| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | Here is another interesting way to look at sabbath rest - and anxiety. From "Mandate to Difference" by Walter Brueggemann. The Creator promises and guarantees abundance, and sabbath is the day we luxuriate in that abundance as a gift which we do not need to perform or possess or acquire or achieve....because it is a gift! But of course, we do not keep sabbath, and so violate the inviolate sabbath and so diminish and deplete our naphshim because we do not believe in, trust in, or count on god's abundance. We do not think that creation is abundant, and we do not trust the guarantee of the Creator. The outcome of such distrust, I propose, is a devouring anxiety....just as sabbath is a total antidote to anxiety. For what remains of my comments, I juxtapose sabbath and anxiety. Note well "anxiety" .....not "sin" or "guilt." Well it is obvious that we will be staying with this discussion of sabbath as we move into looking at sabbath and our anxiety. That's good. I need that. Trusting in God is the foundation of who we say we are. Even at the beginning of the words at Sinai, there is our trust in one God alone. All things come from and grow within that reality. It is a reality that is meant to shape the character of our lives. Once we step away from that foundational word of hopefulness - "I am the Lord, YOUR God" - we step into piles of "stuff" that keep making our lives smell with misplaced trust and thus, anxiety over what may or may not happen to us. I find that as I am anxious about what will happen in my life, I become less of a person shaped within the loving embrace of our God. In many and various ways, I will step into action and begin to build the world as I want it and insist that it must be. In other words, I run from the promises of our God and in response to my anxiety enter a living hell that is always being judged and under scrutiny. That's sad. Sabbath call me to rest in what God has promised and I so easily choose to spin within my anxieties - an utter waste of time - all time. Connection: Are you able to catch yourself spinning within the grasp of anxious moments? It can be so deadly. Come, Holy Spirit. Come and open up our lives that we may see how you offer new life and when you offer life it is life given forever and ever. When we are inspired to see that, we are handed a weapon with which we can face our anxieties. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | Brueggeman comments about when the work of the tabernacle of the tent of meeting was finished and everything God commanded Moses was done. It is finished! it is constituted! Holy zone where God dwells! Holy time where nephesh sets down! Holy space and holy time, holy life devoted to the presence of God and healing, and a vision of God's glory come among us - full of grace and truth - God's glory which we are to practice and enjoy. This space is unlike any other space. This time is unlike any other time. This life is unlike any other life. It is this space and this time and this life that stand as the wellness center of creation. There is no substitute, no reasonable facsimile, no adequate tradeoff or compensation. An act of restful restoration engages the character of the Creator, even as it is engraved in the life of the creation; imagine, moreover, that we are made in that image to turn from busyness to restfulness and so back to full joyous creatureliness, the kind intended by the Creator, the kind intended by good parents by whom we were first fondled. It is the truth of our life that we are meant for restful restoration. Written into the very center of the community is the reality of being finished - set - refreshed. This is not a time that will renew us so that we might never really be set in our ways - but available for the life that will come after we rest from what has been the labor of our lives. I always appreciate when writers remind us of our creatureliness. When we do not find that we can rest in God, it is so very easy to try and overstep our creatureliness and attempt to be something more. But we are not something more. We are what God created - and that is Good - very Good. To be able to step back and let the promises of God hold us and support us and offer us rest is to be a part of the whole picture of life that comes into being by our 'Creator God.' To be human is to be as much as that means - and no more. When we trust God's commentary on our life, there comes a time in which we can breathe and sigh and rest so that we will each remember our place - our calling - our status for life. Connection: Will there be a time in this day to be a part of "restful restoration"? If not, when? Encourage us to abide in you alone, O God. Too often we are afraid of what will come of us if we do not try to control the world in which we live. You alone can free us from that burden. We must remember this power you hold for life. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | Like a week comes to an abrupt end, so too does creation - and it ends in rest. Again from "Mandate to Difference." What a piece of literary architecture, that Exodus 25-31 imagines and construes a safe, ordered place where the holiness of God can touch down without pollution or disturbance. Except that at the last moment, in the seventh speech, the promise of space, in characteristic Jewish fashion, is converted to a safe, ordered time for rehabilitation. In this regard, the tabernacle-to-sabbath sequence is exactly parallel to Genesis 1 that ponders fruitful space for six days and at the last moment turns to holy time. What is holy time? It is the realm of peace. It is the day in which the fullness of God is available without restriction - therefore it is a time of complete rest. All the work and all the planning and all the action and all the creation