the Hebrew scriptures: “To remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy!” (Exodus 20:8), especially for goal-oriented, hard-grinding westerners. Actually, there are two commandments contained here, because we’re charged not only to remember but also to keep the Sabbath…both individually and communally.

There’s no single route to honoring the Sabbath in your personal life, but various paths (singing, yoga, sauntering, meditating and on and on) and you must find the spiritual nourishment that best feeds your soul.
 
All I know is that keeping the Sabbath is a daring pursuit in a culture where busyness is equated with human value and being industrious is rewarded far more than quietude.

Yet, this I know to be true: if we can be trained to observe quality moments of Sabbath every day, all the other life-commandments will fall into place.

Now, I’m claiming that the Sabbath is not only a day denoting the absence of work; it’s far more. Honoring the Sabbath is a visible reminder that every one of us is more than a cog in the economic machine, that we have a divine right to our own bodies and minds.

Sabbath denotes a way of traversing space and time that includes outbreaks of song and dance, restorative naps and rituals, contemplation and conversation, smiling and breathing. During the day, every little stop brings something of one’s self back to the whole, the way a bee brings nectar to its hive; the pauses in our lives add up. Yes, the pauses do add up.

Perhaps you know the story of a South American tribe that customarily went on long marches, and all of a sudden they’d stop walking, sit down to rest for a while, and then make camp for a couple days, before going any further. They explained that they needed the rest so that their souls could catch up with their bodies.

In your life, are you allowing space and time for your soul to catch up with your body? Moments will do.

Wouldn’t it be a shame to come to the end of life’s road and not have gotten to know our inner realm better; and folks, the only way to do so is to spend quality moments alone in tranquility.

Even the Hebrew God, Yahweh, takes the Sabbath personally, for in the book of Exodus we read: “In six days God made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day, the Eternal One rested and was refreshed.” Here the word refreshed literally means “and God exhaled.” Accordingly, the healthy flow of our human days requires inhaling and exhaling, in cadenced measure.

Imagine your needs as a wild horse. You’re engaged in a fierce tug-of-war, trying to subdue the horse. If all you have are your lasso and your might, you’ll soon tire out. For the horse’s superior strength will overtake you. But imagine that you’ve come to this challenge prepared–because you’ve built a corral for the horse.

The Jews built a corral by teaching the body the habit of saying no on every seventh day. And there’s a rhythm in seven that the body understands, since our cells reproduce every seventh day.

My sermon is two-pronged this morning: first, I want to promote the value of honoring the Sabbath institutionally by attending Summit worship as frequently as you can. Then I want to share some notes on the value of honoring the Sabbath individually, in your daily life. For authentic Sabbath-time must always be both personal and public!

Of course, it’s my main job to promote Sunday worship, because I’m your servant leader, and weekly worship is prime time for Summitarians. There are many ways we are bound together as a religious community around here: through education and service, through caring and social activities, through music and gardening, but nothing is more crucial than our worshipping together. Worship’s the heart and soul of our Summit vitality.

I know of no other hour (okay, it’s closer to two hours from arrival to departure), where we can entertain such a poignant awareness of the goods of life in all their freshness and intensity than right here in our Cottonwood chapel.

Without such glimpses of beauty, without such gestures of tenderness and calls to compassion, without such outbursts of gratitude and humor, without the driving devotion to make of our universe a gentler, more loving place…without all the life-sustaining nourishment of our Sunday mornings together, I admit it, my humanity isn’t very safe or very strong.

I come here on Sundays to worship in spirit and in truth, as the Christian scriptures put it: that is, to worship with both a full dose of spirit or energy and truth or integrity. I come here to have life and share it more abundantly. And, my friends, if enjoying abundant life isn’t worth a couple hours of my week, then what else is?

The Sabbath marks a day when we live with no other task than to be fully human, in touch with the depths and heights of our very souls. The Sabbath also notes a day to celebrate harmony between humans and nature, with an afternoon stroll, relaxed lunch with buddies, or playtime in the park. Again, I ask: What’s more important than all that? And if we can’t find time for such spiritual replenishment, then what can we find time for?

People sometimes say: “I don’t have enough time to go to Sunday worship.” And my only response is: “If I dare say so, perhaps you don’t have time not to worship on Sundays.” For, sabbath at Summit is time well-spent, essential time, holy time, time we can ill-afford to forfeit. It’s brief yet oh so potent when compared with our other expenditures of time.