of that which is new and springing forth as though it is truly the gift that it is, is now at its end - for now. Rest comes - breath comes - memories hold us deep within the promises of our God - the sabbath rest (that "cathedral in time") is where we can wander and wonder and prayerfully consider the gift of life that is handed to us all. Where is this day to be honored? I suppose without limit. And yet it must have some intention about it. Even if it is in the middle of the work within time that so often buries us with worry and agendas. For even there, we must be a people who enter the rest that can be presented to us at any moment. I find that at times, this time of rest sits down right alongside me and just stares at me and waits for me to notice what is not yet a part of my life. It is not a condemning presence. It is a loving presence that seeks to keep me well and bring about refreshment. It takes discipline to respect those moments when the world is asking us to press on. Connection: Are you able to enter that rest - that gift - even when your sense that your are being carried away by the day? Your touch, O God, nurtures us and guides us and reminds us that we are your beloved children. In the face of all that must be done you continue to whisper a word of peace and well-being so that we will remember that you love us into restfulness. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | Today, Brueggemann gives some insight on how to consider this notion of our nephesh. For this day ponder you nephesh in its wholeness, its complexity, its social location, and imagine the voices and tasks that deplete and the voices and tasks that restore. And rest! If you need a guide for nephesh pondering, try Psalm 35: - say to my soul, "I am your salvation" vs.3
- then my soul shall rejoice in the Lord, exulting in his deliverance. All my bones shall say, "O Lord, who is like you? You deliver the weak from those too strong for them, the weak and needy from those who despoil them" vss 9-10
- How long, O Lord, will you look on? Rescue me from their ravages, my life from the lions! vs. 17
(read life/soul as nephesh) There are never-ending ways to rest when such words are handed to us. There is the God - our God - who brings rest and who makes promises and is the eternal keeper of promises no matter what the day holds for us. This is how we begin to rest. This is how we take the time to step back and rest or step back and watch the unfolding joy of God's Reign take place all around us. When we become so tied up and tied down to the events of the day we do not give time and space to rest and openness to the way God can and does surprise us with life that will take us beyond our limits and into a reality that come into simply through being re-nepheshed. Connection: When you hear those words: "I am your salvation" and you know that it is a word of promise that shakes all creation with the one truthfulness that cannot be ripped from us, what does it do to your heart? With the whole church and all creation, we pray that it will bring us rest and peace. Come, Lord of the Wind and God of Creation. Come and lift us up to see your promises even when we are being consumed by the events around us. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | Let's continue with this notion of being re-nepheshed - from Mandate to Difference by Walter Brueggemann. ....sabbath is about recovered nephesh, and nephesh is not a "religious idea," no "soul," but self in all of its complex social existence. That is why I entitled this presentation, "You Cannot Fool Your Nephesh." We say often, "You cannot fool your body." Of course not, but the nephesh more so, for nephesh is that intertwined complexity of all things, spiritual, moral, mental, bodily, and material, the whole self, the true self. And it will not be lied to. There are limits because we are in the image of the God who is limited to six days of energy. We are often depleted like God and just like the ox and just like the donkey and just like a slave and just like and immigrant, we must pause. Pushed beyond that limit, the nephesh evaporates and creation fails. And so we must pause. I suppose we could say that we are not fully human unless we rest. It is there that the creativity of our humanity is renewed and ready to be a part of every day. Without rest - without the time for refreshment - do we let ourselves look up to the beauty of the sky and the image of God in the faces of those around us? I often write of taking a breath and letting that be the beginning of seeing thing new and even uncovering the joy that is always right alongside or even in front of us. That breath is just a taste of what comes with rest that persists and interrupts everything we think we must do our finish or attain. This refreshment is something that comes more readily when we have others who remind us of the gift that is ours. For me, "remind" is a more graceful action than a list of regulations that are meant to put shape to the time of refreshment that is able to bring us into full life. I need you to remind me of the gift of sabbath rest. If you attempt to push me into rest, my mind never rests. I enjoy invitation and I think I respond best to that. This may even mean that this rest or refreshment may be something utterly spontaneous - but greatly needed. Such rest may teach me what more rest is able to bring to life. Connection: Are you able to noticed that you are depleted? I mean this as a question directed to each week - not the whole year. If so, how and when are you refreshed? Living water of life, you refresh us by our word of promise and your participation in all of creation and by leading us into the pathway of refreshment that opens us to new life again and again. Tickle us with your promises that we will look up and find time to stop all that we attempt to do and let your gift of life come together in all its fullness. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | In Exodus 25-31 God speaks to Moses seven time (instructions about holy place and holy ordination). Some say it is a play on the creation of Genesis 1. Brueggemann picks up on the seventh speech - holy time. Again, in "Mandate to Difference" by Walter Brueggemann. This seventh speech culminates with references to the divine sabbath: "it is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested." (Exodus 31:17) And then in a quirky conclusion, the text adds, no longer remembering that it is cast as God's own speech, "and was refreshed." This is a stunning theological statement! The Hebrews uses the term nephesh, which occurs often in the Old Testament as a noun meaning "self" and often rendered as "soul," as in "bless the Lord O my soul." But here the term nephesh is a verb in the reflexive niphal; YHWH "was nepheshed." .... Sabbath is a time for being re-nepheshed, for recovery of full self by withdrawal from all that drains and exhausts and depletes. And so for God. Because of God's own life and God's own time and God's own experience, God has ordered, in the very fabric of creation, that there are limits to the demands and expectations that are to be placed on our naphshim. God is refreshed. This is fresh for life. Fresh to be again the one who creates. That is also for us. That we be a people whose acknowledge that our lives can and will be drained of our life essence. Rest is the same as "was refreshed." Makes me wonder how God is within this time of refreshment. Then again, that is my need to figure that out. I also think it is quite odd that we humans think we must define and legislate every second of this day of rest. Are we afraid to rest without rules that really allow for the fullness of rest. Can you imagine God piling on rules for how he can rest or what would be the best way to rest or what cannot take place within the domain of restfulness? Can it be enough that we know that God was refreshed and we are invited into that experience of refreshment. It must be enough to know that God rested. It must be enough that we are trusted to rest also. Otherwise, would God rest?!?! And yet, we all know that we do not rest well (this is me speaking to me here). So instead of mandates that can fill pages and pages of notes on how to rest, we are simply told to rest. It is the way of our creative God - rest. How? Rest. Connection: Sometimes I find it strange that I am in the middle of restfulness even when it is not a designated time to rest (and vice versa). So is it good for us to let those times expand and be noticed and appreciated in order that we can be refreshed. I suppose being people of little discipline - setting aside a day and time to make us rest is good. But to have to make that day another list of things to do and follow seems out of character for the day. Come, O God of Refreshment, Come and help us rest in you alone. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | We ended last week with the reminder that God rested. Today we pick up with that thought. Again, in "Mandate to Difference" by Walter Brueggemann. This God rests! this God so rests that Israel in its poetic imagination can entertain the thought of YHWH's dormancy. Indeed Israel can issue a wake-up call to God: "Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord! Awake, as in days of old, the generation of long ago! Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon? (Isa. 51:9) The summons in Isaiah 51 is to the creator God, the one who had in ancient times dealt with evil sea monsters. God rests because the world will work, because the tasks of creation have been delegated, and because creation, blessed as it is, knows the will and energy of the Creator and does not need constant attention. God rests, because God engages in self-care and because there came a silence over heaven and earth and the radishes said to the porcupines, "Shhh - be quite because 'Himself' is resting, and we must tiptoe until Sunday morning when we will arise after rest to new life." The rest of the Creator causes serenity in creation. The creatures, like the Creator, are competent and trusting and unhasting. the world works and all is well. So, rest - the world will work. Even when there is so much we are handed as caretakers of creation - it will work. Rest is an essential part of all life. God rests as we are trusted to be a part of the ongoing generativity of creation. As we all know, we don't seem to take the caretaker role very seriously. Too often we have let ourselves think that "it will work" means that we don't have to keep our eyes on things. When we do that, we are most likely to take even the little gifts of creation for granted and forget about how we must seek the well-being of all things. God rests as God trusts what will be done by all of us as we enter into the role we have been given. Our resting reminds us what God has put into action before us. Our resting reminds us that we cannot control the working of the world no matter how we work. In fact, it seems like the more we try to get done in our world, the more we seem to take advantage of creation and forget about keep things in good condition. Getting things done often leads to putting our task as stewards on the shelf and going forward as we please. Connection: We are competent and trusting and unhasting - good reason to take our resting and our working as stewards seriously. Creating God, as you rest you hand us the day and consider us to be the overseers of the creative process that continues to unfold around us. Within such a blessing you have once again called us your own and we ask that you encourage this life of faithfulness. Amen. |
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