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, when asked why he went to worship, replied that he had a plant called reverence which needed watering each week. Isn’t that the truth? Each of us has a plant–indeed, is a plant–that needs lots of watering every week.

Sabbath means literally, to catch one’s breath. And one of the most common complaints of our overstressed era is that so many of us are perennially out of breath, winded, and we desperately covet a place where we can catch our breath and rejuvenate our weary, worried, worn beings.

We hanker for a place where we can cease the clutter, stop and get off the train for awhile, sit down and just rest…and restore. Now, by rest I’m not talking about uninterrupted bliss. In fact, you’ll often hear me say in a prayer, “O Spirit of Life, give us peace and unrest–sufficient peace to bring us serenity and enough unrest to keep us spiritually awake.” As one wit put it: sound religion exists to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Both/and.

It’s interesting to read that when Jesus invites people to rest, he does so with a certain type of folk in mind. He says: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest…” The invitation is targeted to those of us who are down, scuffling a bit, perhaps heavy laden. Yes, if and when you’re hurting or heavy-laden, this is the place, this is the people, this is the time, just for you…to be held, sometimes even healed.

I often hear from non-attenders: “But I’m just too pooped to make the effort to go to Sunday worship service.” All I can say is that being pooped puts you in precisely the proper state to appear. You can come plumb pooped out, and just be present all morning, without any pressure or obligation other than sitting still and giving your soul time to catch up with your body!

Let me say more about this entire matter of catching ones breath, of better breathing, as a way of helping us staying spiritually fit, the rest of the week. As a person who often succumbs to hoarseness and lives on throat lozenges, due to incessant speaking, singing, and mingling, I’m a perfect candidate to learn how to breathe more properly.

So, if there’s one thing that you take from today’s sermon, it’s the clarion call to slowly but surely catch your breath. Any disciplined practice of conscious breathing, whether through meditation or yoga, or simply sitting quietly for a few daily moments in a corner of your house, has been proven to reduce stress, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels. One Harvard study showed that even nursing home patients who were in their eighties when they first began meditation felt happier, functioned better, and lived longer than non-meditators.

So why not launch every morn by reciting some simple mantra such as that of Thich Nhat Hanh: “Breathing in, I calm my body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment, I know that this is the only moment.” Then spend the rest of the day trying to live out this mantra.

Breathing, you see, is at once involuntary and voluntary, both ordinary and transformative. To breathe deeply is a religious act; for in breathing, our individual spirit partakes of the Infinite Spirit.

In conscious breathing we become aware that the air taken in is part of the world-envelope of air which is the product of the inhalation and exhalation of all humanity and the product of the planet’s vegetation. You see, we are bound in a universal experience of mutuality–needing what the plants exhale, oxygen and giving what they require, carbon dioxide. Both what they need and what we need are the very building blocks of the cosmos itself.

Folks, you don’t have to visit a sacred site, you don’t have to adhere to a certain scripture, you don’t have to follow a guru. Just observe your breath. Breathe in and breathe out, and pay attention to the breathing process. You can do this any time during the day, while waiting in line, sitting at a stoplight, listening to a sermon. Whatever you’re doing at any given moment, stop a moment, observe…simply look at your breath without trying to influence it. Observing our breathing de-stresses us and puts our minds in a neutral, serene place.

Second, breathe abdominally. That is, when you take a deep breath, your belly should move outward. Many of us don’t let our abdomens expand freely as we breathe. We’re kind of embarrassed about our tummies, so we restrict those muscles, and, as a result, are unable to take a full, deep breath. I say, stick out your gut and go for it.

Third, squeeze out more air. Whenever you think about it, at the end of a breath, try squeezing more air out of your lungs. Use those intercostals muscles. If you practice this exercise regularly, you’ll deepen and lengthen the period of exhalation until it equals your inhalation (typically inhalation takes about three times longer than exhalation). In so doing, we will be moving much more air in and out of our lungs.

In sum, make your breathing deeper, slower, quieter, and more regular. If today you can be aware of breathing for ten seconds more than yesterday, you will have taken a measurable step toward an expanded integration of your mind and body, and, yes, you will be honoring and keeping the Sabbath holy.

Having every one of the 75 trillion cells in our bodies breathing more slowly and harmoniously is decisive to a healthy and holy life. And it just may be the most important religious thing we ever do.

Tom Owen-Towle
September 10, 2006